How to Assess the Degree of Eradication of the View of Self?

In the secular world, some people who have never encountered the Buddha's teachings also believe that the body is subject to arising and ceasing, is impermanent, is not real, and is merely a false shell that they make use of. Have they eradicated the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi)? Some of them do not care about what they eat, wear, live in, or use, and they do not care even when their bodies are ill—have they eradicated the view of self? No, neither of them has. They do not care about the body because certain causal conditions constrain them, such as poverty or stinginess, or because they have pursuits in other areas and for the time being cannot attend to the physical body. Once conditions are complete, they will still cherish the physical body dearly, crave and cling to it, and pursue its pleasures.

Eradicating the view of self requires comprehensive examination—examining it in terms of precepts, meditation, and wisdom, examining it in terms of the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment, examining it in terms of one's mental states, and examining it in terms of one's mental activities; one must not generalize from a partial perspective. Although some people do not care about certain matters concerning the body, this may be because their living conditions are inadequate, or because of inner ignorance, or because they have shifted their attention to other matters related to the body, having pursuits in other areas with some special purpose in mind; for the sake of the body they would still create karma leading to the three evil destinies, and they are unwilling to give up the material life they possess—therefore they have not eradicated the view of self.

All bodily, verbal, and mental actions will form seeds, like files in an archive, which anyone with supernatural powers can consult at any time; this archive never disappears, though karmic seeds can disappear. Attachment has the karmic seeds of attachment; non-attachment has the karmic seeds of non-attachment. The tathāgatagarbha's records differ, and thus the retributions differ. In other words, when doing the same thing, if the mental activities differ, the tathāgatagarbha's records differ, the karmic seeds differ, and the karmic retribution differs.