The Five Aggregates Not Being the Eighth Consciousness Is Not the Conclusion of the Small Vehicle's Contemplative Practice

Since sentient beings, throughout beginningless kalpas, have not known that there is an unborn and unceasing eighth consciousness permanently abiding within the five-aggregate body, sentient beings do not have the self-view that the five aggregates are the eighth consciousness. When engaging in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the five aggregates to eliminate self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi), there is no need to compare the five aggregates with the eighth consciousness, saying that the five aggregates are impermanent while the eighth consciousness is permanent, that the five aggregates arise and cease while the eighth consciousness neither arises nor ceases, and then inferring from this that the five aggregates are not the eighth consciousness, and thereby, through such inference, eliminating the self-view that the five aggregates are the self of the eighth consciousness. Such comparison and inference are entirely unnecessary; without a premise, there can be no subsequent conclusion.

Even if there were a premise—that sentient beings all take the five aggregates to be the eighth consciousness—this would still not be self-view; on the contrary, it would be precisely the absence of self-view, a cognition of non-self. When Mahāyāna practitioners investigate Chan and awaken to the realization of the eighth consciousness, the bodhisattvas engaged in such investigation come to know that the five aggregates are produced by the eighth consciousness, are a part of the eighth consciousness, and are precisely the eighth consciousness itself. Moreover, after a bodhisattva attains the bhūmis, he gradually observes that all dharmas are the tathāgatagarbha, the eighth consciousness—the so-called one true dharmadhātu. The five aggregates are even more so the eighth consciousness; the premise is precisely the tathāgatagarbha, the eighth consciousness, which is one dharma among the one true dharmadhātu. If sentient beings, throughout beginningless kalpas, had possessed the self-view of taking the five aggregates to be the self of the eighth consciousness, then sentient beings would have been bhūmi-attained bodhisattvas all along since beginningless kalpas, possessing the seed-wisdom of Consciousness-Only, and it would be impossible for them to undergo birth, death, and transmigration through the six realms.

Furthermore, when the Buddha taught the Āgama sūtras, He first told His disciples that within the five-aggregate body there is a permanently abiding dharma, unborn and unceasing, upon which the five aggregates of sentient beings depend. After the disciples heard the Buddha say this, they accepted it with faith, knowing that there is a permanent eighth consciousness that does not perish, while the five aggregates arise and cease and are impermanent—the five aggregates are fundamentally not the permanently abiding eighth consciousness. That is precisely why it was necessary to cultivate meditative concentration and engage in contemplative practice, contemplating the impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and non-self of the five aggregates, confirming that the five aggregates are subject to destruction, that the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are subject to destruction, and that there is no self and no possessions of self. Therefore, the conclusion of contemplative practice eliminating self-view is not that the five aggregates are not the self of the eighth consciousness, but rather that the five aggregates are impermanent, subject to decay and ruin, and suffering—they are neither self nor possessions of self.