Is it direct-perception wisdom when mind consciousness alone, through thinking, analyzing, understanding, and reasoning about dharmas, comes to know?

Conclusions derived from the mind consciousness's thinking and reasoning are not realized through practice, not personally attained; lacking genuine, usable evidence as support, the inner doubts are not eradicated. When, at a certain point, one encounters facts that contradict them, one will regret and overturn one's former conclusions. Moreover, the deep doubts within the manas cannot be discovered at all when the mind consciousness lacks wisdom; therefore, the mind consciousness's inferences cannot sever doubt and cannot cause the manas to give rise to faith—consequently, there is no practical use and no benefit to be gained.

Even if the result of the reasoning is completely correct, one hundred percent correct, it is still non-valid cognition. Why? For example, suppose you reason that I must have stolen your things, and in fact I really did steal them; but since you did not see it with your own eyes or catch me with your own hands, your reasoning is useless—the court will not convict and sentence me based on your reasoning or anyone's reasoning. Even if I myself admit that I stole, if I cannot produce strong evidence proving that I stole, the court still cannot pass a sentence. Some people, in order to exonerate those with whom they have karmic affinity from their transgressions, are willing to take the punishment in their place; but without genuine, convincing evidence, even if they go to court to confess, admitting that the transgression was personally committed by themselves and has nothing to do with others, the court still cannot convict and sentence based on one-sided statements.

In the Buddha's Dharma, when there is no meditative concentration (samādhi), one may infer the existence of the eighth consciousness amid the activities of the five aggregates and eighteen realms, and imagine that the eighth consciousness has a certain function, certain functions; but because it has not been personally realized, such reasoning has no merit or benefit, changes nothing—the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) remains as before, the three fetters still bind oneself as before, and one cannot escape the retribution of the three evil destinies at the end of life. You may be allowed to have inferred the eighth consciousness correctly, allowed to have imagined fifty or sixty percent, sixty or seventy percent, seventy or eighty percent of it, but still no great wisdom will arise, there will still be no meditative absorption (samādhi) state, still no merit or benefit, and one remains an ordinary person; one will never, through such imagination and reasoning, sever ignorance and afflictions.

The methods and means of practice used by the patriarchs through the kalpas and generations, the paths they walked, are absolutely correct, conform to direct perception, and their attainments are genuine and credible, exerting an enormous positive influence and impetus on Buddhism. The patriarchs' teachings all reveal the truth of practice and realization, all being true knowledge born of actual practice. Sentient beings of later generations, due to meager merit (alpa-puṇya) and deep obstructions, are unable to devote body and mind to diligent practice as the patriarchs did; mostly it is the mentality of opportunism and cunning at work, and everyone wants to take shortcuts. Practice means relinquishing the self, regardless of all cost—where is there any shortcut to take? One step less on the path means one portion less of merit gained, one portion less of bodily and mental experience, one portion more of loss suffered; in reality, this is a practice of first deceiving oneself and then deceiving others. If there were a shortcut to take, would the Buddha not have told us and guided us along it? Sentient beings suffer so much—would the Buddha not wish for sentient beings to attain the Buddha Way as quickly as possible and take fewer detours?

Any practice that does not accord with the Buddha's teachings, any practice that violates the Buddha's original intent and harms the interests of sentient beings, will in the end be destroyed and expunged from Buddhism—it is only a matter of time, sooner or later.