How Can Defilements Be Eliminated?

Having realized the arising-ceasing mutability, unreality, falsity, and emptiness (śūnyatā) of sense-objects, afterwards when the mind encounters sense-objects it becomes empty and pure; one's views have changed, one's knowledge has changed, right view is fulfilled, there are no sense-objects in the mind—one sees sense-objects yet not as sense-objects, attains the samādhi of sense-objects, and abides in the samādhi of sense-objects. Yet the sense-objects do not disappear or cease; the false appearances remain, but all cognition of them has changed—no longer deluded, no longer inverted, no longer grasping (upādāna).

Sense-objects are the marks that the mind discerns, including material marks and mental marks, as well as marks that are neither material nor mental. The mind is the faculty, the dharma is the sense-object; the two are like traces on a mirror. When studying the Dharma, principle is principle, and phenomena are phenomena—forever two separate things; the moment one encounters a situation, the principle runs off to the back of the head, and one gets stuck by the situation. Studying the Dharma this way, would one attain liberation only in the year of the donkey?