After the elimination of self-view (ahaṃkāra-mamakāra-parityāga), is there still fear?

After eliminating self-view, there is a certain liberating merit and beneficial experience, and this liberating merit varies to a degree depending on each person's level of realization. The so-called liberating merit means that the psychological grasping and attachment to the physical body and the five aggregates has been lightened and weakened; one can let go of many things and no longer fuss over them so much—especially when meditative concentration is present, the attachment becomes even lighter and fainter. This also depends on the depth of the wisdom of eliminating self-view and the degree of meditative concentration; it differs from person to person.

However, when encountering major events one still feels fear, though afterwards, upon reflection, the fear is not so intense; for those at the third or fourth fruit it is very slight. But it is impossible to feel no fear at all. Even the fourth-fruit arhats who followed at the Buddha's side—when a drunken elephant charged at them, they were afraid and ran away. Even those at the fourth fruit who had eliminated self-grasping still feared the drunken elephant. Why? Because they had not realized the tathāgatagarbha and still regarded the five-aggregate body as truly existent and suffering as truly existent; it was only that these things, arising and ceasing and constantly changing, could not be grasped or controlled. They had not realized the principle that the five aggregates are illusory, conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha, and therefore they still had a mind of fear. As for an arhat liberated in both ways, supported by profound meditative concentration, there would be no mind of fear, and he would be comparatively more at ease and free.

If it is an eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva, there would not be the slightest mind of fear at all; a fourth-bhūmi bodhisattva would probably no longer have a mind of fear. Bodhisattvas from the fourth bhūmi upward have not only eliminated self-grasping but also eliminated a portion of dharma-grasping. Not only have they realized the profound tathāgatagarbha, they also possess the four dhyānas and eight samādhis, and have realized that all dharmas are illusory appearances, not truly existent; the five-aggregate body is empty and illusory, and everything is the tathāgatagarbha. Because the Hīnayāna arhats had not realized the tathāgatagarbha, they regarded the five aggregates as still truly existent in the world, and so they entered nirvāṇa to escape suffering. There is a great difference in level between Hīnayāna realization of the fruits and Mahāyāna realization of the fruits: the dharma realized by the Small Vehicle is not ultimate, whereas only the Mahāyāna dharma can thoroughly reach the source of the mind and is the ultimate dharma. Therefore, a first-fruit person who has eliminated self-view still has fear regarding certain relatively major events, because the attachment to the body cannot be eliminated so thoroughly, and there is also the problem of dharma-grasping.