Why Does the Misunderstanding of Failing to Distinguish the True from the False Arise?

A person's thoughts are the views and opinions formed by the mind consciousness through mental activities such as discrimination, analysis, judgment, deliberation, reasoning, and comparison. The nature of the mind consciousness can be coarse or subtle; when it is subtle, it is very difficult for us to detect. There are many times when the mind consciousness is functioning moment by moment, constantly cognizing; only when the mind consciousness has ceased does it stop functioning and lose its discriminating nature. At all other times, as long as the mind consciousness exists, it is discriminating the mental sense-objects, yet we ourselves cannot detect this through introspection. Why can we not detect it? Because our wisdom is insufficient and our power of meditative concentration is not fully developed.

When one cannot detect through introspection that the mind consciousness is discriminating mental sense-objects, some people claim that they have reached a state of no-mind, or that they have attained no-thought; others say that they have realized the true mind which is without deluded thoughts and without thoughts. But this is a tremendous misunderstanding. This is a clear case of failing to distinguish the true from the false—they have not understood the Heart Sutra at all. The Heart Sutra speaks of the true mind as neither arising nor ceasing, yet such a person takes the mind consciousness, when its deluded thoughts have been transformed into a state without deluded thoughts, to be the true mind. This so-called true mind is in fact a conditioned dharma subject to arising and ceasing: when deluded thoughts are present, this "true mind" does not exist; when deluded thoughts are absent, this "true mind" appears again. This is completely not the true mind that the Buddha taught.