Conjecture and Speculation Are Completely Unreliable Methods of Practice

Because sentient beings have limited wisdom and insufficient meditative concentration (samādhi), they are unable to contemplate deeply, and the deliberation (manasikāra) of the manas cannot operate either. For some of the deeper dharmas, they habitually resort to imagination and speculation, and imagination and speculation are merely the functions of the mind consciousness, containing not the slightest wisdom of the manas. The most serious instance of such imagination and speculation is speaking offhandedly like this: "After enlightenment, one can observe how the eighth consciousness gives birth to the faculties, the body, and the material world." The faculties here refer to the physical faculties, the body. As for how the eighth consciousness uses seeds to gradually give birth to the physical body, and how it gives birth to the eye faculty, ear faculty, nose faculty, and tongue faculty, after enlightenment one may need to cultivate for another innumerable kalpa before perhaps observing a little of it, and after two innumerable kalpas one could roughly observe a great deal. The material world refers to the universe, the receptacle-world, the spatial environment in which sentient beings live. As for how the eighth consciousness uses seeds to give birth to the universe and the receptacle-world, even after enlightenment and cultivating for another innumerable kalpa, one may still be unable to observe it; after two innumerable kalpas one could roughly observe some of it.

The realms refer to the eighteen realms: the six faculties, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses. As for how the eighth consciousness uses seeds to give birth to the six faculties and the six sense objects, even after enlightenment and cultivating for another innumerable kalpa it is very difficult to observe; after two innumerable kalpas one could roughly observe some of it. As for how the eighth consciousness uses consciousness seeds to give birth to the six consciousnesses, after enlightenment and cultivating for another innumerable kalpa one can observe some of it, but not observe it completely and fully. Yet no matter what one can observe, if one's own mind is not thereby changed, and one's bodily, verbal, and mental actions do not change as a result of that observation, then the so-called observation is not observation at all, but imagination and conjecture. Imagination and speculation are both ways and methods of the mind consciousness's thinking, and do not involve the deliberation of the manas, the master consciousness. What is imagined and speculated therefore has no force of effect; it cannot transform one's bodily, verbal, and mental actions, cannot eliminate the seeds of afflictions and unwholesome karma, and carries no pure merit and benefit.