Nonrevealing Forms Can Be Known Only with Mental Cognition
When we talk about a nonrevealing form, how is this known? Can we in our practice learn to be able to perceive it?
“Nonrevealing” means that it doesn’t reveal its motivation to anybody. It is something that can be known, but only with mental cognition. It’s not something that we can see or hear. It’s like a dream form, in that we can only know it by our mind. For instance, we can’t actually see a dream with our eyes.
When we are aware, for example, of the nonrevealing form of a vowed restraint that we have taken on to refrain from killing, what are we actually aware of? We are aware that we have this vowed restraint and that we are planning to keep it. Does it reveal the motivation with which we took it on? No. Mind you, whether we are aware of them or not, the nonrevealing forms continue with our mental continuum as extremely subtle forms.
We can also take on an avowed nonrestraint to kill or shoot people, for example, when we join the army, and we can be aware that we have taken on an avowed nonrestraint to engage in this type of behavior. For example, we join the mafia, and we promise to kill whomever the mafia boss instructs us to kill. We can be aware of this avowed nonrestraint, but it’s not as if it reveals our motivation, such as fear or wanting to make money. It doesn’t reveal anything.
Motivations for Taking on Vowed Restraints
Of course, we can take on a vowed restraint with various types of motivation. We can take bodhisattva vows because we want to attain enlightenment and benefit all beings. We can take the vows for individual liberation – the monastic or lay vows – because we want to attain liberation from samsara. We can have constructive motivations like these. However, we can also take on vowed restraints with many other, less positive types of motivation, such as all our friends are becoming monks and we want to be with our friends. Another example is that we can’t get along with the opposite sex, or are attracted to the same sex, so we join a same sex community of monks or nuns. Perhaps, we join a monastery because our parents told us to – as often happens in the Tibetan community – or because we want free food and not to have to work or to join the army. There can be many motivations and reasons. Just the fact that we take on and keep a vowed restraint doesn’t reveal that motivation.
For example, the vowed restraint to refrain from hunting: It could be that we really like hunting, but we know that it is destructive and will cause harm and therefore, we refrain from hunting. Or it could be that it would just never enter our minds to hunt, so it’s no big deal to refrain from so doing. The strength of the motivation and the type of the motivation is not revealed just because we have taken on a vowed restraint.
What is the original word in Sanskrit for a nonrevealing form?
The Sanskrit word for the revealing is prajñapti and for nonrevealing aprajñapti. Prajñapti is a causative noun, “causing one to know,” from prajñā, to know. It is something that cause one to know the motivation. The Sanskrit prefix “a” makes the word a negation, and so something that does not cause one to know the motivation.