What is enlightenment?

Many people take the states of meditative concentration (samādhi) to be enlightenment, and some believe that enlightenment must mean extinguishing all consciousnesses, so that even the manas ceases to function—only then, they say, is it a true state of enlightenment. Let us consider what is wrong with this. In such an "enlightenment," who is enlightened? Enlightened to what? In that state there is no person, no five aggregates and seven consciousnesses—only the tathāgatagarbha remains. That is clearly the nirvāṇa of an arhat, which has nothing to do with enlightenment. Moreover, it is impossible for an ordinary being, through cultivating concentration alone, to extinguish the manas directly and realize the state of an arhat liberated in both ways (ubhayatobhāgavimukta), immediately entering nirvāṇa without remainder (anupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa). Even extinguishing the five sense consciousnesses is extremely difficult; the mind consciousness is harder still to extinguish, let alone extinguishing the manas.

Some people always cling to the notion that "the faculties and objects dropping away" is the state of enlightenment. But when the faculties and objects drop away, there is no faculty and no object; faculties and objects do not come together, and of course there is then no consciousness of the six consciousnesses either. If that were enlightenment, then who is enlightened? Some take the state of "the void shattered and the great earth leveled flat" to be enlightenment—but what exactly is being enlightened to in that state? Since not even the relationship between such a state and the tathāgatagarbha is known, there is no way to prove it is a state of enlightenment. Everyone misunderstands and misapprehends the Buddha-dharma; tracing it to its cause, the fundamental problem is still that the false dharma and the true dharma have not been clearly distinguished and understood, that merit and wisdom are still insufficient, and that grave afflictions and karmic obstructions still block and obstruct the growth of merit and wisdom. Therefore the true and the false cannot yet be genuinely comprehended and integrated.

The true mind and the deluded mind each have their own distinct natures. For example, awareness has the awareness of the true mind and the awareness of the deluded mind; equanimity has the equanimity of the true mind and the equanimity of the deluded mind; purity has the purity of the true mind and the purity of the deluded mind; freedom from signs has that of the true mind and that of the deluded mind; the conditioned has the conditionedness of the true mind and that of the deluded mind; the unconditioned has the unconditionedness of the true mind and that of the deluded mind—and so on, there are many such cases. In short, in studying the Dharma, it is very hard to distinguish the true from the false; they are often confused and mixed up, and misunderstandings abound. This is because the conditions of the bodhisattva's six perfections are not yet complete. Once they are complete, there will be the wisdom to discern the respective natures of the true and the false, and the realization of the Path will come quickly.