The Relationship between the Skill of Contemplative Practice and the Eradication of Afflictions

No matter what dharma you are engaged in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on, if you wish to realize it, you must connect your contemplative practice into an unbroken continuum. How can the practice be connected into an unbroken continuum? It means extending the skill cultivated during sitting meditation in stillness into bodily activities, extending it throughout all hours of the day and night, with mind after mind and thought after thought without interruption. Pay attention to observe whether you can still practice contemplation with awareness after getting off the cushion; whether you can practice contemplation with awareness while walking, standing, sitting, and lying down; whether you can still practice contemplation with awareness when about to fall asleep; and even whether you can continue contemplative practice with awareness in dreams after falling asleep; whether you can practice contemplation with awareness while doing all kinds of things. If you observe that your contemplative practice is intermittent, with mental attention frequently flowing into worldly dharmas, then you must constantly remind yourself to turn your attention back to contemplative practice—when it breaks off, resume it, and try your best to make the practice continuous.

If while walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, all of your mental attention is on contemplative practice and on your own material form (rūpa-kāya), or if most of your mental attention, your primary mental attention, is on contemplative practice and on your own material form, then such power of meditative concentration is quite good. If at all times you can maintain awareness and right mindfulness, the practice has been connected into an unbroken continuum, and such power of concentration has fully accomplished preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi), which is sufficient for the eradication of the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa). When the contemplative practice and awareness have been connected into an unbroken continuum, with mind after mind and thought after thought resting on your own material form, you will no longer violate precepts in your mind, and will no longer create evil karma mentally; at this point the mind becomes purified and afflictions grow faint. This is why meditative concentration can effectively subdue and eradicate afflictions.

Before seeing the path, one must fully accomplish preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi). When preparatory concentration is fully accomplished, the five grades of coarse afflictions of the desire realm are eradicated, and at this point one can become one oriented toward the srotāpanna fruit, not far from attaining srotāpanna. If preparatory concentration is not yet fully accomplished, or if there is no preparatory concentration at all, then do not even think about eradicating the view of self and realizing the first fruit. Claiming that one can realize the fruits without meditative concentration is mere conceptual proliferation (prapañca) and cannot become reality.