Essay #26: The Collapse of Judgment

The clouds above are silent, too,
While the sun is shining down.
And by and by a ray breaks through
To my shadowed patch of ground.

Like the mind’s judgments, the clouds above are silent, too.  The mind’s judgments collect in darkness below.  The clouds gather light above.  Just as there may be little or no observing of the judgments, the clouds may go unnoticed, too.  The difference is that the clouds do not go unnoticed because the mind has somehow excluded them in judgment.  If they go unnoticed, it is simply because they lie outside the canopy of the mind’s awareness, not usually because there is an aversion to them which has avoided encountering them.

This is a subtle but telling difference.  On the one hand, there exists in the mind a scheming partiality which narrows and limits its awareness both intentionally and unintentionally.  On the other hand, there is a limit to its awareness which is neutral and impartial but nevertheless real.  All the while the sun continues to shine down.  That is, the conditions of dependent origination continue to unfold, which make observing and non-observing possible, both of the qualities and aggregates which might or might not come into the canopy of the mind.  Then, too, judgment itself is made possible by this same process of unfolding or becoming.  The attractions and aversions of the mind become what they are by the same process of gathering, becoming, changing, and passing away manifested by other qualities.  The difference between these passions or fires of the mind and other aggregates is—from the point of view of this process—not one of kind.  From that viewpoint, fire and water are the same.  The fires of the mind kindle, burn brighter, flicker, and go out.  The waters of the clouds rise up, gather, billow, and then dissipate.  It is inherent in neither fire nor water to remain in a steady-state.

When we look at the quality of judgment itself, however, from the point of view of the mind’s own partiality, then of course there appears to be a difference in kind between qualities or aggregates it likes or dislikes and those toward which it is neutral.  Our example of a neutral aggregate is clouds.  As we said, that the mind may or may not observe the clouds probably has nothing to do with its judgment but rather depends on whether its activity of observing happens to encompass the clouds.  With respect to the kind of qualities or aggregates it likes or dislikes, however, the mind’s partiality limits its observing or awareness.  The mind intentionally limits its observing by shunning that toward which it has an aversion and focusing on that toward which it is attracted.  The mind unintentionally limits its awareness because by maintaining partiality it does not understand that dependent origination governs all aggregates equally–both those that it likes or dislikes and those toward which it is impartial.

What is important to notice is that the difference in kind we are pointing to here is itself one of the qualities or thought-forms in the mind’s canopy.  Just because likes and dislikes are conceived in the mind, decisions follow them, and entire lifestyles and ways of being in the world are shaped by them does not mean that all such things are not subject to the same process of arising, change, and passing away which things like clouds are.   The thought-form in the mind which attaches to such “personal” things and makes them out to be different in kind from all that it considers impartial does not actually spare them or protect them from change.  With respect to the process of becoming, such things are no different in kind.  All the mind’s attachments and aversions remain subject to the same process of becoming as everything else.

That the mind thinks or believes they are not does not alter the fundamental reality of becoming and change.  As the Buddha noted, “All composite things are perishable.”  This applies equally to the objects of the mind’s desire or repulsion and to its desires and repulsions themselves, that is, to its activities.  Both are subject to change, do change, and have already changed.  The latter observation is most important lest some persons retort that they are content to hold onto their preferences as long as they can.  In other words, these persons might agree that to some extent change, and certainly death, are inevitable, but argue nonetheless that it is possible to achieve a lifestyle which permits one to retain one’s preferences for a very long time.

It is true that this argument is more difficult to counter because of the stubbornness of the mind and thought-forms such as exclusivity, entitlement, ownership, and personal property which it attaches to objects by means of other thought-forms such as individuality, personality, fairness, and accomplishment.  In Essay #18 we encountered the famous parable of the vineyard where Jesus described day laborers complaining that they all earned the wage of a denarius although some worked for 8 hours and others only for 1.  There is an openness to this outcome which does indeed challenge the mind’s narrow viewpoint through such lenses as fairness, accomplishment, and entitlement.  As we noted in that essay, it is not the unfairness of the landowner himself but the orientation of the minds of the laborers that gives rise to their dissatisfaction.  Had a single denarius seemed to them to be an extraordinary or a sufficient wage, they might not have complained when some among them were given more.  However, it was their attachment to a belief in limited resources and their corollary belief in the resulting urgency of fairness that fueled their complaint.  If money grew on trees, we can imagine that none among them would have coveted the extra that some of them got.¹

Of course the retort of the laborers—as of anyone invested in personal property—would be that money does not grow on trees; therefore, it is appropriate and even necessary to adhere to such concepts as fairness, entitlement, and ownership. From a certain viewpoint this appears true. If there were actually such a thing as an individual or personal mind to take ownership of so-called “personal property,” then there might indeed be some substance to these concepts.  If there were some entity which could actually be sorted and counted among the “haves” or the “have nots” then concepts like entitlement might make sense.  However, what we are seeing is that the mind consists only of thought-forms like that, and other thought-forms like individuality, separateness, and exclusivity.  There just isn’t any entity which can be found to lay claim to all these thought-forms in a way which satisfactorily distinguishes them from yours as mine.  That this is true is actually proven by our common ability to understand both yours and mine. If your thought-form were really uniquely yours, then I would be utterly unable to comprehend it.  That I can comprehend it and often comprehend it very well should indicate to us that in some way we are not talking at all about two different thought-forms but of one.  The usual assumption is that there must be two different thoughts occurring because there are two different individuals.  However, if we cannot find any real evidence of two separate entities or minds, then why should we assume it?  Is it not truer to what we can observe directly to say that in many instances thought-forms—be they intellectual formations, sensations, or emotions—are shared?  The only catch here is to also observe that there are not 2 minds doing the sharing.  It would be better to say that there are 2 canopies partly overlapping, sharing some of the same thought-forms but not all.  This is still just an illustration or metaphor, but it is a more accurate illustration than any depicting 2 fully separate entities or minds.

In fact, once the fiction of separate minds is lifted, then empathy and compassion are revealed in the full splendor of what they really are:  oneness.  The Anatta Doctrine, it turns out, does not threaten us with dissolution.  Rather, it exposes what we have been looking for all the while.  It reveals the very doorway to liberation.  The insight that all thought-forms—including those of clinging, cordoning-off, and pushing away—are all part of a process of becoming in dependent origination with no real reference to particular identifiable substantial entities or minds offers us an opening upon another much broader view of reality.  We see that many of our thought-forms are shared.  Where we have different desires or repulsions—or the objects of these activities are different—there are not 2 or more different minds having these desires nor are the objects in any real sense truly owned or possessed by 2 or more different individual entities.  Rather, there is one quality of desire, say, and also its opposite moving in oscillation with one another and also other qualities in between.  There may also be and there often is a thought-form or activity of understanding which refers to or grasps this oscillation as well as its opposite poles.  On top of this understanding there may also be thought-forms or beliefs such as entitlement, ownership, exclusivity, and so forth that take one or the other pole of the oscillation as their referent and attach themselves there.  It is important to note that these are just further thought-forms in oscillation and becoming with other thought-forms, which do not in any way establish the veridical existence of the separate entity or mind whose existence they assume for their own justification.  Thus, because these thought-forms—say, desires—merely exist in a larger field in oscillation with their opposites they are, as we said earlier, becoming, changing, and already changed.

If I could consider only “my own mind” or “my own individuality” in establishing the boundaries of my preferences, then it might make sense to argue that, despite change and death, I can still find a way to hold onto my preferences for a very long time.  However, once it dawns that there is no evidence for such individuality or mind, then it at once also dawns that “my” preferences have no greater standing than–nor are they truly separate from– “yours.”  In fact, they are all just preferences oscillating back and forth in a much larger field.  Not only does this foster wider understanding and tolerance, it offers a liberating insight into the relativity of all preferences, desires, and aversions taken together.  Rather than becoming separated out and isolated through attachment to a particular entity under the general concept of “mine,” all preferences and the like taken together as “yours and mine” have already changed into their opposites many times.  In the light of this awareness, the notion of holding on to just the things I prefer is exposed as illusory.  That is, it is no more substantial than the fiction of the individual mind that it depends on.  Taken altogether, preferences are nothing special in themselves but just what thought-forms happen to have arisen.

These usually highly partial thought-forms appear, after all, not as different as we had imagined from aggregates like clouds about which the mind may have no particular partiality.  If all things together may be equally liked or disliked depending upon what thought-form has arisen in the overall field, then objects themselves return to a kind of neutrality seen in distinction from the thought-forms of the mind which may settle on them.  The mind’s thoughts themselves with the assumption of separate minds or entities removed settle back into the broader oscillation they are part of and cease to assume the artificial importance assigned to them by further thought-forms such as “my” and “mine” now seen to be assumptive but not veridical.²

This key insight of the Anatta Doctrine into the non-individuality of the mind is the ray that breaks from liberation’s door and lands on the shadowed patch of ground that is the mind’s judgments.  Once the assumption of the mind’s individuality is removed, the understanding that observes the oscillation between the poles of attraction and aversion is much more likely to spawn the feeling-qualities of empathy and compassion than such thought-forms as possession, entitlement, exclusive ownership, protectiveness, estrangement, fear, righteous indignation, blaming, and demonization.  Such thought forms comprise judgment.  Without individuality, there is nothing to possess.  Attractions and aversions arise, bloom, and pass away much like clouds.  Undivided into “mine” and “yours” a shared or common preference or concern—for example, a concern for one’s children—may be understood between persons in a collegial “like-mindedness” that we have no reason to believe is not actual single-mindedness.  The experience of single-mindedness naturally gives rise to the feeling of empathy, also shared.

In cases where preferences or concerns are different–even diametrically opposed—the insightful mind does not take these as evidence of separate minds but pays bare attention to what they are:  thought-forms mutually arising in a larger field.  As such, they are in a way interchangeable.  What you call “your” preference could easily be “mine,” and mine could be yours.  Only set into constellations of further distinguishable thought-forms and qualities (commonly referred to as “persons”) does one preference become mine and another yours, not through attachment to observable separate entities or minds.  These further thought-forms and qualities are just as interchangeable as the first.  Therefore, even when concerns and preferences are diametrically opposed, the insightful mind understands the impermanence and oscillation of qualities to include their interchangeability rather than their possession and exclusive ownership.

Such understanding, broadly held, may once again be considered single-mindedness. Here the mind recognizes that its field of attention—or we could say its activity of observation–is large enough to include not only thought-forms which span across constellations of multiple qualities (“persons”) in “like-mindedness” but also thought-forms within those constellations which are at opposite ends of a process of origination.  The insight that reveals this encompassing field of attention getting filled out in all manner of (interchangeable) ways is not different in various “persons” in whom it resides, but the same.  Hence, as we said, it may considered actual single-mindedness, or the occurrence of one activity of observation.  The natural feeling that arises out of such single-mindedness is, once again, empathy.  Thus empathy may well arise even where preferences or concerns are opposed or the objects of preferences are entirely different.

The result of this ray of insight striking the mind’s shadow storehouse of judgment is that it begins to collapse or dissolve.  The mind begins to see what it would not see.  This includes not only what it formerly pushed into the shadows out of aversion but also the mechanism of thought-forms and mistaken beliefs by which it maintained the illusion of its exclusive preferences and attachments as well as its separation from other minds.  The collapse of judgment clears the way for the mind to awaken to its original unitive and compassionate nature.

 

Notes:

1. Some might still be motivated by honor and object from that viewpoint to the unequal distribution. This still amounts to a belief in limited resources insofar as honor, esteem, and recognition are all aggregates of qualities considered to be in either ample supply or wanting.

2. This is the most radical, selfless understanding of dependent origination.