The Real You Has Not Yet Awakened

📖Master’s Reading

We are used to taking worldly labels for our true selves, anxious over our roles each day. Yet saṃsāra is in fact like a game of "role-play": in each life we merely put on a different outer form and act out a different drama of ignorance. These worldly identifications all revolve at the surface of the first six consciousnesses; the sixth consciousness speaks only of the principles of being human, and a soul forever entangled here can never accomplish practice.

True practice is seeing through and setting down these worldly roles. We must lay down the worldly and ignorant self and begin from the deep "seventh consciousness" to enter the pure buddha-nature. When the soul passes from the seventh consciousness into the bodhisattva path, rising to the eighth (manas) consciousness and even to the highest ninth consciousness, the mind takes on the height of the cosmos.

Standing at cosmic height and looking down on the human world, you find that the worldly eight sufferings that once felt unbearable are as trivial as a child's game, and all gain and loss are emptiness. This is a process of awakening that strips away illusory labels. When you peel off social identity, wealth and clinging layer by layer, the pure essence that remains is life's truest origin. To awaken the soul asleep deep in the body is where real practice begins.

🌱Reflection for Daily Life

• Understand that saṃsāra is like a game of role-play.
• Notice whether you cling too tightly to worldly labels.
• Set down the ignorant self and raise the mind's height.
• Strip away illusory labels and awaken the true soul.
• The role is not the real you; the pure soul is.