What Are Gradual Cultivation and Sudden Enlightenment?

Before attaining sudden enlightenment, there must be a process of gradual cultivation, which differs fundamentally from the gradual cultivation after enlightenment. The gradual cultivation before sudden enlightenment involves practicing the Thirty-seven Factors of Enlightenment and the Six Perfections of the Bodhisattva, cultivating precepts, concentration, and wisdom, and fully developing the four wholesome roots—warmth, summit, acceptance, and supreme worldly phenomena—before one can suddenly realize the teachings of the Mahayana and Hinayana vehicles. This principle can be clarified through an analogy. Consider felling an ancient tree a thousand years old with a thick trunk: cutting it down requires gradually sawing through the trunk with tools—this process corresponds to gradual cultivation. Finally, when the old tree suddenly falls, this corresponds to sudden enlightenment. Thus, without gradual cultivation, there can be no sudden enlightenment.

The processing after felling the tree—such as stripping the bark, cutting it into planks, polishing, sanding, waxing, and staining—resembles the gradual cultivation after enlightenment. Finally, assembling the planks into pleasing furniture or crafts corresponds to the ultimate sudden enlightenment and Buddhahood. Felling the ancient tree is extremely laborious and demanding, requiring patience, endurance, physical strength, sharp tools, and skilled technique. This parallels the provisions needed for realizing the path; without sufficient provisions, one cannot attain realization. Some practitioners retreat, fall behind, or stagnate along the way, while others turn back entirely. On this path of practice, the number of people diminishes over time. Though tens of thousands may initially resolve to practice, few persevere, and those who attain the way may be fewer still. Thus, sages are as rare as phoenix feathers, exceedingly precious and deserving of reverence when encountered.

Some conflate gradual cultivation before enlightenment with that after enlightenment, believing there is no gradual cultivation before enlightenment and that practice belongs only to the period after enlightenment. However, sudden enlightenment without gradual cultivation does not even constitute intellectual understanding; it is entirely deluded thoughts and conjectures, devoid of any meritorious benefit—unless one is a highly advanced Bodhisattva with profound foundations from past lives, capable of direct sudden enlightenment. Gradual cultivation before enlightenment is precisely the process of transforming an ordinary person’s mind into that of a sage, a process of complete rebirth, a metamorphosis before the carp leaps through the Dragon’s Gate. Without this process, how can transformation occur? Therefore, to discern whether someone has genuinely attained enlightenment, observe their mind and character—their very bones—rather than superficial brilliance, eloquence, or grandiose talk, for the essence is what matters most.

Gradual cultivation enables one’s body and mind to gradually approximate those of sages and virtuous beings. Only upon reaching the standard of sages can one suddenly realize the path. This is the process of cultivating the mind. If the mind remains unchanged, without the conduct of a sage, one cannot become a sage. Thus, gradual cultivation is crucial—it is the key step in generating the wisdom attained through cultivation. Before this, one possesses only the wisdom attained through hearing and reflection, which is shallow and insufficient to withstand karmic obstacles of life and death. Only when the wisdom attained through cultivation is complete can one give rise to the wisdom attained through realization. Only then can one avoid the karma of the three lower realms, eradicate afflictions, and break free from the suffering of the cycle of rebirth.