How to Eradicate Sectional Birth and Death

All life and death arise due to ignorance. Where there is ignorance, there are corresponding karmic actions and karmic seeds of ignorance. These karmic seeds of ignorance inevitably cause sentient beings to experience the segmented cycle of birth and death and the transformative cycle of birth and death. To end the segmented cycle of birth and death, one must eradicate ignorance. After the mind becomes pure, afflictions and habitual tendencies of afflictions are severed, and the karmic seeds of ignorance are eliminated. Thus, the segmented cycle of birth and death is ended, and one enters the stage of the transformative cycle of birth and death.

What is the prerequisite for the transformation of karmic seeds? Only when the mind transforms, and the actions of body, speech, and mind transform, will the karmic seeds transform. What is the prerequisite for the transformation of the mind? When ignorance is eradicated and afflictions are severed, the mind transforms. What is the prerequisite for eradicating ignorance? Only when the practice of the Thirty-Seven Aids to Enlightenment, the Six Perfections of the Bodhisattva, and the cultivation of precepts, concentration, and wisdom reach a certain level can ignorance be eradicated and afflictions severed. Only then can the mind transform, the actions of body, speech, and mind become pure, and the karmic seeds transform. When the attachment to self is completely severed and the attachment to dharmas is eliminated, the ālaya consciousness can transform into the maturational consciousness, and the segmented cycle of birth and death transforms into the transformative cycle of birth and death.

The extent to which one cultivates determines the degree of ignorance eradicated, the degree of afflictions severed, the degree of purity attained in the mind, the degree of transformation in the actions of body, speech, and mind, the degree of transformation in the karmic seeds, and consequently, the degree of transformation in the resultant karmic retribution. Therefore, spiritual practice is always a process. Each stage of the process is necessary and essential. The duration may be long or short, but the process itself is indispensable. Without the process, there can be no talk of the result. Thus, do not imagine that ordinary beings bound by all fetters can attain enlightenment while still carrying all their afflictions. Nor should one imagine that after attaining enlightenment, one can continue walking the path to enlightenment without severing afflictions. Afflictions are not the path.