PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Hopkins: Paradigm Change in Meditation 123different. In this context, reasoning is a matter not of cold deliberation orsuperficial summation but of using various approaches to find one that canshake yourself to your being. The seeming simple-mindedness and rigidityof the reasonings suggested must be transcended through gaining intimateexperience with them.The Fifth Dalai Lama lays out a series of approaches through reasoning,rather than just one, on the principle that certain reasonings would notwork for some people. The first is a challenge from common experience: If“I” were one with body, how could “I” speak of “my body”? If “I” wereinherently one with mind, how could “I” speak of “my mind”? Should wealso speak of body’s body? Or my I?If the “I” inherently exists, then oneness with its basis of designationwould be one of two exhaustive possibilities. The reference is not toordinary misconception but to a consequence of inherent existence, suchconcreteness requiring a pointable identification under analysis.The rules for inherent existence, therefore, are not the rules for mereexistence. Within the context of inherent existence, sameness of entityrequires utter oneness in all respects. Thus, the issue that is central toevaluating the soundness of this reasoning is not whether beings ordinarilyconceive of such oneness (since it is not claimed that we do), butwhether the logical rules that have been formulated for concrete, pointableexistence are appropriate.More ReasoningsThe mere presence of the reasoning is clearly not expected to beconvincing, and thus the Fifth Dalai Lama continues with permutations ofthe same reasoning. For these further reasonings to work, the meditatormust have gained belief in rebirth. They are: If the “I” and the body are one,after death when the body is burned, so the “I” also would absurdly beburned. Or, just as the “I” transmigrates to the next life, so the body alsowould absurdly have to transmigrate. Or, just as the body does nottransmigrate, so the “I” also would absurdly not transmigrate.From meditating on such reasonings, one might come to think thatprobably the “I” is not the same as the body but is perhaps one with themind; then, one is instructed to consider the following fallacies: Since it isobvious that the suffering of cold arises when the “I” is without clothes andit is obvious that the sufferings of hunger and thirst arise when the “I” lacksfood and drink, these would—if the “I” were merely mental—be mental inorigin, in which case one could not posit a reason why the same sufferingwould not be experienced in a life in a Formless Realm. Also, since the mindwould be one with the “I,” it would absurdly still have to make use of grossforms such as food and clothing which do not exist in the Formless Realm.