Awareness, Consciousness,Sentient Beings – Thoughts – Jundo Cohen

Jundo Cohen No comment on what some of the Tibetan schools may or may not say. However, as to Huang Po’s “One Mind,” and even the Yogachara interpretations (of which there are more than one), it is just not clear at all if that means some kind of “Universal Consciousness” like a Godhead or “Cosmic Intelligence” or the like. Likewise when Dogen and some of the Tendai folks said that mountains and stones are also “sentient beings.” The difference is a fine one, but the former points more to something like a Brahma or “Universe as Super Intelligence” kind of idea. The latter may be more that our “mind” is not only what is happening between our ears, but involves all that we usually consider external to us that gives us the stuff and experience between the ears, e.g., the atoms and light “out there” that come into the eyes, get interpreted in the head as “the mountains and stones out there” which is not “me in here,” when really it is one great feedback loop, and “in here” and “out there” and “me” and “not me” etc. can be dropped from mind as the borders fall. Your mind is the product of the whole universe and most distant stars that contributed to its formation too, so you can include all that as part of your “Mind” too, and drop thought of “you vs. them” too. Basic Buddhism 101 is that we create a mental reality based on sense data that creates a false subject/object divide. However, it is far short of a “Godhead” or us as “radio receivers for the Cosmic Brain” (no comment on that one way or the other by me) and much more local and immediate. Am I making any sense? If you are reading from Joe Blofield’s translation of Huang Po, his interpretation of what was being said is considered a bit romantic by some.