Mind Like a Wall: The Gateway to Enlightenment

Question: One night, I entered meditative concentration in my dream. My mind was perfectly clear and lucid, fully aware of the people and things around me, yet I felt as though these people and events had no connection to me and could not affect me. It was as if I were in a vacuum, without a single distracting thought in my mind—only a single thought contemplating the Dharma (though I cannot recall the specific teaching). It felt like a solitary sun shining in the sky, utterly devoid of clouds. Simultaneously, my entire body and mind experienced unparalleled lightness, ease, and comfort. I finally understood how profoundly comfortable meditative absorption could be! Even after waking, I could still feel that comfort. If such meditative states exist, one truly would no longer crave worldly pleasures. That feeling of lightness, ease, and freedom is beyond comparison with the pleasures of the five desires in the mundane world. Master, may I ask: Why did this state, which I have never experienced in reality, appear in my dream?

Answer: This dream state reflects the condition of investigating Chan within meditative concentration—where there is both stillness (samadhi) and wisdom (prajna), the simultaneous practice of cessation and insight. In your past lives, you cultivated this type of meditative absorption, known as "access concentration" (anāgamya-samādhi). Your manas (the seventh consciousness) experienced it before and retains the memory. Now, your mind yearns for it and wishes to re-experience this meditative state. However, in your current life, you are relatively busy, and the conditions for cultivating concentration are not yet complete. Thus, your manas had no choice but to create a dream, allowing you to enjoy the bliss of meditative absorption and Chan investigation within the dream. It seems your manas is rather pitiful and helpless—modern society is too chaotic and bustling, making it impossible to renounce the clamor of life and wholeheartedly pursue the path.

In the dream, your consciousness was in a clear, thoughtless state—utterly lucid and free of thoughts. This likely occurred within access concentration, yet your manas was actively engaged in investigating the Dharma, contemplating the Buddha’s teachings. Only through such contemplation of the Dharma can fundamental problems be resolved and realization attained. Investigating Chan is precisely this state: not a single distracting thought in the mind, external objects unable to enter the heart, the mind unmoving like an impregnable fortress. The Patriarch Bodhidharma said, "When the mind is like a wall, one may enter the path." This is what he meant. If meditative concentration and contemplation do not reach this degree, do not expect to attain realization.

This state of investigation and contemplation by the manas can only arise and remain continuous under extremely tranquil environmental conditions. Only then can one investigate the profound, subtle, and extremely profound principles of the Dharma. Therefore, genuine practitioners renounce all external distractions, embracing absolute solitude and stillness. They are utterly without companions, for cultivating the path is the great work of a solitary individual—it cannot be accomplished amid clamor or in the company of others. Those who cannot endure solitude will not tread the true path of cultivation. Meditative concentration subdues and severs afflictions, bringing lightness, ease, joy, and happiness. Nothing is more joyful than cultivating the path. Thus, those with meditative absorption dislike worldly dharmas; their minds do not cling to the world. They do not pursue wealth, sensual pleasures, fame, food, sleep, reputation, or profit. They take no delight in power, status, or authority. To crave worldly dharmas is truly unwise.

Some claim that merely ten or so minutes of undistracted contemplation of the Dharma can lead to the attainment of fruition and enlightenment. Such statements are utterly absurd. Such a short period of contemplating the Dharma cannot possibly lead to deep or subtle reflection, nor can it cultivate the state of meditative and wisdom equipoise (samatha-vipassanā) required for Chan investigation. It is like trying to boil a large pot of water: it requires an hour. If you boil it for five or ten minutes and then stop, only to resume the next day, even after a year or a decade of such intermittent effort, the water will never boil. To treat the Dharma so frivolously, to toy with it, carries exceedingly negative karmic retribution. If the Dharma were so easy to cultivate and realize, how could there be so many sentient beings in the three lower realms? People in the world love to cut corners, yet the result of cutting corners only harms themselves. You reap what you sow. To achieve anything, you must relinquish body and mind—you must be willing to put in the effort.