Contemplating the Five Aggregates and Eliminating the View of Self (Part I) (Second Edition)

Section Two: The Practice of the Contemplation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

1. The Difference Between the Four Foundations of Mindfulness of Sentient Beings and the Dharmakāya

The contemplation of the four foundations of mindfulness is the four establishments of mindfulness: contemplating the body as impure, contemplating feeling as suffering, contemplating the mind as impermanent, and contemplating dharmas as non-self. Sentient beings are inverted: they take the body to be pure. For countless kalpas they have craved their own bodies and craved the bodies of others, not knowing that the physical body is filthy and impure, filled with blood and gore, overrun with bacteria, brimming with urine and feces, with the nine orifices constantly discharging unclean filth—it is in fact a moving toilet. Contemplating this bodily form, it is truly impure; using this as an antidote to counteract the inverted notion of purity. In contrast, the Dharmakāya is pure, without body and without marks, without thought and without contrivance, free of any fabrication, purely and utterly unsullied, pure in the holy life (brahmacarya).

Sentient beings are inverted: they take feeling to be pleasure. For countless kalpas they have craved feelings, instead creating causes of suffering, and the results are all suffering. They take small, temporary pleasures as ultimate and pursue them insatiably. They do not know that the moment of pleasure is itself a suffering feeling; pleasure is inherently suffering, and after pleasure there is even more suffering. Suffering is divided into the suffering of suffering, the suffering of conditioning, and the suffering of decay. When sentient beings experience suffering, that is itself the suffering of suffering; the inner feelings flowing and shifting moment after moment, changing without cease, constitute the suffering of conditioning; after a pleasant feeling, the pleasure perishes and cannot last long—this is the suffering of decay. All feelings, whether painful, pleasant, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings—whatever feeling there is, it is suffering. In contrast, the Dharmakāya has no feeling, receives nothing; there is no painful feeling, no pleasant feeling, no neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling; being ultimately without suffering, it is pure bliss, supreme bliss, great bliss. When the mind does not crave any realm of experience, painful feelings are removed, and one is at ease in neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā).

Sentient beings are inverted: they take the mind to be permanent, grasping at spiritual awareness as the ultimate self, clinging without letting go. They do not know that this mind arises and perishes thought after thought, never abiding for an instant, impermanent and mutable, ultimately without self. In contrast, the Dharmakāya is permanent, never perishing; it does not arise and does not abide, is not different and does not perish—it is inherently the permanent body of all Buddhas.

Sentient beings are inverted: they take dharmas to be the self, not knowing that these dharmas arise from causes and conditions; when the causes and conditions disperse, the dharmas perish—how could a perishing dharma be the self? The ignorant mind takes dharmas as the self; lacking a single condition, where would the dharmas be? Without father and mother, whence come the five aggregates (pañca-skandha)? The bodily, verbal, and mental actions create the five aggregates; without suchness (tathatā), how could there be any formations? What arises from conditions and perishes with conditions is not the self. In contrast, the Dharmakāya is the self, the ultimate of seeds, pure and unconditioned, never again mutating; the twenty-one mental factors (caittas) are possessed by suchness, and having this mind-dharma is what constitutes the self. Sentient beings have no self, but the Buddha does have a self—true, permanent, and unchanging; if not the self, then what? Through this contemplative wisdom, ignorance is utterly removed, suffering is cut off and defilement abandoned, reaching ultimate nirvāṇa. Practice this contemplation constantly, and attain buddhahood soon.

2. The Specific Contemplative Methods of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

To contemplate the mind as impermanent, one must contemplate the impermanence of the eye consciousness, the impermanence of the ear consciousness, the impermanence of the nose consciousness, the impermanence of the tongue consciousness, the impermanence of the body consciousness, and the impermanence of the mind consciousness. To contemplate dharmas as non-self, contemplate the non-self of the dharmas of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), contemplate the non-self of the dharmas of the eighteen realms, and contemplate that among all the dharmas produced by the aggregates, sense bases, and realms, there is no self—no permanently unchanging self exists.

First contemplate the aggregate of form: the aggregate of form arises and perishes, going from nonexistence to existence, from existence to nonexistence. In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, King Prasenajit said that he observed his own physical body changing once every thirty years, once every ten years, once every year, changing day by day, changing thought after thought. Every moment, the cells of sentient beings undergo metabolism—hair grows, nails lengthen, and the skin, muscles, internal organs, blood, and so on are all changing. Today's body is not the same as yesterday's, even less the same as the body of ten years ago, and compared with the body of childhood it is hard to find anything identical. The aggregate of form is thus impermanent, arising and perishing, changing; from inside to outside it is filthy and impure. How could such an arising-and-perishing, impure physical body be the self? How could it have the nature of self? The self is unarising and unperishing, unchanging, constant and uniform, without the nature of suffering, real and true; the self is pure. The aggregate of form is the opposite of this; therefore the aggregate of form is not the self.

Next, observe the aggregate of feeling. Feeling is the feeling and awareness of the consciousness-mind, primarily the mind consciousness; this mind is impermanent, arising and perishing, changing; it is suffering and not the self. Whether pleasant feeling, painful feeling, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, all are suffering and impermanent, contrary to the nature of self; therefore the aggregate of feeling is not the self. Third, observe the aggregate of perception. The aggregate of perception is the discerning nature and grasping nature of the consciousness-mind, the thinking and discriminating nature of verbalized imaginings, primarily the mind consciousness; it is arising, perishing, impermanent, and mutable; it is suffering and contrary to the nature of self, and thus also not the self.

Fourth, observe the aggregate of volitional formations. Formation means fabrication, operation, and flowing change. The discriminating activities of the six consciousnesses belong to the aggregate of volitional formations; the fabrications of the physical body are the aggregate of volitional formations; the fabrications of speech are the aggregate of volitional formations; imaginative discriminations are the aggregate of volitional formations; cellular metabolism is the aggregate of volitional formations; the flow of blood is the aggregate of volitional formations; breathing, heartbeat, and intestinal peristalsis are the aggregate of volitional formations—all of these are arising, perishing, changing, and impermanent; they have the nature of suffering and are contrary to the nature of self; therefore they are not the self.

Fifth, observe the aggregate of consciousness. The aggregate of consciousness is the six consciousness-minds, which are arising and perishing, impermanent; they are suffering and mutable, without the nature of self, and are not the self. Observe the six faculties, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses of the eighteen realms: all are impermanent, arising, perishing, and mutable; they are suffering, without the nature of self, and are not the self. Thus all the dharmas produced by the operations of the five aggregates, twelve sense bases, and eighteen realms have no real, eternal, unchanging nature of self; all are false, impermanent, arising, perishing, and mutable; they are dharmas that cannot long abide, and none of them is the self.

3. What Are Inner and Outer Mind, Inner and Outer Afflictions?

When the Buddha, in the Great Mindfulness Sutra, taught the contemplation of feeling as suffering, he spoke of two kinds of feeling: inner feeling and outer feeling. Outer feeling refers to the feelings of the mind consciousness that are easy to observe, especially the feelings of the mind consciousness with respect to the realms of the six sense objects; inner feeling refers to the feelings of the manas, which are hidden rather deep and not easy to observe. Although the vast majority of people cannot distinguish the mind consciousness from the manas, the mental activities deep within the mind can still be perceived and observed, as long as the mind is very subtle and attentive.

When the Buddha taught the contemplation of the mind, observing the mind meant observing the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion of the inner mind and the outer mind, observing the collectedness and distraction, the expansiveness and narrowness, the superiority and unsurpassedness, the concentration and lack of concentration, the liberation and non-liberation of the inner mind and the outer mind. This shows that the inner mind, the manas, has the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, has concentration and non-concentration, has liberation and non-liberation. This proves from the Hīnayāna scriptures that the manas has these mental factors (caittas), even though the World-Honored One did not state it explicitly. Because the dharma of the manas could not be understood or realized even by Mahāyāna disciples, let alone the Hīnayāna disciples being able to deeply and correctly understand the dharma of the manas, the World-Honored One had no choice but to teach the mental factors of the manas in a hidden manner.

The affliction of doubt has inner doubt and outer doubt; cutting off doubt must be done ultimately—what is certainly cut off is the doubt of the manas. Therefore the three fetters refer entirely to the fetters of the manas; only eradicating the doubt of the manas is cutting off the three fetters. To cut off greed, one must cut off the greed of the manas; only then can the mind correspond with the devas of the form realm and be reborn in the form realm heavens. To cut off hatred, one must certainly eradicate the hatred of the manas; only then is one a person of the third fruit (anāgāmin). To cut off delusion, one must certainly cut off the deluded ignorance of the manas; only then can one transcend the three realms.

The Hīnayāna teachings are the easiest to understand, yet what person can truly comprehend the Hīnayāna Buddhist scriptures, let alone the Mahāyāna scriptures—what person can truly and completely understand them? Even attaining the fruit of the arhat, one still cannot completely believe one's own mind; wisdom is insufficient and the mind's understanding not ultimate; to believe it completely is prone to error.

The Buddha-dharma is not fragmentary; it must be coherent and continuous from beginning to end, with all parts mutually supporting and explaining one another.

4. The Inner and Outer Five Hindrances

When the Buddha, in the Great Mindfulness Sutra, taught the five hindrances, he said there are inner greed and outer greed, inner hatred and outer hatred, inner sloth-and-torpor and outer sloth-and-torpor, inner restlessness-and-remorse and outer restlessness-and-remorse, inner doubt and outer doubt. What do "inner" and "outer" each refer to?

If the mind is divided into inner and outer, the outer mind refers to the mind consciousness that sentient beings can generally discover and observe, while the inner mind refers to the mind-root, the manas, which sentient beings cannot easily discover and observe. The two consciousness-minds are one manifest and one hidden, one bright and one dark, one deep and one shallow; one is easy to change, the other is firm and hard to change. Cultivation means first implementing at the shallow level of the mind consciousness, then implementing at the deep level of the manas—first preliminarily transforming the mind consciousness, and finally ultimately transforming the manas. Therefore, of all ignorance and afflictions, the earliest and most obvious are at the level of the mind consciousness, while the latest and most hidden and profound are at the level of the manas.

From this sutra we can see that when the Buddha taught the Hīnayāna, although he did not explicitly state the dharma of the manas, he still implicitly spoke of the manas, implicitly teaching that all afflictions and ignorance belong to the manas; cutting off afflictions means cutting off the afflictions of the manas; liberation is the liberation of the manas; all dharmas are implemented upon the manas. If the problem of the manas is solved, all problems can be solved, ultimately reaching nirvāṇa and liberation.

5. The Inner and Outer Seven Factors of Enlightenment

In the Great Mindfulness Sutra, when the World-Honored One taught the five aggregates of grasping, he also spoke of the inner dharmas and outer dharmas of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness. Inner form is the physical body; outer form is the six sense objects; the inner feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness are the manas; the outer feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness are the mind consciousness.

When the World-Honored One taught the seven factors of enlightenment, he also divided the seven factors of enlightenment into inner seven factors and outer seven factors. The investigation-of-dharmas factor, the diligence factor, the joy factor, the tranquility (praśrabdhi) factor, the concentration factor, and the equanimity factor are all divided into the outer factors of the mind consciousness and the inner factors of the manas. When the inner seven factors of enlightenment have not been accomplished, it is impossible to attain the Hīnayāna fruits, impossible to eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi), let alone see the mind and see the nature. If the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment are not cultivated to completion, do not even speak of the fruits of either the Mahāyāna or the Hīnayāna. If tranquility of body and mind is not accomplished, if concentration is not accomplished, if neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā) in the inner mind does not exist, then the view of self cannot be eradicated, and seeing the mind and seeing the nature is impossible. These are the hard criteria of Buddhist cultivation and realization, which no one can bypass. If one insists on claiming that so-and-so has attained a fruit or seen the mind, those are all plastic fruits—something to admire, but of no real value.

From the World-Honored One's description of the seven factors of enlightenment, the manas has the investigation-of-dharmas factor, the diligence factor (true diligence), the joy factor (the manas does not have only neutral feeling), the tranquility factor, the concentration factor (corresponding with concentration), and the equanimity factor. Only when the mental activities thereafter accord with the Noble Eightfold Path can the conditions for attaining the Hīnayāna fruits be complete, can the view of self be eradicated and the first fruit attained; otherwise all are false fruits, plastic fruits. When the conditions are incomplete and the causes and conditions are not fulfilled, forced guidance can only yield a false fruit—something to look at every day, but without practical value.

6. The Supreme Fruits and Virtues of the Contemplation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The Buddha said that through diligent practice of the contemplation of the four foundations of mindfulness for various lengths of time, from seven years down to seven days, one can attain the fruits. This refers to those whose good roots are deep, whose afflictions are slight, whose obstructions are few, and who studied Buddhism for long eons in past lives; if they can practice diligently as the Buddha required, they can attain the fruits in a few days to a few years. But those who, since beginningless kalpas, have studied Buddhism for a short time, whose afflictions are heavy and obstructions severe, need more than seven years of diligent practice to attain the fruits. Perhaps most people could not attain the fruits even in a hundred years; some cannot even contemplate the breath well—no matter what, their minds cannot settle down, let alone speak of attaining the fruits.

But just as the Buddha said, no matter who one is, as long as one diligently practices the contemplation of the four foundations of mindfulness, so that every thought is the four foundations of mindfulness and every thought can engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), changing the habit of clinging to the world of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) accumulated since beginningless kalpas, and subduing afflictions and karmic obstructions, then attaining the fruits is not difficult. The difficulty lies in not being able to pass through the barrier of karmic obstructions, in being unwilling to resolve to apply effort to the Path, in being unable to subdue the habit of distraction. If one can truly practice with heroic diligence, accomplishing those practices described in the sutras, one will certainly attain the fruits.

This method of cultivating the contemplation of the four foundations of mindfulness is extremely supreme. Do not disdain the Hīnayāna practice; in fact, this is the shortcut of cultivation. Only the shortcut taught by the Buddha is truly the shortcut of cultivation—complete in precepts, concentration, and wisdom, with genuine practice and realization, not mere lip service, not emotional conjecture and intellectual understanding, not the kind where one attains the fruits just by thinking it over and pondering a bit.

From the cultivation methods the Buddha taught us, we should realize what true practice and true realization are, and what price must be paid. It is not like what some people imagine—where the mind consciousness merely understands intellectually, no price need be paid, no precepts need be kept, no concentration need be cultivated, and the dry wisdom of intellectual understanding counts as attaining the fruits. We must deeply believe in the Buddha's wisdom and follow the Buddha's teachings; only then will there be true benefit for our own cultivation.