..续本文上一页to our hearts. And this means that we”re working at cross purposes. Even within a single you, you”re working at cross purposes. What you hear is one thing, what you think is something else, and they don”t go together. When this happens, you start having doubts. Uncertainty. Things aren”t clear to the heart. Your practice turns into nothing but ups and downs, right things and wrong.

　　This is because the heart of every person... Of course, there”s only one heart in every person, but how is it that the heart has so many issues

　　 This is a really complicated question. Why

　　 Because if we look only on the surface, we”ll say that each person has only one mind. That”s all we know. But if we look in another way, the texts tell us that there are so many mental consciousnesses that they can”t be counted. This makes us wonder: How can that be

　　 And when we turn from the texts and really look at ourselves, we”ll see that the body of a human being doesn”t have only one consciousness. There are lots of consciousnesses in there. Your own real consciousness, you can hardly find at all. You may have up to three kinds of consciousness inside your body. The first is your own consciousness, which entered your mother”s womb at the time of your conception, without any other consciousnesses mixing in with it. There were lots of other consciousnesses around it at the time, but they all died out before they could take birth. You can”t count how many there are at a time like that, but in the fight to take birth, only one of them has the merit to make it, and the rest all fall away in huge numbers by the wayside. So when we make it into a human womb at the time of conception, we can chalk it up to our merit that we”ve been able to establish a foothold for ourselves in the human world.

　　Once our consciousness gets established like this, it begins to develop. The body develops. As it develops, other consciousnesses start infiltrating without our realizing it. If you want to see a really clear example, look at the human body after it takes birth. Sometimes a worm two feet long can come out of your intestines. What does that come from, if not from a consciousness

　　 Or how about germs

　　 Some diseases are actually caused by little animals in your body that cause swellings and tumors. As the traditional doctors used to say, there are eight families and twelve clans of disease-causing animals in our body. What do they come from

　　 From consciousness, that”s what. If there were no consciousness, how could there be animals

　　 Animals arise from consciousness. And some of them you can clearly see, as they come crawling in huge numbers out of wounds, out your ears and eyes, nose, teeth, anus, whole swarms of them. So what are they

　　 They”re a form of consciousness.

　　This kind of consciousness you can see clearly, but there”s another group of consciousnesses that are more insidious, that don”t have a body you can see. Only if you meditate and gain psychic powers can you see them. That”s the third kind of consciousness inhabiting your body.

　　So altogether there are three: Your own consciousness, and there”s only one of that. And then all the many consciousnesses lurking in your body, so many that you can”t say exactly how many there are. The ones with bodies you can see are more than many. And as for the ones with no bodies, but are living in your body, there”s no telling how many there are.

　　Now, it”s because there are so many of them, with so many agendas, that the Buddha tells us not to go joining in with them. They”re not us, not ours, none of our business. Sometimes we sit around, with absolutely nothing wrong, and all of a sudden one thing starts leading to another inside the mind. We don”t want it to happen, but the mind seems to take on a mind of its own. That”s a clear ca…

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