Can One Attain Bodhi Without Cutting Off Afflictions?

Some people say that it is normal for one who has seen the mind and attained the first fruit to have not cut off afflictions and to have no transformation in body and mind. Yet this is extremely abnormal. Such a great matter of birth and death, overturning previously grave erroneous views, with the cognition of the world of the five aggregates shifting from existence to emptiness — how could body and mind remain unchanged? With the four right efforts cultivated in accordance with the Dharma, how could body and mind not transform? With the seven factors of enlightenment cultivated correctly, how could body and mind not change? If the mind does not change, how can this be attaining the fruit and seeing the mind? Even in worldly dharmas, when the manas truly knows something, one becomes extraordinarily agitated — the body undergoes great changes, the mind is extremely stirred, whether with hot tears welling up, body and mind trembling, a solemn expression, or being unable to sleep for several days.

Before attaining the fruit, in the process of cultivating the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment, body and mind transform little by little, becoming greatly different from before. If the difference becomes evident and one has cut off the five grades of delusion in the desire realm, one is approaching the first fruit. If body and mind never show any change, then one has not been cultivating in accordance with the Dharma — the direction of cultivation is wrong, or one is simply not diligent, or one remains only at the level of broad learning and intellectual understanding, or one spends too much energy on worldly matters, and the Dharma principle has not truly entered the mind.

The Abhidharma-kośa states that if one truly cultivates the path, cultivating it correctly, one must subdue afflictions and delusions, and then cut them off. This is how it is in the process of cultivation, and even more so in the result of cultivation. Only then can one become one approaching the first fruit, and then the first fruit itself. If not a single strand of affliction and delusion is cut off and body and mind have not transformed, one still belongs to the ordinary beings bound by fetters, tied up hand and foot by afflictions and delusions, unable to move. How can one advance on the bodhi path and transform one's status? If one forcibly claims the status, it can only be in name without substance — the name does not match the reality, which is called deceiving the world and stealing fame.

Many people think that as long as one can expound the Dharma, one has already realized it. But the facts are not so. If one expounds the Dharma without having realized it through actual attainment, there is no true guiding significance. Having never walked that road oneself, one cannot guide others on how to walk it specifically. If one's own mind is blazing with the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, with leaks everywhere, one cannot guide others to subdue and cut off afflictions.

There is a gong'an about one-finger Chan. A master became enlightened the moment a nun guiding him raised her index finger. A novice monk saw this and thought: "So this is enlightenment!" Thereafter, when the master was away, whenever someone came to ask about the Dharma, the novice would likewise raise his index finger and tell the other person that this was suchness — mimicking like a parrot, quite convincingly. People's "enlightenment" today is no different from that novice's "enlightenment." Though they can gesture and gesticulate, looking quite similar to the ancestral masters' maneuvers, seeming like a dharma combat and seeming able to guide people, laypeople watch the excitement while experts watch the craft — these tricks can only deceive some laypeople. All dharma combats are the union of the eight consciousnesses, containing both true and false. If one does not distinguish true from false and takes the false as true, no matter how one gestures, it is not a dharma combat.

A hundred years after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, Ānanda heard a novice monk reciting the dharma of arising and ceasing as "water old crane" and corrected him. But when the novice asked his master which was correct, the master said: "Don't listen to Ānanda. He has become senile. Recite it as I taught you and you'll be right." So the novice continued reciting as before. Hearing this, Ānanda thought: "The Buddha has just entered parinirvāṇa for a hundred years, and the Dharma has already been mis-transmitted like this. In future ages, even further from the Buddha, how will the Dharma evolve? Sentient beings are truly too foolish." So Ānanda, heartbroken, decided to enter parinirvāṇa immediately and leave, not wanting to see the tragic scene of the Dharma gradually being destroyed. Even then, the Dharma had already degenerated — let alone today, thousands of years later! The present age is by no means an age of sages filling the streets. Many people have severely misunderstood the cultivation and realization of the Dharma.

Nowadays, neither the Mahāyāna nor the Hīnayāna Dharma is so precious, nor are they rare dharmas. As long as one hears the Dharma and reflects on it a little, the fruit is in hand. There is no need for precepts, meditation, and wisdom, nor for cultivating the six pāramitās and myriad practices. Those who uphold precepts and cultivate meditation are fools. Now any fruit can be easily obtained — for example, the fruits of the contemplation of dream-likeness, the contemplation of illusion-likeness, and the ten dedications are no difficult matter. As long as the method of cultivating and realizing the contemplative practice of tathāgatagarbha is passed by word of mouth, one can bring the fruit home. The foolishness and inversion of sentient beings have already left people speechless.