Eliminating the Self-View of the Mind Consciousness through Contemplative Practice (1)

The reason the mind consciousness arises is that the manas contacts the mental sense-objects, and the eighth consciousness produces the mind consciousness at the point where faculty and object contact each other; then the three—faculty, object, and consciousness—conjoin in contact, and the mind consciousness begins to discern the mental sense-objects, whereupon discriminating mind manifests, and thus the function of discrimination comes into being. Among the six consciousnesses, the mind consciousness has an extremely broad range of activity. Whenever we are in a waking state without being unconscious, or a waking state without being truly asleep, the mind consciousness is present, active, and operating. Therefore the range of the mind consciousness's activity is indeed extremely broad: at every present moment when our bodily, verbal, and mental actions manifest, the mind consciousness is currently active. The nature of the mind consciousness is: "I am thinking, I am discerning, I am contemplating, I am reflecting." We (referring to the manas) often take the mind consciousness as the self, and this "self" is the most prominent and the strongest manifestation.

Who takes the mind consciousness as the self? One is the mind consciousness itself, but the principal one is the manas, which gravely clings to the mind consciousness as the self, taking all the functions of the mind consciousness as the self. The manas is of the imputed nature (parikalpita-svabhāva); it universally deliberates and grasps all dharmas as the self and as belonging to the self. It not only grasps the eighth consciousness as the self, but also grasps the six consciousnesses as the self, grasping all dharmas as the self and as its possessions—its greedy clinging nature is especially great. In every activity of our bodily, verbal, and mental actions, every act of thinking and every mental function is a function of the mind consciousness, including the functions of discrimination, thinking, judgment, reflection, contemplation, and so on. The function of deliberation—no matter what dharma is being deliberated, whether deliberating worldly dharmas, deliberating the Buddha-dharma, or investigating a huatou—is all the mind consciousness in operation. One can see that the uses of the mind consciousness are quite extensive.

To eliminate self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi), one must engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) through deliberation on the arising-and-ceasing nature and illusory nature of the mind consciousness, and must deliberate on the various conditions required for the mind consciousness to arise, knowing that dharmas manifesting through conditions are necessarily empty, illusory, and subject to arising and ceasing. At every present moment when the mind consciousness manifests, it requires various conditions and various supporting conditions in order to arise and to be active; if there are no supporting conditions, the mind consciousness cannot manifest and falls into a state of cessation. Another method is to deliberate on the illusoriness of the mind consciousness from its overall phenomenon of arising and ceasing. After the mind consciousness has formed, it appears on the surface to be continuous, and the discriminating function of the mind consciousness also seems to exist all along. In fact, these functions are all illusory, subject to arising and ceasing, and also intermittent. Under the following five circumstances, the mind consciousness must cease: for example, at true death, when unconscious, when in dreamless sleep, when in the samādhi of no-perception, and when in the samādhi of cessation.

The conclusion reached through deliberation should be: all dharmas born of causes and conditions are illusory, are subject to arising and ceasing, are empty, and are not the self. Forming this view is also not easy; it requires overturning mistaken ideas and views held from beginningless kalpas past in order to establish present ideas and views that accord with reason and reality. From then on, one no longer mistakenly takes conditionally arisen dharmas as real—this is the elimination of self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi).