The Profound Meaning of the Diamond Sutra from the Consciousness-Only Perspective (22)

The desire realm includes the six levels of heavens, humans, and the beings of the three evil paths. The form realm has eighteen levels of heavens: thirteen levels from the first dhyāna heaven to the fourth dhyāna heaven, and the five heavens of non-returners, including the Avṛha heaven, the Atapa heaven, the Sudarśana heaven, the Sudṛśa heaven, and the Asaṃjñi heaven. Arhats of the third fruit cultivate here; after severing the final afflictions, self-conceit, and craving-attachment to the three realms, they attain the fourth fruit of arhatship, and then either enter Nirvāṇa without remainder or turn their minds toward the Great Vehicle, taking rebirth anew to learn the bodhisattva path. Other beings cultivate in the five heavens of non-returners; after becoming weary of the form body, they abandon the form body and ascend to the formless realm. The form realm has the burden of form; "formless" means that the formless realm has no form body—beings there have only the mind consciousness, the manas, and the Ālayavijñāna existing, with the mind abiding unmoving in meditative concentration (samādhi).

The formless realm has four levels of heavens: the heaven of the sphere of boundless space, the heaven of the sphere of boundless consciousness, the heaven of the sphere of nothingness, and the heaven of the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. Beings in the formless realm also cultivate the contemplation of emptiness, with the aim of entering Nirvāṇa without remainder, but because they have not thoroughly understood this principle of emptiness, they still remain within the cycle of the six paths of rebirth. Take, for example, the Buddha's non-Buddhist teacher Udraka Rāmaputra, who cultivated the highest meditative absorption—the absorption of neither perception nor non-perception—and believed that since there was no perception within this absorption, it was the state of nirvāṇa. In fact, there was still an extremely subtle perception within that absorption. As long as there is a deluded mind, one cannot transcend the three realms and cannot attain liberation. After the Buddha attained the Way, He wished to deliver His teacher; looking with the divine eye, He saw that he had already been reborn in the heaven of neither perception nor non-perception and would not emerge from that absorption again. So He sighed with regret, saying that after descending from that heaven, he would fall into the three evil paths to undergo suffering.