What should Buddhist practitioners who truly seek liberation do?

Buddhist practitioners who truly wish for liberation should, in their daily lives, carefully examine the various feelings and sensations within their own minds—examining what they are craving and attached to, what matters they care about, and what they devote their thoughts and energy to. Once discovered, they should analyze what kind of mental state this is, what significance it has, and what its outcome will be. Then they should find ways to counteract their own cravings and feelings; in this way, practice will sweep away obstructions, and progress on the path will be swift.

Our craving habits accumulated over beginningless kalpas are very heavy, and we ourselves find them very hard to detect, because we have become accustomed to them and take them for granted. Only those who have walked the path and eliminated or subdued their craving habits can detect their own and others' craving minds. It is like one who has long dwelt in a fragrant courtyard no longer noticing the fragrance, or one who has long stayed in a manure pit no longer noticing the stench—only people outside the fragrant courtyard can smell the fresh scent, and only people outside the manure pit can detect the foul odor.

The scope of craving is very broad: any dharma within the desire realm, so long as one is fond of it, is craving. Those literary masters skilled in poetry and verse, and those painters who wield their brushes with effortless flair, have almost all gone off to frolic in the ghost realm, because those things all belong to craving—let alone other aspects; romantic love and affection are even more certainly craving, making it impossible to escape rebirth in the ghost realm. Those who often paint horses, painting them with lifelike spirit, are reborn into a horse's womb after death; those who often write ghost stories, writing them with great vividness, take rebirth as ghosts after death. Whatever one's mind frequently dwells upon, after death one goes to keep company with that very thing. When a painter paints horses with great concentration, the mind resonates with horses, and in the next life he will be reborn as a horse; those who often write novels about ghosts and spirits pour their minds into ghosts and spirits, resonating with them, and after death they will become ghosts. Now, when we recollect the Buddha, our minds resonate with the Buddha, and we will be born beside the Buddha. When the mind resonates with the wholesome, one will be reborn in wholesome destinies; when the mind resonates with the unwholesome, one will be reborn in unwholesome destinies.

When the karmic retribution of the ghost realm ends, if some merit still remains, one takes rebirth in the animal realm; only when the karmic retribution of the animal realm ends and some merit still remains will one return to the human world to take rebirth. Therefore, the time one obtains a human body is very brief, while the time spent in the three evil destinies is very long; every sentient being experiences far more suffering than pleasure, with extremely little happiness. So we should still plan for future lives—enjoy less blessing now, and leave more merit for later lives; only with great merit can one be reborn as a human as quickly as possible.

Those with deep roots of goodness and abundant merit stay beside the Buddha, receiving His supervision and edification, and their practice advances very quickly. Without the Buddha, being beside bodhisattvas who have severed afflictions, or beside arhats, one's practice also advances very quickly—as the saying goes, one who stays near vermilion gets stained red, and one who stays near ink gets stained black. Coarse craving can still be observed with somewhat finer attention, but subtle cravings are extremely numerous, and almost no one can observe them—unless one has severed afflictions. How rare is the opportunity to obtain a human body, how brief the time one possesses it, and how scarce and difficult it is to attain realization of the fruits and liberation with a human body. Having already obtained human bodies, how should we seize this rare opportunity and diligently cultivate realization to attain even a small measure of liberation? This is a question we should ponder deeply and often.