The Importance of Cutting Off Doubt and Giving Rise to Faith

Only by eradicating 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 eradicated, can firm faith be established, and can one gradually achieve the transformation of the basis as tathāgatagarbha (āśraya-parāvṛtti-tathāgatagarbha). Understanding attained through inference and speculation does not have such merit and benefit.

Learning from the tathāgatagarbha and achieving the transformation of the basis as tathāgatagarbha is, first of all, the affair of the mind consciousness. Once the mind consciousness has learned and understood it thoroughly, it then teaches the manas. The manas takes refuge in the tathāgatagarbha, takes the tathāgatagarbha as its model, and at all times and in all places relies upon the intrinsic nature of the tathāgatagarbha, subduing the self-nature of the manas, weakening ignorance, transforming consciousness into wisdom, and accomplishing the Buddha Way.

The prerequisite for the transformation of the basis must be realization through enlightenment; understanding through inference cannot bring about a genuine transformation of the basis, because such understanding cannot observe the functioning of the tathāgatagarbha, and does not know the selflessness and suchness of the tathāgatagarbha within the operation of conditioned phenomena; thus there is no way to truly transform the basis. What is arrived at through speculation leaves doubt deep in the mind that cannot be resolved, and therefore one's own mind cannot be changed. Only what one has genuinely and personally seen—true realization—can be believed one hundred percent, and only then can doubt be eradicated. Otherwise, even if one can speculate that the tathāgatagarbha is roughly of such tranquility (praśama) and can temporarily suppress one's doubts and accept it, the doubt deep within the mind cannot be eradicated, and thus the fetters and bonds cannot be severed. Severing the fetters means cutting off the root and sprout of birth-and-death—pulling up the grass by the roots—which is extremely important.