When Will Spiritual Cultivation Attain Fulfillment?

Feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are all empty and devoid of self. If that is so, then who is it that experiences feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness? The mind of the seven consciousnesses capable of feeling, perceiving, forming mental states, and being conscious is empty and devoid of self. The consciousness that observes the emptiness of feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness is empty and devoid of self. The consciousness that knows the observer is empty is empty and devoid of self. The conscious mind that comprehends all phenomena as empty and devoid of self is empty and devoid of self. Any state of mind involving awareness, thought, or ideation is empty and devoid of self. In the chapter on perfect penetration through the faculty of hearing in the Avalokiteshvara Sutra, all phenomena are emptied, including the emptiness that is emptied and the act of emptying itself. Finally, what remains is the ultimate reality that cannot be emptied—the self-nature Tathagata-garbha. Yet even this is not clung to. When one does not dwell upon the self-nature Tathagata-garbha, one's practice is perfected.