One-Mindfulness in Waking and Sleep as a Test of Awakening
One of the greatest misunderstandings in Buddhism concerns omae-il-yeo, the claim that the mind remains one and the same while awake and asleep. It is said that when someone went to the monk Seongcheol claiming to have awakened, Seongcheol would ask, “Are you the same in waking and sleep?” Il-yeo is explained as being one, unchanged, and thus-so. The question is whether one’s mental state is the same while awake and asleep, and equally constant while moving and remaining still. Expressions such as “one in waking and sleep” and “one in movement and stillness” point to that state.
I do not know what this has to do with awakening or why such a state should serve as its measure. Yet Seongcheol demanded it. He would drive people away, saying, “You cannot even do that, so how can you come here claiming to be awakened?” In my view, this attitude truly damaged Buddhism.
The moment an unchanging mental state in waking and sleep becomes the standard of awakening, Buddhism ceases to observe dependent arising and begins to worship an immutable state.
The Mind Is Affected by the Body and Matter
Buddhism is a religion of dependent arising. We can observe this directly in ordinary life, without any mystical experience. What happens to the mind when you drink alcohol? You may become excited, your inhibitions may loosen, and many aspects of your mental state change. When nicotine enters the body through smoking, the mind also changes and may become relaxed. Is the mind affected by material conditions or not? It is. Answer quickly. The point is obvious.
Now try holding your breath for about a minute. Can your mind remain exactly the same? Your mental state also differs when you are hungry and when you have eaten until full. A full stomach can make you drowsy, and a lack of sleep affects the mind as well. Mind and body exist in an inseparable web of relations. If something goes wrong in the brain, you may even lose the ability to remember.
Alcohol, nicotine, breathing, hunger, fullness, sleep, and the condition of the brain all alter the mind. This is the most immediate evidence that we exist through relations.
The Error of Asking About Sameness Without Understanding the Human Being
People ask whether the mind is always one and the same because they do not understand that mind, body, and environment continually affect one another. But Buddhism is not a religion that seeks such sameness. Even when Buddhism speaks of an unmoving mind, it does so relatively. If my mind is shaken and I am suffering, something within me is catching on the situation and causing the distress. The Buddhist direction is to look for that cause.
This is then distorted into a demand for an absolute mental state that can never be shaken, regardless of place, time, or circumstance. That is not Buddhism. Examining the causes and conditions that produce a particular suffering is entirely different from trying to become eternally unchanging by transcending every condition.
An unmoving mind is a relative change that comes from finding the causes of suffering and becoming less shaken. It is not a transcendent state that remains eternally identical under every condition.
Can Sameness and Impermanence Stand Together?
Buddhism says that everything in the world changes and calls this impermanence. What, then, does il-yeo mean? It means remaining the same without changing. How can the claim that everything is impermanent coexist with the claim that something is permanent? The problem becomes even clearer when the supposed object of sameness is the mental state. Our minds are continually affected by the body, matter, and circumstances. How could they remain identical?
A person who would lose consciousness from a single dose of anesthetic talks about an eternally constant mind. The strange idea that the mind during sleep must be exactly the same as it is while awake comes from being trapped by inherited notions and the phrase “unmoving mind.” It is presented with confidence by someone who has not deeply considered the most elementary Buddhist teachings of dependent arising and impermanence.
To say that everything changes according to conditions while demanding that the mind remain identical in waking and sleep is to overturn dependent arising and impermanence with one’s own claim.
Why I Say Seongcheol Did Not Understand Buddhism
This is why I state plainly that Seongcheol did not understand Buddhism. The monk Seongcheol spoke nonsense about sameness because he lacked a deep understanding of dependent arising. Once waking-sleep sameness, movement-stillness sameness, and deep-sleep sameness were arranged like stages of awakening, it followed that he would spend years sitting.
I speak so forcefully because these notions are still repeated in the same form. People say there is sameness in movement and stillness and sameness in deep sleep, and that even while asleep the mind must be exactly as it is while awake. This leads people to believe that they must undergo some mysterious experience before they can awaken.
Turning sameness in waking and sleep, movement and stillness, and deep sleep into a ladder of awakening erases human conditionality and replaces Buddhism’s aim with a mystical mental state.
Do Not Equate Meditative Experience with Wisdom
This misunderstanding extends into the claim that special experiences such as meditative absorption or samādhi are directly equivalent to wisdom. But must one enter absorption in order to understand dependent arising or impermanence? Does it require a special meditative state to understand that I am not permanent, that nothing in this world is permanent, and that nothing independent, immutable, and eternal exists? It does not.
Buddhism is a religion of thinking, observation, doubt, and questions. Meditative absorption can assist this process. It can settle the mind, give a complicated head some rest, and make one calm like a perfectly still and clear surface of water. But an aid must not be turned into wisdom itself or a mandatory condition of awakening.
Meditative absorption can settle the mind and assist thought and observation, but wisdom does not automatically blossom from absorption itself.
Do Not Be Deceived by Claims of a Mystical State
To claim that wisdom blossoms only through absorption and that awakening requires the mind to remain identical in waking and sleep is, in my view, bullshit. Buddhism is not essentially about obtaining such an extraordinary state. It is about observing and questioning the conditions in which I stand, what makes me waver, and what causes me to suffer.
Do not be deceived by claims that an immutable state of mind exists somewhere and can be reached through prolonged practice. If we are going to study, we must go in the right direction. We must first see the contradiction in speaking of dependent arising and impermanence while craving a mind that never changes.
The direction of Buddhist study is not to chase a mystical state that never changes in waking or sleep. It is to see dependent arising and impermanence clearly and to observe and question the causes of agitation and suffering.
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