The Cultivation and Realization of Dharma Require Immense Good Roots and Merit

The Dharma is difficult to realize and cultivate, requiring sentient beings to practice for three great immeasurable kalpas. If the Dharma were easy to understand, realize, and cultivate, sentient beings would not need to practice for three asamkhyeya kalpas to attain perfect Buddhahood; if the Dharma were easy to understand, the Buddha would not have emphasized that sentient beings must possess a considerable degree of virtuous roots, merit, and precepts, concentration, and wisdom. Some people may read the Tripitaka and the twelve divisions of scriptures five times, yet fail to grasp even the periphery of the Dharma, and the shadow of enlightenment remains far beyond their sight. Sentient beings, deluded and inverted for immeasurable kalpas, immersed in the illusory worldly dharmas, truly find it difficult to comprehend the profound Dharma.

The Buddha expounded the Dharma for forty-nine years, yet at the time of his parinirvana, countless sentient beings still had only a partial understanding of the Dharma, and some had not even that. It was precisely because Ananda witnessed the difficulty of liberating sentient beings from their ignorance and their misinterpretation of the Dharma that he had no choice but to depart from the Saha World one hundred years after the Buddha's parinirvana. Originally, he could have remained in the world for a very long time through the power of his samadhi and merit, acting in the Buddha's stead to teach sentient beings. After the Buddha's parinirvana, an elder monk taught a younger monk, mispronouncing the Dharma of the liberation path as "water old crane." Ananda corrected him, but the elder monk refused to change, instead saying that Ananda was senile and could no longer remember the Dharma taught by the Buddha. Heartbroken and grieved, Ananda then left the Saha World.

Repeatedly, we emphasize that everyone should cultivate more merit and nurture more virtuous roots and merit. Yet few are willing to cultivate merit and nurture virtuous roots and merit. It is entirely normal not to understand the Dharma, for the Dharma is not easily comprehended or realized by those devoid of merit who refuse to cultivate it. Realizing the Dharma requires great merit; only with great merit can one attain great wisdom. Small roots and small wisdom are indeed incompatible with the profound Dharma. Even achievements in worldly affairs require merit, how much more so for supramundane matters concerning life and death, how much more so for the great matter of liberating oneself from afflictions accumulated over immeasurable kalpas, and let alone achieving Buddhahood—such an inconceivably supreme matter. How could those whose minds harbor only themselves, seeking only self-benefit, be compatible with the great Dharma of the Tathagatagarbha, which is devoid of self-nature?