The Stages of Contemplative Practice

Question: When contemplating in practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) that the mind consciousness is not self, I simply cannot find any evidence. You said that after the mind consciousness cognizes one mental sense-object (dharma-viṣaya), it ceases, and then operates on another mental sense-object. But I feel that this "knowing" mind of consciousness is still me; although it is constantly changing, the nature of this "knowing" has not changed. I am rather troubled by this.

Answer: The Four Noble Truths: suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self. Pay attention to the sequence in which the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths: impermanence, emptiness, suffering, non-self — these are linked one to another in sequential succession. When engaging in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), one must practice according to this sequence: when one has fully and comprehensively contemplated the first, one should draw out or arrive at the second conclusion; when one has contemplated the second, one must draw out the third conclusion; when one has contemplated the third, one should arrive at the fourth conclusion. If it does not proceed this way, obstructions and resistance arise. What are these obstructions? They are the ingrained ideas and views accumulated over beginningless kalpas that obstruct oneself, making one unable to overturn one's former views and unable to form new views and understandings. For example, dharmas that are impermanent are empty, unattainable, and cannot be grasped. If you only know impermanence but cannot enter into the thought of emptiness, then you stop and cannot proceed further with contemplation.

If one can fully contemplate the stage of emptiness but cannot form the view that what is empty is suffering, an obstruction arises, the contemplative practice stagnates, and one cannot proceed further. If one contemplates that the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) are all suffering but cannot arrive at the conclusion that the fundamental nature of suffering is not self, then the final bottleneck appears. How can one break through this bottleneck? Or how can one break through each of these bottlenecks and change one's former ingrained wrong ideas and views? This requires us to ponder deeply, and ponder again.