Cultivation of Concentration and Chan Meditation for Realization of the Way (Part 1)
Section 2: The Reasons for Being Unable to Enter Meditative Concentration
1. The Reasons for Failing to Cultivate Meditative Concentration Well
There are many reasons why meditative concentration is not cultivated well. Search carefully for them yourself, and then remove and correct all the greedy habits that should not exist. If you want to cultivate meditative concentration well and have a pure mind every day, you must eat less and not be greedy for food; the nutrition in your diet should not be excessive, and the flavors should not be too rich—if you eat lighter, the mind becomes purer. In human life, regarding clothing, food, housing, transportation, eating, drinking, and bodily functions, try not to be greedy or attached to any of them; moderation is best. In this way, it becomes easier to transcend the human way of life and resonate with the life of the heavenly realms, and meditative concentration will more easily arise.
Appropriate fasting has many benefits for the body and can extend one's lifespan. Do not fear hunger; hunger has its benefits. Eating less reduces the workload of the stomach and intestines, so there is less wear and tear, and the lifespan of the internal organs is naturally prolonged. Enjoying less and consuming less merit allows the retained merit to nourish the physical body, thereby extending one's lifespan. Drink water in moderation—just enough for the body's needs. Drinking too much always requires metabolism and excretion, which wastes time and also increases the workload of the internal organs, wearing them down. When abstaining from solid food and consuming only some liquid nourishment and fruits, the body feels light and the mind is very pure. When cultivating meditative concentration under such conditions, not only is the power of concentration good, but diseases can also be removed and the body becomes healthier. We Buddhists should not exhaust our blessings of merit; we should endure and exhaust our unwholesome karma as much as possible, so that the latter half of this life and future lives will be relaxed and pleasant. Think more about future lives, and especially more about your own career on the Path—only this is a wise person.
For almost everyone, the hardest things to relinquish are emotional attachment and desire. In cultivation, one should first relinquish desire, for among all afflictions, desire is the coarsest and easiest to relinquish. Heavenly beings have emotional attachment but no desire. Although desire-realm devas also have desire, it is very faint, which is why they live in the desire-realm heavens. With meditative concentration, both body and mind are comfortable and wondrous. Let us begin by relinquishing what is easiest to relinquish, and raise the quality of our lives.
Devas of the first dhyāna heaven do not eat food, do not smell fragrances or tastes, and have no sexual activity. If we wish to attain first-dhyāna concentration, we should not be greedy for food and drink, not greedy for their form, fragrance, and taste, and not greedy for their nutrition. At the same time, do not care about the odors of your surrounding living environment—do not pursue fragrant smells, do not detest unpleasant odors, do not be picky about or concerned with smells; let everything follow conditions, with indifference. Do not be attached to male or female forms; gender is merely an illusory false appearance—a combination of the four great elements, just like pork, nothing worth craving. Maintain such a mind, and there is no worry about lacking meditative concentration. Then subdue sleep and the scattered mind, and first-dhyāna concentration will easily arise.
In the Āgama sūtras, the Buddha told the bhikṣus to be diligent during the first watch of the night without craving sleep, diligent during the middle watch without craving sleep, and diligent during the last watch without craving sleep. Eat and drink less, without dullness and with few wandering thoughts, and sleep will naturally decrease.
We should frequently observe our own minds, sweeping and cleaning them, making the mind clean and pure, without hindrance or obstruction—then meditative concentration will quickly arise. Cultivating concentration is actually not very difficult. Modern life is too affluent, which easily gives rise to greed, so meditative concentration is not so easy to cultivate. Moreover, information from all directions is too developed and invades people's minds; everyone's mind is stuffed full. If the mind is not empty, how can there be meditative concentration? Add to that the living environment, where it is not easy to keep precepts; if one cannot keep precepts, how can there be meditative concentration?
2. The Reasons for Being Unable to Enter Meditative Concentration
Why do some people, when sitting in meditation to cultivate concentration, always fail to enter concentration, and why is their power of concentration so shallow? It is because the manas refuses to rest, with ceaseless grasping. The mind dwells on everything and cannot let go—this is ignorance. The mind believes there truly is an external world, that people, matters, and things truly exist, and so the mind cannot disentangle itself. Thus, when sitting in meditation, the manas always grasps everywhere, stirring up various matters, and the mind consciousness must then discern these matters, so the mind cannot be at peace, cannot settle down, and even less can it extinguish wandering thoughts. If there were no ignorance, and the manas did not grasp or cling and did not produce mental sense-objects, the mind consciousness would not need to discern them, and settling the mind would be very easy.
All the people, matters, and things seen within concentration are also produced by the manas's grasping, and are equally illusory. If you do not cling to these people, matters, and things, those states will gradually disappear, and the concentration will deepen. Remember the words the World-Honored One once told us: "All marks are false and illusory." Remind yourself of this at all times, and you can reduce grasping. When ignorance becomes thin, concentration becomes easy to cultivate.
3. When the Power of Concentration Is Insufficient, Thinking Is Not Clear
Everyone must train their own thinking well and not deviate too far from the right direction. If your thinking is not clear, you certainly lack meditative concentration, and then you must strive to cultivate it. If meditative concentration is not cultivated well, check whether you lack merit, or whether your observance of precepts is insufficient, or whether your afflictions and habitual tendencies are too heavy, or whether there are obstacles in your body. Many people lack meditative concentration; with insufficient power of concentration, their thinking cannot keep up, and when they cannot understand many teachings, they cannot achieve determination (adhimokṣa), and gradually fall behind in their cultivation.
Everyone, in their cultivation, must strive to find their own crux, their own shortcomings and deficiencies. After finding them, one must find ways to improve. Looking back at oneself, checking for gaps and patching leaks—this is a form of diligence. If the power of concentration is even slightly lacking, contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) cannot reach its target, and what one says lacks evidence and may not be the truth of reality. Therefore, as long as one's power of contemplative practice is not good enough and one's logical thinking is not strong, one should not assert one's own views and opinions with certainty—they are not definitive.
4. Taboos in Cultivating Concentration
Concentration means unmoving, quiet, non-restless. If you want body and mind to be quiet and unmoving, you must reduce food intake—do not eat too full; reduce the nutrition and quantity of food, and do not eat too well or too much. In this way, body and mind can quiet down and cease restlessness. If the energy from food is too abundant and excessive, it will leak outward; during the leakage, body and mind become restless and cannot be stilled. If the body is normal, an ordinary diet is fine; do not crave nutrition and energy, as this is not conducive to cultivation. Of course, lacking nutrition, with insufficient yang energy and a weak body, one also cannot cultivate. One must keep the body moderate and balanced for the mind to be quiet and for meditative concentration to be cultivated well.
5. Only by Keeping Precepts and Repenting Karmic Offenses Can Meditative Concentration Be Cultivated Well
The realization of all dharmas truly must occur within profound meditative concentration. Lacking meditative concentration, what one learns is mere knowledge, not true wisdom. Therefore, one must value meditative concentration and contemplative practice. The reason for insufficient concentration is a scattered mind; the reason for a scattered mind is much grasping and much craving. Gather the mind in, and meditative concentration will surely come. Gathering in body and mind requires keeping precepts; before keeping precepts, one must receive precepts; before receiving precepts, one must repent all karmic offenses. When karmic offenses are eliminated, obstructions vanish, and the mind becomes pure.
In repentance, first, one must change the seeds—repent newly created karma to offset old karmic offenses. Through repentance, mental conduct transforms, karma transforms, and one does not create it again. When the mind consciousness and manas become pure, this is the result of true repentance. With this result, first, karma is eliminated; second, no new karma is created. If there is no such effect, it shows the repentance was insincere—a false repentance. To judge whether karmic offenses have been eliminated after repentance, one must first see what kind of offense it was, whether light or heavy. For heavy offenses, one must see auspicious signs, after which the mind becomes much purer than before, some obstructions are removed, and the pace of cultivation quickens. After repenting light karmic offenses, the mind is also pure.
6. Battling Wandering Thoughts Is Not the Correct Method of Practice
How many people, in the course of learning Buddhism, constantly battle with wandering thoughts, believing that if they eliminate wandering thoughts, they can realize the Buddha's Dharma. But even if one battles wandering thoughts for a hundred years and subdues them, in the end one still does not understand the Buddha's Dharma; no wisdom is born, and there is no liberation. The correct method of practice is to have the manas transfer its attention to contemplating and contemplating-practicing the Buddha's Dharma; wandering thoughts will naturally decrease. Shift the attention, shift the object of grasping, and success in cultivation will come quickly.
Constantly fussing back and forth over wandering thoughts is of no benefit to practicing the Buddha's Dharma and gaining wisdom. The most direct method is to switch the object of grasping—from grasping worldly dharmas to grasping the Buddha's Dharma; transfer attachment to worldly dharmas onto the Buddha's Dharma; change one's interests, change the objects of craving, and convert worldly cleverness and petty intelligence in worldly matters into the wisdom of contemplating the Buddha's Dharma. Then concentration and wisdom will immediately appear—why worry about not attaining the Way? Those skilled in learning Buddhism should be skilled at utilizing wandering thoughts—not crushing thoughts to death, but knowing how to convert thoughts, converting them into thoughts of contemplating the Buddha's Dharma, with every thought and every moment on the Buddha's Dharma, every thought and every moment being the Buddha's Dharma. In this way, concentration and wisdom are accomplished.
If every day one battles with wandering thoughts, it is no different from the practice methods of non-Buddhist paths, and one fundamentally cannot match the profundity of the non-Buddhists' meditative concentration. In the past, the non-Buddhists cultivated concentration and achieved the four dhyānas and eight absorptions, and also developed the five superknowledges. But because they had not yet eradicated the view of self, they still took some dharma within the five aggregates and eighteen realms as self, as real; their wrong views and inverted views were not broken in the slightest. Based on these wrong views, they could not avoid the birth-and-death of saṃsāra. Even if they could remain in concentration for as long as eighty thousand great kalpas, after emerging from concentration after eighty thousand great kalpas, they would still fall into the three evil destinies, still unable to escape the suffering of birth-and-death and saṃsāra. It is precisely because of the wrong view of clinging to self that sentient beings create karma and undergo birth-and-death in saṃsāra. If the view of self is eradicated, the bond that ties oneself up is opened, and one can be assured of not entering the three evil destinies. In cultivation, breaking wrong views and gaining right knowledge and right views is extremely important; otherwise, even after cultivating for immeasurable kalpas, one is still walking the wrong path, unable to return to the right path, and cannot attain liberation.
As long as merit is complete, the goal is correct, and the method is appropriate, attaining enlightenment is not such a difficult thing. Each person's faculties are different, so the methods of practice differ. Those who from childhood enjoy tranquility, enjoy solitude, and have relatively few hobbies cultivate concentration relatively quickly; even without sitting in meditation, their minds grasp less, and their energy is focused. As soon as they encounter the Buddha's Dharma, they can single-mindedly contemplate the Dharma and go deep into it. After they have been steeped in the right knowledge and views of the Buddha's Dharma for a period of time and have acquired right views, they understand the method of investigating Chan and spontaneously and consciously begin to investigate Chan. In contrast, some people sit in meditation for ten or twenty years and still cannot single-mindedly contemplate the Buddha's Dharma, do not know how to contemplate-practice the Dharma, and cannot distinguish whether a dharma is right or wrong, or its level.
