What Conclusion Should a Hīnayāna Practitioner Reach After Engaging in Authentic Contemplative Practice (Vipaśyanā-Caryā)?

If, after contemplating the five aggregates as illusory and without self, one arrives at the conclusion that the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness, what does this show? It shows that all sentient worldlings, since beginningless kalpas, have constantly taken the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness, and then, upon encountering the Buddha's Dharma and seeking liberation, through contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and deliberation, corrected their former mistaken cognition, changing the wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi) into the right view: the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness; the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness, yet are not not the eighth consciousness. Is it so? Does the statement "not not the eighth consciousness" include the implication that the five aggregates are also the eighth consciousness?

If it is so, then what is wrong with worldlings' constant belief since beginningless kalpas that the five aggregates are the eighth consciousness? Is it a wrong view? There is nothing wrong with it! If worldlings had truly, since beginningless kalpas, taken the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness, then there would be no self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) and no self-grasping, no ignorance and no afflictions, and the Buddha would not have needed to laboriously come to the Saha world eight thousand times to rescue sentient beings. Recognizing the eighth consciousness as self, beings would not recognize the five aggregates as self, and would not create unwholesome karma. The most crucial point is this: have worldlings, since beginningless kalpas, taken the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness?

If worldlings have constantly taken the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness since beginningless kalpas—if it is truly so—then all sentient worldlings would be post-bhūmi bodhisattvas (bhūmi-pratiṣṭhita-bodhisattva), possessing the consciousness-only seed wisdom. Because only post-bhūmi bodhisattvas, through the direct perception of consciousness-only seed wisdom, can observe that the five aggregates in their entirety are the eighth consciousness—that the cloth doll in its entirety is cloth, the clay figure in its entirety is clay, the gold ornament in its entirety is gold. Then all sentient beings since beginningless kalpas would have been post-bhūmi bodhisattvas, and in that case, would there still be any need to eliminate self-view, to eliminate the self-view of the eighth consciousness, to eliminate the view of "my eighth consciousness"?

If worldlings, since beginningless kalpas, have never known that there is a true self, the eighth consciousness, and have never believed the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness, then when worldlings encounter the Dharma of liberation and contemplate the Four Noble Truths—suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the path—and contemplate suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self, could they in the end arrive at the conclusion that the five aggregates are not the self of the eighth consciousness, and are not the self's eighth consciousness? Is this not a sleight of hand, a swapping of concepts? If it is a swapping of concepts, then no one could truly eliminate self-view, and no practitioner of the Small Vehicle could attain purity of the dharma eye or attain liberation.

One who genuinely cultivates the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment as they truly are, and genuinely engages in contemplative practice, cannot possibly arrive at the conclusion that "the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness" at the moment of eliminating self-view and realizing the fruit. To offer such a conclusion is mere intellectual speculation and conceptualization about actual practice, without having gone through the process of genuine deliberation and contemplative practice. Only after eliminating self-view, and then from the perspective of Mahāyāna contemplative practice, can one arrive at the conclusion that the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness.

When the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths to his disciples, he first told them: within the five aggregates there is a true self, the eighth consciousness, which neither arises nor ceases; even if the five aggregates and the eighteen elements were all extinguished, the eighth consciousness would not perish. Thus the disciples all believed and accepted the Buddha's words, knowing there is something imperishable, that after nirvāṇa without remainder (anupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) it is not annihilatory emptiness (uccheda-śūnyatā), a void of nothingness, and that the true self has its function. Upon hearing the Buddha's words, the disciples immediately knew that the five aggregates and eighteen elements can perish while the eighth consciousness does not perish, and thus knew that the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness. But this knowing is the knowing of the mind consciousness; the manas has not realized it through actual realization—actual realization of this would make one a Mahāyāna bodhisattva. Nor would they go searching for the eighth consciousness; they would simply contemplate the nature of the five aggregates as suffering, empty, impermanent, and without self. They would not, after a round of arduous contemplative practice, arrive at the conclusion: the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness. If it were so, then he had not contemplated carefully and thoroughly. This conclusion should already have been known in his mind when the Buddha taught that there is a true self.

In the Āgama sūtras, the Buddha taught the Sutra on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: contemplate the body as impure, contemplate feeling as suffering, contemplate the mind as impermanent, contemplate dharmas as non-self. If a person genuinely and truly engages in contemplative practice over several years, at the moment of eliminating self-view, could he arrive at a conclusion such as: the body is not the eighth consciousness, feeling is not the eighth consciousness, the mind is not the eighth consciousness, dharmas are not the eighth consciousness? If he arrives at such a conclusion, may I ask: how did this person contemplate? Did he contemplate in accordance with what the World-Honored One actually taught?

This person is drawing conclusions based on imagination, without truly contemplating in accordance with the Dharma. If practitioners of the Small Vehicle had truly realized that the five aggregates are not different from the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, then they would not fear suffering and would not be in a hurry to extinguish the five aggregates and enter nirvāṇa without remainder. Because they would have realized that the five aggregates are all illusory manifestations displayed by the eighth consciousness, without any real substance, without any true suffering.