The Speculative Reasoning of Consciousness Is Irrelevant to Liberation

Attaining genuine realization through Buddhist study and practice is not so easy, while intellectual understanding can be freely interpreted. Discussing key issues may yield a correct conclusion, but such discussion is mere reasoning. The outcome of reasoning is intellectual understanding, not realization; it cannot lead to realization and is actually harmful and unbeneficial to personal cultivation. Nowadays, most people studying Buddhism in the world rely on the thinking, analysis, reasoning, and speculation of the conscious mind. Those who genuinely cultivate, genuinely investigate, and exert diligent effort are exceedingly rare. Even if one could speculate about the state of an Eighth Ground Bodhisattva or speculate about the state of Buddhahood, it would be utterly useless and completely unrelated to liberation from birth and death. Preaching the Dharma with dazzling eloquence is also useless and completely unrelated to liberation from birth and death. Writing ten thousand books in a lifetime is equally unrelated to liberation from birth and death.

Cultivation is about breaking through all appearances; revolving within these appearances is useless. Studying Buddhism with a mind seeking gain or seeking attainment only leads to the learning of conditioned dharmas (saṃskṛta dharma), and all conditioned dharmas are karma of birth and death. If studying Buddhism is not for the sake of selflessness (anātman), not for the sake of liberating oneself from afflictions, not for the sake of eliminating ignorance, then it is clearly for the sake of the worldly self and what belongs to the self... Such an approach fundamentally cannot attain the wisdom of liberation, cannot transcend birth and death; this is another kind of delusion and inversion. In studying the Dharma, those who only want the result, only want the answer, but reject the actual process of cultivation in between, all have a mind seeking gain and attainment—this is the mind of birth and death, which is also karma of birth and death.

Nowadays, even if people studying Buddhism can have moments of insight numerous times, they still cannot eradicate the view of self. Why is this? Without diligently and steadfastly cultivating concentration (samādhi) and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā), without genuinely applying effort to investigate and seek realization, it is impossible to realize the truth, and thus impossible to eradicate the view of self. The result is that they can acquire it through any form, but the actual process of cultivation and study is something that cannot be attained by any means. On the issue of cultivation, shrewd people are unwilling to exert arduous effort, while those who truly exert effort pursue it diligently like a fool, focusing solely on the work without asking about the harvest. Yet, the shrewder a person is, the more foolish they become in this regard. Cultivation is something done by fools, not by the shrewd.