The Equal Cultivation of Samādhi and Prajñā: Not Straying onto the Wrong Path

If you want to learn Buddhism and cultivate practice more quickly, you must clarify the principles and framework of practice, distinguish the difference between the methods of cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) and the methods of investigating Chan, and then find the proper focus for your current practice, so as not to waste time.

If you want to subdue the arising and ceasing changes of the first five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness, not letting the five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness discern and feel the realms of the five sense objects, this is the method of cultivating meditative concentration. With this kind of meditation, after the power of concentration improves, you still need to use the five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness to observe the sense objects, to investigate the sense objects, to clearly recognize the true nature of the sense objects and of the world of the five aggregates, and thereby gain wisdom. Only with such wisdom of realization can one be liberated from the suffering of birth and death, and only then can practice reach its goal.

After meditative concentration has been developed, one must engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā). The Small Vehicle contemplates the five aggregates and the eighteen realms as suffering, empty, impermanent, and non-self; the Great Vehicle, on the basis of the Small Vehicle's contemplation, contemplates who it is that sees forms and hears sounds, and who it is that investigates Chan. Contemplative practice and Chan investigation necessarily involve observing and attending to the sense objects; it is just that one is more focused, with attention not scattered onto dharmas that are not needed.

In practice, one must not, like the non-Buddhists, solely cultivate meditative concentration, single-mindedly ignoring and disregarding all the dharmas around oneself, neither hearing nor asking about them—this cannot open wisdom. When one is on the verge of becoming a Buddha, not knowing even a single dharma is ignorance, and becoming a Buddha would then be hopeless. The non-Buddhist's mind is still; encountering all states, the mind does not move, even entering samādhi for eighty thousand great kalpas, knowing nothing of any matter, dull and dazed. Yet after emerging from samādhi, when evil karma manifests, he falls directly into the Avīci hell. This is exactly what happened to Śākyamuni Buddha's teacher—after the Buddha attained buddhahood, he wanted to save him but could not even find him; what a pity. If all the people of the world were combined together, they still could not match the mental stillness of such a non-Buddhist—but what use is that? Unable to understand the true nature of the world, unable to obtain the wisdom of liberation, one cannot escape continuing to struggle within the cycle of birth and death. Therefore, in learning Buddhism and cultivating practice, one must attend to both concentration and wisdom, cultivating precepts, concentration, and wisdom together, so as not to go astray.