The Key Factors to the Accomplishment of All Dharmas: Precepts, Concentration, and Wisdom

When the World-Honored One dwelled in the Saha World, He frequently taught His disciples to cultivate the threefold training of precepts, concentration, and wisdom, repeatedly emphasizing: "From precepts arises concentration; from concentration arises wisdom." The training in precepts, concentration, wisdom, and so forth, can lead to the undefiled mind: upholding precepts enables the mind to become undefiled, cultivating concentration enables the mind to become undefiled, and the growth of wisdom enables the mind to become undefiled. When the mind is undefiled, the mind attains liberation, wisdom attains liberation, and the fruition ground progressively advances stage by stage. After the threefold training of undefiled precepts, concentration, and wisdom is ultimately perfected, one will certainly attain Buddhahood.

Before enlightenment, when the threefold training of precepts, concentration, and wisdom is cultivated to a certain degree and correspondingly fulfilled to a certain extent, one can sever the view of self or realize the mind and attain enlightenment. Further cultivation and enhancement of the threefold training of precepts, concentration, and wisdom enables entry into the first ground, achieving an undefiled mind. Continued enhancement through the cultivation of undefiled precepts, concentration, and wisdom allows progression stage by stage up to the eighth ground. Further enhancement through cultivation leads to the tenth ground of equal enlightenment. After further enhancement and the perfect fulfillment of precepts, concentration, and wisdom, one can attain Buddhahood.

Therefore, the threefold training and the threefold undefiled learning are extremely important, constituting the key factors for achieving the Buddha Way. The Six Perfections of a Bodhisattva also include the three perfections of upholding precepts, cultivating concentration, and prajna-wisdom. Using the upholding of precepts and cultivation of concentration as the foundational practices, the ultimate result is the attainment of perfect prajna-wisdom. Within the Six Perfections, the training in wisdom comes only after the training in concentration. The Buddha taught that wisdom arises from concentration; the attainment of genuine great wisdom invariably arises from profound, subtle contemplation and observation within meditative concentration. This is wisdom realized through actual proof, not the dry wisdom derived from intellectual understanding or emotional reasoning. This is true throughout the entire process from the realization of the first fruition up to the attainment of Buddhahood. At every intermediate stage, there is the support of meditative concentration; every type of wisdom is the result of meditative concentration.