The Mental Factors Employed in the Discernment of Direct Perception, Inference, and Mistaken Perception (Non-Valid Cognition)

Among the three kinds of discernment, it is not fixed which of the fifty-one mental factors will be employed; each case must be analyzed specifically. Different situations call for different mental factors, and due to various reasons, different people employ different mental factors. Even for the same person, at different times and in different settings, with different physical and mental states, different levels of knowledge, and different levels of wisdom, the mental factors employed are not the same. The five universal mental factors will all be used; the five object-specific mental factors are not necessarily all used; the eleven wholesome mental factors do not necessarily appear; and the fundamental afflictions and the great, intermediate, and minor derivative afflictions also do not necessarily appear—it depends on the circumstances. 

Direct-perception discernment requires gathering sufficient data, which demands very deep wisdom: the mental factor of determination (adhimokṣa) must be strong, the mental factor of meditative concentration (samādhi) must be present, and the mental factor of mindfulness must be complete, so that mind after mind, thought after thought, there is no interruption. Inferential discernment involves relatively shallower wisdom; it must proceed through comparison—without comparison, one cannot know. If there is no relative condition, there is no place to begin. Direct-perception discernment, by contrast, knows directly without comparison, or knows in the very moment—this requires sharper faculties. Erroneous cognition occurs when evidence truly cannot be found: when there is insufficient data and no object for comparison, one has no choice but to resort to imagination, guessing, inference, and other such means. The more methods used, the more limited the wisdom and the weaker the power of determination (adhimokṣa); of course, the power of concentration and the power of mindfulness are also insufficient, so that one cannot judge directly or draw a conclusion directly. 

Inference is like a person whose ability is insufficient to accomplish a task alone, who must find someone to help in order to get it done. Erroneous cognition is when not even a single person who could help can be found, and one has no choice but to fiddle around on one's own, and only by luck gets it right. Even if one gets it right, the wisdom is insufficient—it does not count as direct perception. It is like being unable to see what clothes someone is wearing now, and having nothing to compare against, so one has no choice but to imagine and guess; even if the guess is right, it is not something directly seen.

Some people lack wisdom and do not know how to guide others step by step in cultivation and realization so as to see the Way through direct perception, yet they still insist on guiding others, and so they resort to the process of elimination. For example, suppose there are five roads here leading out of the city to five other regions, and only one of them leads to Beijing. Not knowing how to guide a person to make the correct choice, he resorts to elimination: first he points to the first road; the other person, hesitating, points at it and points again, not daring to be certain; he reads the hesitation in the person's eyes and hints that it is wrong. Then he moves to the second road; the other person looks at his expression and feels that this too is wrong, and so the second road is eliminated. In this way, four roads are all rejected, leaving only the last one. The other person then says, "It must be this road—this is the road that leads to Beijing." Whereupon this person says: "Well, that's what you said, not what I taught you. Congratulations, you have seen the Way!" Everyone, tell me—does this count as seeing the Way? What wisdom has such "seeing the Way" produced? Those who cheat people and lead students astray are precisely such people—out-and-out deceivers who cheat you without a second thought, and the other person is cheated happily besides. What a pair of fools!