Eradicating Feeling Is Not the Primary Goal of Practice

Some people always assume that eradicating the feeling of sensation—having no sensation at all—is the basis and hallmark of realizing the Path. In fact, subduing and eradicating sensations mainly relies on profound meditative concentration (dhyāna); whether or not one has realized the Path, as long as one possesses very deep meditative concentration, one can eradicate sensations. Even non-Buddhist practitioners with the four dhyānas and eight samādhis can accomplish this. Even the concentration of the first dhyāna cannot eradicate sensations; the sensation within first-dhyāna concentration is merely a pleasant feeling, a sense of comfort—it is still a form of sensation. To eradicate all sensations, one must cultivate until the aggregate of feeling is exhausted; only concentration above the fourth dhyāna can exhaust the aggregate of form, and only afterward can the aggregate of feeling be eradicated, realizing the exhaustion of the aggregate of feeling, and only after that can the aggregate of perception and the aggregate of volitional formations be eradicated. Liberation does not require eradicating sensations; as long as one does not cling to sensations, one can attain liberation. Eradicating sensations is not the primary goal of our practice; the primary goal is to eradicate the wrong and false views held since beginningless kalpas—that is, the view of self that takes the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) as the self. Once the view of self is eradicated and one is no longer bound by it, one can attain initial liberation, and one's subsequent cultivation will proceed on the right track.