Mind Like a Wall Enters the Path

Question: One night, while asleep, I entered a state of meditative concentration in my dream. My mind was lucid and clear, fully aware of the people and things around me, yet it felt as if these people and affairs had no connection to me and could not affect me. It was as if I were in a vacuum, with not a single distracting thought in my mind—only one thought focused on contemplating the Dharma (though I cannot recall the specific teaching). It felt like a solitary sun shining in the sky without a trace of clouds. Simultaneously, my entire body and mind experienced incomparable lightness, ease, and comfort. I finally understood that meditative concentration could be so profoundly blissful! Even after waking, I could still feel that comfort. If such meditative concentration exists, I truly would no longer crave worldly pleasures. That feeling of lightness, ease, and freedom is beyond comparison with the pleasures of the five worldly desires. Venerable Master, please enlighten me: Why did I experience this state in my dream, one I have never encountered in waking life?

Answer: This dream state reflects the condition of investigating Chan within meditative concentration, where calm and insight are simultaneously present. You practiced this type of meditative concentration in a past life—it was access concentration (anāgamya-samādhi). Your manas (mind faculty) experienced it before and retains the memory. Now, your heart yearns for it and wishes to experience this state of meditative concentration again. However, your present life is busy, and the conditions for cultivating concentration are not yet complete. Thus, your manas resorts to dreaming, enjoying the bliss of meditative concentration and Chan investigation in the dream. It seems manas is rather pitiful and helpless—modern society is too chaotic and bustling, making it impossible to renounce this frenetic life and wholeheartedly pursue the path.

In the dream, your consciousness was in a clear, thoughtless state—utterly lucid and without discursive thoughts. You were likely in access concentration, yet your manas was actively engaged in investigating the Dharma, pondering the Buddha's teachings. Only through such contemplation of the Dharma can the fundamental problems be resolved and realization attained. Investigating Chan (cān Chán) is precisely this state: not a single distracting thought in the mind, external objects failing to enter the heart, the mind as immovable as a copper wall or iron fortress. The Patriarch Bodhidharma said that a mind like a wall can enter the path—this is what he meant. If meditative concentration and contemplation do not reach this level, do not expect to attain realization.

This state of investigative contemplation by manas can only arise and be maintained continuously under conditions of extreme stillness. Only then can it investigate the profound, subtle, and extremely deep principles of the Dharma. Therefore, genuine practitioners renounce all external distractions; it is a state of absolute solitude and seclusion, without companions. Cultivating the path is a great undertaking for the solitary individual; it cannot be accomplished amidst clamor and company. Those who cannot endure solitude cannot tread the true path of cultivation. Meditative concentration can subdue and eradicate afflictions, bringing lightness, ease, joy, and happiness. Nothing is more joyful than cultivating the path. Thus, those with meditative concentration do not delight in worldly dharmas; their minds do not cling to the world. They do not pursue wealth, sensual pleasures, fame, food, sleep, reputation, gain, power, status, or position. Craving worldly dharmas is truly unwise.

Some say that even just ten or so minutes of contemplating the Dharma without distracting thoughts can lead to the attainment of fruition and mind-realization. Such a statement is utterly reckless. Such a short period of contemplating the Dharma cannot possibly lead to profound, subtle contemplation, nor can it cultivate the state of meditative concentration and wisdom equipoise (śamatha-vipaśyanā) required for investigating Chan. It is like trying to boil a large pot of water: it requires an hour. If you stop after five or ten minutes and resume the next day, even continuing this way for a year or ten years, the water will never boil. Treating the Dharma so frivolously, toying with it, brings exceedingly unwholesome 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 seek shortcuts, but the result of such opportunism only harms themselves. You reap what you sow. To achieve anything, you must relinquish body and mind and be willing to put in the effort.