The Attainment of the Fruits by Venerable Pilindavaccha

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, when the Venerable Pilindavatsa was pricked by a poisonous thorn, he concentrated his thoughts, and shortly after, his body and mind suddenly became empty, attaining the patience with non-arising. At that moment, the mental consciousness of the Venerable One was certainly concentrated, not engaging with any dharma apart from the doubt, nor even engaging with the body, unaware of the body's existence. The mental faculty (manas) was also concentrated; otherwise, mental consciousness could not have been concentrated, as it would necessarily follow the manas in grasping. Because the manas was concentrated and not engaging with other dharmas, both the body and the conscious mind became empty and vanished. This was not merely the nothingness of meditative concentration but also the emptiness in conceptual understanding—the realization that body and mind are not the self, the attainment of fruition. The concentration of body and mind is meditative concentration (dhyāna). Subsequently, deeper meditative concentration arose, and the wisdom of selflessness in body and mind was revealed.

Without meditative concentration, can genuine wisdom arise? It is impossible. Even if there is so-called wisdom, it is dry wisdom, belonging to those who merely grasp through intellectual understanding. Nowadays, everywhere there are such intellectual adherents like the monk Shenhui—it is uncertain whether they can even teach. When the Sixth Patriarch criticized the monk Shenhui, it was equivalent to criticizing people today. Yet people today remain unaware and unenlightened, studying the Dharma only through the emotional and intellectual understanding of consciousness, with no means to attain actual realization.