How Can One Truly Cultivate and Realize the Wisdom of Direct Perception?

Many people take the Dharma as they understand it to be personal realization, and their understanding may even be quite shallow—some even arrive at the Dharma through guessing, inference, and speculation. They cannot distinguish the boundaries and differences between intellectual understanding, awakening through understanding, and awakening through realization, and this great misunderstanding leads to the grave false speech of claiming realization one does not have. Many answers and conclusions in the Buddha-Dharma were given by the Buddha Himself, and some were expounded by the great bodhisattvas and good spiritual teachers. When, in the course of one's practice, one comes to understand these conclusions and answers, that is not realization; it does not even count as awakening through understanding—it is still very far from it.

What, then, is realization? For example, the Buddha said that all dharmas are like a dream, like an illusion. This is a conclusion the Buddhas reached through cultivation and verification; it is the Buddha's realization-attainment. If others merely understand it, it is only understanding—not even awakening through understanding. To genuinely awaken to the realization that all is like a dream and an illusion, one must reach the tenth dedication stage of the bodhisattva path, after which one soon becomes qualified to enter the first bhūmi. So can ordinary sentient beings, merely by reading and understanding that all dharmas are like a dream and an illusion, directly become great bodhisattvas of the tenth dedication stage? Obviously not. They lack the precepts, meditation, and wisdom, as well as the bodhisattva's six perfections; nothing has been cultivated to completion, and they have not even attained initial enlightenment. How could they leap over nearly one great asaṃkhyeya kalpa of time to become great bodhisattvas of the tenth dedication stage?

Realizing that all is like a dream and an illusion requires, on the foundation of fully cultivating the precepts, meditation, and wisdom and the bodhisattva's six perfections, contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and investigation proceeding from the shallow to the profound, sequentially realizing the dharmas at each level—from the first and second barriers of the Chan school all the way to the third barrier—before one can finally realize the contemplation that all is like a dream. This takes many kalpas of time, a cultivation approaching one great asaṃkhyeya kalpa. Even the understanding that all is like a dream and an illusion has many levels, and even a complete, thorough, exhaustive understanding does not equal realization, because there has been no actual process of investigation, no proof; the conclusion was not arrived at by oneself.

It is like a geometry proof problem: the final conclusion is given by the teacher, ready-made, not derived by oneself. One must prove it step by step, with a process and steps, and only at the end can one prove the final conclusion given by the teacher. If the process is incomplete or inaccurate, even if one arrives at a conclusion consistent with the teacher's, it is still wrong—not directly perceived realization (pratyakṣa). The Buddha-Dharma works on exactly the same principle. Everyone can state the final conclusion that all is like a dream and an illusion; although what they say is correct truth, it is still not their own direct-perception realization.

In the Buddha-Dharma, the Buddha has given us countless final answers and conclusions, contained in the Tripiṭaka and the twelve divisions of the scriptures. Even if we memorized the entire Tripiṭaka and the twelve divisions of the scriptures, and even expounded them eloquently, that would still not be our own realization-attainment—it would merely represent our understanding, still a great distance from awakening through understanding, let alone awakening through realization. Every dharma the Buddha taught, even every single sentence, requires us to deliberate and investigate within profound meditative concentration (samādhi), and to engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) in accordance with reality and principle, before we can possibly realize them one by one. Only the wisdom after realization is one's own wisdom of direct perception; otherwise, no statement is one's own realization, and true wisdom will not accord with what is said.

If one truly wants to realize and to achieve something, one must even forget the finer details of contemplating the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), casting them behind. Just devote oneself to contemplative practice and investigation; the details need to be clarified by oneself during contemplation, and only then can wisdom arise. Many people simply cannot apply their effort to the manas; that is because their meditative concentration is severely insufficient, and they can never get a feel for how to let the manas alone deliberate (manasikāra). With insufficient power of concentration, how could there be any such experience? When one lacks meditative concentration, it is best not to investigate anything at all. A clever mind consciousness will "understand" quite a lot, but it has no real use—it may serve for verbal display, but it is of no practical value. It would be better for the mind consciousness not to "understand" the Dharma at all; it is best to reserve that for raising one's meditative concentration, and investigate again when the conditions are complete.