Studying Theory Is Not Equal to Actual Practice and Realization

The Four Noble Truths, the Four Right Efforts, the Four Bases of Supernatural Powers, the Five Faculties, the Five Powers, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Eightfold Noble Path—these are all stages of practice before and after attaining the path of seeing. The Great Vehicle and the Small Vehicle are largely similar, with similar and alike processes of practice. If one has not been cultivated and steeped in these processes, yet suddenly a fruit appears and one becomes a noble one, that fruit is extremely unreliable. Fruits and conclusions can be plagiarized, and all views and knowledge can be memorized—just by reading a few more books, one can memorize them or imagine them.

But these processes cannot be plagiarized by anyone; they are processes that everyone who attains the path of seeing and realizes the fruit must go through. Each person's process may differ somewhat depending on the foundation laid in past lives. For those who already realized the fruit in a previous life, these processes in this life may perhaps be passed through and experienced very quickly; for others it is not so—they must practice and personally realize each one, and every checkpoint must be passed through. The same applies to the fruits of the Great Vehicle. Once all these processes have been experienced, one's body and mind can be transformed, and at the time of realizing the fruit there will be great liberated merit and beneficial enjoyment.

For those who have not gone through these processes, the fruit they obtain is like flowers in the sky—it can only be admired, with no practical value, no liberated merit or beneficial enjoyment. A plastic fruit is just like this: it can be set out for display, but it cannot fill the belly.

What is called genuine practice is precisely the practice content of the Thirty-Seven Factors of Enlightenment of the Great and Small Vehicles. Apart from these concrete and specific contents of practice, there is no genuine practice. Any practice that has only conclusions without processes is not genuine practice; merely studying theory is not genuine practice. Theory can be learned up to the level of a bodhisattva of the second or third bhūmi or beyond. Even if one understands those principles, there remains a distance of one or two incalculable eons before actually realizing them. If one studies theories that would only apply one or two incalculable eons from now and believes one has already mastered them, considers oneself a noble one, and thinks that the road ahead need not be walked and that the actual processes of practice need not be experienced and practiced—then such practice is like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, yielding only sky-flowers and bearing an empty fruit.