Contemplative Practice (Vipaśyanā-Caryā) on the Five Aggregates to Eliminate Self-View (Ātma-Dṛṣṭi)

External form is jointly manifested by the tathāgatagarbhas of many beings; internal form is manifested by one's own tathāgatagarbha; the eye faculty is manifested by the tathāgatagarbha; eye consciousness is manifested by the tathāgatagarbha. The eye consciousness's function of seeing form is the joint operation of the tathāgatagarbha, the manas, the mind consciousness, and the eye consciousness, which displays internal form within the eye consciousness and the mind consciousness. Among these, the four consciousnesses each have their own functions, and they also have functions that operate in harmony. Faculty, sense-object, and consciousness are all manifested, upheld, and supervised by the tathāgatagarbha. Apart from these three, there would be no sentient beings and no five aggregates. So what are the sentient beings of the five aggregates? Where is the self, where are the five aggregates? Which one is the self?

Seeing forms, hearing sounds, smelling scents, tasting flavors, feeling tangibles, and discerning dharmas—all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing, all functions of feeling and perception, all thoughts and sentiments—what are they? Find the dharmas upon which the five aggregates depend, and contemplate what these dharmas are, and what these dharmas in turn depend upon. Whatever has dependence is not real; it lacks self-mastery (avaśatā), is not autonomous, is suffering, empty, impermanent, subject to arising and ceasing, illusory and transformed, false and unreal, and without self.

Following this line of thinking, enter meditative concentration and engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), sort out your thinking, and let the manas perceive, awaken, and personally touch and realize it. In the end, a voice will arise within your heart telling you: all these dharmas truly have no reality; they are all a farce. Where is the self? Which one is the self? None of them is. Then you will weep bitterly, body and mind will drop away, and nothing will remain to obstruct you.

There is a process in this. When the manas is gradually coming to recognize this fact, the mind will feel intense pain and sorrow. The self that has been clung to for so long is about to vanish before one's eyes; naturally the mind feels empty, hollow, and fearful, like standing at the edge of a cliff, terribly afraid of falling—hesitating, worrying, fearing, knowing there is nothing at all, yet worrying that nothing can be grasped anymore. That state of mind is extremely agitated and turbulent. After a period of time, one can come to accept it, settle into peace, and return to normal. This is the process that one who is about to eliminate self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) for the first time in this life must undergo. For those who have eliminated self-view over many lifetimes in past lives, it will be very easy—joyful and delightful.

What each person can come into contact with is privately owned by the individual; this private ownership represents a second illusion—illusory upon illusion. Whether external and shared or internal and private, all is illusory and unreal, without genuine reality; all are images formed in a mirror. Of course, truly realizing the mirror-image contemplation occurs at the full mind of the first bhūmi, when all the dharmas cultivated at the first bhūmi have already been completed.