Quick question with answer
I thought I would reproduce the question and answer here as it might benefit others also.
I thank Mavis for his question.
Tsem Rinpoche
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
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Thank you Mavis for the thought provoking question.. Rinpoche’s reply is another story to contemplate and understand better.. Sounds complicated at first, but once Rinpche explained it using the phone call example, I sort of grasp the concept though I need to read up more on the mind and the unconscious mind moving from one body to another..
Thank you for the explanation and thank you for sharing, Rinpoche!
Thank you for the sharing Rinpoche. The driving force behind our action is mainly due to our karma from the past.As a human being we are so fortunate to be given an intellect and consciousness that enable us to make a choice to act out our destiny in our physical form.
If by some chance due to our good karma that we had a chance to meet up with dharma and most fortunate to understand the importance of practicing it through a guru.Then ,we have a chance to reduce if not eliminate the effect of the negative karma before it ripens.Then,maybe we could make it right this time around and we could at least have a chance to be reincarnated as a human again to practice dharma and evolve to a higher state of consciousness .
Our flawed perception of reality ( under the power and influence of our karma and delusions )makes us act in ways that enhance the deceptions of ‘self’ and ‘phenomena. This deception leads us to create negative karma, which follows us in our mindstream, till the karma is exhausted or purified.
Hence there are two factors, we need to work on : our delusions(principally the three poisons of attachment/desire, hatred/anger and ignorance) and our negative karma. Of the two, delusions are the principal factor causing our deceptions to arise. We need to practice greater mindfulness and watch our thoughts as they arise, as well as guard our sense doors.We need to renounce our strong attachments to the eight worldly concerns. As for karma, we need to practice purification of our negative karmas. In fact, as the Lamrim says, we need to continuously accumulate merits and purify.
I remember from a previous teaching that everything we do is ultimately recorded and imprinted into the subtlest part of our mind. Our gross mind in which we operate on right now along with the underlying subconscious will eventually dissolve when we pass on and it is the subtlest part that will be ejected and that will be the mind that will take rebirth in another form.
Rinpoche adds that everything we do imprints itself onto this part of the mind. It is with the intent of our actions that will imprint onto this part of the mind and from this mind, it will eventually arise again and manifest as the type of existence (human, animal, ghost, hell being, demi-god or god), experiences and people we encounter. That was part of what I remember of that particular teaching that is related to what Rinpoche is talking about.
Thank you Rinpoche for answering this question is such a short but deep and quick explanation . I really like the analogy of the phone. A funny thing is that when we dream, we are only our mind, yet we can feel, see, touch, hear etc.
Thank you Rinpoche for the sharing, it is very interesting on how rinpoche use the telephone as example. It just created a very clear and easy to understand on this.
Like Sharon said, we think that this is our body, just like how real we felt the sound comes from the phone, but when we put down the phone, the surreal sound will disappear, just like our body, once we died, our mind will leave our body, until we make another call.
Our mind is formless, that why it can take rebirth in any form, hence, we should be like our mind, takes no form, so we can adapt into any form of situation…
Thank you for sharing this response – i like the analogy of the phone very much – that although our voice comes from the phone, we are not the phone, while we are usually deluded to think that we are our body. What is interesting is that when we are dreaming, we are not using our five aggregates yet using our mind, it seems that we can see, touch, hear, taste, smell though our physical body is not obviously at work. Interesting! 🙂
Thank you Rinpoche for explaining what is a mind and what constitutes a physical body. There is still a lot to learn in this topic that I do not understand.
Thank you so much Rinpoche for this short, deep and straight to the point explanation.
I am taking the liberty to quote Rinpoche and comment so as to understand better here below.
Thus, the tastes, the forms, the color, the size, the shapes, and all chemical and physical phenomena exist as imputations through the working of our aggregates, but does it also exist on its own?
I mean if it exists on its own then there must also be a cause for it that does not depend upon my imputations?
And then, if it exists on its own, it can exist separately from me imputing them?
Does it exist separated from my mind, like awaiting for my mind to create the physical aggregates that allows me to access them?
In brief: do objects exist if and when our aggregates do not perceive them?
After karma is exhausted, thus, does it mean that physical constituents cannot arise anymore?
Thus does it mean that an enlightened mind cannot create conditions to create aggregates and therefore cannot perceive objects anymore?
OR! Or is it that an enlightened mind can still create aggregates (but how?), and thus perceive objects, register them but does not impute in a way that leads to creating more karma?
So is the difference in the imputation actually?
As karma is the “force behind”, what happens when karma is exhausted?
That is, WITHOUT karma, can a mind still experience anything at all?
This is my current understanding. Please feel free to read more, ponder, meditate to increase understanding. Objects such as physical objects, and also me, you and I, as a person, exists due to conditions, conditioned phenomena. Externally we see a rain or a rainbow, we called it natural phenomena. But what about us? Do we exist independently? Or we exist as a phenomena as well just like rain and rainbows? Yes, that is what I have read. It might sound ridicules but the reality as we known doesn’t really exist as what we imagined and perceived in our deluded mind. It seems real because our own karma, our own projections perceived it as real, and therefore we create new karma every day. New karma can be positive, negative, or neutral karma, and the results will be ripen in future thus creating more future lives, endless future. An analogy, the rain came from the clouds, the clouds came from the evaporation of water from rives, oceans, and lake, which goes in cycles. Our bodies, and aggregates including our consciousness came from actions we in the past, and the future from today, endless in this conditioned world.
If non-enlightened mind which is filled with ignorance, desire, and hatred can create physical constituents what does it make that enlightened mind cannot create physical constituents? Isn’t enlightened mind, it is smarter, can perceive everything which non-enlightened mind not being able to perceive, therefore the enlightened mind knows the exact way or conditions to manifest or born to help all sentient beings in human or whatever form?
A mind can experience anything it is at this state it has blocked itself with heavy filters and distortions therefore it can only perceive whatever it can perceive in the form it exists such as a human body. And the mind thinking, innately, that ‘I exist as a human body’, ‘I am separate from others’, ‘I am independent from others’, and so on.
Thank you Swee Keong for your explanation and for taking the time to write this.