Better Not to Awaken at All than to Awaken through Mere Intellectual Understanding

In the stages of Chan investigation and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), not only is the mind consciousness employed, but what is most essential is the use of the manas. If your effort has not reached the manas, it is all merely sentimental thinking and intellectual understanding; even if you come to understand, it is the mind consciousness that understands—that is intellectual understanding/interpretive awakening. Any awakening that occurs without meditative concentration (samādhi) is one hundred percent interpretive awakening. Therefore, if you lack meditative concentration, or your meditative concentration is insufficient, by no means should you engage in investigation, let alone attempt to awaken. Awakening under such conditions is interpretive awakening; it would truly be better not to awaken at all. You would spend a lifetime neither dead nor alive, stuck in place—unable to go up, unable to come down—and your progress on the Path would be forever blocked. Moreover, it would merely add to your arrogance and lead you to commit unwholesome karma, and in the future you will regret it when it is too late. All of you, remember this well: better not to awaken at all than to have interpretive awakening. Half-cooked rice is extremely hard to eat; even if you put it back in the pot, it is very difficult to cook it through.

Hereafter, when we encounter the Buddha's Dharma, we must learn to discern whether the method is one of interpretive awakening or one of realization through awakening. A method that does not require cultivating meditative concentration is a method of interpretive awakening, and therefore must be avoided.

When meditative concentration is insufficient and one is guided and guided again, prompted and prompted again, the causes and conditions are not complete; generally speaking, such awakening is interpretive awakening.