Three Kinds of Non-Discrimination

T1606 explains why only the third of these three genuinely counts as non-discrimination in the full sense the treatise has in mind. Non-discrimination through contentment describes an ordinary being who, having simply reflected to a conclusion about a single characteristic such as impermanence, becomes settled and satisfied — certain that "this is simply how it is, with nothing further to look for" — at which point all further active inquiry and discrimination on that point comes to a stop. Non-discrimination free of distortion describes the śrāvaka who, specifically counteracting the distorted views of permanence and the like concerning the aggregates, correctly observes that only form and the other aggregates are actually present, and thereby attains supramundane wisdom that penetrates selflessness. And non-discrimination free of conceptual proliferation describes the bodhisattva who, having recognized that form and the rest are themselves nothing but conceptual proliferation, is able to dissolve every characteristic of every dharma entirely, attaining the most utterly still supramundane wisdom that penetrates suchness in its full, all-pervading extent.

Of the three, only the bodhisattva's own non-discrimination free of conceptual proliferation is genuine non-discriminating wisdom in the treatise's own strict sense — the ordinary being's contentment is simply a halt in ordinary discursive thought, not a genuine penetration of reality at all, and the śrāvaka's freedom from distortion, while a real supramundane attainment, still falls short of the bodhisattva's own complete dissolution of every characteristic whatsoever.

T1606 walks through each of these five candidate identifications and shows, in turn, why each one fails to actually capture what genuine non-discriminating wisdom is. If non-discrimination simply meant the absence of mental attention, then deep sleep or intoxication — states in which no dharma's characteristics are being reflected upon at all — would themselves count as non-discriminating wisdom, which is plainly absurd. If it simply meant having gone beyond ordinary mental attention, then every meditative level from the second dhyāna upward, having already gone beyond investigation and analysis, would count as non-discriminating wisdom — yet mind and mental factors throughout all three realms are elsewhere explicitly said to be discrimination's own very essence, a direct contradiction. If it simply meant stillness itself, then the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, in which mind and mental factors themselves have entirely stilled, would count as non-discriminating wisdom — but in that case there would be no wisdom present there at all to be called anything. If it simply meant an object's own intrinsic nature, then form and the other objects themselves, which are simply not the sort of thing that discriminates in the first place, would count as non-discriminating wisdom. And if it simply meant applying deliberate effort toward an object, then the very activity of discrimination itself, which is nothing but exactly this kind of effortful engagement with an object, would end up counting as its own opposite.

Having ruled out all five, the treatise poses the natural next question: how, then, is non-discrimination free of conceptual proliferation actually to be understood? The answer given is that no effort is generated toward the object at all. And what does this actually mean in practice? A bodhisattva who has observed, in accordance with the teaching, that every dharma is unreal in both its nature and its characteristics, and who has thoroughly internalized this observation through sustained, repeated familiarity, comes to rest the mind, without any further deliberate exertion, in genuine stillness within the true suchness of all dharmas — the very domain free of conceptual proliferation, exactly as it is. It is this, and only this, that is properly called non-discriminating wisdom free of conceptual proliferation.