24 July 2009

The three minds unattainable

While I have been pondering over the question raised in the previous post all the night, on facebook Connie has already made a comment on it. She contends:
there is no such experience which is identical to another in my life so far.
Upon reading her remark, a passage from Section XVIII in the Buddhist text Diamond Sutra (originally वज्रच्छेदिकाप्रज्ञापारमितासूत्र Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra in Sanskrit, and known as 金剛經 Jingang jing in Chinese) came to my mind:
[Buddha said] it is impossible to retain past mind, impossible to hold on to present mind, and impossible to grasp future mind.
Based on what I studied more than one decades ago, these few words suggests that the mind is in all places and present at all times, yet it is in no places and is present at no time. The mind is formless and therefore no one can locate the mind from the past, present or future. Everything, including our experience of suffering and happiness, is nothing but the projection of our mind.

There is no such experience which is identical to another in our life, because we can never stay in the past, present or future. What an aphorism from Connie!

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