A Mind Like a Wall Can Enter the Path

Question: One night, while dreaming, I entered meditative concentration. My mind was bright and lucid, and I was clearly aware of the people and things around me, yet I felt that these people and affairs seemed to have no connection with me whatsoever, and could not affect me in any way. It was as if I were in a vacuum, with not a single stray thought in my mind—only one thought contemplating a point of Dharma (I can no longer remember exactly what Dharma it was)—like a lone sun shining solitary in the sky without a single dark cloud. At the same time, my whole body and mind felt incomparable tranquility and comfort, and I finally understood how blissful it is to be in meditative concentration! Even after waking up, I could still feel that comfort. If one has this kind of meditative concentration, one truly would no longer crave worldly pleasures. That feeling of tranquility and ease is something the five desires of the world cannot compare with. May I ask, Master: why would such a state, which I have never experienced in waking life, appear in a dream?

Answer: This kind of dream is a state of investigating Chan within meditative concentration, possessing both concentration and wisdom, with śamatha and vipaśyanā operating together. You cultivated this kind of meditative concentration in past lives—it was preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi). Your manas experienced it in a previous life and retains the memory; now you yearn for it in your heart and wish to experience this state of meditative concentration again. But your present life is rather busy, and the conditions for cultivating concentration are not complete, so the manas could only dream, enjoying in the dream the bliss of meditative concentration and Chan investigation. It seems the manas is quite pitiable and helpless—modern society is so chaotic and cluttered that one cannot even shut out the tumult of life to cultivate the Path single-mindedly.

In the dream, the mind consciousness was in a lucid state of no-thought—bright and clear, without any thoughts—which should have been within preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi), while the manas was functioning in a state of investigating the Dharma, deliberating (manasikāra) on the Buddha's teachings. Only by thus deliberating on the Dharma can one resolve the fundamental problem and realize the Path. Investigating Chan is precisely this state: not a single stray thought in the mind, external objects not entering the mind, the mind as immovable (tathatā-acalita) as a wall of bronze and iron. When Patriarch Bodhidharma said that a mind like a wall can enter the Path, this is what he meant. If your meditative concentration and contemplation cannot reach this degree, do not expect to realize the Path.

This deliberating and investigating state of the manas can only arise and be sustained continuously under conditions of extreme quietness; only then can one investigate the profound and extremely subtle principles of the Dharma. Therefore, genuine practitioners will shut out all external conditions, in absolute solitude and loneliness, alone without companions. Cultivating the Path is a great undertaking done by a solitary one; it cannot be accomplished amid clamor and in company. Those who cannot endure loneliness cannot walk the path of genuine cultivation. Meditative concentration can subdue afflictions and eradicate afflictions, and can bring tranquility, joy, and happiness—nothing brings more happiness than cultivating the Path. Therefore, those who possess meditative concentration all dislike worldly dharmas; their minds do not cling to the world, they do not pursue wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep, nor gain and honor, nor power and status. Being greedy for worldly dharmas is truly unwise conduct.

Some people say that as long as one can contemplate the Dharma without stray thoughts for a dozen or so minutes, one can attain realization and see the mind. Such talk is simply absurd. With such a short time of contemplating the Dharma, it is utterly impossible to have any deep and subtle contemplation, nor can one cultivate the state of investigating Chan in which Samādhi and Prajñā are equally cultivated. It is like boiling a large pot of water, which takes an hour; if you stop the fire after five or ten minutes and continue the next day, even boiling it this way for a year or ten years will never bring the water to a boil. To treat the Buddha's teachings as child's play in this way brings quite unwholesome retribution. If the Dharma were so easy to cultivate and realize, how could there be so many beings in the three evil destinies? People of the world all love to take shortcuts, yet the result of taking shortcuts is harming oneself. You reap what you sow; if you wish to achieve something, you must relinquish body and mind and be willing to put in real effort.