Studying Theory Does Not Equal Practical Cultivation and Actual Realization

The Four Noble Truths, the Four Right Efforts, the Four Bases of Spiritual Power, the Five Faculties, the Five Powers, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Noble Eightfold Path — these contents all pertain to the cultivation process before and after attaining the path of insight (darśana-mārga). The Greater and Lesser Vehicles are largely similar in this regard, with analogous cultivation processes. Without the steeping in these processes, if a fruit were to suddenly appear, enabling one to become a sage, this fruit would be extremely unreliable. Fruits and conclusions can be plagiarized; all knowledge and views can be memorized — one can recite them by reading a few more books, or imagine them.

However, these processes cannot be plagiarized by anyone. They are necessary experiences for every individual who attains the path of insight and realizes the fruit. Each person's process may differ slightly due to their karmic roots from past lives. Those who realized the fruit in past lives may traverse these processes very quickly in this life, but others are not so; all must practice and realize them one by one, passing through each barrier. The same applies to the stages of attainment in the Greater Vehicle. Once these processes are fully experienced, one's body and mind undergo transformation, and at the moment of realizing the fruit, one enjoys immense liberation and merit.

For those who have not undergone these processes, the fruit they obtain is like flowers in the sky — pleasing to behold but of no practical value, devoid of the merit and benefit of liberation. It is like a plastic fruit — fine for display but unable to satisfy hunger.

So-called genuine practice refers precisely to the cultivation contents of the Thirty-seven Aids to Enlightenment (Bodhipakkhiyādhammā) of the Greater and Lesser Vehicles. To depart from these concrete and specific cultivation contents is not genuine practice. Any cultivation that has only conclusions without the process is not genuine practice. Merely studying theory is not genuine practice. One may study the theories of Bodhisattvas at various stages (bhūmis), but even understanding those principles still falls short of actual realization by the distance of one or two immeasurable eons (asamkhyeya-kalpas). To study theories that belong to one or two immeasurable eons from now, and then consider oneself to have mastered them, to believe one is already a sage — thinking the path ahead need not be walked, the actual cultivation processes need not be experienced or practiced — such cultivation is like an illusion, a bubble, a shadow. It yields only empty flowers and bears a hollow fruit.