After Hearing the Dharma, Actual Practice Is the True Way

Broad learning and extensive hearing is called "counting another's treasures"—you yourself do not have a single coin. After you have seen another's treasures, you must find a way to obtain your own treasure. What state of mind should it be to count your own treasures? Rather than standing at the water's edge envying the fish, it is better to go back and weave a net. No matter how many fish you see in the deep water, none of them are yours; a wise person should turn back and weave a net—only by catching them with the net can you enjoy them. Yet in this world, people with wisdom and intelligence seem few; they only admire others' treasures without wanting to possess their own, and do not care even if they go hungry. Some people delight in hearing the Dharma day after day but are never willing to put in effort to attain the Dharma. Having finished reading what others have, you should turn back and work on your own—how substantial it would be to truly possess it yourself! Only what you yourself have counts as having; how can what others have be counted as yours?

The ancients said, "Learning without thinking leads to confusion." We should say, "Learning without cultivation leads to confusion." Because many people do think, but their thinking is very shallow; without meditative concentration (samādhi), their contemplation only stays on the surface of the Dharma and cannot go deep. Knowing only a superficial layer, they claim they have realized, realized—how pitiable their shallowness and arrogance. That little bit of thinking cannot be called cultivation at all. Cultivation means repairing and refining—repairing and refining your own body and mind. Only when your body and mind have undergone a corresponding degree of change after being refined can it be called cultivation. If the person is still the same person, the mind is still the same mind, and the afflictions remain just as afflicted as before, it can in no way be called cultivation—let alone the fruit of cultivation. There can be no fruit; a self-proclaimed fruit easily melts away and rots.