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In chapter 8–15, Śāntideva turns to the topic of purification and discusses the various practices bodhisattvas can engage in to purify themselves of sinful actions and afflictive emotions. These actions include: confession and atonement, the practice of patience, putting forth effort in study and learning, purifying the mind through meditation, and applying the mind to the practice of mindfulness.
Chapter 13: Mindfulness
Having purified the mind and made it pliable, one must apply the mind to the practice of mindfulness. The first one of the four practices of mindfulness is the mindfulness of the body, which was partly covered in the preceding chapter while discussing the repulsiveness and impurity of the body. Delving further into the mindfulness of the body, Śāntideva cites The Compendium of Dharma Sūtra to argue how a bodhisattva must mentally dissect and breakdown the body into many parts and see the body as merely an assembly of many parts and empty of true nature. "Thinking this body is like space, one must remain in mindfulness of space and see everything as space,"[1] states the sūtra. There is no beginning, end, middle, base, owner, and no real thing as body, aggregate, enjoyment, habitat, foundation, and sense-fields. They are mere labels, and the body has no essence. Moreover, it is a repulsive and impure thing and a nest of hundreds of illnesses.
Śāntideva makes the same point in a long citation from The Questions of the Vīradatta (Skt. Vīradattaparipṛcchāsūtra) using numerous analogies. The body is compared to an empty house with nine doors, an anthill haunted by snakes, a bad friend, a jealous monkey, a fleeting bubble, a deceptive mirage, a pithless plantain tree, a misleading magical illusion, a demanding king, an opportunistic thief, a hateful enemy, an indifferent stranger, a murderer, etc. Each of these and other analogies are used to illustrate the transient, unreliable, deceptive, and demanding nature of the body and how meaningless it is to be attached to the body. The body is a bag of impurity and of 84000 kinds of worms and microbes, which ooze out of the nine orifices.
As the body is a fleeting thing that is bound to end in death, The Jewel Crest Sūtra (Skt. Ratnacūḍasūtra) recommends getting the best out of it, or "to extract the essence" of one's body, possessions, and livelihood. One does so by thinking of the impermanent nature of the body and using it as a servant of sentient beings, not engaging in any negative bodily actions, not craving for enjoyments but giving them away, and wishing to use one's body to turn the bodies of all sentient beings into the bodies of enlightened buddhas.
To discuss the next topic of mindfulness of sensation, Śāntideva cites The Jewel Crest Sūtra, which states that a bodhisattva who is meditating on the mindfulness of sensation will generate compassion toward even those beings experiencing a pleasant or blissful sensation, for true bliss or pleasure is the state of being without sensation. A bodhisattva must experience any kind of sensation—blissful, painful, or neutral—with a sense of compassion. When he experiences pleasure, he should cultivate compassion toward sentient beings engaged in attachment and work to eliminate the tendencies of attachment. When he experiences suffering, he should cultivate compassion toward sentient beings engaged in aversion and work to eliminate the tendencies of aversion. And when he experiences neither pleasure nor pain, he should cultivate compassion toward sentient beings engaged in ignorance and work to eliminate the tendencies of ignorance. He should not be attached to pleasant sensation, averse to painful sensation, or indifferent to neutral sensation but destroy attachment, aversion, and ignorance. He should know pleasant sensations to be impermanent, unpleasant ones to be dissatisfactory, and neither pleasant nor unpleasant ones to be lacking self.
The Teachings of Akṣayamati instructs a bodhisattva to generate compassion toward beings in suffering when one encounters unpleasant sensation and to recognize that sensation leads to attachment, craving, grasping, apprehension, and wrong thoughts. The Compendium of Dharma Sūtra recommends a bodhisattva to see that there is no one having the sensation in reality. A wise person must abide in the mindfulness of sensation, seeing it as peaceful and luminous, like the state of enlightenment itself.
Śāntideva's presentation of the mindfulness of the mind involves a very reductive and deconstructive approach. He quotes The Heap of Jewels Sūtra, which asks what the mind with attachment, aversion, or ignorance really is. Does it exist in the past, present, or the future? Mind cannot be from the past, as what is past has ceased to exist. It cannot be from the future, as what is in the future is yet to exist. And it cannot be in the present, as there is no present which remains. Mind is not outside, inside, or both. It is not form, visible, tangible, dependable, cognizable, or knowable. The buddhas have not seen, do not see, and will not see it. It is the mere creation of a mistaken notion. The sūtra uses many analogies, such as magical illusion, waterfall, wind, light, space, lightning, sandcastle, and dream, to illustrate the nonessentiality and futility of the mind.
"O Kāśyapa! You cannot find the mind even if you look everywhere," claims the Buddha in this sūtra, "and what cannot be found is inapprehensible and beyond the three times."[2] It is therefore neither existent nor nonexistent. The Jewel Crest Sūtra also investigates the existence of mind by looking outside, inside, in the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields, and cannot find any mind in them. If apprehension or fixation generates the mind or consciousness, what is apprehension? "Is it one with the mind or different?" asks the sūtra to conclude that both options are not tenable.[3] The reductive analyses found in the sūtras which Śāntideva cites here are also succinctly presented in his Way of the Bodhisattva while discussing the mindfulness of the mind.
The same kind of reductive analysis is used in establishing the points for the mindfulness of all phenomena. According to The Teachings of Akṣayamati, a bodhisattva who sees phenomena as they are will see no phenomena, no buddhas, buddhahoods, paths, freedoms, or bondages. Yet, as things appear, such a bodhisattva will generate compassion for sentient beings and perceive all phenomena, including afflictive emotions, like a magical illusion, for in reality there are no afflictive emotions, no aggregates, no attachment, no aversion, and no ignorance. Such a bodhisattva will maintain the mindfulness of the fact that the nature of afflictive emotions is exactly the nature of enlightenment.
In maintaining the mindfulness of phenomena, The Jewel Crest Sūtra focuses on the point that there is no self-existence, being, soul, person, or individual who is born, dying, or moving apart from the process of arising and ceasing phenomena. This is the reality of things which should be realized while also maintaining the thought of bodhicitta. The Play in Full Sūtra gives many similes, including an unfired clay pot, sandcastle, light rays, wind, bubble, plantain tree, and magical illusion to show the nonessentiality and ephemerality of all phenomena, although the childish world sees them to be real and permanent. Things arise from causes and conditions, like the sprout arising from the seed and like a clay image from a mold. The seed does not become the sprout, but the sprout cannot be without the seed. The mold is not transferred to the clay image, but the clay image emerges from the mold. It is a fleeting and illusory process of dependent-arising, and this applies to all conditioned phenomena. A flame can arise from the convergence of two twigs and the effort of the hand, but it dies when the causes cease to exist. Yet, if a wise one investigates from where the flame has come and where it has gone, it cannot be found. There is no real coming or going, production or cessation, apprehension or cognition. This is the main point of the mindfulness of phenomena.
Additional resources
Here we need to think about what would be particularly useful to the student/reader at this point. Link to key terms found in chapter one? Any thoughts?
The Way of the Bodhisattva
The Compendium of Training
