What Is the State of Enlightenment?

What state is realization-enlightenment? The first line of the Heart Sutra says: When the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara practiced profound prajñā-pāramitā, He illuminated and saw that the five aggregates are all empty, and thereby crossed over all suffering and adversity. Practicing profound prajñā-pāramitā, illuminating and seeing that the five aggregates are all empty. This means that at the very moment of realizing the tathāgatagarbha, the mind endowed with prajñā wisdom, the mind becomes empty. The key word here, "practiced," means investigating Chan and inquiring into the meaning of prajñā; "profound" refers on the one hand to deep meditative concentration (samādhi), and on the other to deep wisdom in the investigation, with a clear direction. On the premise of this profundity, the sixth and seventh consciousnesses give rise to great wisdom, wisdom illuminating the ultimate reality of the dharmadhātu, realizing that all dharmas within the five aggregates in the dharmadhātu are manifested by the prajñā mind, the tathāgatagarbha, and that the substance of the five aggregates is empty—false appearances, illusory forms.

In this way, deep in one's heart one knows that the five aggregates are not real, and so there is no suffering; in an instant one crosses over all suffering and adversity. All suffering and adversity are false appearances, unreal, conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha. After thus illuminating and seeing that the five aggregates are all empty, the mind becomes empty and non-active, afflictions are eradicated—this is the merit and benefit of Mahāyāna seeing-the-path through realizing the tathāgatagarbha. This is the manas seeing-the-path, the manas realizing the meditative absorption (samādhi) state of the tathāgatagarbha, fully endowed with meditative concentration and wisdom, the equal cultivation of Samādhi and Prajñā. So-called "illuminating and seeing" means sudden enlightenment—there is no time or effort of slowly pondering, analyzing, and deliberating toward gradual understanding; one knows or one does not know, without hesitation. 

After thus illuminating and seeing that the five aggregates are all empty, is it still necessary to separately undertake the transformation of the basis as tathāgatagarbha (āśraya-parāvṛtti-tathāgatagarbha) for it to count as realization-enlightenment? Not at all—this is genuine, unambiguous realization and sudden enlightenment, not that kind of gradual intellectual understanding, a comprehension gradually clarified through analysis and inference. One has thus already entered the gate of the Mahāyāna and obtained genuine merit and benefit. If one merely uses the mind consciousness to reason, ponder, and guess at the tathāgatagarbha, such guessing and reasoning carries no merit or benefit whatsoever, and so one must slowly undertake the transformation of the basis; yet no matter how hard the mind consciousness strives at the transformation, if the manas has not realized it, the transformation of the basis still cannot succeed. And so a heap of messy problems remains unresolvable—afflictions are still afflictions, ignorance is still ignorance.

It is like those who take meditative concentration as Chan: they cultivate a samādhi of "not one thought arising" and take this to be the no-thought state of the true mind, mistaking the false for the true. But after emerging from samādhi, deluded thoughts appear again, and because they fear in their hearts that the true mind will vanish, they keep cultivating concentration, staying in long meditative absorption, striving not to leave samādhi, in order to preserve and maintain the state of concentration, ensuring the true mind is not lost—calling it, in fine-sounding terms, "preserving and maintaining." Yet the state of concentration will eventually vanish, and one must eventually emerge from samādhi; even if one did not emerge from samādhi for countless kalpas, the state of concentration is still not the true mind, the self-nature. If one has truly awakened, what is there left to preserve and maintain? If one has truly realized the true mind, what is there left to transform? Right now it is just so—right now the mind is empty, purified: the carp leaps over the Dragon Gate. Having leapt over the Dragon Gate and become a dragon, would one still fear leaping back and turning into a carp again? Only if one has never leapt over the Dragon Gate at all—trembling in one's heart, anxious about gain and loss—would one need preserving-and-maintaining and the transformation of the basis.