The Focus of Contemplative Practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) for the Elimination of Self-View in the Small Vehicle

The Hīnayāna elimination of self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) is the realization that the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) and the eighteen realms are impermanent, empty, suffering, and not-self; the self is identical with the impermanent, identical with the empty, identical with the suffering, and thus is something that must be eliminated, and is therefore destructible. What is destructible is not the truth, not the real.

"Real truth" has two meanings: one refers to the truths and facts of the worldly realm, and the other refers to the eighth consciousness in the Mahāyāna dharma, which never arises and never ceases.

As for the Hīnayāna practice of eliminating self-view, it suffices to know that there is an eighth consciousness that does not perish, which is distinct from the five aggregates and eighteen realms, and which is that upon which the five aggregates and eighteen realms depend. The focus of contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and deliberation (manana) is to recognize that, in terms of the truths of the worldly realm, the five aggregates and eighteen realms are destructible and perishable dharmas, without any reality; their true nature is merely the marks of impermanence, the mark of suffering, the mark of emptiness, and the mark of destruction.

Why is it that many people's minds and thinking always fall into a pitfall from which they cannot extricate themselves? One reason is that they have been misled in some way and have formed preconceptions; another is insufficient capacity for logical thinking. Insufficient power of deliberation is related to insufficient power of meditative concentration (samādhi), and is also related to one's wholesome roots and merit from past lives; this requires accumulating concentration, wisdom, wholesome roots, and merit bit by bit on one's own. If one did not possess a certain foundation of cultivation in past lives, one's practice in this life cannot be very fast. If one forcibly demands a very swift awakening for oneself—when various causal conditions are not yet ripe, and when one's mental disposition and so forth have not yet been transformed to resemble that of a bodhisattva—and anxiously investigates the eighth consciousness without even eliminating the view that the five aggregates are not-self, it will harm rather than benefit one's progress on the Path, and often produces the opposite of the intended result.