Why Is the Initial Elimination of Self-View (ātma-dṛṣṭi) So Difficult?

The manas establishing the manas itself is the self-validating cognition (sva-saṃvitti-saṃvitti-bhāga). The manas grasps its own constant, moment-by-moment, everywhere-present capacity to make decisions and exercise choice as "self," not knowing that this too is arising and ceasing, illusory and unreal. Does the mind consciousness grasp the manas's constant, moment-by-moment, everywhere-present capacity to make decisions and exercise choice, and its continual scrutiny and deliberation, as "self" and as real? Whose mind consciousness, after all, could cling in this way to the functions and activities of the manas? If the mind consciousness does not know that these functions and activities all belong to the manas, and instead takes them to be its own functions and activities, this is a mistaken grasping, and the mind consciousness is also without wisdom.

When the mind consciousness takes its own capacity to discern the six sense objects and discriminate among them as real and as "self," this is the mind consciousness's self-validating cognition (sva-saṃvitti-saṃvitti-bhāga). This is a misidentification, and this misidentification leads the manas to misidentify along with it. In order to correct this misidentification of the manas, one must first let the mind consciousness reflect that its own functions and activities are not real and not "self," thereby imprinting the manas. Once the manas has been imprinted and no longer takes the functions and activities of the mind consciousness as real and as "self," the self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) is severed.

These false selves are mainly what the manas believes in: the manas believes the physical body is its own, that the functions and activities of the six consciousnesses are its own, that the six sense objects are its own, that the five sense faculties are its own, and that its own functions and activities are its own. Only the manas is most qualified to say that all dharmas are "mine," because all dharmas do indeed serve the manas—including the mind consciousness and the five sense consciousnesses, and even including the tathāgatagarbha. That is why the "self" of the manas is so self-assured, so obstinate, so stubborn, so proud and willful, so blind, and so irreversible—and that is why the initial severance of self-view is so difficult. After taking up Buddhism, one does not spend too long bobbing up and down in the ocean of saṃsāra and karma; in the end, one emerges from the sea, stands up, walks toward the shore, reaches the land, and enjoys ease and freedom, liberated from sorrow, grief, suffering, and distress (śoka-parideva-duḥkha-daurmanasyopāyāsa).