The Cultivation Experience of the Venerable Pilindavatsa in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra

Original text:我初发心，从佛入道，数闻如来说诸世间不可乐事。乞食城中，心思法门，不觉路中毒刺伤足，举身疼痛。我念有知，知此深痛；虽觉觉痛，觉清净心，无痛痛觉。我又思惟：如是一身宁有双觉？摄念未久，身心忽空。三七日中，诸漏虚尽，成阿罗汉。得亲印记，发明无学。佛问圆通，如我所证，纯觉遗身，斯为第一。

Explanation: When I first made the aspiration to leave home, I followed the Buddha into the Path and practiced, and often heard the Buddha speak of the various things in the world that are not worthy of delight and attachment. Once, while begging for food in the city, I was pondering the dharma gate of practice in my mind, and as I walked along the road, I accidentally had my foot pierced by a poisonous thorn, and my whole body felt pain. At that moment my mind had an awareness that knew this deep pain. Although the mind consciousness knew that I (the body consciousness) was in great pain, it also knew that the self-natured pure mind does not feel pain—He has no sensation of pain.

I then contemplated further: Does my single body have two kinds of awareness? With this questioning doubt arising, I held my mind so that it did not scatter outward. Before long, both body and mind suddenly became empty. Then, over the course of twenty-one days, all afflictions were emptied and completely severed, and I became an arhat of the fourth fruit. Later I received the Buddha's personal seal of confirmation, having reached the stage beyond training (aśaikṣa). Now the Buddha asks me about the method of practice by which I attained thorough penetration. As in my own realization, with pure awareness leaving behind the body—this was the foremost method.

The awareness that feels the body's pain is primarily the body consciousness, which knows the tangible object of pain. There is also another awareness, the awareness of the mind consciousness. On one hand, the mind consciousness knows the awareness of the body consciousness, knowing that the body consciousness is now in deep pain; on the other hand, it knows the subtle aspects of the pain, mainly the painful distress of the heart's discomfort, and further knows the mind consciousness's own heartache—this is the mind consciousness's self-validating cognition (svasaṃvedana), the introspective awareness of itself.

Because the Venerable One was single-mindedly devoted to practice, although his body was in great pain, his mind was tranquil (praśama). Amid the pain he contemplated something that does not hurt, a questioning doubt arose, and so he abided in deep questioning doubt, and meditative concentration (samādhi) appeared. Within that samādhi, through deep and subtle contemplative investigation, he realized that the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) are without self.

Afterwards, due to his power of concentration and awareness, the first dhyāna arose, and over twenty-one days he sequentially severed all afflictions, becoming a great taintless arhat. This is the process of practice that attains the fruits of realization and seeing the mind—the process of actual practice and actual realization. With the threefold training of precepts, samādhi, and wisdom complete, the Venerable One's observance of precepts was certainly perfect; only when meditative concentration arose could the wisdom of liberation finally be born, attaining the realization of liberation.

In his account of his practice experience, there is not the slightest element of mere intellectual understanding—it is all the actual realization gained from real practice. Unlike some people nowadays, who rely entirely on the mind consciousness's intellectual understanding of the dharma teachings they encounter, treating what they have understood as realization. Without even touching the edge of understanding-based awakening, they consider themselves to have realized enlightenment. In such so-called realization, the views held after "awakening" are still something reasoned out intellectually, without the slightest bit being their own present observation and experiential realization.

The spiritual faculties (indriya) of people in the world today are already a hundred thousand miles apart from those of practitioners of past eras. They have not the slightest skill in meditative concentration, yet they talk grandly about theory as if it were all their own realization. For how many years have they been corrected, for how many years have they been scolded, yet they cannot be scolded awake—they remain the same old way, not even knowing that the scolding is directed at themselves.