What Is the Correct Contemplation of the Five Aggregates and Eighteen Realms as Not-Self

When contemplating that the five aggregates are not the self, one first contemplates that the aggregate of form is not the self. If this "self" is replaced with the eighth consciousness, then it becomes contemplating that the aggregate of form is not the eighth consciousness. Let me ask: what is the purpose of contemplating this? How is it to be contemplated? Is such contemplation even necessary? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of feeling is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of feeling is not the eighth consciousness. What is the purpose of contemplating this? How is it to be contemplated? Is such contemplation even necessary? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of perception is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of perception is not the eighth consciousness. What use is such contemplation? How is it to be contemplated? Is such contemplation even necessary? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of formations is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of formations is not the eighth consciousness. What is the purpose of contemplating this? Is such contemplation even necessary? How is it to be contemplated? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of consciousness is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of formations is not the eighth consciousness. What is the purpose of contemplating this? Is it correct contemplation? Is such contemplation even necessary? How is it to be contemplated?

Then one proceeds to contemplate that the six faculties are not the self, yet instead contemplates that the eye faculty, ear faculty, tongue faculty, nose faculty, body faculty, and mind faculty are not the eighth consciousness. Is such contemplation even necessary? Who does not know that the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind faculties are fundamentally not the eighth consciousness? Yet through laborious cultivation of meditative concentration one engages in contemplative practice, only to arrive at the conclusion that the six faculties are not the eighth consciousness. Who does not know that the eye faculty is not the eighth consciousness? Who does not know that the manas is not the eighth consciousness? The contemplation of the six sense objects is the same. What is the point of insisting on contemplating that the six sense objects are not the eighth consciousness? Who does not know that form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas are not the eighth consciousness? Is such contemplation even necessary? Everyone knows this—is this not like drawing legs on a snake, a superfluous and pointless exercise? Does it have anything to do with the impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and non-self of the five aggregates?

Refusing to walk the straight and proper path, they instead engage in lofty, grandiose, and mysterious things to attract attention. Worldly people, being ignorant, eagerly follow along, utterly failing to notice anything amiss.

The Hīnayāna contemplative practice of the five aggregates is precisely to contemplate the impermanence, mutability, emptiness, and suffering nature of the five aggregates and the eighteen realms, thereby confirming that they are definitely not the self that we have clung to since beginningless kalpas—that there is fundamentally no "self" whatsoever to be clung to. In this way, the self-view is eliminated. Only such contemplative practice is correct contemplation; if one contemplates otherwise, it is wrong contemplation.