..續本文上一頁nts, from awareness of visual objects (forms, shapes and colors), awareness of sounds, tactile consciousness, smell, taste, and mental consciousness; they are all distinct parts or functions of the mind. Each type of consciousness recognizes a particular field of experience in its own terms. Thus each of these six consciousnesses functions in its own frame of reference and is somewhat independent of the others. So the mind too is not a single, unitary thing, but a compounded object, consisting of many parts, just as all external objects are compounds.

　　It is sometimes said that there are eight consciousnesses; the five sensory consciousnesses, the mental consciousnesses, the klesha consciousness, and the ground consciousness; all appearances and mind forms arise from them. The consciousness that clings to the notion of “I” and the ground consciousness which stores information from the other six consciousnesses are sometimes held to be independent modes of consciousness. It is much easier to posit just six consciousnesses.

　　More specifically, we can see that visual consciousness, for instance, has the potential to perceive various objects. For instance, if we look at a piece of yellow cloth, we see yellow; if we look at a snowy mountain we see white. Then too we experience the objects of visual awareness in succession, seeing first one thing and then another, and so on, with prior appearances disappearing the moment the succeeding appearance occurs. Thus, visual consciousness is multiple and successive and has many different referential objects; so it cannot be a single, unitary thing.

　　Examining the successive manner in which consciousness perceives objects, we might be led to believe that each “flash” of awareness, each moment of consciousness, is a fundamental unit of time, comparable to the inpisible particles of matter already discussed. However, if we could ever isolate such a single unit of time, we would see that it could only occur within a framework of ongoing consciousness, because awareness is never static and hence each moment is linked to a previous and a future moment. That is, such a moment would not be a inseparable whole but rather would consist of three parts: past, present, and future

　　So there is no unitary essential quality, no single identifiable reality, in either the external world that appears to us or the subjective mind. Neither is there any reality in activity or functioning. If we decide to go to Kathmandu, for example, we might think that the activity of going, the function we would be performing by going, has some essential reality of its own. Or if rain falls, we might feel that, although there is really no rain as such, because what we call rain is only innumerable drops, yet there is a reality to the activity of the rain which is the falling of the rain. However, this is not the case, for there is no valid way to isolate and designate as real any function or activity. That is to say, the falling of the rain cannot be isolated from the rain itself, nor can the going of an inpidual be isolated from the inpidual itself. These activities or functions are merely smaller changes in their mode of being a particular compound and are not separate things at all. Therefore, no function can ever be isolated and identified as a unitary thing.

　　Finally, we might decide that some uncompounded entity like space has a fundamentally real, inherent existence. Space is not a compound, it does not consist of different parts, so we might very well imagine it to have some sort of essential quality.

　　But in actuality no uncompounded entity exists in and of itself, not even as a mere appearance. If we make a square with our finger, we might refer to a square space, but in fact, there is no square space there at all. We simply fail to recognize our finger for the moment and suppose that we see a square space. But space is not a thing in itself; it merely seems to exist as the negation of particular appearances, in this case our finger. Similarly, the space in a room seems to appear real but when we negate the appearance of the walls, then there is no independent thing that we can point to as “this space.”

　　Thus we can conclude from the foregoing analysis that there is no way for there to be any particular single real nature or essence to anything. And if there is no single real nature, there also could not be any multiple real nature, because multiplicity is based on single units. If there is no single unit, there can be no multiplicity. These being the only possible modes that a real nature or quality might exist, we can see from this one method of examination that there is no self in any appearance, no self in any dharma, no essential nature to anything at all.

　　This concludes the discussion of the third analysis of Madhyamaka, an examination to find the essential quality according to the Ornament to the Middle Way of Shantarakshita.

　　Thank you.

　　May virtue increase!

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