What Realm of Attainment Is Enlightenment?

The first line of the Heart Sutra says: When Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva practiced the profound prajñā-pāramitā, he illuminated and saw that the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) are all empty, and thereby crossed over all suffering and distress. Practicing the profound prajñā-pāramitā and illuminating and seeing that the five aggregates are all empty means that at the very moment one realizes the tathāgatagarbha endowed with prajñā wisdom, the mind becomes empty. The key word here is "practiced," which means investigating the meaning of prajñā through Chan contemplation; "profound" refers both to depth of meditative concentration (samādhi) and to depth of the wisdom of investigation, with a clear direction. On the premise of this depth, the sixth and seventh consciousnesses give rise to great wisdom, which wisdom illuminates the real characteristic of the dharmadhātu, realizing that all dharmas within the five aggregates are manifested by the prajñā mind, the tathāgatagarbha, and that the essential nature of the five aggregates is empty—false appearances, illusory forms.

When this is so, deep in one's heart one knows that the five aggregates are not real, and thus there is no suffering; in an instant one crosses over all suffering and distress. All suffering and distress are conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha; they are false appearances, not real. Having thus illuminated and seen that the five aggregates are all empty, the mind becomes empty and non-active, and afflictions are severed. This is the merit and benefit of attaining the Mahāyāna path of seeing by realizing the tathāgatagarbha; this is the manas seeing the path, the manas attaining the samādhi state of realizing the tathāgatagarbha, with both samādhi and wisdom complete, the equal cultivation of Samādhi and Prajñā. What is called "illuminating and seeing" means sudden enlightenment—there is no time or effort of gradually understanding through pondering, analyzing, and deliberating; one knows or one does not know, without hesitation or ambiguity.

After thus illuminating and seeing that the five aggregates are all empty, is it still necessary to separately accomplish the transformation of the basis as tathāgatagarbha in order to call it realization and enlightenment? Not at all. This is genuine, unambiguous realization and sudden enlightenment, not the kind of intellectual understanding that is gradually attained through analysis and inference, gradually clarified step by step. One has already entered the gate of the Mahāyāna and obtained genuine merit and benefit. If instead one uses the mind consciousness to reason, ponder, and guess at a tathāgatagarbha, such guessing and inference carries no merit or benefit whatsoever, and so one must slowly accomplish 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. Consequently, a huge mess of problems remains unhandled—afflictions are still afflictions, ignorance is still ignorance.

This is like those who take meditative concentration as Chan: they cultivate a samādhi of "not one thought arising" and take this to be the thought-free state of the true mind, mistaking the false for the true. But after emerging from concentration, deluded thoughts appear again. Because they fear in their hearts that the true mind will vanish, they keep cultivating concentration, staying in long samādhi, striving not to leave concentration, in order to preserve and sustain the state of concentration and ensure the true mind is not lost—calling it, in fine-sounding words, "preserving and sustaining." However, the state of concentration will eventually disappear, and one must eventually emerge from concentration. Even if one did not emerge from concentration for countless kalpas, the state of concentration is still not the true mind, the self-nature. If one has truly awakened, what is there to preserve and sustain? If one has truly realized the true mind, what transformation of the basis is there to accomplish? It is right here and now; in this very moment the mind is empty and pure. When the carp leaps over the Dragon Gate and becomes a dragon, would it still fear leaping back and turning into a carp? Only if one has never actually leaped over the Dragon Gate—trembling in one's heart, anxious about gain and loss—would one need to preserve, sustain, and transform the basis.