To What Degree Must the Cognition of the Mind Consciousness Reach Before It Can Be Called Wisdom?

The cognitive understanding of dharma by the conscious mind occurs at different levels or degrees. Cognition heavily obscured by afflictions is invariably wrong knowledge and wrong view; cognition with somewhat lighter obscuration by afflictions is sometimes correct, but only relative to previous mistaken understanding—it is not yet completely correct. Its views have merely been turned somewhat in the right direction; the conscious mind has gained some power of wisdom (prajñā-bala), but it still cannot be called wisdom in the sense of jñāna. Jñāna is correct cognition after afflictions no longer obscure the mind. Because there is no obscuration by afflictions, the conscious mind's cognition carries no defiling nature of afflictions, and its pure wisdom-nature can be revealed very clearly; what it creates is only wholesome karma and pure karma, and it will not create unwholesome karma. At this stage, its jñāna is almost free of error, or has very little error, and is worthy of trust and reliance. Only then can it be called jñāna.

When the Buddha was about to enter parinirvāṇa, He instructed sentient beings of later generations to rely on jñāna and not on consciousness. This jñāna is not the jñāna of ordinary wisdom, nor is it the jñāna of the patience with non-arising (anutpattika-dharma-kṣānti) that arises right after attaining the fruits and awakening to the true mind; rather, it is the jñāna of the patience with the non-arising of dharmas free from obscuration by afflictions—the jñāna after consciousness has been transformed into wisdom, the jñāna of the wisdom of the varieties of paths. Right after attaining the fruits and awakening to the true mind, although one's wisdom is deeper than that of ordinary beings, because it is still obscured by afflictions, the wisdom remains rather shallow, and the defilement of the mind is still quite evident; sometimes one may even create unwholesome karma due to afflictions. This is not yet jñāna, so one's understanding of dharma can only be called prajñā, not jñāna. As long as the outcome has harmful effects, it is not jñāna and cannot be called such; only when the outcomes are all wholesome is the action a wise move, and only then can it be called jñāna and be relied upon.

Whatever the mind consciousness of ordinary beings thinks and contemplates belongs to the nature of consciousness; the discerning and decisive functions that arise relying on the habitual tendencies of afflictions all belong to the nature of consciousness—there is no jñāna. For noble persons who have attained the fruits and awakened to the true mind but have not eliminated afflictions, their thinking and contemplation possess a certain degree of wisdom; the strengthened power of wisdom of the conscious mind is called prajñā, but it is not yet jñāna. On the whole it still falls within the domain of the nature of consciousness and cannot be fully trusted and relied upon. Therefore, many people, after learning some dharma, think themselves so superior and transcendent—all of this falls within the cognitive range of the nature of consciousness, in which erroneous elements still make up a large proportion. So do not trust your own mind too much; such self-confidence is almost mistaken trust, the result of the mental factor of conceit. For many people, what they believe to be non-doubt is not really non-doubt either. When wisdom is insufficient, even when doubt exists, one cannot detect it through introspection; what one takes to be fact is often not fact at all, but merely an erroneous judgment.