How to Give Rise to the Mind of Liberation

The functions of the mind are the functional operations of feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness—recognizing and discerning, grasping, feeling, and making choices, and generating joy, anger, sorrow, and delight, as well as grief and distress, toward all dharmas. All these functional operations are brought forth by the seeds of consciousness within the tathāgatagarbha. Once the seven great seeds are transmitted forth, the mental activities of the seven consciousnesses and the realms of the six sense-objects appear just like bubbles. From beginningless kalpas, the manas has continually clung to these bubbles, taking the impermanent mark as the mark of permanence, taking the marks of suffering, emptiness, and affliction as the mark of happiness, taking the selfless mark of the five aggregates as the mark of self, and taking the impure marks of the six sense-objects and six consciousnesses as the mark of purity. It clings to all these bubbles as "I" and "mine," and clings to dharmas that are suffering, empty, and impermanent as self and belonging to self.

Because the manas grasps at these dharmas, it cannot escape the three realms and attain liberation. After we understand these principles, in this life we should give rise to the aspiration for liberation and strive to understand how all these dharmas are illusory and unreal—by what causes and conditions they arise and by what causes and conditions they cease—and no longer grasp at the illusory, conditioned dharmas that are impermanent and selfless. All feelings, even pleasant feelings, are impermanent and cannot be retained. When a sense-object appears, a pleasant feeling arises; when the sense-object ceases, the pleasant feeling also ceases. There is no feeling, no dharma, that can exist permanently without changing and perishing.

The six sense-objects are all illusory shadows presented within the brain. It is by grasping at these shadows that we produce all kinds of feelings and perceptions. The shadows are not real, and the feelings and perceptions they produce are equally unreal. All dharmas are constantly arising and ceasing moment by moment. The past has already passed; the present instantly becomes the past; the future has not yet arrived. The manas cannot hold on to any illusory mark of the past, present, or future.

In the world there are fundamentally no such people, no such affairs, no such principles, and no world at all. It is just like crying and laughing at the shadow in a mirror, giving rise to thoughts and mental activity and performing all kinds of karmic actions, while not knowing that everything one faces is merely an illusory shadow. It is like a foolish dog barking madly and endlessly at its own shadow in a mirror, or like a foolish monkey leaping into a lake determined to fish out the moon's reflection—such is the foolishness of sentient beings. To escape this foolishness and attain liberation through wisdom, one must recognize the truth and the true reality, no longer grasp at any dharma, and eliminate the two attachments of self-grasping and dharma-grasping.