The Cult of Tara

96
| internal
Awareness
"(1) eye perception
(2) ear perception
(6) mental perception-*
(3) nose perception—
(4) mouth perception
.(5) body perception—
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MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
external j
Sense Field or object
—sight forms
—hearing sounds
—smell smells
—taste tastes
—touch tangibles
—mind mental events
To these six are added (7) the "defiled mind," the mind as defiled
by the delusion of self, that is, the false self with which we identify
and which seems to lie behind and appraise the processes of mental
perception; and (8) the "underlying awareness," the karmic continuum
that "contains all seeds" and from which the seeds ripen into
awareness and become perceptions in nonreality; as is said in the
Lankdvatara Sutra [X.871]:
All thoughts evolve from the "underlying"
like waves from the ocean:
they are all caused by the impressions of karma
and are born in accord with conditions.
Thus the first seven awarenesses are called "evolutes," since they
evolve from the "underlying" and function only to receive the data
it supplies them. It is of this underlying awareness in the most
general sense—as the source and totality of all perceptual experience—that
Asanga says: "Awareness arises in the appearance of external
objects, living beings, selves, and sense-data." Thus it is
nothing but awareness itself that appears externally to be things
and persons, and internally to be a self in receipt of sense-data.
But "these do not exist with reference to it: and because they nonexist
it does not exist either." These appearances are mere projections
of duality upon defiled Emptiness: they do not exist with
reference to their supposed perception because things and persons,
which appear to be "out there," are nothing but awareness itself;
they are subjective, and the subject—the self and its sense-data—is
illusory. "Because its objects do not exist," says Vasubandhu, "the
subject—the awareness—does not exist either." And so Asanga
concludes: "Thus awareness is demonstrated to be the construction
of a nonreality."
In the simplest way, then, nonreality begins from an awareness
and evolves as follows: