The cultivation and realization of the Buddha Dharma requires great wholesome roots and merit.

The difficulty of realizing and cultivating the Buddhadharma requires sentient beings to practice for three great immeasurable kalpas. If the Buddhadharma were easy to understand, easy to realize, and easy to cultivate, sentient beings would not need to practice for three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas in order to perfectly accomplish the Buddha Way; if the Buddhadharma were easy to understand, the Buddha would not have emphasized that sentient beings need a considerable degree of good roots, merit, and precepts, meditative concentration (samādhi), and wisdom. As for the Tripitaka and the twelve divisions of the scriptures, some people have read them five times, yet never touch even the edge of the Buddhadharma, and cannot even glimpse from afar the shadow of awakening to the Way. Sentient beings have been deluded and inverted for immeasurable kalpas, immersed in the illusory worldly dharmas; it is truly not easy for them to understand the profound Buddhadharma.

The Buddha taught the Dharma for forty-nine years, yet at the time of His parinirvāṇa, there were still countless sentient beings who had only a half-baked understanding of the Buddhadharma, and some did not even have that. It was precisely because Ānanda saw the ignorance of sentient beings, how hard they were to guide, and how they misinterpreted the Buddhadharma, that he had no choice but to leave the Sahā world himself one hundred years after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa; originally, relying on his power of meditative concentration (samādhi) and his merit, he could have remained in the world for a very, very long time, teaching and transforming sentient beings on behalf of the Buddha. After the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, an old monk taught a young monk, reciting the Dharma of the liberation path as "a water-old crane"; Ānanda asked him to correct it, but the old monk refused, and instead said that Ānanda had become senile and could not remember clearly the Dharma the Buddha had taught. Thereupon Ānanda, grieved and saddened, left the Sahā world.

Repeatedly and repeatedly it has been emphasized that everyone should cultivate more merit and nurture more good roots and merit, yet few people are willing to cultivate merit and nurture good roots and merit. So it is entirely normal that they do not understand the Buddhadharma—the Buddhadharma is not something that meritless people unwilling to cultivate merit can easily understand and realize. Realizing the Buddhadharma requires great merit; only with great merit can one have great wisdom. Small faculties and small wisdom are indeed not in accord with the profound Buddhadharma. Even accomplishments in worldly dharmas require merit—how much more so the great matter of birth and death that transcends the world, how much more so the great matter of liberating oneself from afflictions of immeasurable kalpas, and even more so the inconceivably immense matter of accomplishing the Buddha Way. For those whose minds hold only themselves, who think only of benefiting themselves, how could they be in accord with the great Dharma of the tathāgatagarbha, which possesses the nature of selflessness?