The Effect of Practice Depends on the Degree to Which the Manas Is Perfumed

Question: If one hears a view, learns something—say, that the five aggregates are illusory, that there is no self, that all is impermanent and empty—and the mind genuinely changes in daily life, whether in adjusting the general direction of one's work and life, or in no longer being so attached to things one previously craved, feeling much less clinging—does this count as a transformation of the manas? 

Answer: This is a change occurring at the stage of cultivating the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment. When cultivation has become fairly effective and the mind abides on the Noble Eightfold Path, subduing some coarse afflictions of craving, the mind begins to transform. When the body, mind, and world transform, it is because the manas has been perfumed and transformed accordingly. That is to say, at any stage of cultivation, as long as the manas is perfumed, cultivation shows results. The thirty-seven factors of enlightenment must also be cultivated all the way to the manas; otherwise it is false cultivation, and one has not yet gotten onto the path. However, this kind of transformation of body and mind is not yet sufficient to bring about a complete metamorphosis, to the point of being able to eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa). This is why many people who claim to have eradicated the view of self show little improvement or change in body and mind afterward—the bones have not changed, so the ordinary person's embryo cannot be exchanged for a sage's embryo.