Cultivation Must Be Divided into Levels and Stages

The practice of the Four Noble Truths by arhats and the practice of the twelve links of dependent origination by pratyekabuddhas are methods of subtraction and relinquishment, because there are dharmas and things in their minds; therefore, in their practice they continually reduce mental activities and relinquish greed and all afflictions. Arhats believe that the three realms truly exist, that the body of the five aggregates truly exists, that suffering feeling truly exists, and that cause and effect truly exist; hence they resolve to relinquish all of this and escape from the three realms. A mind of grasping and rejecting becomes clever artifice, and it is not the supreme and most genuine method of practice, although it is a path that every practitioner must pass through.

However, practice is divided into levels and stages: first one must abandon evil and take up the good; after the mind is good, one neither takes up evil nor takes up good—grasping nothing and rejecting nothing, the mind abides in the Middle Way. Bodhisattvas understand that all dharmas are illusory transformations of the tathāgatagarbha; there is nothing in their minds, and thus there is nothing to relinquish. Toward all dharmas they neither grasp nor reject, neither crave nor loathe; they face everything with equanimity and calmly deliver sentient beings, so they absolutely have no wish to leave the three realms and enter nirvāṇa.