Realization Is the Fruit of Cultivation Across Many Lifetimes

Some people feel that the mind consciousness and the manas fundamentally have no self of their own to speak of—that they are all just the tathāgatagarbha's own tricks. "Neither the mind consciousness nor the manas is me; both are the tathāgatagarbha"—this is a merely similar understanding, and it is unreliable. Because such cognition is too shallow and has no evidence whatsoever: if the mind consciousness is not taken as real, let alone the manas, which is even less taken as real. Only when one has genuinely realized it does one know that neither the mind consciousness nor the manas is the self. After realizing the eighth consciousness, through contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) one observes how the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are born from the eighth consciousness; only then does one truly know that the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are in essence also the eighth consciousness. This kind of contemplative realization is extremely difficult and not easy to achieve; it requires very great realization-attainment and excellent meditative concentration (samādhi). Otherwise, the element of mere intellectual understanding still predominates.

Some dharmas, even if understood for ten thousand years, may still never see the conditions for realization appear. Genuine enlightenment requires accumulating, over life after life, the wholesome roots, merit, and all the provisions for seeing the path. It is not something attained lightly just by talking about it.

Some people insist that enlightenment was very easy for those in the Buddha's time. In fact, by the time they attained those fruits, they had already accumulated provisions of merit over a considerable length of time; their precepts, samādhi, and wisdom were all already complete. Encountering the great conditions of meeting a Buddha, they realized enlightenment in one stroke. Their identities in previous lives were quite special, and they cultivated with great diligence life after life. Many of them were manifestations, appearing in order to assist the Buddha in propagating the Dharma—within that group there were people of every identity, all come from the worlds of the ten directions to play their parts alongside the Buddha.

Why say this? For example, all Buddhist practitioners know that animals are beings among the six realms of saṃsāra, that we too were animals in past lives, that eating animal flesh is lacking compassion toward sentient beings, that it is incurring debt to animals which must be repaid doubly in the future. But of what use is this kind of knowing? Because there is no personal realization—it is merely believing the principles of cause and effect taught by the Buddha, while all personal experience has been forgotten—so the mind still half believes and half doubts, making it so hard to abstain from meat and keep the precept against meat-eating. Believing is one thing, doing is another; belief without realization is very hard to put into function. It is the same with all the theoretical knowledge being studied now: although the mind consciousness understands and accepts it, because there is no realization, this understanding still cannot have actual effect. As for the great matter of birth and death, an extremely easy enlightenment is impossible. Having transmigrated for countless kalpas and unspeakably many kalpas, with ignorance so deep and heavy as to be unspeakable—how could one attain realization merely by reading some books, doing some study, and gaining some understanding? Many people harbor a mentality of getting lucky, which is really a mentality of opportunism at work. This precisely proves that most people are still very ignorant, with deep and heavy ignorance.

When one truly eliminates the self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi), each elimination makes one more honest and humble—whoever eliminates it becomes humble. Because one has genuinely realized non-self and truly knows there is no self, the mind immediately becomes humble, and one will no longer flaunt and show off the self, nor boast "I have attained the fruit." If there is a mind of showing off, then the self-view has not been eliminated, and moreover there is now an additional self that has "attained the fruit." With two selves appearing like this, the afflictions will of course be even heavier than before—one becomes simply insufferably arrogant, with pride blazing fiercely.

I have met quite a few people who had attained fruits and awakened to the true mind, yet were almost all somewhat domineering and insufferably arrogant, feeling themselves higher than heaven. The two selves in their minds, each more conspicuous than the other—and they themselves were unaware of it, precisely because they had been harmed by the "fruit."