Forests of Imagination

From Wisdom Beyond Words by Sangharakshita

Isbn 0904766616 p 99-100

The Victorian art critic Ruskin made the point that if we imagine that we know who Apollo is through looking at a statue of him, we are mistaken. Apollo is not that particular shape at all; indeed, the shape of Apollo can never be captured in sensuous terms. Apollo is a significance, a spiritual force, that can never be represented. The more we rely on external appearances, the more likely we are to be misled, although close attention to appearances will take our perceptions deeper.

Perhaps the clearest way of coming at this point is through the concept of the ‘five eyes’. There were people who were able to set eyes on Gautama the Buddha because they happened to be around at the time; there were people whose divine eye may have been sufficiently open for them to see his thirty-two marks; and there were those who saw the Unconditioned in the depths of the conditioned, and could see the Buddha with their Dharma-eye. Going even deeper, an Arhat would have seen the greater part of the Buddha’s being, so to speak, with his prajna eye. But give up being an Arhat, become a Bodhisattva, become yourself a samyaksambuddha, and you will see the Buddha as he actually is, with your Buddha-eye.

At a much lower level, we can apply the same idea of layers to our responses to other people. Clearly, just because someone can put a name to your external appearance does not mean that they recognise you in any real sense. Even in the case of ordinary folk, first impressions can be both deceptive and superficial. In fact, no one is to be known by their marks. It generally takes a good few years and some empathic effort to get to know someone well - except pn the rare occasions when there is an immediate rapport, that sense of having known someone all your life when you have only just met them. It is always a question of penetrating deeper and deeper levels. So we may imagine how much more this is the case in encountering the Buddha. The thirty-two marks do not denote wisdom or compassion. Nor is the Buddha to be known even by his discourse, his teaching, in the sense of the words or the ideas through which his teaching is communicated. You can only know the Buddha’s mind through your own experience of it, either because you are in direct contact with that mind, or because you yourself develop an Enlightened mind.