The Healing of Illness Lies in the Physician’s Eight Consciousnesses Jointly Transforming the Patient’s Rūpa-Kāya

When a physician cures a patient, does the physician first alter their own inner manifestations or their own outer manifestations? How do inner manifestations arise? If this issue is not properly resolved, future attainment of enlightenment will be impossible. The question of which comes first—inner or outer manifestations—is extremely important and cannot be bypassed. Both involve the principle that the Tathāgatagarbha manifests all dharmas, including how and upon what basis the Tathāgatagarbha manifests them. Once this matter is clarified, enlightenment becomes attainable.

The patient is the physician's outer manifestation. Curing the patient naturally involves transforming the patient's physical form, restoring it to health. The patient's physical form, relative to the physician, constitutes an outer manifestation. Healing is the process by which the physician's own eight consciousnesses collectively transform the patient's physical form—that is, they alter the physician's own outer manifestation. The physician's Tathāgatagarbha transmits this outer manifestation through the physician's six sense faculties into the physician's subtle sensory base, where it becomes an inner manifestation, aligning with the outer manifestation. Consequently, the patient's physical form, as perceived by the physician through inner manifestations, simultaneously recovers.

Healing also requires the participation of the first six consciousnesses; all eight consciousnesses are involved. In cases involving healing through visualization, the mental consciousness must also participate. The sixth, seventh, and eighth consciousnesses function together to transform the patient's physical form. This likewise alters the patient, who is the physician's outer manifestation, while the patient's body within the physician's inner manifestations changes simultaneously. How exactly the eight consciousnesses transform the patient's physical form and how they function upon the outer manifestation's physical body are matters for Chan practitioners to investigate through meditation; they will understand after achieving a breakthrough in meditation.