All Dharmas Are Without Self (III)

The selflessness of the eighth consciousness refers, first, to the fact that the eighth consciousness still contains seeds that arise and cease moment by moment; these seeds are still subject to change and are not fixed, and therefore the eighth consciousness is not truly immutable, is not constant and everlasting, and so is not yet a completely and genuinely real self. Only that which does not arise, cease, or change is the true self. Second, it refers to the fact that the eighth consciousness does not know that it itself is a true dharma, and He also does not exercise mastery. The seventh consciousness, however, has a sense of self and can exercise mastery; He regards all dharmas as self, which is precisely the opposite of the eighth consciousness. The eighth consciousness is the true self, yet this true self possesses the characteristic of selflessness. The five aggregates are a false self, yet on the surface they appear to possess self-nature; the tathāgatagarbha is the true self—this is a title we have conferred upon Him, but He Himself does not consider it so, nor is He aware of this matter.

All dharmas produced through the successive combination of the five aggregates and eighteen realms are likewise manifested through the sustaining function of the eighth consciousness. Without the eighth consciousness, there would be none of these dharmas; therefore all dharmas are selfless and illusory, and the five aggregates themselves have nothing to do with them. When one realizes even a small portion of the selflessness of dharmas in this way, one attains the wisdom of the varieties of paths. After entering the first bhūmi, one must realize the selflessness within the hundred dharmas, thereby accomplishing the illusion-like contemplation of a mirror image; after entering the second bhūmi, one must realize the selflessness within the thousand dharmas, thereby accomplishing the contemplation of light and shadow; after entering the third bhūmi, one will realize the selflessness within the ten thousand dharmas and within immeasurable dharmas, and one's wisdom will grow ever deeper. Now, the selflessness of all dharmas—its content is boundless and vast in scope; only the Buddhas, the World-Honored Ones, can realize it completely and thoroughly, becoming ultimate and perfectly unsurpassed wise ones.

In the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, the Buddha said that the undefiled consciousness (amala-vijñāna) at the Buddha-stage is called permanence, bliss, self, and purity. "Permanence" means that it is already ultimate and will never change again; the seeds it contains no longer exhibit any phenomenon of arising, ceasing, or change. "Self": the undefiled consciousness has twenty-one mental factors and is a genuine and complete self, fully endowed with self-nature. The Buddhas are thoroughly selfless—this means that the seven consciousnesses of the Buddha have already reached ultimate, complete, and thorough selflessness. Before this, it is not yet ultimate and thorough selflessness; there remains some portion, or a small portion, of self that has not been fully eliminated, and so Buddhahood cannot yet be attained; when it is fully eliminated, Buddhahood is attained. The consciousness mind possesses self-validating cognition (sva-saṃvitti-saṃvitti-bhāga) and the ability to introspect upon itself—that is to possess self-nature. The undefiled consciousness at the Buddha-stage can prove its own existence and can introspect upon itself, and therefore it possesses self-nature.

"There is no self; in all dharmas there is no self"—that is the Dharma cultivated by the Small Vehicle. The annihilatory emptiness (uccheda-śūnyatā) of the non-Buddhists also asserts that all dharmas are empty, that there is nothing real, no self, and that everything ends once and for all; they do not acknowledge the existence of the true self, the eighth consciousness, which is real and imperishable, and therefore they are called non-Buddhists. The śrāvakas of the Small Vehicle all acknowledge that a true self, the eighth consciousness, exists—they simply cannot realize it—whereas the non-Buddhists do not acknowledge it at all, and therefore they are called non-Buddhists.