The Buddha's Dharma Must Be Actually Realized, Not Speculated or Imagined

The Buddha-dharma emphasizes realization and demands realization. Without realization, relying merely on hearsay and inferential understanding, one has long since strayed a hundred thousand miles from the great Way. If one establishes "emptiness" in the mind as real, as an actually existent dharma, then that emptiness becomes real and turns into a bondage of dharma, and one cannot attain liberation. If all dharmas are empty, then is the dharma of emptiness itself empty? If the dharma that "all dharmas are empty" is not empty, how can it be said that all dharmas are empty?

Many people have not genuinely eliminated the self-view; the five aggregates have not been seen as empty, yet they go on to speculate and imagine the emptiness of dharmas, viewing all dharmas as the eighth consciousness. Only when they reach the stage of bodhisattvas of the sixth and seventh bhūmis can they truly accomplish viewing all dharmas as the eighth consciousness. But even bodhisattvas of the sixth and seventh bhūmis, including those of the eighth and ninth bhūmis, cannot view all dharmas whatsoever as the eighth consciousness, because there are still so many dharmas they have not realized; dharmas not yet realized simply cannot be viewed as the eighth consciousness in an accurate, true-to-fact way. Even the coarsest of these—the body of the five aggregates—has not been realized as arising from the eighth consciousness. Without genuinely engaging in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on this point, one cannot truly and accurately view the body of the five aggregates as the eighth consciousness; otherwise, one would have long ago eliminated the grasping at self and entered the first bhūmi.

Many people, having never realized any dharma, fabricate an imagined method of practice and posit a route of cultivation—a route whose map is drawn so vaguely that even they themselves cannot make sense of it. This is precisely how the Buddha-dharma is transmitted today: it does not touch at all upon step-by-step actual practice, and there is no practical, workable method or means.