Imprisoned in a Cocoon of Discrimination
THEN SAID MAHAMATI to the Blessed One: Why is it that the ignorant are given up to discrimination and the wise are not?
The Blessed One replied: It is because the ignorant cling to names, signs and ideas; as their minds move along these channels they feed on multiplicities of objects and fall into the notion of an ego-soul and what belongs to it; they make discriminations of good and bad among appearances and cling to the agreeable. As they thus cling there is a reversion to ignorance, and karma born of greed, anger and folly, is accumulated. As the accumulation of karma goes on they become imprisoned in a cocoon of discrimination and are thenceforth unable to free themselves from the round of birth and death.
Because of folly they do not understand that all things are like maya, like the reflection of the moon in water, that there is no self-substance to be imagined as an ego-soul and its belongings, and that all their definitive ideas rise from their false discriminations of what exists only as it is seen of the mind itself. They do not realise that things have nothing to do with qualified and qualifying, nor with the course of birth, abiding and destruction, and instead they assert that they are born of a creator, of time, of atoms, of some celestial spirit. It is because the ignorant are given up to discrimination that they move along with the stream of appearances, but it is not so with the wise.
From: A BUDDHIST BIBLE, First Edition, BY DWIGHT GODDARD [1932, Copyright not renewed] – The Lankavatara Sutra – http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bb/bb08.htm – scanned at sacred-texts.com, August 2004. John Bruno Hare, redactor. This text is in the public domain because it was not renewed at the US Copyright Office in a timely fashion, as required by law. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice of attribution is left intact.