What Is It That We Cultivate in Spiritual Practice?

At the very end of practice, is it the mind consciousness that must be killed off, or the manas? Killing off the mind consciousness is the cause; killing off the manas is the result. Although killing off the manas is the ultimate goal, the point of entry must still begin with the mind consciousness. The mind consciousness dies every night, and the consciousness of a person in a vegetative state is more or less dead all the time, yet such beings still cannot avoid the three evil destinies in later lives, let alone the cycle of rebirth through the six destinies. What does this show? It shows that the great authority over birth and death is held in the hands of the manas. Therefore, practice must be implemented at the manas—understanding the manas clearly, subduing the manas, and severing the manas's ignorance. How, exactly, should one go about extinguishing the manas's ignorance? Ignorance extends into all the afflictive mental factors; so whose mental factors are the afflictive mental factors, primarily? Ignorance in the manas leads to the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death—which afflictive mental factors does the manas not possess? If the manas did not possess all the afflictive mental factors, would practice not be easy and pleasant?

Some people insist that the manas is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. If that were so, would we still need to practice? The tathāgatagarbha is neither wholesome nor unwholesome, and so the tathāgatagarbha never practices and does not need to practice at all. What would it cultivate? What would it need to correct? It has no ignorance, no unwholesomeness, and nothing deviant. If the tathāgatagarbha were to engage in practice, it would probably go astray and become crooked. Both wholesomeness and unwholesomeness are ignorance; whatever has ignorance is necessarily subject to the wholesome and the unwholesome. The tathāgatagarbha has no ignorance, and so it neither creates wholesome karma nor unwholesome karma; it responds according to conditions without applying the mind. Only with ignorance is there a mind of anger, and only then does one give rise to the intention to create the karma of killing; only with ignorance is there delusion, and only then does one create the karma of killing.