Even If Mind Consciousness Attains the Fruit, It Is Still an Ordinary Being Bound by Fetters

Attaining realization through the mind consciousness is very quick and easy, requiring little cost, no need to rack one's brains or exert effort in investigating Chan, and most importantly, no need to cultivate meditative concentration (samādhi)—it is simply too effortless. The hurdle of meditative concentration is the hardest to pass, especially arduous, consuming time and requiring painful endurance of sitting with crossed legs, delaying many worldly affairs. Attaining realization through the mind consciousness requires hardly any observance of precepts; even the three refuges and five precepts can be dispensed with, the most troublesome thirty-seven factors of enlightenment need not be cultivated, saving an enormous amount of time and energy, one's merit need not be particularly good, and the first five of the bodhisattva's six perfections can all be skipped—simply too effortless. One only needs to use the mind consciousness to study theoretical knowledge, then deliberate, understand, analyze, speculate, infer, integrate, and summarize. These operations require no great concentration and do not overly tax the brain or weary the mind; these tasks are like the daily work of a junior secretary—anyone of average intelligence can handle them.

How cheap it is to attain realization this way! One need not pay much of a price; there is a whole pile of theoretical knowledge, which can even attract attention and win people's admiration. One need not abandon wife and children to leave home and cultivate the Way, need not part from relatives and sever attachments, need not give up worldly undertakings, and can still accept offerings from the assembly, and can even serve as a Dharma master bodhisattva, or as a so-called "ultimate meaning saṃgha" member overshadowing monastics—reaping the benefits of both monastic and lay life, maximizing worldly benefits. With so many advantages to attaining realization through the mind consciousness, who would be willing to give it up?

But after attaining realization this way, one cannot sever even the tiniest bit of afflictions, being no different whatsoever from a fettered ordinary being. Some people make excuses for themselves, saying that only third-fruit and fourth-fruit practitioners sever afflictions, while first-fruit and second-fruit practitioners still have afflictions, so this is nothing surprising—that a first-fruit person's afflictions are as many and as heavy as an ordinary being's is also nothing surprising. But if a first-fruit person is the same as a fettered ordinary being, that means the first-fruit person is essentially an ordinary being complete with all afflictions, a first fruit in name only—how could such a person be a first-fruit srotāpanna who has eradicated the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa)? If the Buddha-dharma continues like this, how can Buddhism not perish?

Although there are many worldly deviant dharmas and deviant teachers, those deviant dharmas are all very shallow and low, unable to destroy the foundation of Buddhism or shake its roots. For example, what a certain Dharma master teaches about tathāgatagarbha is utter nonsense, but he can never influence the mainstream development of Buddhism; the sentient beings he delivers have extremely shallow faculties, and even if he exhausts his efforts to pull them out, they accomplish nothing and pose no threat to Buddhism. Another example is the dual-cultivation method—that is fundamentally a non-Buddhist path, of an extremely low and inferior level; anyone with a bit of wisdom can discern it and will not enter into it. Those who do enter are mostly people of heavy karmic obstructions and shallow roots of goodness; even if one exhausts effort to rescue and deliver them out, they cannot amount to anything and can never become the mainstay of Buddhism. What can destroy Buddhism will never be non-Buddhist paths or their dharmas; Buddhism is always destroyed from within—this is what is meant by "the worms within the lion's body devour the flesh of the lion's body."

The foundation and focal point of Buddhism across the three periods lies in the extremely critical juncture of attaining realization and seeing the mind and seeing the nature. As long as nothing goes seriously wrong at this juncture, the future development of Buddhism will be smooth and untroubled. Therefore, the fundamental dharma of eradicating the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa) and of seeing the mind and seeing the nature is not something just anyone can transmit; it absolutely must not be handled recklessly. If one recklessly transmits it and thereby harms the dharmakāya and wisdom-life of sentient beings, then in the future, even wishing to be a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes would be wishful thinking—the evil retribution one undergoes will be countless times more severe than that. Protecting and supporting those who recklessly transmit the dharma is tantamount to abetting a tyrant, and the karmic retribution is likewise quite bad. Therefore, I sincerely implore everyone to deeply contemplate cause and effect, to treat the Buddha-dharma with seriousness, and to maintain a highly responsible attitude toward sentient beings and Buddhism.