The Distinction Between the True Mind and the Deluded Mind

Original text of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra: 纵灭一切见、闻、觉、知，内守幽闲，犹为法尘，分别影事。我非敕汝，执为非心，但汝于心，微细揣摩，若离前尘，有分别性，即真汝心。

Explanation: Even if, in the process of sitting in meditation and cultivating samādhi, you enter into concentration and extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing—no longer seeing, hearing, being aware, or knowing—and within your mind you hold to a state of leisurely ease, pure and tranquil, clear and lucid, this state is still a mental sense-object (dharma-dust), a shadow-like object of perception discriminated by your solitary mental consciousness. I am not necessarily demanding that you regard this state as not being your own mind. But within your mind you should further engage in subtle deliberation, carefully pondering and discerning between the true mind and the deluded mind. What, then, is your true mind? If, apart from all the sense-objects present before you, this mind still possesses a discriminating nature and can still function, then this mind is your true mind, not the deluded mind.

What does it mean to possess a discriminating nature apart from the sense-objects before you? These "sense-objects before you" refer to the six sense-objects, including the six inner sense-objects of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas. The mental sense-objects include the dharma-object of a samādhi state that is empty and vacant, empty and tranquil, various Image-Only Objects, dream states, frenzied and chaotic states, and so on. If, apart from all these six sense-objects, that mind can still exist and still possesses a discriminating nature, only then is it your true original mind. What kind of discriminating nature is this? It is different from the six consciousnesses discriminating the six sense-objects, and different from the mind consciousness discriminating mental sense-objects. The true mind does not discriminate the six sense-objects or mental sense-objects; it does not come out and know whether something is pure or impure, empty or not empty, with thought or without thought, comfortable or uncomfortable, lucid or not lucid—all of these are contents discriminated by the mind consciousness. That is to say, the one that knows these contents is the mind consciousness, not the original mind, the tathāgatagarbha. What the true mind mainly discriminates is the content of seeds; these discriminating characteristics are very difficult to observe before the consciousnesses have been transformed into wisdom (āśraya-parāvṛtti).

The Buddha, in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, specifically instructed us that the pure deluded mind within samādhi states is not the original true tathāgatagarbha. This passage is precisely the World-Honored One rebuking those who mistakenly fix upon the wrong guiding star—those who take the dharma-object of a samādhi state to be the true suchness mind-substance, the tathāgatagarbha, not knowing that such a samādhi state is a conditioned dharma subject to arising and ceasing, first nonexistent and then existent, existent and then again nonexistent—fundamentally impossible to grasp or hold onto. It is not the unborn and unceasing, neither increasing nor decreasing original mind, the tathāgatagarbha; it is not the Tathāgata Buddha who is originally pure and does not need you to specially purify Him. Would the Tathāgata Buddha need you to purify Him first, and only then acknowledge and accept Him? Was He originally not pure?

When sitting in meditation, your mind becomes pure for a moment, as if there were no seeing or hearing. Even if you extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing, and your mind is pure and tranquil with nothing happening at all, this is still your mind consciousness discriminating the dharma-object of the samādhi state; it is the deluded mind entering a profound state of meditative concentration, not the original mind, the tathāgatagarbha. The true mind is able to be apart from all the dharmas you discriminate—apart from pure tranquility, apart from solitary luminous clarity, apart from crystal clearness, apart from perfect lucidity—apart from all these sense-objects, while itself existing all along, possessing its own characteristic discriminating nature, without discriminating worldly dharma-marks. The dharma-object state of being without a single deluded thought arising is not a dharma-mark discriminated by the eighth consciousness, the Tathāgata; therefore, the discriminating mind at such a time is not the true mind, the self-nature.