Matters of Spiritual Practice Cannot Substitute for Each Other

If you wish to attain genuine wisdom of liberation, do not go around inquiring into the specific division of labor between the tathāgatagarbha and the manas with respect to all dharmas. If you try to sort out through reasoning and speculation the division of labor between the true mind and the deluded mind, clarifying their respective duties, it would amount to directly pointing out which one is the tathāgatagarbha and which one is the manas. What would be the result of doing this? You would fall into emotional thinking and intellectual understanding, obstructing actual practice, to the point of being unable to attain realization, and the great matter of birth and death could not be resolved. Do you think that one could become enlightened just like this—so convenient, saving worry and effort, without having to laboriously study anything, cultivate anything, or investigate anything? But things often turn out that where one gains an advantage is precisely where one loses it. There is no shortcut in cultivation; only by cultivating honestly and steadfastly can one achieve anything.

Whoever cultivates is the one who gains. Do not expect to easily receive specific and detailed help from others. Whatever is someone's task, that person must do it; no one can substitute for another. The more help you receive, the less effort you expend, but the shallower the wisdom you gain and the less merit and benefit you obtain. If the Buddha could attain enlightenment and buddhahood on behalf of sentient beings, the Buddha would only need to tell sentient beings all the secrets of every stage from being an ordinary sentient being to the buddha stage, and describe to them the scenery of the buddha stage. Once sentient beings fully understood and knew it, they would become buddhas. How wonderful that would be—the Buddha would save worry, sentient beings would save effort, and everyone would be joyful. But could this actually work?

What the seven consciousnesses should do, the tathāgatagarbha cannot do in their place, nor can the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. What the tathāgatagarbha should do, the seven consciousnesses even less can do in its place. Otherwise, the tathāgatagarbha alone would suffice and could solve all problems, and the seven consciousnesses could do whatever they pleased—sleeping all day long would be fine, and even perishing would be fine. In fact, it is not like this at all. Between the seven consciousnesses and the tathāgatagarbha, and between sentient beings and the Buddha, each has its own division of labor, each bears its own responsibility, and each resolves its own problems.