What Is Meant by "Filling in the Blanks with Imagination"?

Anything imagined through rich imagination, rather than concluded through actual practice, is called "making things up in one's head." Making things up is in essence a misunderstanding—there is no such thing at all. Just like many people's attainment of fruits and enlightenment: these are all fabricated in their heads, not cultivated into being; they are the result of a rich imagination.

Only on the day when the mind consciousness is rendered half-paralyzed does one's practice get on the right track and begin to show some promise. A clever mind consciousness is precisely the condition that obstructs the Path; only when a person is not so clever does the Path easily appear. Cultivating the Path is something fools do. Clever people do not cultivate the Path—they think about it. A Path thought up is a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, and is of no use whatsoever. Thinking about the Path is easy; cultivating the Path is hard. That is why most people take shortcuts, all using the method of thinking rather than the method of cultivation.