The Terrible Consequences of Understanding the Dharma

Question: Why is it said that if everyone who studies and practices Buddhism only reaches intellectual understanding (jie wu), the true Buddhadharma will gradually disappear and perish? The vast majority of us cannot even get close to intellectual understanding—isn't intellectually understanding the Buddhadharma already quite good?

Answer: Let me give an example. Suppose everyone buys a book to learn driving skills, or listens to someone explain driving techniques in person, and everyone masters the technical knowledge and all feels they can drive. Yet they have never actually driven a car, never even touched a steering wheel. Then these people go on to write books and teach others how to drive. In that case, what would driving skills become after being passed down like this? Would this skill still have any practical, hands-on value? Would anyone drive in the future? Would there still be anyone who knows how to drive? After this, wouldn't the skill of driving be lost, becoming merely a game of armchair theorizing?

The Buddhadharma is the same. If everyone merely attains intellectual understanding without real realization, and one person passes it to another, then eventually even those with intellectual understanding will cease to exist, and even the intellectually understood Buddhadharma will become distorted, and the true Buddhadharma will be lost. This is a situation the Buddha could not bear to see, and as the Buddha's true disciples, we would also feel deep pain over it.

There is an essential difference between comprehension and understanding on the one hand, and intellectual understanding (jie wu) on the other. Intellectual understanding is something like guessing the general way the tathāgatagarbha functions; it is not observed through direct perception, not as clear as seeing an object right before one's eyes. What is arrived at by guessing leaves the manas still unenlightened; the mind remains unsteady, without groundedness, and is easily swayed. In this way, one cannot observe the specific operations of the tathāgatagarbha and cannot give birth to genuine great wisdom. Ordinary comprehension and understanding mean one has learned and grasped the knowledge fairly well, but has not yet entered the stage of actual deliberation (manasikāra) and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and investigation; one still has not the slightest knowing of the operation of the tathāgatagarbha—still far from the level of intellectual understanding, and the gap with realization is even greater.