No Cessation, No Insight Practice

Contemplation without calm abiding is distracted contemplation, where the mind is scattered and disordered. It is often driven by emotional thoughts and intellectual understanding, rarely giving rise to wisdom. It is hardly surprising that almost all sentient beings engage in such scattered thinking. What is most precious and difficult to attain is contemplation during calm abiding and contemplation after attaining calm abiding—this is exceedingly challenging. Genuine practice of calm abiding and contemplation requires sustained cultivation over a period of time to develop.

Yet some actually advocate that one can engage in contemplative practice without cultivating concentration or calm abiding. What kind of contemplative practice is this? What directly perceived states can it produce, and what directly perceived conclusions can be drawn? Anyone may possess such so-called contemplative practice, but it is of no benefit for realizing the Dharma, attaining wisdom, or achieving liberation. Such contemplation cannot give rise to contemplative wisdom or observational wisdom. Nowadays, the proliferation of Buddhist teachings has become bewildering, packaged with a plethora of clever words and eloquent phrases, spoken with extravagant flourish. Yet within this, is there not a lack of substantive content for cultivation and realization? It fails to enable people to rely upon it and progress step by step, steadily cultivating and realizing the truth. Sentient beings lack wisdom and are often deluded by such ornate rhetoric, failing to awaken themselves.