The Profound Yogācāra Meaning of the Diamond Sutra (53)

Why do all sages and noble ones, having realized the true dharma and realized the unconditioned dharma, still differ from one another? The sages and noble ones include śrāvaka arhats from the first fruit to the fourth fruit, pratyekabuddhas who have realized the dharma of causes and conditions at various grades, and bodhisattvas from the seventh abode of seeing one's true mind up to wondrous enlightenment. Śrāvakas of the first and second fruits are sages; those of the third and fourth fruits, along with pratyekabuddhas, are noble ones. Bodhisattvas before the first bhūmi are sages, and from the first bhūmi onward they are all noble ones. What they all realize is the unconditioned dharma, yet the content and levels of this unconditioned dharma differ greatly. A first-fruit person realizes that the five aggregates are empty and without self, and eliminates the three fetters; from then on he will not enter the three evil destinies and has no action with regard to the paths of the three evil destinies—this is the initial stage of the five aggregates being unconditioned.

A second-fruit person, having realized the emptiness of self regarding persons, has fewer mental activities, his afflictions become faint, his mind is somewhat purified and somewhat unconditioned. A third-fruit person further realizes the falsity of the five aggregates; the meditative concentration of the form realm manifests, he attains the first dhyāna and extinguishes sensual craving, eliminates anger and resentment, and cuts off afflictions so the mind is pure; he no longer creates unwholesome karma, and the seven consciousnesses begin to be truly unconditioned. A fourth-fruit person is further unconditioned: he extinguishes the pride of self, cuts off craving and attachment to the form realm and the formless realm, exhausts all afflictions, and attains liberation by wisdom (paññāvimutti), being unconditioned with regard to the three realms and able to use the wisdom of liberation to transcend the three realms. An arhat liberated by meditative concentration can enter the fourth dhyāna, where breath and pulse both cease, realizing imperturbable cessation; entering the concentration of no perception, he realizes the cessation of the aggregate of consciousness and his mind attains the unconditioned. An arhat liberated in both ways can enter the cessation of perception and feeling anytime and anywhere, extinguishing the two mental factors of feeling and perception of the manas, realizing the cessation of perception and feeling, and can at any time attain nirvāṇa and leave the three realms. Because śrāvakas realize the non-self of the five aggregates, their mental activities become increasingly unconditioned and increasingly pure, and there are great differences in the degree of unconditionedness among them.

Pratyekabuddhas include solitary realizers (pratyekabuddhas) and condition realizers. A solitary realizer, through the wholesome roots cultivated life after life, at a time when there is no Buddha and no dharma abiding in the world, upon seeing a single phenomenon of arising and ceasing in the world, is stirred to deep contemplation. He goes alone to a quiet place to cultivate the path, investigating the root of these phenomena of arising and ceasing, probing the dharma of the twelve links of dependent arising and the dharma of the ten links, and finds that the root of sentient beings' birth and death in saṃsāra is ignorance, and that the source is the eighth consciousness, the mind; thus he attains the fruit of a pratyekabuddha. A condition realizer, however, cultivates by following the Buddha and realizes the fruit by hearing the Buddha teach the dharma of the twelve links and the ten links of dependent arising. Their wisdom of the unconditioned dharma is deeper than that of śrāvaka arhats, and the fruit, wisdom, and superknowledge of pratyekabuddhas also differ in shallow and deep levels—that is to say, there are differences in the degree to which their mental activities are unconditioned.