Chan and Meditative Concentration and the Empirical Realization of the Buddha-Dharma

Take, for another example, the contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the manas: it requires not only meditative concentration (samādhi) but also wisdom. Without meditative concentration, even if all the teachings on the manas were told to you, you still could not carry out the contemplative practice. Only when you have meditative concentration and a certain degree of wisdom, and then the teachings on the manas are given to you, can you look at the text and contemplate and observe along with the words, and thereby quickly realize the manas. After realizing the manas, if you can further observe some of its subtle characteristics, your wisdom becomes truly remarkable. If meditative concentration is lacking, even if all the various teachings on how the manas operates were told to you, it would be useless, because without realizing the manas, you cannot observe it, and thus cannot truly understand its characteristics; your wisdom cannot make substantive progress, and when the situation changes, you will no longer know how the manas operates.

Therefore, without sufficient and necessary power of meditative concentration, the enhancement of wisdom, the cultivation and realization of the bodhisattva path, and contemplative practice at various levels are all impossible to achieve. Apart from the power of meditative concentration, it is impossible to have the wisdom of contemplative practice, the wisdom that is real. The Buddha taught us the three unconditioned learnings of "precepts, samādhi, and wisdom" (śīla, samādhi, prajñā); we must never discard the precepts, never discard samādhi, and then hold on only to dry wisdom or wild wisdom—this is just like drawing a cake to satisfy hunger. Some people seem to know a great deal of Buddhist knowledge and principles, as if they had wisdom, and can talk fluently; but what they talk about is merely hollow theory. They cannot explain the concrete steps of how to operate in order to realize this principle and make phenomena accord with it. Everything is vague verbal description of general principles, very unspecific and coarse, showing that they themselves have no real realization and cannot articulate the concrete issues of how to cultivate and realize it. In particular, although they can talk glibly, their mental conduct cannot change and is not consistent with what they say, and they have no merit or benefit of liberation in their mental nature whatsoever.

If we do not diligently cultivate samādhi and lack the power of meditative concentration, then we will be unable to understand the ever-deeper and ever-subtler teachings, let alone contemplate them; our practice will gradually fall behind, and we will drop out. Then we will lose confidence and turn to study other shallow teachings, which contain many errors and flaws that we lack the ability to discern; a whole lifetime of study will not lead to realization of the Buddha-dharma, and our precious time will be wasted in vain.

For the great liberation of body and mind, for the realization of the Buddha-dharma, and for attaining buddhahood as soon as possible, we must attach importance to meditative concentration. Without samādhi, when we encounter teachings that are crucial and important, we cannot understand and digest them, and thus cannot realize them; we cannot receive the benefit of the sublime Buddha-dharma, and cannot attain liberation by relying on it. Therefore, I sincerely advise everyone to seize the time as much as possible, make full use of existing conditions, and even create conditions to cultivate samādhi. We should cultivate both the samādhi in motion while walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, and the samādhi in stillness while sitting in meditation, training our minds to be able to settle down at any time, and refining the practice in ever finer detail. In this way, when we contemplate the teachings we have studied, realization comes easily; afterwards wisdom can arise, knowledge is transformed into our own experience of realization, and there is genuine benefit. Practicing like this, both samādhi and wisdom will continually advance and reach perfection, the practice will progress very rapidly, all efforts are not made for nothing (gong bu tang juan), and we can attain the greatest achievement on the path to buddhahood.