The Difference Between the True Mind and the Deluded Mind

Original text of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra:纵灭一切见、闻、觉、知，内守幽闲，犹为法尘，分别影事。我非敕汝，执为非心，但汝于心，微细揣摩，若离前尘，有分别性，即真汝心。

Explanation: Even if, in the process of sitting in meditation and cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi), you enter into samādhi and extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing—neither seeing, nor hearing, nor being aware, nor knowing—and within the mind you hold to a state of leisurely ease, pure and tranquil, clear and lucid, this state is still a mental sense-object (dharma-viṣaya), a shadow-like realm discriminated by your solitary consciousness (mano-vijñāna-eka-citta). I am not necessarily commanding you to regard this state as not being your own mind. But you should, within your mind, carry out a subtle deliberation (manasikāra/manana), carefully pondering and discriminating between the true mind and the false mind. What, then, is your true mind? If, apart from all the sense-objects before you, this mind still possesses a discriminating nature and can still function, then this mind is your true mind, not the false mind.

What is meant by "apart from the preceding sense-objects, there is still a discriminating nature"? The "preceding sense-objects" here refer to the realms of the six sense-objects, including the six inner sense-objects of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas. The mental sense-objects include the dharma-object of a samādhi state that is empty and vacant, empty and tranquil, various subjectively imagined realms, dream states, frenzied and chaotic realms, and so forth. If, apart from all these six sense-object realms, that mind can still exist and still has a discriminating nature, only then is it your true original mind. What kind of discriminating nature is this? It is different from the six consciousnesses discriminating the six sense-objects, and different from the mind consciousness discriminating mental sense-object realms. The true mind does not discriminate the six sense-objects or mental sense-object realms—it does not come out and know whether it is pure or impure, empty or not empty, with thought or without thought, comfortable or uncomfortable; these are all contents discriminated by the mind consciousness. That is to say, the one that knows these contents is the mind consciousness, not the original mind, the tathāgatagarbha. What the true mind mainly discriminates is the content of the seeds; when the consciousnesses have not yet been transformed into wisdom, this discriminating nature is very difficult to observe.

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Buddha specifically instructed us that the pure false mind within a samādhi state is not the true tathāgatagarbha. This passage is precisely the World-Honored One rebuking those who mistakenly identify the guiding star—those who take the dharma-object of a samādhi state to be the true suchness mind-body, the tathāgatagarbha, not knowing that such a samādhi state is a conditioned dharma subject to arising and ceasing (utpāda-nirodha-lakṣaṇa), first nonexistent and then existent, existent and then again nonexistent—fundamentally impossible to grasp or hold onto. It is not the unborn and unceasing, neither increasing nor decreasing original mind, the tathāgatagarbha; it is not the Tathāgata Buddha who is originally pure and does not need you to specially purify Him. Would the Tathāgata Buddha need you to purify Him first, and only then be recognized? Was He originally not pure?

When sitting in meditation, the mind becomes pure for a moment, as if neither seeing nor hearing; even if you extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing, and the mind is pure and tranquil with nothing at all happening, this is still your mind consciousness discriminating the dharma-object of the samādhi state—it is the false mind entering a profound state of dhyāna, not the original mind, the tathāgatagarbha. The true mind is able to be apart from all the dharmas you discriminate—apart from purity and tranquility, apart from solitary luminosity, apart from crystal clarity, apart from lucid knowing—apart from all these sense-object realms, while itself existing all along, possessing that discriminating nature uniquely its own, without discriminating worldly dharma-marks. The dharma-object realm without deluded thoughts, with not a single thought arising, is not a dharma-mark discriminated by the eighth consciousness, the Tathāgata; therefore, the discriminating mind at such a time is not the true mind, the self-nature (svabhāva).