Why Is the Initial Abandonment of Identity View So Challenging?

The mental faculty establishes the mental faculty, which is the self-verifying awareness. The mental faculty clings to its own constant and pervasive sovereign volition and decision-making as being the self, unaware that this too is an impermanent, illusory, and unreal phenomenon. Does consciousness cling to the mental faculty's constant and pervasive sovereign volition, decision-making, and perpetual discernment as being the self and real? Who exactly possesses consciousness capable of such attachment to the functions of the mental faculty? If consciousness does not recognize these functions as belonging to the mental faculty, but instead takes them as its own functions, this is erroneous attachment, and consciousness lacks wisdom.

Consciousness considers its own functions of discerning the six dusts and differentiating the six dusts as real and belonging to the self; this is consciousness's self-verifying awareness. This is a case of mistaken identification, and this misidentification causes the mental faculty to consequently misidentify as well. To correct this erroneous identification by the mental faculty, first allow consciousness to reflect that its own functions are not real and do not constitute the self, thereby imbuing the mental faculty. Once the mental faculty is imbued and ceases to regard consciousness's functions as real and belonging to the self, the view of self is eradicated.

These false selves are primarily what the mental faculty perceives. The mental faculty considers the physical body to belong to its own self, the functions of the six consciousnesses to belong to its own self, the six dusts to belong to its own self, the five sense faculties to belong to its own self, and the functions of the mental faculty itself to belong to its own self. Only the mental faculty is most qualified to declare that all dharmas belong to the self, because all dharmas indeed serve the mental faculty, including consciousness, the five sense consciousnesses, and even the tathagatagarbha. Therefore, this "self" of the mental faculty is so self-assured, so obstinate, so inflexible, so self-important, so blind, and so irreversible. This is why the initial eradication of the view of self is so difficult. After studying the Buddha Dharma, one must still struggle in the sea of birth and death for such a long time, repeatedly surfacing and submerging, before finally emerging from the sea, standing up, walking towards the shore, reaching the bank, and enjoying freedom, liberation from sorrow, grief, and suffering.