Can Enlightenment Regress?

Regarding whether one can regress after enlightenment, this involves two issues. One is whether the enlightenment is genuine or false, how it was attained, and the process of enlightenment. The other is what constitutes regression, where one regresses to, and what one turns toward.

The first issue: The concept of enlightenment refers to opening one's own mind and realizing the true mind, the self-nature Tathāgatagarbha. Opening one's own mind is extremely difficult. Since beginningless time, we have consistently regarded the five aggregates (body and mind) as a truly existing self, clinging to them incessantly, with great greed and attachment. To reverse such a greedy and clinging mind, to make the sixth and seventh consciousnesses deny the five-aggregate body and mind and instead recognize a true mind Tathāgatagarbha that has never been encountered before—utterly unfamiliar and ungraspable—is an immensely challenging task. This endeavor can only be accomplished by one of great resolve; it requires considerable virtuous roots and merits, substantial courage and perseverance to gradually subdue the inherent erroneous views within one's mind, continuously negating the cognitive habits accumulated over beginningless time. It necessitates constant struggle against old prejudices and biases until one completely denies one's own five-aggregate body and mind, establishing the correct view that within the body resides the true, deathless mind, Tathāgatagarbha, as the real self. Only when the mind's nature is tamed, achieving a submissive endurance toward the true self-nature, can one have the conditions to find and realize the true mind Tathāgatagarbha.

Before finding and realizing Tathāgatagarbha, one must contemplate the illusory and unreal nature of the five-aggregate body and mind, continuously negating the five aggregates, repeatedly overthrowing them, until the erroneous view of taking the five-aggregate body and mind as the self is severed. Only then can one truly recognize the true self-nature. In other words, the five-aggregate body and mind must fall and die; only within the corpse can one find that vibrant self-nature Tathāgatagarbha. There must be a death to realize that lively, vital one. Otherwise, if one still mistakes the dead for the living, it is impossible to recognize the true living being. Therefore, before enlightenment, one must sever the view of self. Even if one finds the true mind Tathāgatagarbha within an hour, a day, or a few days after severing the view of self, it is still preceded by severing the view of self and the death of the five-aggregate body and mind, only then realizing the true Tathāgatagarbha mind. Without this process of severing the view of self, true enlightenment is impossible; that would be false enlightenment, the mind not truly opened.

Another issue: Sentient beings, since beginningless time, have never been enlightened before. The first enlightenment must involve a long process of investigation. During this process, the seven factors of enlightenment must all arise and be fully developed; the Noble Eightfold Path must be cultivated to completion; the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment must all be well-cultivated and achieved; the conditions of the six pāramitās of the Bodhisattva must all be fulfilled. Only when the mind's nature becomes subdued and pliable, and one initially possesses the qualities and mindset of a Mahayana Bodhisattva, can one enlighten the mind and become a true, worthy Bodhisattva. Only those who enlighten in this way are genuinely enlightened, not falsely. Those who are truly enlightened, having obtained the fruit through a long and arduous process of investigation, will cherish and value this hard-won fruit immensely and will not regress from the true self-nature Tathāgatagarbha.

The second issue concerning regression: Regression means withdrawing from the true mind Tathāgatagarbha, no longer recognizing Tathāgatagarbha as the true, deathless mind, but reverting to the former view that takes the functions and activities of the five aggregates as the true, deathless self. One turns from the true mind toward the deluded mind of the seventh consciousness, continuing to mistake the false for the true.

The primary reason for this situation is that the enlightenment was not genuine, and the understanding is not firm. One reason is the lack of the process of severing the view of self. The view of self that takes the five aggregates as the self has not been eradicated; the five aggregates have not died, or have not died completely.

Another reason is the absence of a long-term process of investigating Tathāgatagarbha. There is no increasingly clear and thorough understanding of Tathāgatagarbha, no endurance of Tathāgatagarbha's selfless nature, no endurance of Tathāgatagarbha's formless, featureless, and obscure operational mechanism. Regarding Tathāgatagarbha, it is like viewing flowers through a fog—at best, a mere intellectual understanding, without truly finding and realizing Tathāgatagarbha. One also fundamentally fails to observe Tathāgatagarbha's operation within the five-aggregate body and mind, failing to observe the purity, selflessness, and reality of Tathāgatagarbha in the functioning of the five-aggregate body and mind.

Therefore, this vague and indistinct cognition of Tathāgatagarbha is insubstantial; it cannot shake one's inner being, and thus one cannot treasure the true self-nature Tathāgatagarbha. One can only cling again to the seemingly real functions and activities of the five aggregates as the self. This is regression and its cause. Genuine, substantial enlightenment of the mind, with the five aggregates thoroughly dead, results in a realization so real that one can directly observe the functioning of the true mind and will no longer cling to the functions and activities of the five aggregates. Therefore, no matter who tries to persuade or mislead, one will not regress from the unsurpassed bodhi of Tathāgatagarbha.