The Form Attained through Meditative Concentration Is the Realm of Direct Perception and Realization of the Manas

Bai Xuexiang's sharing of her white-bone contemplation experience: While sitting in meditation in the morning (with eyes closed), she felt an itch at the ankle bone of her right foot, and then (still with eyes closed) suddenly saw (with the eyes closed) that the itchy spot at the ankle bone had rotted away. She then contemplated using a finger to scrape it, and all the flesh on her body fell away, leaving only a skeleton—but it was still hung with dark-red bloody sinews and shreds of flesh, not the snow-white bones that others have manifested through the contemplative practice of white-bone contemplation.

I thought: Is this not precisely an intermediate stage within the contemplative practice? First the skin falls away, then the flesh, then the sinews, and only afterward do the bones appear. Both the contemplative practice and its result proceed in sequence; you cannot contemplate the white bones all at once out of nothing—the practice advances step by step. What appears now is an intermediate level of contemplative practice; deeper contemplative states will appear later, and only at the very end do the white bones come.  

Assessment: The above states of white-bone contemplation are all states manifested within meditative concentration, called concentration-born form (dhyāna-born material form). States brought forth by meditative concentration are all states of direct perception (valid direct cognition); they are states of realization, without the slightest imaginative or deliberative function of the mind consciousness—they are all states of the manas's contemplative practice in direct perception. Whatever thoughts and views the manas holds, whatever dharma it accepts, that is the state that manifests; nothing can be faked. Such is the might and power of the master consciousness (the determining consciousness). In concentration, the flesh of the ankle bone rotted and fell away, with the bone hung with bloody sinews and shreds of flesh—such phenomena arise involuntarily; they are the manas's realm of direct-perception cognition, something the mind consciousness could never imagine into being.  

If white-bone contemplation relied on the mind consciousness's deliberation and conjecture, then no matter what the mind consciousness thought the body should look like, the body would simply refuse to comply and would never become that way, because the mind consciousness has no power and does not preside. Concentration-born form arises from the manas and never from the mind consciousness. However, in the early stages of white-bone contemplation, the mind consciousness plays the role of guiding the manas into the state of contemplative practice, exerting a guiding and perfuming influence upon the manas; therefore the mind consciousness also deserves considerable credit.  

The above contemplative practice is indeed one stage of the process. The white-bone contemplation is not yet complete: the bones are not yet clean enough, and their color is not yet white and pure enough, indicating that the practitioner still has some karmic obstructions not yet eliminated, the mind is not yet pure enough, and the power of meditative concentration is not yet strong enough. Further, deeper contemplative practice is still needed to complete the white-bone contemplation, eliminate self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi), and attain purity of the Dharma eye.