Why Should We Observe the Mind When Learning Buddhism?

Those who do not know how to contemplate the mind, who are not skilled at contemplating the mind, and who cannot contemplate the mind are unable to awaken to their own mind; and if one cannot awaken to one's own mind, one cannot transform one's own mind. Many people who study Buddhism simply let their minds drift along, complying with their own afflictions of greed, anger, and delusion, complying with their own self-nature, never having considered that they have evil minds and unwholesome mental factors, and therefore never having considered changing themselves. Consequently, they will not go against themselves at every moment and in every place, will not go against their own afflictive habits, and will not go against their own ignorance and delusion, not knowing that complying with one's own mind and self-nature is complying with birth-and-death, complying with the three evil paths, and complying with bitter karma.

Revolution—whose life is to be revolutionized? It is one's own life that must be revolutionized, the life of the manas that must be revolutionized; only thus can one attain liberation and great ease and freedom. Yet many people spend every day revolutionizing others' lives, striving to change others in order to comply with their own self-nature and satisfy their own selfish desires and greed—such people are precisely those deeply mired in ignorance. All who cannot contemplate the mind are people with severe afflictive habits, people heavy with self-nature, people who are arrogant and conceited. For such people, even the conscious mind has not awakened; how could the manas deep within be awakened, so as to attain liberation and ease and freedom?

Most people, before encountering the Buddhadharma, are lost and unawakened within; and even after encountering the Buddhadharma, they remain just as lost and unawakened. They grasp at external objects as their possessions and for their own use, increasing their view of self and conceit, not hesitating to resort to base means to achieve their personal selfish desires and interests, yet brazenly believing themselves to be cultivated, resourceful, intelligent, and talented. They are never able to turn the light around and shine it upon themselves; after studying the Dharma, they use Buddhist knowledge as a disguise to strengthen and inflate the self—this is truly delusion, and they do not even know it.