Question asked by Mavis Yeh
Dear Rinpoche,
Your Eminence mentioned in the Lam rim Lineage teaching that the physical constituents that make up a sentient being are egg, sperm, blood. The formless does not have that. Since our mind is a continuum, what constitutes our mind since our body will expire and we go in bardo prior to taking rebirth to a physical body. What holds all the information or rather our karma, merit and imprints that carry over to our other lives? Is our mind formless?
Thank you Rinpoche for answering my previous question.
Sincerely with folded hands and deepest gratitude,
Mavis
Dear Mavis,
Our mind is tasteless, formless, colorless and without size. It exists on the basis we can indirectly perceive imputations of our aggregates. Since our aggregates can perceive objects, our mind can register and impute. In this way the mind and body has a temporary relationship. Like when you are in a telephone booth and make a call, your voice is not in the phone or connected as a part of it, but the phone carries your voice to the receiver. So it would seem that your voice is coming out of the phone or even a part of it when it is not. The phone transmitting your voice is borrowed just like your aggregates/body is borrowed for the mind.
The physical constituents arise, gather, form and function due to our karma as the force behind it. The force behind our karma is our flawed perception of the reality around us. This flawed perception around us ‘makes’ us act in ways that increase the deceptions of both self and phenomena. The deceptions are the basis of karma which follows the doer (mind) till the karma is used, exhausted or purified.
The mind does not need a physical constituent to exist or function but it can have a physical body in order to experience the karmas previously accumulated.
I hope this helps you very much.
Tsem Rinpoche