How Human Works According to Xuanzang’s book

Our-five-sense

We are all familiar with our five senses: eye to see, ears to hear, nose to smell, tongue to taste, and hands or whole body to touch or feel. For the five senses the outside world we are contacting with has no concept bad or good, they are just simply there. 

Stop here for a moment, if we just live in five senses, we would have no pain, we see mountains, seas, birds chipping, butterfly gently flapping their wings and landing, flowers, trees…rains, snow. It sounds good, doesn’t it? 

Qigong masters live with nature a lot, they experience gratitude raise within constantly, ‘nature,’ they say ‘take care of them wonderfully’. Then what is the problem?

The problem is our six-sense, it takes us away from here and now, where all our sorrows raise, regret and guilt merges in… why our six sense would do such a thing?

Our-six-sense

Our six-sense has the ability to travel all places, quicker then light, it could travel to China or end of the end within any given moment or space. 

When it is with our five senses, we notice things, ‘it is a flower, a white flower.’ But it doesn’t say ‘it smells good or it is pretty.’ It only gives us what it is without judging, it has no personal preference. It is contentment and joy.

The problem really is our seven sense. It has personal likes and dislikes, it always has an opinion on about everything that our five sense and six sense’s contact. 

If we pay attention, we can notice here, if we be mindful and discipline ourselves remain or dewell our attention at our five and six sense, we have no suffer but enjoyment of the world in from of us. 

If we aren’t aware, soon our seven sense would take over.

Seven sense

Our seven sense sees everybody is different, and decides, there are many single individuals, it separate each one from everyone else, the different selves have different tastes. It uses the past memories, experience to tell the difference, likes and dislikes, good and bad, right and wrong. It wants to make sense of everything, when in truth, it is only different energy patterns in display, like the floating clouds, it changes shapes, sizes all the time and everywhere… 

We are as a human contact the world with our five senses, seven sense jumps in all the time to expain why this and why that, what this is, what that must be, instead just being…I don’t this, I like to have a bit more of that…because our seven sense’s interfere, our six sense goes out to look for more this, less that…the trouble is, our seven sense is never content, and it lives in fear of dying, because everything changes in seven sense’s eye, it wants to hold on something. It wants to make sense but it doesn’t in reality, how can we stop a cloud floating, change forms, changes sizes or disappears…

Because this fearful voice constantly making noise at the back of our head, we can’t have peace. ‘Oh snake bites people, poison thing’ And next time, if it sees a no harm snake still thinks it bites, it is bad, it creates fear in a pear, it gives a person a scare when far away see a rope on a road. Seven sense makes a person fearful and timid, so a lot of us scared to try new things. It makes our life misery because it is against our nature.

Eight Sense

According to Xuanzang, our eight-sense is the maker of everything. All what we experience in the five senses world is our eight sense’s part energy patterns in form. The only problem is our eight sense is so generous, it allows the whatever our other senses choose, such as our seven sense separate itself with other parts of the whole. Let us use a famous Chinese drama, Journey to the West, to demonstrate how inclusive, or the difference among our eight sense to the rest seven senses.

There is a monkey in the story, who presents our seven sense, six sense listens to it, they presents our mind, or heart in Chinese, can go anywhere at any given moment. The Monkey can soar in the vast sky, and visit dead people’s place. With one jump he makes 18,000 miles. One day, he visits the sky, in heaven, asks for a well respected job. He was told looking after horses is one of the top jobs. When he realises it is not, people laugh, he gets cross with the leader and makes such a mess. No one can catches him. The leader of the heaven has to ask Buddha’s help.

Buddha represents our Highest Self, or eight sense. He asks the Monkey to jump on His hand, says to the Monkey, no matter where he goes, he will not be able to get out His hand. The Monkey thinks with one single jump he can make108,000 miles, he says he would like to try. He jumps into the sky, on a piece of cloud, he travels and travels and travels, thinks it is far enough now, he stops and sees five very tall posts, he makes a Mark on one, and fly back to the Buddha. Buddha smiles and shows the Monkey, the mark he made on one of His finger. His hand turns and makes a huge mountain to burry the Monkey, put a mantra on top, otherwise the Monkey will be able to break free.

What the story tells us, words or sounds are powerful, our mind or heart is restless, and our eight sense includes the all, it has all the power when one asks.

Not many people really realise how powerful we are as human. Our nature, eight sense is who we are, it is the whole universe, it connects the all. Our thought can reach anywhere, so is our body and feelings. We use a quote from the greatest astrophysicists of all ages, Sir James Jeans, he said: 

     ‘On this planet man cannot raise his hand and not disturb the farthest star.’

Maybe ponder on that quote for a while to help you to sink in the idea how vast, powerful and inclusive we are as human. We know this of course at core, which makes us misery when we live not according to our nature but living in the mistakes our seven sense makes.

Love you all.