The Importance of Eliminating Doubt to Give Rise to Faith

Only by severing doubt can faith arise. When doubt remains unresolved, the faculty of faith is not complete. Only by truly seeing and realizing the tathāgatagarbha can doubt be severed, can firm faith be established, and can one gradually accomplish the transformation of the basis as tathāgatagarbha. What is attained through intellectual understanding and conjecture lacks such merit and benefit.

Learning from the tathāgatagarbha and transforming the basis as tathāgatagarbha is, first of all, a matter of the mind consciousness. Once the mind consciousness has studied and understood it clearly, it then teaches the manas. When the manas takes refuge in the tathāgatagarbha, taking the tathāgatagarbha as its model, relying at all times and in all places upon the intrinsic nature of the tathāgatagarbha, it can subdue the self-nature of the manas, dilute ignorance, transform consciousness into wisdom, and accomplish the Buddha Way.

The prerequisite for the transformation of the basis must be realization through enlightenment; intellectual understanding cannot bring about a genuine transformation of the basis. This is because with intellectual understanding one cannot observe the operation of the tathāgatagarbha, does not know the selflessness and suchness of the tathāgatagarbha within the operation of conditioned dharmas, and thus has no way to genuinely transform the basis. What is merely conjectured leaves doubt deep in the mind that cannot be resolved, and therefore one's own mind cannot be changed. Only what one has truly and personally seen—genuine realization through enlightenment—can be believed one hundred percent, and only then can doubt be severed. Otherwise, even if one can conjecture that the tathāgatagarbha is roughly of such tranquility (praśama) and can temporarily suppress oneself into accepting and believing it, the doubt deep in the mind cannot be severed, and thus the fetters and bonds cannot be severed. Severing the fetters means severing the root and sprout of birth-and-death—pulling up the grass by the roots—which is of the utmost importance.