Chan and Samādhi Are for Attaining the Wisdom of Liberation

When cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi), if the component of non-Buddhist concentration is predominant, then cultivating concentration is a waste of precious practice time, and at the time of death one will discover that a lifetime of practice amounts to nothing—no wisdom at all—and one will still have to transmigrate endlessly following the karmic conditions of birth and death. Many people are quite proud of their excellent meditative concentration: once they enter concentration, they know nothing at all, or all sorts of marvelous things appear. In the end, however, all of these will vanish without a trace, and nothing will be gained. The purpose of cultivating concentration is to let the mind settle down, and then to single-mindedly contemplate and engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the Buddha's teachings, in hopes of realizing the Dharma and attaining the wisdom of liberation. If the wisdom of liberation cannot be attained, then that meditative concentration is not worth pursuing.

The mind must have right mindfulness. After meditative concentration has been developed, one should mindfully focus on true suchness (tathatā), recollect that the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) are without self, and recollect that all dharmas are impermanent. When the mind holds the Buddha's teachings in mind, that is right; when the mind's thoughts are scattered and confused, that is not right. Since one already knows that neither the body nor the conscious mind is the self, this should be the result of contemplative practice. Observing that the mind that is presently thinking of doing all sorts of things is not the self—this is contemplative practice. While doing things, asking oneself: How could this be me? How is it not me?—this is contemplative practice. When contemplation within concentration can penetrate deep into the manas, the manas participates in the contemplative practice and accords with it. Practicing in this way is very good, and there is hope of realizing the Path.

If the mind consciousness can leap outside of one's own physical body to observe oneself, observing oneself from the perspective of a bystander, this is the self-validating cognition (sva-saṃvitti-saṃvitti-bhāga) function of the mind consciousness, its reflective function—the power of introspection, also called the power of wisdom (prajñā-bala)—which can clearly illuminate one's own mental activities and afflictive habits. Since it is called a "power," it has force: it can untangle the doubts in the mind and solve problems. This is genuine practice. Of course, when problems are solved, the power of the manas is also involved: the manas, with the aid of the mind consciousness, has also observed the state of its own mental activities and thereby decides to change itself, and then the tathāgatagarbha helps bring about the change.

Those who sit cross-legged in meditation all day long, no matter how they sit or how concentrated they become, still cannot observe their own minds, cannot introspect, and lack the power of awareness and the power of wisdom. They still do not know that the five aggregates are without self, cannot give rise to the liberating wisdom of no-self, and cannot resolve the great matter of birth and death. We should practice well according to the method of the four foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna); there will surely be great gains, and gradually we will all be able to observe as they truly are that the functions of the five aggregates are all unreal and none of them is the self.

Only by leaping the mind consciousness out of the body to observe oneself can there be any awakening. If one is completely fused together with the physical body, the power of awareness will be lost. When we want to examine our own mental activities, we must also leap the mind out and introspect upon ourselves; only then can we observe our own mental activities. In the end, one observes that both the observing subject and the observed object are not the self, and the mind abides in a state of equanimity, with all marks extinguished in the mind. One must naturally arrive at that conclusion—that there is no self and nothing is real—without mechanically forcing it or far-fetchedly contriving it.