What Is the Correct Way to Contemplate the Five Aggregates and Eighteen Elements as Not-Self?

When contemplating that the five aggregates are not the self, one first contemplates that the aggregate of form is not the self. If this "self" is replaced with the eighth consciousness, then it becomes contemplating that the aggregate of form is not the eighth consciousness. Question: what is the purpose of contemplating this? How should one contemplate it? Is such contemplation even necessary? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of feeling is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of feeling is not the eighth consciousness. What is the purpose of contemplating this? How should one contemplate it? Is such contemplation even necessary? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of perception is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of perception is not the eighth consciousness. What use is such contemplation? How should one contemplate it? Is such contemplation even necessary? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of volitional formations is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of volitional formations is not the eighth consciousness. What is the purpose of contemplating this? Is such contemplation even necessary? How should one contemplate it? Is it correct contemplation?

When contemplating that the aggregate of consciousness is not the self, one instead contemplates that the aggregate of volitional formations is not the eighth consciousness. What is the purpose of contemplating this? Is it correct contemplation? Is such contemplation even necessary? How should one contemplate it?

Then, continuing on to contemplate that the six faculties are not the self, one instead contemplates that the eye faculty, ear faculty, tongue faculty, nose faculty, body faculty, and mind faculty are not the eighth consciousness. Is such contemplation even necessary? Who does not know that the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are fundamentally not the eighth consciousness? Yet through the arduous cultivation of meditative concentration one carries out contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), only to arrive at the conclusion that the six faculties are not the eighth consciousness. Who does not know that the eye faculty is not the eighth consciousness? Who does not know that the manas is not the eighth consciousness? The same applies to contemplating the six sense objects—what is the point of insisting on contemplating that the six sense objects are not the eighth consciousness? Who does not know that form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas are not the eighth consciousness? Is such contemplation even necessary? Everyone knows this—is it not like drawing legs on a snake, a superfluous and pointless exercise? Does it have anything to do with the impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and non-self of the five aggregates?

Not walking the straight and proper path, yet insisting on concocting lofty, grandiose, and mysterious things to attract attention—people of the world, being ignorant, eagerly follow along, utterly failing to notice anything amiss.

The Hīnayāna contemplative practice on the five aggregates is precisely to contemplate the impermanence, mutability, emptiness (śūnyatā), and suffering-nature of the five aggregates and the eighteen realms, thereby ascertaining that they are definitely not the self that we have been grasping since beginningless kalpas—that there is fundamentally no "self" whatsoever to be grasped. In this way, the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) is eradicated. Only such contemplative practice is correct contemplation; if one contemplates otherwise, it is wrong contemplation.