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The final cut of the Diamond Sutra

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strikes at the Dharma itself

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Last time we discussed a common misconception

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Does awakening turn you into a cold emotionless person

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with no human feelings left

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I broke the relationship between awareness and emotion into five levels

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from being completely hijacked by emotion

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to noticing it afterward

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to noticing it in real time

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to developing a stable inner observer

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and finally to the fifth level

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where even the observer dissolves

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After that episode came out

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a viewer asked an excellent question

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He said

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The five levels make a lot of sense

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Could you explain how to reach the fifth

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I replied at the time

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To reach the fifth level

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the first step is actually to see through the first four

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Today I want to unpack that sentence completely

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Hello

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everyone

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I am Wang Lijie

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Here is a very quick recap for anyone who missed the last episode

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At the first level

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emotion arrives and carries you away

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and only afterward do you realize it

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At the second level

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you can notice the emotion after it passes

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Oh

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I just lost my temper

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At the third level

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you see the emotion as it arises

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you know you are angry while you are angry

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At the fourth level

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a stable observer appears within you

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To use the metaphor from last time

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it is like watching self driving from the drivers seat of a Tesla

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your hands are off the wheel

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yet you clearly see everything unfolding

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At the fifth level

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even the person watching from the drivers seat becomes transparent

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That person does not disappear

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the distance between observer and observed emotion disappears

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There is no person watching

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and no thing being watched

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there is only seeing itself

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That sounds abstract does it not

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Today we will leave abstraction aside

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and examine one very concrete question

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Between the fourth and fifth levels

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what exactly is blocking the way

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The answer may surprise you

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What blocks you

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is precisely everything the first four levels taught you

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The Buddha gave a metaphor in the Diamond Sutra

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called the parable of the raft

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He said

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You need to cross a river

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so I build you a small boat

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You row and row

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and after great effort finally reach the far shore

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What do you do after stepping ashore

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Naturally

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you put down the boat

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and continue on your way

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But the Buddha said

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what most practitioners do is this

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after reaching shore

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they carry the boat on their heads and keep walking

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then proudly tell everyone

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Look I have a boat

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Then the Buddha said something

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that may be the most devastating line

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in the entire Diamond Sutra

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Even the Dharma should be relinquished

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how much more what is not Dharma

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Think about those six Chinese characters

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Even correct teachings must be released

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let alone mistaken ones

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What does that mean

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The Buddha spent more than forty years teaching a complete system

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the thirty seven aids the twelve links the eight consciousnesses and emptiness

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building an entire tower brick by brick

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Then in the Diamond Sutra he says

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this tower is scaffolding

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Once the building is complete

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the scaffolding must come down

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This is not the Buddha being modest

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It is the underlying architecture of Buddhism

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The ultimate purpose of a tool

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is to make itself unnecessary

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So why do the first four levels become an obstacle to the fifth

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Let me unpack it through cognitive science

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We have discussed predictive coding before

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The brain is not a camera passively receiving reality

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It is a machine that actively generates predictions

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The brain first generates an expectation

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then checks sensory data against it

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When the data does not match the expectation

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a prediction error appears

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Learning means continually adjusting the predictive model

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so the error becomes smaller

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What the first four levels of practice do

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is install a new predictive model in the brain

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For someone at the first level

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the brains default model is

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the emotion is me

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When the amygdala fires

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I am that anger

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with no distance at all

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At the second and third levels

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you begin installing a new model over the old one

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The core belief of this new model is

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the emotion is not me

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I can observe the emotion

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By the fourth level

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this new model has become very stable

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You can sustain the perspective of an observer

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watching emotions come and go

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without being swept away

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At this point

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most people feel they have become very clear

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But this is exactly where the problem begins

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That observer

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that supposed self who can observe emotion

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what is it itself

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It is a model

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a new set of prior beliefs trained through practice

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In the language of Yogacara

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this is attachment to Dharma

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attachment to the teachings themselves

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Before this you clung to the self

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to the body and mind composed of the five aggregates

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Through practice

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you saw through that attachment

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Congratulations

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your attachment to self has loosened

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But manas consciousness does not stay idle

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Its instinct is to seize something and announce

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This is me

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You broke through attachment to self

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so it released the five aggregates

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but immediately reached for the next available thing

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What is the best thing it can seize now

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Awareness itself

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So manas consciousness says

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Fine

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I am no longer those emotions

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I am the awareness that sees them

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Do you notice something

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I am anger became I am awareness

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The subject changed

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but the sentence did not

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The subject shifted from the five aggregates to awareness

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yet an I still remains

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Attachment to self became attachment to Dharma

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You moved from one cage into another

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The new cage is simply decorated more elegantly

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so you have not recognized it as a cage

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This is where many people get stuck in practice

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They can see their emotions

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and are no longer carried away

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Their minds are quite calm

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yet something subtly feels wrong

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That discomfort comes from this

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the observer has become a new identity

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a new point of attachment

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You have practiced for so long

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that you created a refined spiritual identity card

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and now use it to define yourself

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Neuroscience offers some fascinating observations here

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Studies of long term meditators have found

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that when beginners meditate

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activity in the default mode network drops markedly

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That network is the system constantly telling stories in your head

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Who am I

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What do others think of me

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What must I do tomorrow

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That thing yesterday was so embarrassing

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During meditation these stories stop for beginners

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and the mind becomes quiet

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This roughly corresponds to the second and third levels

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Long term meditators show a different pattern

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The default mode network is not simply shut down

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Instead the seesaw relationship between the default mode network

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and the task positive network disappears

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In an ordinary brain

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these two networks inhibit each other

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when one activates the other quiets down

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But in a deeply meditative brain

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both networks can operate together without fighting

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What does this mean in cognitive science

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It means that advanced meditation

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is not one network suppressing another

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nor the observer suppressing the observed

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the opposition between them has dissolved

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At the fourth level

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you sit here

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the emotion is over there

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with distance between you

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and you watch it

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At the fifth level

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that distance falls to zero

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The observer and emotion do not merge

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the dimension of distance itself ceases to exist

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It is like asking whether north of the North Pole is north or south

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Once you reach the North Pole

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the north south coordinate system loses meaning

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The Song dynasty Chan master Qingyuan Weixin

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once gave three statements

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perhaps the most concise description of this process

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He said

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Before I practiced Chan thirty years ago

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mountains were mountains

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and waters were waters

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Later after receiving true instruction

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and gaining an entry

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mountains were not mountains

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and waters were not waters

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Now that I have found a resting place

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mountains are simply mountains again

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and waters simply waters

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Mountains are mountains

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This is the first level

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There is no distance between you and the world

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but not because you are clear

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because you have never noticed anything

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You are fused with the mountain

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Mountains are not mountains

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This is the second through fourth levels

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You begin taking things apart

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You discover a mountain is not merely a mountain

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It is made of atoms

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it arises through dependent origination

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and it is constructed by your brain

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You use conceptual tools to dismantle the ordinary world

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That is good

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and necessary

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but if you stop there

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you become someone who analyzes forever

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You eat a bowl of rice

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while thinking about carbohydrates and insulin responses

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You look at a flower

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and think about evolution and pollination strategies

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You have seen through the world

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but also made the world disappear

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Mountains are mountains again

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This is the fifth level

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All tools have been put down

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the mountain becomes a mountain again

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and water becomes water again

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It looks exactly like the first level

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but it is completely different

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The first level is someone who never left the ground floor

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The fifth is someone who reached the roof and came back down

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to stand on the ground floor again

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The position is the same

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but the view is entirely different

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So how do you move from the fourth level to the fifth

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Here is an honest answer that may disappoint many people

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The fifth level cannot be trained into existence

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It happens

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You can train the first four levels

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You can practice noticing emotion

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practice mindfulness

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practice seated meditation

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and use many methods to sharpen observation

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All of these are Dharma

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all are tools

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all are rafts

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But the fifth level is not a destination tools can reach

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because at the fifth level you must release

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the very person using the tools

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A knife cannot cut itself away

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Thought cannot eliminate thought

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The observer cannot cancel the observer

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Every effort in those directions

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creates another round of attachment

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I am trying to let go

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I am earnestly trying to see through it

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I am practicing something called not practicing

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Look

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every such thought lays another brick

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So what can you do

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The Chan approach is fascinating

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It does not tell you to stop practicing

289
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It tells you

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practice

291
00:10:18,872 --> 00:10:20,650
but do not make a big deal of practice

292
00:10:21,073 --> 00:10:23,449
A koan illustrates this beautifully

293
00:10:23,912 --> 00:10:25,630
A monk asked Chan master Zhaozhou

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00:10:26,032 --> 00:10:27,431
I have just entered the monastery

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Please guide me master

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00:10:28,872 --> 00:10:29,429
Zhaozhou asked

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00:10:29,833 --> 00:10:31,089
Have you eaten your porridge

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The monk replied

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00:10:32,152 --> 00:10:32,809
Yes

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Zhaozhou said

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Then go wash your bowl

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It is that simple

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There is no advanced instruction

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and no secret formula

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00:10:41,051 --> 00:10:42,528
When it is time to practice just practice

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00:10:42,811 --> 00:10:44,289
when it is time to sit just sit

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when it is time to observe just observe

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Do not add another story on top of these actions

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00:10:49,770 --> 00:10:51,628
Do not wash the bowl while thinking

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I am doing something extraordinary called spiritual practice

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When eating porridge just eat porridge

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When washing the bowl just wash the bowl

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When practicing just practice

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Do not build a palace about practice on top of practice

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True letting go

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is not an action you decide to perform

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One day after practicing for long enough

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you look back

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and find your hands already empty

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You do not know when you released it

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You did not make a decision called letting go

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You simply kept living

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until one moment the grasping hand had opened

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You did not open it

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it opened by itself

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I have spent many years investing

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and went through a structurally similar process

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At first I relied on intuition

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and invested whenever something felt good

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Later I learned many frameworks

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sector analysis and business model assessment

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founder profiling and market sizing

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framework after framework and model after model

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These tools really helped me avoid many mistakes

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But at some point I realized I had become slower

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The tools were not bad

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I had become a tool operator

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I was no longer looking at the company

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I was forcing it into a model

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I could no longer see what the company really looked like

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All I could see were models

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Then one day I suddenly realized

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my best investment decisions

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had not come from a model

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00:12:14,872 --> 00:12:17,248
After talking with a founder for ten minutes

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something in my body that I could not explain told me

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This is right

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That feeling was not illogical

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all the logic had become internalized

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so I no longer needed to summon it deliberately

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It is like driving for ten years

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00:12:29,072 --> 00:12:32,888
you no longer think about coordinating the clutch and accelerator

353
00:12:32,992 --> 00:12:34,128
You simply know

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This resembles mountains being mountains again

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00:12:37,271 --> 00:12:38,748
It does not mean you never learned the models

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You learned them

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mastered them

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until you no longer needed to recall them consciously

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They became your way of seeing the world

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rather than tools you must take out and use

361
00:12:50,644 --> 00:12:51,701
Back to spiritual practice

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00:12:51,924 --> 00:12:54,221
The fifth level does not reject the first four

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Quite the opposite

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without the accumulation of the first four levels

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the fifth could never happen

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The Buddha said even the Dharma should be relinquished

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not that the Dharma need not be learned

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You need a raft first

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before you can release the raft

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Someone who never boarded cannot say I need no boat

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That is not letting go

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that is never having begun

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Ken Wilber calls this the pre trans fallacy

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This is exactly what he means

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An infant has no developed self

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an awakened person has transcended the self

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00:13:20,644 --> 00:13:21,961
both may look selfless

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but one has not climbed upstairs

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00:13:24,203 --> 00:13:26,300
while the other has returned from the roof

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00:13:26,443 --> 00:13:29,380
You cannot jump from the basement straight to the roof

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00:13:29,603 --> 00:13:32,260
But you also cannot cling to the ladder forever

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The hardest part of practice is not learning Dharma

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but releasing Dharma when the time comes

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00:13:38,673 --> 00:13:40,329
The Diamond Sutra has another line

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Let the mind arise without dwelling anywhere

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It dwells nowhere

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yet the mind still functions

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The mind is not shut down

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00:13:47,833 --> 00:13:51,130
it simply stops sticking to every station

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00:13:51,392 --> 00:13:52,150
Emotion arrives

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00:13:52,392 --> 00:13:53,290
and the mind moves

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00:13:53,353 --> 00:13:54,150
Emotion leaves

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00:13:54,353 --> 00:13:55,489
and the mind is empty again

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00:13:55,593 --> 00:13:59,409
No observer is crouching there taking notes

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Everything that has helped you

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00:14:01,712 --> 00:14:02,929
techniques of awareness

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00:14:02,952 --> 00:14:03,868
methods of breathing

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00:14:04,151 --> 00:14:05,368
frameworks of contemplation

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00:14:05,472 --> 00:14:07,368
even every word spoken by the Buddha

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00:14:07,472 --> 00:14:09,529
once they have fulfilled their purpose

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00:14:09,551 --> 00:14:11,769
once they have carried you across the river

402
00:14:11,832 --> 00:14:13,968
gently leave them on the shore

403
00:14:14,311 --> 00:14:15,228
You need not destroy them

404
00:14:15,551 --> 00:14:16,508
or deny them

405
00:14:16,872 --> 00:14:17,889
simply put them down

406
00:14:18,192 --> 00:14:21,368
You would not hate a boat that carried you through rapids

407
00:14:21,872 --> 00:14:24,878
You simply no longer need to carry it on your back

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00:14:25,381 --> 00:14:28,317
Then you may discover something wonderful

409
00:14:28,580 --> 00:14:30,397
When you truly put down the tools

410
00:14:30,460 --> 00:14:33,598
the person who used them also becomes transparent

411
00:14:33,940 --> 00:14:34,777
That person does not vanish

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00:14:35,100 --> 00:14:36,118
but becomes transparent

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00:14:36,381 --> 00:14:36,978
He is still there

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00:14:37,301 --> 00:14:39,078
but no longer blocks anything

415
00:14:39,301 --> 00:14:42,718
It is like holding a pane of glass up to view the world

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00:14:43,021 --> 00:14:45,037
You polish the glass until it is cleaner and cleaner

417
00:14:45,100 --> 00:14:49,317
from dirty glass to clear glass to colorless glass to ultra clear glass

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00:14:49,620 --> 00:14:52,557
Yet however clean it becomes it is still glass

419
00:14:52,781 --> 00:14:55,277
Until one day you put the glass down

420
00:14:55,541 --> 00:14:58,478
You discover the world did not become any clearer

421
00:14:58,820 --> 00:15:01,238
because the world had always been that way

422
00:15:01,541 --> 00:15:05,218
You were holding up something called seeing in order to see

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00:15:05,641 --> 00:15:06,897
Today we unpacked one question

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00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:09,257
From the fourth level to the fifth

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00:15:09,400 --> 00:15:11,698
what exactly is the wall blocking you

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00:15:11,920 --> 00:15:12,438
The answer is

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00:15:12,721 --> 00:15:14,658
you built that wall yourself

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00:15:14,920 --> 00:15:17,338
Every teaching you learn adds another brick

429
00:15:17,641 --> 00:15:18,517
Awareness is one brick

430
00:15:18,881 --> 00:15:20,058
mindfulness is one brick

431
00:15:20,080 --> 00:15:21,559
seeing no self is one brick

432
00:15:21,560 --> 00:15:23,578
knowing that you are seeing is one brick

433
00:15:23,841 --> 00:15:25,298
Every brick is a good brick

434
00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:28,108
but good bricks stacked together still make a wall

435
00:15:28,452 --> 00:15:30,429
The Buddha said even Dharma should be relinquished

436
00:15:30,491 --> 00:15:32,549
to help you dismantle this wall

437
00:15:32,651 --> 00:15:35,149
And when the wall comes down you may discover

438
00:15:35,212 --> 00:15:37,108
there is nothing behind it

439
00:15:37,411 --> 00:15:39,669
not nothing in the sense of empty absence

440
00:15:40,212 --> 00:15:45,204
there was never another side that required crossing the wall

441
00:15:45,548 --> 00:15:47,405
Let me leave you with one final question

442
00:15:47,828 --> 00:15:49,964
If even letting go must be let go

443
00:15:50,107 --> 00:15:52,385
what is left standing at the end

444
00:15:53,027 --> 00:15:54,885
I do not have an answer

445
00:15:55,267 --> 00:15:57,844
Or rather any answer put into language

446
00:15:57,907 --> 00:16:01,084
becomes another brick the moment it is spoken

447
00:16:01,507 --> 00:16:04,964
All I can do is stand before the question with you

448
00:16:05,267 --> 00:16:05,864
If we stand there long enough

449
00:16:06,107 --> 00:16:08,525
perhaps the question will quiet down on its own

450
00:16:08,708 --> 00:16:09,545
And that quiet

451
00:16:09,948 --> 00:16:12,226
may be its own answer

452
00:16:12,823 --> 00:16:13,380
What do you think

453
00:16:13,755 --> 00:16:16,920
Have you ever been trapped by something your own practice created

454
00:16:17,408 --> 00:16:19,138
Tell me about your experience

455
00:16:19,384 --> 00:16:20,015
I am Wang Lijie

456
00:16:20,278 --> 00:16:21,126
See you next time