Only Realization Through Direct Perception Can Transform the Manas

How can the manas be changed? Only through direct realization in valid direct cognition can the manas be changed; apart from this, nothing can change it. For example, a small child does not understand the danger of fire. Even when adults tell him not to play with fire, he does not listen—until one day he gets burned in an accident with fire. Only then does he learn how formidable fire is and stop playing with it. This is the manas personally verifying the danger of fire; without needing further deliberation or observation, it immediately assents, immediately takes the lesson to heart, and immediately decides never to play with fire again—thus the manas changes its habit of playing with fire. Another example: it is widely publicized that smoking is harmful to health, yet smokers harbor a lucky mentality, and only when one day they contract lung disease are they willing to quit smoking. Once the manas personally verifies the harm of nicotine, it changes the habit of smoking. Many such examples show that only when the manas personally experiences and directly verifies something is it willing to believe; once it believes, it changes—to the degree it believes, to that degree it changes.

Realizing the fruits is the same. When one directly realizes the non-self of the five aggregates and eighteen elements, the manas changes and obtains the merit and benefit of liberation. To whatever degree one directly realizes, to that degree one changes. From the first fruit all the way to the fourth fruit, the manas continuously deepens its direct realization of the principle of the non-self of the five aggregates and eighteen elements, its understanding continually deepening. When the non-self nature of the five aggregates has been fully and directly realized, fundamental ignorance is severed completely, and self-grasping is severed completely—one is liberated from the threefold world and no longer engages in any karmic activity. At the first three fruits, the depth of the manas's direct realization is still insufficient; afflictions and fundamental ignorance have not yet been severed completely, so there is still karmic activity, and one cannot immediately be liberated from the threefold world. Even an arhat liberated by wisdom (paññāvimutti), due to insufficient meditative concentration and lack of direct realization of superknowledges, has no ability to come and go freely, and the five aggregates remain limited.

If the manas does not eliminate self-view at the first fruit, then when will it eliminate self-view? It must eliminate self-view at some point—so when exactly? It eliminates self-view at the first fruit, and thereafter, through deep cultivation, it severs afflictions, ignorance, and thought-delusions. That is, one further engages in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and deliberation on the dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen elements; the wisdom of non-self continually deepens, the manas obtains more evidence, realizes more deeply, and changes more greatly, until afflictions are severed, self-grasping is severed, and craving for the threefold world is severed. This is on the side of the Small Vehicle.

This shows that there are different degrees of eliminating self-view: differing wisdom leads to differing degrees of transformation in the manas. From the first fruit to the fourth fruit, it is the differing levels of the manas's realized wisdom of the non-self of the five aggregates that result in different fruits, different levels of presence or absence of afflictions, and different degrees of subduing and severing self-grasping. The realization of fruits in the Great Vehicle is the same: the depth and level of realizing the tathāgatagarbha differ, wisdom differs, the degree of severing ignorance differs, and the fruits differ.

On the side of the Great Vehicle, when one directly realizes the tathāgatagarbha, the manas changes at the moment of realization; to whatever degree one realizes, to that degree one changes, all the way until the direct realization at the Buddha-ground, when the manas is completely transformed, the complete transformation of consciousness into wisdom is accomplished, and no further transformation is ever needed—the Buddha abides in non-abiding nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa).