Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (68)

The Reason We Cannot Depart from All Dharmas

What is the reason we cannot depart from all dharmas? It is because of craving, attachment, and fondness; because there is a mind of fondness and delight, the mind abides in all dharmas and cannot separate from them. Toward all worldly dharmas we wish to possess and own them—this is the mind of fondness and delight. If there is no mind of fondness and delight, then the mind will abide nowhere, without wishing to possess or own anything. In this way the mind is not bound by any dharma, gains the power of liberation, and can attain liberation. For one who does not give rise to fondness and delight toward the desire realm, the dhyāna concentration of the first dhyāna arises; for one who has no fondness for the state of the first dhyāna, the state of meditative concentration rises even higher; for one who has no fondness even for higher states of meditative concentration, one can reach the highest state within the three realms; and for one who has no fondness for the dharmas of the worlds of the three realms, one will enter the cessation of perception and feeling (nirodha-samāpatti), which is the state of an arhat of the fourth fruit. At the end of life, one can extinguish all of one's first seven consciousnesses; when the material body perishes and the seven consciousnesses are extinguished, when the five aggregates are extinguished, one enters Nirvāṇa without remainder, liberated from birth-and-death in the three realms, no longer transmigrating.

An arhat can enter Nirvāṇa without remainder, end birth and death, and leave the three realms precisely because he no longer has any mental action of fondness and delight toward the worldly dharmas of the three realms. We suffer within the three realms, especially within the desire realm; being born in the human world of the desire realm rather than in the heavens of the desire realm is because our mind of fondness and delight toward the dharmas of the desire realm is deeper than that of the devas, deeper than that of the devas of the form realm, and compared with the devas of the formless realm, it is so deep as to be beyond comparison. The fainter the mind of fondness and delight, the higher the heaven one is reborn in at the end of life, the happier and more tranquil the life, and the less suffering one experiences; the heavier the mind of fondness and delight, the heavier the suffering. If there is no mind of fondness and delight, one can depart from all dharmas, and the mind attains purity (viśuddha) and tranquility (praśama).