Profound Consciousness-Only Meaning of the Diamond Sutra (119)

Original text: 以无我无人无众生无寿者。修一切善法。即得阿耨多罗三藐三菩提。

Explanation: The World-Honored One said: When sentient beings, within their minds, do not abide in the notion of self, the notion of person, the notion of sentient being, or the notion of life span, and cultivate all wholesome dharmas of the world and beyond the world with a mind free of the notion of self, the notion of person, the notion of sentient being, and the notion of life span, they will attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.

Early in the Diamond Sutra, the World-Honored One already broke sentient beings of the four notions. Only a bodhisattva who has broken the four notions can accord with the principle-substance of the diamond-like prajñā, can accord with the true reality of all dharmas, can accord with suchness, and ultimately will accord with anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi. Because sentient beings, since beginningless kalpas, have constantly been attached to the four notions and have not accorded with the principle-substance of emptiness (śūnyatā), for the sake of these four notions they have widely created immeasurable and boundless evil karma, and for accumulated kalpas have sunk in the ocean of saṃsāra and karma, suffering immeasurably with no prospect of escape — the root cause lies precisely in the malady of clinging to the four notions. With great compassion, the World-Honored One, in order to dig out the root of sentient beings' malady of grasping at marks and clinging to marks, skillfully devised various expedient means to break sentient beings of the four notions; being without the four notions, one can escape the great pit of fire of birth and death.

Why can being without the four notions allow one to escape the great pit of fire of birth and death? From the perspective of the Hīnayāna teachings, as long as sentient beings can break the notion of self, they will escape the three evil destinies; when they cultivate to the point of being able to eradicate attachment to their own five-aggregate (pañca-skandha) body and to the worldly dharmas of the three realms, they will have the ability to escape the birth-and-death cycle of the six destinies, thereby escaping the pit of fire of segmented birth-and-death (pariccheda-maraṇa) and gaining temporary rest. When sentient beings continue advancing along the bodhisattva path and the Buddha path, they will gradually break the various attachments to dharmas, sever the various forms of transformational birth-and-death (parināma-maraṇa), and realize the true purity of nirvāṇa; from then on there will be no more birth and death, and only then will the great pit of fire of birth and death have been truly and thoroughly escaped.

The starting point for entering the bodhisattva path and the Buddha path is to realize the vajra-prajñā tathāgatagarbha mind-substance that is originally without the four notions. Cultivating in accordance with this principle-substance that is without the four notions, the mind becomes increasingly purified, and one will break all conditioned dharma-marks of the world, not even clinging to the mark of suchness; the mind becomes empty and pure to the utmost degree of emptiness and purity, without the slightest remainder of any dharma-mark existing or being clung to. Only thus can one thoroughly and completely accord with the suchness mind-substance, and ultimately one will perfectly accomplish the Buddha path and attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi. Therefore the World-Honored One said that by being without self, without person, without sentient being, and without life span, and cultivating all wholesome dharmas in accord with the nature-substance of suchness, one can accomplish anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.