Contemplative Practice Eradicates the Self-View of Mind Consciousness (1)

The reason mind consciousness arises is that the manas contacts the mental sense-objects (dharmāyatana); the eighth consciousness produces mind consciousness at the point where faculty and object contact each other, and then the faculty, object, and consciousness come together in contact, and mind consciousness begins to discern the mental sense-objects. Thus discriminative mind manifests, and the function of discrimination arises in this way. Among the six consciousnesses, the range of mind consciousness's activity is extremely broad. Whenever we are in a waking state without being unconscious, in a waking state without being truly asleep, mind consciousness is present, and mind consciousness is active and operating. Therefore the range of mind consciousness's activity is indeed extremely broad; at every present moment when our bodily, verbal, and mental actions manifest, mind consciousness is currently operating. The nature of mind consciousness is: I am thinking, I am discerning, I am contemplating, I am reflecting. We (referring to the manas) often take mind consciousness as the self, and this "self" is the most prominent and most intense manifestation.

Who takes mind consciousness as the self? One is mind consciousness itself, but the primary one is the manas, which severely grasps mind consciousness as the self, taking all the functions and operations of mind consciousness as the self. The manas has the imputed nature (parikalpita-svabhāva); it universally deliberates and grasps all dharmas as the self, as belonging to the self. It not only grasps the eighth consciousness as the self, but also grasps the six consciousnesses as the self, grasping all dharmas as the self, as belonging to it—its greedy grasping nature is especially great. In every activity of our bodily, verbal, and mental actions, every act of thinking, every mental operation, is the function of mind consciousness; including the functions of discrimination, thinking, judgment, reflection, contemplation, and so on. The function of deliberation—no matter what dharma is being deliberated, whether deliberating worldly dharmas, deliberating Buddhist dharmas, or investigating a huatou—all is mind consciousness in operation. One can see that the uses of mind consciousness are quite extensive.

To eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa), one must engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) through deliberation on the arising-and-ceasing nature and illusory nature of mind consciousness, and must deliberate on the various conditions needed for mind consciousness to arise, knowing that dharmas manifesting through conditions must be empty, illusory, arising and ceasing. At every present moment when mind consciousness manifests, various conditions are needed, various supporting conditions are needed, for mind consciousness to arise and to be active; if there are no supporting conditions, mind consciousness cannot manifest and is in a state of cessation. Another method is to deliberate on the illusoriness of mind consciousness from the overall phenomenon of its arising and ceasing. After mind consciousness has formed, on the surface it appears to be continuous, and the discriminative function of mind consciousness also seems to exist all along. In fact, these functions are all illusory, arising and ceasing, and also intermittent. Under the following five circumstances, mind consciousness must cease: for example, at true death, when unconscious, when in dreamless sleep, when in the concentration of no-perception (asaṃjñi-samāpatti), and when in the cessation of perception and feeling (nirodha-samāpatti).

The conclusion reached through deliberation should be: all dharmas born of causes and conditions are illusory, are arising and ceasing, are empty, and are not the self. Forming this concept is also not easy; it requires overturning mistaken ideas and concepts from beginningless kalpas past in order to establish present ideas and concepts that accord with reason and reality. From then on, one no longer mistakenly takes conditionally arisen dharmas as real—this is the eradication of the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa).