The Contemplative Practice of Hinayana Noble Disciples Cannot Access the Eighth Consciousness

After contemplating the five aggregates as devoid of self, if one concludes: "Form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are suffering; what suffers is the eighth consciousness, not the eighth consciousness itself" — is this tenable?

Having realized that form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are suffering and not the eighth consciousness, can one gradually become disenchanted with them and cease to delight in them? If so, one would then turn to crave the eighth consciousness and delight in it. Can a śrāvaka disciple delight in the eighth consciousness or crave it? Does such a phenomenon exist? If it does, then an arhat, due to delighting in the eighth consciousness, would continue cultivating the bodhisattva path for self-benefit and the benefit of others, and thus be unable to enter parinirvāṇa and attain liberation from the triple realm.

Theoretically, one can know that the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness. Anyone, upon hearing the Buddha introduce the eighth consciousness, can immediately know this. Many people, upon reflection, also realize that form-aggregate phenomena come and go without cease — they are certainly not the true self, nor are they the true eighth consciousness. There is no need to laboriously contemplate whether the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness; this deviates too far from the point.

Is it tenable to say that the five aggregates are suffering, not the eighth consciousness, and not possessed by the eighth consciousness? The manas (ego-mind) certainly regards the five aggregates as "I" (the self), not as belonging to the eighth consciousness. It is precisely because of this that it clings to the five aggregates as self, leading to immeasurable suffering through birth and death. If the manas of an ordinary being considered the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness and possessed by it, would such a being still harbor self-view and self-attachment? Would there still be the characteristic of projective grasping (parikalpita-svabhāva)? What would the manas cling to, if nothing belongs to it?

The five aggregates are essentially the eighth consciousness. The six great elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space, consciousness) that form the five aggregates all originate from the eighth consciousness. They are the five aggregates produced through the "investment" of the eighth consciousness; thus, the five aggregates certainly belong to the eighth consciousness. How, after contemplation, could one instead conclude that the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness? Is this not strange? Theories inevitably reach their limit one day; there will always be a point where they become untenable, unable to justify themselves. Those with genuine realization, however, speak coherently in any manner; it all holds water, and no one can refute it.