The Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

It all starts when our mind creates ‘things’.

Our mind creates a thing by mixing a symbol (often a word) with sensory experience and the concept of ‘I’, which forms a stable tangle or knot. Through meaning (karma), this knot will reoccur as a perception.

When our mind later encounters a similar sensory pattern, this resonates with the knot, and suddenly we are aware of what this ‘means’.

Thus, when our mind sees an object, it reaches out through the sense door which perceived it, and it either likes the object, dislikes the object, or remains neutral.

We might imagine a house with five windows, in which lives a very curious monkey. This monkey leaps from window to window, briefly looking out of each one — grasping towards some objects, hiding from others, and ignoring the rest. From the outside it might seem there are five monkeys, but we know there is only one.

When our mind strikes each object, it can respond in one of three ways, all of which are toxic to us:

• If the object is desirous, it creates attachment, which establishes the root of greed.
• If the object is threatening, it creates aversion, which establishes the root of hate.
• If the object is neutral, it fosters indifference, which establishes the root of delusion.

These roots then anchor thoughts, which in their natural state are rootless and transient, but now persist and solidify the perception of the object.

Once our mind has created objects, they remain as ‘dust’ in the mind — which, being naturally luminous, reflect this inner light and render what was originally clear into a dull lucidity. Self-sustaining and seemingly real, these objects cloud our being and become the matrix of reality.

It is only when we calm the mind that we can realise our error in reaching out towards these objects. But until we convince ourselves they are unreal, we remain too agitated to risk ignoring them.

The very act of perceiving an object re-enforces its reality, while simultaneously creating a perceiver. This divides our sense of being across the Veil of Isis.

“When the mind makes no discrimination between good and evil, it is enlightened.”
— Sengcan, Xinxin Ming