Attachment to Fruit Positions and Realization of Fruits Are Also the View of Self

Nowadays, there are hundreds and thousands of people outside who claim to have attained enlightenment and realized the fruits, and the streets seem nearly packed with sages. Yet with so many of these sages, in terms of the afflictions of the mind and self-nature, there is fundamentally no difference between after their "awakening" and before it. They have no elevated state of thought and no meditative absorption (samādhi) to speak of; their bodily, verbal, and mental actions remain the same as ever, and are even more defiled than before, with their arrogance even heavier than before. How can it be proven whether those people have truly realized the fruits and seen the mind? It simply cannot be proven. They have not cultivated the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment at all, and they completely lack precepts, meditative concentration, and wisdom. Many of them are merely at the level of intellectual understanding by the consciousness—a comprehension and grasp at the level of knowledge. Even more of them do not even possess complete theoretical knowledge; they cannot even resonate with or reach the level of the consciousness, let alone the manas.

Therefore, nowadays there are far too many people committing gross false speech out in the world. Why commit gross false speech? Only those with a heavy view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) and those who cling to self as being right would commit gross false speech. A person with a mild view of self would be extremely cautious, extremely careful, and extremely truthful and practical; he would seek verification everywhere—whether his state of cultivation is truly a realization. He would not blindly exalt himself, saying things like how great he is. If a person with a heavy view of self believes he has realized the fruit, and you tell him that it is not a realization of the fruit, he will immediately become agitated and angry. Why would he become angry? Because he is extremely attached to the matter of realizing the fruit, extremely attached to being a sage, extremely attached to being different from others, extremely attached to the fruit and the status, and deeply concerned about his own attainment and identity.

This kind of attachment shows that the "self" still exists in his mind, the same as before, or even heavier than before. If you tell him that realization of the fruit by the consciousness is not true realization of the fruit, that emotional sentiment, intellectual understanding, reasoning, and speculation do not count as realization of the fruit, and that the fruit must be realized by the manas, then in order to defend his attainment and reputation, he will oppose, refute, and attack in all sorts of ways, without thinking or reflecting at all, completely disregarding the facts, and even less will he engage in self-examination. Because there is a "self" in his mind—that self which has realized the fruit, an extraordinary self, a self different from all others, a self high above all others—he takes such a self as truly existent and will especially defend it; he also takes the fruit as truly existent and belonging to himself, and especially defends it. This shows that this person's view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) exists in its entirety, and he has not realized the fruit at all. Only when one has truly eradicated the view of self and one's wisdom gradually increases does one gain the ability to judge whether the minds of people with various mental activities contain a self, whether they are a person who has eradicated the view of self, to what degree their view of self exists, and whether it is very severe.