I. Introduction
Once we have been able to know the way to get a true mind, the next step is to
practice a Sudden Enlightened Zen. This Zen is a pure Cognition of a True Mind.
Cognizing a Pure Perception, we get a Pure Cognition. The Meditation is to get the True
Mind for reaching a free world when living and dying. Zen or Meditation is how to
purify the Mind as Bhikku Bodhi perceived in his essay "Purification of Mind":
Purification of mind as understood in the Buddha's teaching is the sustained
endeavor to cleanse the mind of defilements, those dark unwholesome mental
forces which run beneath the surface stream of consciousness vitiating our
thinking, values, attitudes, and actions. The chief among the defilements are the
three that the Buddha has termed the "roots of evil" -- greed, hatred, and delusion
-- from which emerge their numerous offshoots and variants: anger and cruelty,
avarice and envy, conceit and arrogance, hypocrisy and vanity, the multitude of
erroneous views.
So, in general, Zen is a cognition to the mind. We need to distinguish "Dhyana -
Contemplation" and "Sudden Enlightened Zen" by analyzing the Mind, even to know the
difference of the Common Mind and the True Mind or the perception and the cognition.
II. Perception and Cognition.
Padmal Silva studied:
Perception is based on twelve gateways or modalities (ayatana), six of
these being the five sense organs plus the mind, or "inner sense," and the
other six being the objects of each of these (Samyutta Nikaya, II,
1884-1898). The status of mind (mano) is special. It has the ability to
reflect on the objects of the other senses, so in this way it is linked to
the activity of all the senses (Kalupahana, 1987). Each combination of
sense organ and its objects leads to a particular consciousness
(vinnana)--for example, visual consciousness arises because of the eye and
material shapes. When consciousness is added to each of the pairs of
modalities, one gets eighteen factors of cognition, referred to as dhatus,
or elements. These are presented in Table 2. It is said:
TABLE 2
The Eighteen Factors of Cognition
Sensen Organ Object Consciousness
eye material shapes visual
consciousness
ear sounds auditory
nose smells olfactory
tongue tastes gustatory
body tangibles tactile
mind mental objects mental
a) Sensations and Perceptions.
The characteristics of sensation are common to all.. First, the indvidual sensory
organs are stimilated by a specific and different form of external or internal energy:
vision (eyes + material shapes = visual consciousness) is stimulated by electromagnetic
energy (or light); hearing (ear + sounds = auditory consciousness), by sound waves;
smell (nose + smells = olfactorey consciousness) by new stimuli olfactory system; taste
(tongue + tastes = gustatory consciousness by papillae; touch (body + tangibes = tactile
consciousness) by a stimulus of the skin or body; and feeling (mind menal + objects =
mental consciousness) whereby the brain interprets the sensations it receives, giving them
order and meaning. All perceptions are conscious ones and people are aware of things
they are perceiving and how they interpret them. Perceptions are limited from senses.
"Sensation is essentially the process whereby stimulation of receptor cells in various
parts of the body (the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and surface of skin) sends nerve impulses
to the brain, where these impulses register as a touch, a sound, a taste, a plash of color,
and so forth. Perception, in contrast, is the process whereby the brain interprrets the
sensations it receives, giving them order and meaning" (Psychology, Wortman and
Loftus, 1981). All perceptions are conscious ones and people are aware of things they are
perceiving and how they interpret them. Perceptions are limited from senses.
b) Cogn