Who Can Truly Accord with Conditions?

If ordinary beings follow conditions, what kind of karmic conditions prevail day by day, year by year, life after life, and lifetime after lifetime? Where can such adaptation lead? "Adapting without changing" and "unchanging adaptation" can only be fully realized by the eighth consciousness. Bodhisattvas before the First Ground cannot achieve this; it is impossible for them to remain unchanged. Even Bodhisattvas after the First Ground, prior to the Eighth Ground, cannot fully accomplish it. As long as the sixth and seventh consciousnesses remain subject to defilements, it is impossible to adapt without changing. The Buddha, regardless of the conditions encountered, remains unchanged in mind because the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are no longer defiled.

The meditative concentration attained by non-Buddhists is so profound that they can enter samadhi for eighty thousand great kalpas, subduing all afflictions. Yet, because they have not eradicated these afflictions, upon rebirth in the desire realm, they again follow conditions and create karmic actions of greed, hatred, and delusion, thus revolving once more in the suffering of evil karma. Arhats, fearing defilement by worldly conditions of the three realms, withdraw from the three realms and enter nirvana without residue. The minds of ordinary beings inevitably change whenever they follow conditions; they are utterly unreliable. Whoever places all hope entirely in ordinary beings will surely regret it.