The Unreliability of Consciousness

Question: I heard someone say that after enlightenment one may forget the content of the enlightenment. If one forgets it, then one no longer counts as an enlightened person, right? How could enlightenment still be forgotten?

Answer: The theoretical knowledge learned by the mind consciousness can be forgotten; what the mind consciousness has understood and memorized can be forgotten; a parrot's mimicry can be forgotten—once forgotten, it cannot be recalled. But enlightenment is the realization of the wisdom of one's own mind, a wisdom developed simultaneously by the manas and the mind consciousness, not obtained from elsewhere. Therefore the question of remembering and forgetting simply does not arise.

Recollection and forgetting are functions of the mind consciousness, and the mind consciousness is dependent in nature (paratantra), arising and ceasing, subject to change. When the conditions are not complete, the mind consciousness weakens and disappears. For example, if the brain has a pathological change, or is stimulated, or the mind suffers a shock, or in old age the brain atrophies, the functions of the mind consciousness decline and cannot operate normally, so one cannot recall many people, events, principles, and things from the past—this is called forgetting. When the mind consciousness disappears, one even less can remember anyone or anything from the past. For instance, after falling asleep, fainting, dying, or undergoing rebirth, the mind consciousness has vanished, and the people and events one experienced in the past are temporarily or permanently erased. In the antarā-bhava (the neutrino-body), although there is a faint mind consciousness, its functions are limited, controlled by karmic power, and it can accomplish nothing on its own.

If only the mind consciousness has awakened to and understood certain principles, while the manas has not awakened, then there is truly no guarantee at all. The moment the mind consciousness disappears, everything is forgotten completely clean. Because the mind consciousness arises from causes and conditions and changes extremely fast—under some influence it changes at the drop of a hat, turns hostile in an instant, forgets something and cannot recall it, and in the space of a doze the mind becomes a blank. Therefore, if one has not gone through the arduous process of investigating Chan, has never truly investigated, yet fantasizes about reaching heaven in a single step by letting the mind consciousness directly know the rough result, without imprinting the manas, then this result vanishes in an instant and yields almost no benefit of merit.

Without passing through the concrete stages of cultivating the Path, without painstakingly investigating Chan, the manas receives no imprinting; one can only rely on the mind consciousness's reasoning, imagination, guessing, and conjecture—without any direct perception, everything is non-valid cognition. The content of such conjecture, of course, will be forgotten at any moment, will not function, cannot guide bodily, verbal, and mental actions, and cannot become an uninterrupted, continuous state of mind—it may not even last a few minutes, and its dissolution is only a matter of time.

But through the arduous process of investigating Chan, with the manas participating in it, awakening to the true mind and self-nature, that is a state of direct-perception wisdom; meditative absorption (samādhi) appears, it becomes uninterrupted seeing of the Path, and bodily, verbal, and mental actions are pure. In that case, even if the mind consciousness wants to forget, it cannot forget; even if it wants to lose it, it cannot lose it; even if it wants to regress, it cannot regress—because this matter is governed by the manas. Once the manas has awakened, the mind consciousness must accord with the manas, receiving the manas's direction and control; even if it forgets, it cannot help but recall it. In fact, it does not depend at all on whether the mind consciousness wants to remember or not; even if the mind consciousness ceases, it does not matter—the manas is awakened, and so it is awakened forever. Whether asleep, unconscious, dead, or in the antarā-bhava, one is still awakened, and one will undergo rebirth in the capacity of an awakened one, obtaining the wholesome fruit of realization.

In studying Buddhism and cultivating practice, using only the mind consciousness means suffering a great loss. To rely on the arising-ceasing, changing, impermanent mind consciousness to resolve the great matter of birth and death shows one has absolutely not thought through what cultivation is. One eats one's own food and one is oneself filled; if one always depends on external conditions, those conditions will cease—one cannot rely on them until after countless kalpas. Therefore a person of wisdom must not place the weight on the unreliable mind consciousness that constantly arises, ceases, and changes; the same is true of any matter, mundane or supramundane. To summarize once more: any fruit realized by the mind consciousness is a fruit made of paper, and paper is the easiest to rot and decay.