Intuition: The Power of Manas Awareness

Jobs said to trust your intuition, which transcends thought and allows you to perceive what thought cannot see. The intuition Jobs referred to is the awareness of the mental faculty, while thought is the awareness of the conscious mind. The dharmas that the conscious mind can perceive are limited, whereas the awareness of the mental faculty is limitless. The conscious mind cannot perceive many dharmas that the mental faculty can perceive.

Why is the awareness of the mental faculty called intuition? Because the mental faculty, relying on the Tathagatagarbha, can comprehend all dharmas. In the Shurangama Sutra, this is expressed as the mental faculty silently encompassing all dharmas—it can swiftly connect with all dharmas. The degree to which it knows the dharmas is another matter. Thus, the awareness of the mental faculty is extremely fast, directly confronting the dharmas, swiftly and directly discerning them: knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing, without the analytical reasoning of the conscious mind. At this stage, the conscious mind has not yet arisen. Once dharmas fall into the conscious mind, they inevitably undergo a process of thinking, analysis, reasoning, and judgment, which takes a long detour and considerable time. The final result becomes unreliable because it contains elements of inference and conjecture, not immediate seeing and knowing.

In the past, when Chan masters guided students toward enlightenment, if a student rolled their eyes or pondered upon being questioned, the master would immediately strike them with a board, saying: "Understand if you can understand—what is there to ponder?" Chan masters always guided students to realize the Way through intuition, without falling into thought. Upon being questioned, one either realized it then or not at all; they were not permitted to descend into the thinking of the conscious mind. If a Chan master guided you toward enlightenment and you pondered and pondered, you should have been struck and sent home the moment you began to ponder—you wouldn’t have been allowed to ponder repeatedly. Yet nowadays, some people take hours or even days to "attain enlightenment" through pondering—such a result is even less credible. The answer might be correct, but no matter how correct it is, it is still not genuine because it arises from the conscious mind's pondering, not from direct seeing, not from firsthand experience.

If you interrogate someone about whether they know something, and that person hesitates and stammers, thinking again and again without answering directly, then that person's words cannot be trusted—their thinking contains elements of concealment and falsehood. For example, if you think, analyze, reason, imagine, and ponder the appearance of Beijing, and finally conclude what Beijing is like, congratulations—you might have pondered correctly; Beijing is roughly like that. But because you have never been to Beijing, you are not someone who has seen Beijing firsthand. Only those who have been to Beijing and entered the city are firsthand witnesses of Beijing. When describing Beijing's appearance, they will be truthful, detailed, precise, and utterly certain, leaving no room for doubt. This is equivalent to severing the three fetters in the eradication of self-view—eliminating doubt, leaving no uncertainty. Those who have never been to Beijing, no matter how they describe its appearance, will feel unsettled in their hearts, lacking confidence, unable to affirm it with absolute certainty. This corresponds to the intellectual understanding of the conscious mind, which cannot sever the three fetters and is unable to eliminate doubt and generate genuine faith.

Only when you have diligently practiced in silence behind the scenes and are just a hair's breadth away can a Chan master guide you to enlightenment and realization of the Way. It will happen naturally, like water flowing in its course—utterly genuine, without the slightest pretense or falsehood. Or if only the right causes, conditions, and timing are lacking, then the Chan master will observe you, pay attention to your state, and see if the time has arrived. When the time comes, they will provide the opportunity for you to awaken. If they observe that you are still far from ready, the Chan master will absolutely not attempt to guide you. But nowadays, with students still tens of thousands of miles away from enlightenment, they are forcibly dragged forward with iron hooks. The result is like yanking out a giant radish—pulled out alive and killed. It ends badly, and the karmic retribution in future lives is extremely terrifying.