Why Is It Difficult for Modern Buddhist Practitioners to Cultivate Meditative Concentration?

The common phenomenon among present-day Buddhist practitioners is that both the conditions and the merit needed for cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) are insufficient, and therefore meditative power is very difficult to develop. On the surface, many people's material living standards have indeed improved, but the merit available for the supramundane Dharma—the Buddha's teachings—is very inadequate.

Those who cannot cultivate meditative concentration well, whose minds are not purified and emptied, should frequently examine and introspect upon their own minds, to see whether their minds are filled with the wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep of the desire realm, whether they are attached to the various dharmas, people, affairs, and objects of the desire realm, and whether they have deep clinging to these desire-realm dharmas. All such attachments are the root of the illness obstructing the cultivation of meditative concentration, making it very difficult to develop. Once this root of the illness is found, one must find a way to remove it, continuously contemplating, analyzing, and observing the illusory and unreal nature of these dharmas in order to lessen the clinging.

If a person loves fine food, loves comfort, loves enjoyment, loves praise, and clings to everything in the human world of the desire realm, caring about it all, keeping every matter of the human world in mind and attending to it all, then meditative concentration is impossible to cultivate. The more one pursues in life, the more hope and interest one has in life, the less likely one is to attain meditative concentration, because when objects block the mind, the mind's burden becomes heavy; it cannot be empty and tranquil, and cannot attain tranquility (praśama) and ease. If we can subdue to some degree our various attachments, loves, hatreds, jealousies, and resentments toward the human world, meditative concentration will quickly appear.

If, thought after thought, we cling to the world of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) with heavy grasping, meditative concentration will not arise. Only when the mind wearying of the world of the five aggregates arises and there are no desires can the desire-realm concentration appear; only by wearying of the living environment of the five aggregates of the devas of the desire realm can the form-realm concentration appear. If we always have longing for everything in the world, and the mind is always rushing toward sense objects, it will be very difficult to make room for something more excellent and more wondrous.