03. COMMENTARY

THE PROCESSES

We can say that this is the recommended first meditation that is a serious attempt to follow the Dharma Path.

Now in the two parts of Lesson 1, two different translations have been presented. We will consider both, because there may well be confusion depending upon which translation, among the many available, you may read in the future.

"The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the eye are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, that also is on fire."

"The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye -- experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain -- that too is aflame."

You will see that the second is less precise, particularly in speaking of Consciousness AT the eye and Contact AT the eye. The interpretation is left up to the words Consciousness and Contact.

In the first case we see that the two processes are referred to as Eye Consciousness and Impressions received by the Eye.

We have a clue as to what is referred to when we see the expression “whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye -- experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain.”

This is the level of the process where discrimination takes place. Now DISCRIMINATION depends directly upon sensation, so we can say with certainty that IMPRESSIONS of the EYE and therefore CONTACT are both the process of SENSATION.

When the sutra declares that the eye is aflame or on fire, then that refers to the actual organ of sight, which is the EYE.

Now in the human information process there are different levels of processing. They consist of:

1. ATTENTION

2. SENSATION

3. DISCRIMINATION

4. PERCEPTION

5. VOLITION

All these (in the human creature under the influence of identity) receive information from these different levels in CONSCIOUSNESS, which is actually comparable to the monitor of a computer.

Now the Eye naturally, although it is a part of the process, being the most important part of the hardware of vision, is clearly not in itself a process, but the information received by the Eye is directly sent to consciousness (we will examine this later). We can say therefore that the eye exists in a directly symbiotic relationship with CONSCIOUSNESS.

We are left then with two elements in the chain presented in the Fire Sermon.

Forms and Eye-consciousness on one hand and Forms and Consciousness at the eye on the other.

These two must be paired with the two remaining processes of Perception and Volition. We know that the process of human perception is directly related to the selection of perceptual forms and the allocation of names to those forms. Therefore Eye-consciousness must be in fact the process of Volition.

Now we can perhaps see the problem with simply taking translations for granted, for VOLITION does not take place “AT”  the eye.

Now let us pair the members of the list and see what we have.

1. The Eye  ------- Attention / Consciousness

2. Forms -------- Perception

3. Eye-consciousness ------- Volition

4. Impressions received by the eye --------Sensations

5. Sensations, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions ------ Discrimination.

You can see that the order of the presentation in the sutra is different than the actual levels of processing.

            We must ask why if we wish to really understand the Fire Sermon.

It is because the human processing is so rapid that a conscious awareness of that processing is impossible. It is then left to the mind to deduce what that process was.

Reflection will show that our idea of what is happening is that “we see”, then “some sort of volition happens”, then “we sense”, then “we discriminate.”

The eye, which is really attention and not actually discriminated as such, when it is stimulated gives the signal “Seeing is taking place.” Thus it is placed first in our common impressions of what is taking place.

In other Sutras, Buddha places these in the correct order of human perception, because they can, through correct and profound meditation, be seen to be in the natural order of processing.

But in Buddha Dharma one can find a different order still in the sutras:

1. SENSATION

2. DISCRIMINATION

3. PERCEPTION

4. VOLITION

5. CONSCIOUSNESS

You will note that Consciousness is in its natural place and that Attention has been removed from the list.

Those who have read a little about the Buddha Dharma path will recognize these five Skandhas here in this ordering and naming.

Now this Skandha ordering becomes important for Skandha meditation. That order is precisely the ordering of the meditation series which one performs in the Theravadin Skandha Meditation series and the meditation known as Shiné in the Tibetan path, with slight differences.

             All Skandha meditation must begin with the meditation of SENSATION.

You will see in the Sutra that Buddha mentions the five senses… Vision, Hearing, Smell, Taste and Touch. The first meditations include all these modalities in the first stage.  Depending on personal attributes, some may find it better to begin with Meditation on the sensation of Sight while the majority find the meditation upon Touch the most effective. For the majority this is known as the Meditation on Breath, which is a misguided way of presenting the practice, for actually it is the Meditation on the Tactile Sensation of Breathing.

Alright, one may ask why proceed through all this rigorous examination of the process levels if it all comes down to a simple meditation.

It is because the meditation is not at all simple and one must understand the physiology of the processes to adequately perform the meditation.

One further point must be presented here in the first examination of the sutra.

The Fire Sermon further declares,

"The mind is on fire; ideas are on fire; thinking-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by thinking are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by thinking, that also is on fire.”

We have already declared that Attention and Consciousness are paired, so when speaking of the MIND we cannot assume that it is CONSCIOUSNESS itself, but that Consciousness suggests the existence of a mind.

There are two important words that give us a clue in this phrase of the Fire Sermon. They are IDEAS and THINKING.

Now although VOLITION is the process itself, the experiences are transmitted to consciousness as ideas and thoughts. We can then say that here the Sutra is stating that the thought processes that appear in consciousness are also aflame.

You will remember that we spoke before of the Skandhas and the slight differences in the Meditation series.

The eventual meditation series then is:

1. SENSATION

2. DISCRIMINATION

3. PERCEPTION

4. VOLITION perceived through THE CONTENTS OF MIND

5. MIND itself exemplified by CONSCIOUSNESS

Perhaps now you can begin to see the depth in which all sutras must be examined and the importance of this sutra to all meditation.

In fact, I will state categorically that a complete and profound understanding of this Fire Sermon is essential to all meditation. Furthermore, one cannot successfully (particularly in this complex 21st-century world) proceed efficiently even to the first Tibetan meditations on Tara, Vajrasattva and Avalokiteshvara in Vajrayana, the first meditations of Pure Land, or the first elementary processes of preparation for Mahamudra, or even Chan (including Japanese Zen) without a mastering of the meditations of this Fire Sermon.