Without Precepts and Meditative Concentration, There Is No Actual Realization.

Precepts are the prerequisite and foundation of meditative concentration (samādhi). Cultivating concentration without keeping the precepts is like trying to steam sand and stones into rice—it will never become rice. In the Dharma-ending age, those who keep the precepts have become very, very few, and those who have obtained the essence of the precepts have become very, very few, because the people who confer the precepts on others themselves lack the essence of the precepts, or have lost it through breaking the precepts, and thus others cannot obtain the essence of the precepts from them.

Therefore, among Buddhist practitioners today, very few can achieve meditative concentration, and the wisdom of contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) is even harder to possess. Most people can only read books and gain intellectual understanding, imagining that they have attained something and realized something. Without meditative concentration as the foundation and the necessary and sufficient condition for contemplative practice, genuine realization is simply out of the question—they can only, like three-year-old children, play at "Chan of the mouth" and spout lofty principles.