Cultivating Both Samādhi and Prajñā Without Straying from the Path

If you want to learn Buddhism and practice more quickly, you must clarify the principles and framework of practice, distinguish the difference between the methods of cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) and the methods of investigating Chan, and then find the proper focus of your current practice, so as not to waste time.

If you want to subdue the arising and ceasing changes of the first five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness, not letting the five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness perceive and experience the realms of the five sense objects, this is the method of cultivating meditative concentration. With this kind of cultivation, after the power of concentration has increased, you still need to use the five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness to observe the sense objects, investigate the sense objects, and clearly recognize the true nature of the sense objects and the world of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), thereby gaining wisdom. Only with such wisdom of realization can one be liberated from the suffering of birth and death, and only then can practice reach its goal.

After meditative concentration has been developed, one must engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā). In the Small Vehicle, one contemplates the five aggregates and the eighteen realms as suffering, empty, impermanent, and non-self; in the Great Vehicle, on the basis of the Small Vehicle's contemplative practice, one contemplates who sees forms and hears sounds, and who investigates Chan. Contemplative practice and Chan investigation necessarily involve observing and attending to the sense objects, only with greater focus, so that attention is not scattered onto dharmas that are not needed.

In practice, one must not, like the non-Buddhists, single-mindedly cultivate meditative concentration, single-mindedly ignoring and disregarding all the dharmas around oneself, neither hearing nor asking about them; in this way wisdom cannot arise. At the time of approaching buddhahood, if there is even one dharma that is not known, that is ignorance, and becoming a Buddha would be hopeless. The non-Buddhist's mind is still; when encountering all states, the mind is unmoved, even entering meditative concentration for eighty thousand great kalpas, not knowing a single thing, dull and dazed. Yet after emerging from concentration, evil karma manifests, and one falls directly into the Avīci hell. This is exactly what happened to Śākyamuni Buddha's teacher; after the Buddha attained buddhahood, he wanted to save him but could not even find him—what a pity. If all the people in the world were combined together, they still could not match the mental stillness of such a non-Buddhist, but what use is that? Unable to understand the true nature of the world, unable to obtain the wisdom of liberation, one cannot escape continuing to struggle within the cycle of birth and death (saṃsāra). Therefore, in learning Buddhism and practicing, one must attend to both concentration and wisdom, cultivating precepts, concentration, and wisdom together, so as not to go astray onto a deviant path.