Studying Buddhism and practicing the path is a long journey

A master is in his room admiring flowers, and says to himself: "The red flowers are very beautiful." The parrot nearby hears this and repeats: "The red flowers are very beautiful." Is what the parrot said truthful speech? Is it an observation of direct perception? Has it realized the redness of the flowers and their beauty? None of these—the parrot is merely mimicking speech, knowing nothing of the meaning of the words, and may not even know what it is saying. Therefore, just because someone can say something does not necessarily mean they have genuine practice and realization.

The Buddhist sūtras say that sentient beings at the stage of the ten faiths have already been studying Buddhism for several great kalpas and have encountered many Buddhas; practicing Buddhism for one incalculable kalpa only brings one to the level of a first-bhūmi bodhisattva. A bodhisattva at the abode stage who has awakened and seen the true mind still has two-thirds of the practice and kalpas remaining before reaching the first bhūmi, having completed only one-ninth of the path to Buddhahood—and this already requires an extremely, extremely long span of kalpas, which is by no means easy. It is clear that studying and practicing Buddhism is not an easy matter; every advance of one level in the path of practice requires an incalculable expenditure of time and energy. Therefore, no one should take this lightly, thinking that by merely understanding something intellectually they have attained some fruit or stage—there is no such simple thing. If one has not walked that stretch of the path, one cannot see the road ahead, and by mere imagination one would naturally think it is very simple and that becoming a Buddha is easy; only one who has already become a Buddha knows what the path to Buddhahood is really like, and only what such a person recounts from experience is reliable.