Only When the Causal Conditions Are Complete Can One Awaken to the Path

If the conditions for attaining realization and awakening to the true mind are complete, then upon encountering the corresponding conditions—whatever they may be, whether deliberately arranged or arising from the natural environment—as long as they can touch the mind deep within, one can attain realization and awaken to the true mind. If one encounters the Buddha teaching the Dharma, it is even more possible to attain realization and awaken to the true mind and see one's nature, for the Buddha's power of majestic blessing is immense, and the magnetic-field effect of a Dharma assembly where the Buddha teaches is also immense. Moreover, practitioners in the Buddha's time generally possessed profound dhyāna, their minds were pure, they all had the mind of renunciation, their afflictions were slight, and their roots of goodness and merit were deep and abundant. Therefore, upon hearing the Dharma, they could engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and deliberation following the sound of the Buddha's voice, and immediately attain realization and awaken to the true mind.

If one's Buddhist practice has not yet reached the necessary level, if there is no questioning doubt in the mind, no active investigation, no abiding mindfulness of this very object, then even if one encounters many conditions that should lead to enlightenment, one will let them pass by in vain and fail to awaken. We sentient beings of the Dharma-ending age cannot compare with those of the Buddha's time: our roots of goodness are scant and our merit thin, our minds restless and agitated, and we lack meditative concentration. Even if the Buddha-dharma is explained in the finest detail, it cannot enter the mind, so no one can truly and genuinely realize any fruit of attainment; at best, one can merely reach some intellectual understanding, which is already quite good.

Precisely because sentient beings nowadays generally lack meditative concentration and cannot fulfill the requirement of dhyāna, a certain claim has emerged: that one need not cultivate concentration but can directly engage in contemplative practice of the Buddha-dharma. Yet without dhyāna, how can one have the capacity for contemplative practice? What could one contemplate and realize? For how long could one sustain it? Everyone can test this for themselves: compare the contemplative practice before cultivating concentration with that after cultivating concentration, and see how great the difference in effect really is. It can be said the difference is enormous—the results are fundamentally different.

For a given point of Dharma meaning, deliberating with meditative concentration versus deliberating without it is as different as heaven and earth. That is why many people, when deliberating on the Buddha-dharma, cannot truly understand it at all; they misinterpret and misunderstand far too much, unable to grasp the true meaning. To actually realize it and engage in direct perception/valid direct cognition contemplative practice is truly, extremely difficult. Even so, many people place great confidence in their own power of understanding, readily citing a passage of scripture to prove their point of view. In fact, the meaning of the scripture and their own view do not accord at all; they have misinterpreted a great deal without knowing it. Many who study the scriptures simply cannot accurately and thoroughly understand the true meaning of the texts, yet still consider themselves quite capable. In truth, the Buddha-dharma can never be worked out through research alone; only through deep dhyāna, deliberation in accord with reason, contemplative practice, and investigation can one truly understand and truly realize. Research cannot lead to realization.

Some people, seeing the records in the sutras of sentient beings attaining realization and awakening to the true mind at the very moment of hearing the Buddha teach, note that those people had not cultivated dhyāna and yet directly attained realization—as if merely hearing the Dharma and reflecting a little were enough to attain realization, without any need to deliberately cultivate concentration. This is a tremendous misunderstanding. They do not know that those who attained realization upon hearing the Dharma had already fulfilled the requirement of dhyāna, with deep roots of goodness and abundant merit, lacking only the conditions. Encountering the supremely excellent condition of the Buddha teaching the Dharma, of course they could very easily attain realization and awaken to the true mind and see their nature. Such people see only the final result, blind to how long a path of practice those who attained realization had already walked beforehand—how they applied effort before hearing the Buddha's teaching, how they made aspirations and conducted themselves, how they strove to cultivate dhyāna. Ignoring all these necessary conditions, they single out only the final segment of attaining realization—this is the most serious form of quoting out of context.

People today are so restless that they all want to take shortcuts—the simpler and more direct, the better. They do not want to walk the path the Buddha himself walked, believing their own methods more practical and more direct than the Buddha's, sparing themselves such hardship. Could it be that an ordinary being is superior to the Buddha, more wise than the Buddha? Was the Buddha's practice all a roundabout detour, while one's own path is the most direct—no need to lay a foundation, no need to pay any price, no need to laboriously cultivate concentration to subdue one's own mind, just do some research and achieve great results? That is a fool's dream. The fruits produced by research are all made of paper—scattered and ruined by a gust of wind, melted away when meeting fire. In today's world there are too many fake fruits, all stamped with radish seals, unable to withstand the slightest stir of wind and grass; the karmic retribution after death, one will know for oneself.