Treating Illness Is the Doctor's Eight Consciousnesses Jointly Transforming the Patient's Physical Body.

When a doctor cures a patient's illness, does He first change His own internal object-aspect (nimitta), or first change His own external object-aspect? How does the internal object-aspect arise? If this question is not resolved well, one will be unable to attain enlightenment in the future. The question of whether the internal or external object-aspect comes first is extremely important; it cannot be bypassed, as it all involves the issue of the tathāgatagarbha manifesting all dharmas, and involves the questions of how the tathāgatagarbha manifests them and on what basis it manifests them. Once this question is understood clearly, attaining enlightenment becomes easy.

The patient is the doctor's external object-aspect. In treating the patient, of course the patient's material body is changed, allowing the body to recover. The patient's material body is, to the doctor, an external object-aspect; treating the illness means that the doctor's own eight consciousnesses together change the patient's material body, which means changing the doctor's external object-aspect. The doctor's tathāgatagarbha, through His own six faculties, transmits the external object-aspect into the doctor's supreme faculty (indriya), where it becomes the internal object-aspect, consistent with the external object-aspect. The internal object-aspect of the patient's material body that the doctor sees also recovers at the same time.

Treating an illness also requires the participation of the first six consciousnesses; all eight consciousnesses participate. If it is healing through visualization, the mind consciousness also needs to participate; the three consciousnesses of the sixth, seventh, and eighth together function, changing the patient's material body. This is also changing the patient who is the doctor's external object-aspect, and the patient's body in the doctor's internal object-aspect changes at the same time. Exactly how the eight consciousnesses change the patient's material body, and how they function upon the external object-aspect of the material body, is something that the Chan practitioner needs to investigate; after breaking through the investigation (passing the huatou), one will know.