Who Is Able to Accord with Conditions?

When ordinary beings follow conditions, every day, every year, every life, every existence—whatever conditions predominate, where can following conditions lead them? "Following conditions without changing, and not changing while following conditions"—only the eighth consciousness can accomplish this completely. Even pre-bhūmi bodhisattvas (pūrvabhūmika bodhisattva) cannot do it; it is impossible for them not to change. Post-bhūmi bodhisattvas (bhūmi-pratiṣṭhita-bodhisattva), before the eighth bhūmi, also cannot accomplish it completely. As long as the minds of the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are still subject to perfuming and defilement, it is impossible to follow conditions without changing. No matter what conditions the Buddha follows, His mind never changes, because the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are no longer subject to perfuming and defilement.

The meditative concentration (samādhi) of the non-Buddhists is so excellent—entering samādhi for eighty thousand great kalpas, with all afflictions subdued. Yet because they have not eliminated the afflictions, in later lives they are born in the desire realm, and still follow conditions to create karmic actions of greed, hatred, and delusion, once again transmigrating amid unwholesome karma and suffering. Arhats, fearing that they would be perfumed and defiled by worldly conditions of the three realms, avoid and escape the three realms and enter nirvāṇa without remainder (anupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa). The mind of an ordinary being, once it follows conditions, will certainly change—it is extremely unreliable. Whoever places all hope in an ordinary being will surely regret it.