Without Meditative Concentration (śamatha), Contemplative Practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) Is Impossible

Contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) without meditative concentration (śamatha) is mixed-up contemplation; the mind is scattered and distracted, often consisting merely of emotional thoughts and intellectual interpretations, with very little wisdom arising. Almost all sentient beings can engage in such scattered deliberation, so it is nothing remarkable. What is most valuable and most difficult to achieve is contemplation while in concentration, contemplation after concentration has been attained—this is far from easy. Genuine contemplative practice in the true sense takes a period of cultivation before it can be developed.

Yet some people actually advocate that one can engage in contemplative practice without cultivating meditative concentration or stillness. What kind of contemplative practice would that be? What direct-perception states could it observe, and what conclusions based on direct perception could it reach? Anyone can engage in this so-called contemplative practice, but it is of no benefit for realizing the Dharma, gaining wisdom, or attaining liberation; such contemplation cannot give rise to the wisdom of contemplative practice or the wisdom of observation. Nowadays the Buddha-Dharma has proliferated to the point of being bewildering: wrapped up in heaps of clever words and ingenious phrases, spoken so flamboyantly, yet containing no substantive content of cultivation and realization, leaving nothing for people to rely on in order to cultivate and realize the truth step by step, in a solid and down-to-earth manner. Sentient beings lack wisdom and are often beguiled by those flowery rhetoric, without awakening to it themselves.