How to Get Out of the Prison Gate?

The final barrier (laoguan), as the name suggests, is still the gate of the prison. What is the prison? The three realms are the prison, and the world of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) is the prison. Where is the gate for exiting the prison? It lies in eradicating the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) and eradicating attachment to self, and moreover in not clinging even to the tathāgatagarbha as a self; the mind must be purified and emptied. This can only be discussed on the basis of having realized the tathāgatagarbha, and therefore it is said to be the third barrier of the Chan school. If one can accomplish this, one can pass through the gate of the prison of birth and death, be liberated from the three realms, and be liberated from the bondage of the body of the five aggregates. In terms of the Small Vehicle, one at least has the liberating merit of an anāgāmin: the mind is liberated, having eradicated the afflictions of craving and aversion; at the end of life, having eradicated attachment to self and eradicated the ignorance of one thought (ekacitta-avidyā), one has the ability to attain Nirvāṇa without remainder (Anupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa). As for meditative concentration (samādhi), attaining the first dhyāna is sufficient; a very high level of concentration is not required—though of course, the higher the concentration, the better. But it is not, as some people say, necessary to cultivate the body of the five aggregates to be like a piece of wood, or to be able to extinguish it, and so on; that is something only bodhisattvas at several bhūmis, or even at the eighth bhūmi, can achieve. Those who are around the third barrier of the Chan school belong to the stages of the ten practices (daśa-caryā) and the ten dedications (daśa-pariṇāmanā), still very far from the eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva.