How to Avoid Intellectual Understanding

Many people today worry that they might attain only an intellectual understanding during their practice in the Mahayana and Hinayana paths, which could hinder their future realization. Thus, a question arises: how to avoid intellectual understanding.

What constitutes intellectual understanding? It refers to becoming very familiar with the Dharma principles, having a clear grasp of the Mahayana and Hinayana practices, almost knowing with certainty that "this is the principle, this is how it is," as if there are no more doubts.

However, this remains at the level of thorough intellectual understanding of the Dharma, still distant from genuine realization. Although many at this stage believe they have attained enlightenment and are easily guided or confirmed as enlightened, what follows thorough understanding are mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. The final, true wisdom—the wisdom of the manas (the root consciousness)—must still be developed. There remains a long and arduous journey ahead, one that is extremely difficult and demanding, requiring perseverance, skill, aspiration, faith, endurance, and compassion to overcome, reaching a temporary endpoint, goal, or destination.

After the intellectual consciousness thoroughly understands the Dharma, it must further influence and guide the manas to also attain thorough understanding. Even after the manas achieves thorough understanding, it still does not constitute enlightenment. One must develop continuous, uninterrupted mindfulness. Only when this mindfulness matures can concentration arise. Only when concentration is fully established can wisdom be developed, leading to the wisdom of path-realization in the Mahayana or Hinayana paths—recognizing the path, realizing the path, and confirming the path. Only then can one become irrevocably established on the Mahayana or Hinayana Bodhi path, never losing the merit of path-realization. Otherwise, encountering adverse conditions could easily cause regression from the Bodhi path, because while the intellectual consciousness understands, the manas remains unillumined. It is entirely normal for the manas to deny what the intellectual consciousness previously understood. Such regression is actually a regression of the intellectual consciousness; the manas itself does not regress because it never entered the path in the first place—it never saw the path, so how could there be any denial or regression? This so-called regression is merely agitation outside the gate before path-realization. Once one truly enters the gate, the genuine state of samadhi—the balanced union of concentration and wisdom—brings tranquility. The mind becomes empty and still; agitation fundamentally ceases.

The three steps—thorough understanding, mindfulness, and concentration—are all crucial; the later cannot arise without the former. Among them, the transmission of Dharma principles from the intellectual consciousness to the manas is a critical point. Once the manas accepts the Dharma, doubt will arise—a persistent, focused doubt. When this doubt matures, meditation concentration inevitably arises. Beyond this lie the two crucial stages of cultivating concentration and engaging in introspection (investigative meditation). Having attained a degree of thorough understanding of the Dharma, how does one enhance concentration, and how does one engage in introspection? For example, regarding the principle of abandoning the view of self: if one already has a general intellectual understanding and a rough clarity about the concept of non-self, this still does not constitute realization. How should one proceed in practice from here?

At this stage, some practitioners lack concentration, while others possess some but not yet sufficient. The primary task, of course, is to find ways to cultivate concentration and enhance this power. Only after attaining and fully stabilizing the "access concentration" (an early stage of meditative absorption) can one engage in introspection within that concentration, ultimately leading to realization. This is how one avoids mere intellectual understanding.