The Reason for Being Eager in Deliberation and Contemplative Practice (vipaśyanā-caryā)

Question: It is clearly known that insufficient meditative concentration is detrimental to investigating Chan, yet in actual practice one particularly enjoys contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), using meditation only as an auxiliary means, spending more time on contemplative practice than on cultivating concentration. Why does this psychological phenomenon arise?

Answer: This psychology is very common, and there are three reasons for it. First, most sentient beings have studied Buddhism for only a short period of time, their roots of goodness are not deep enough, and they have not given rise to the aspiration for the Path. Regarding the Buddha-dharma, their interests and preferences outweigh deep-seated discernment; they are rather superficial, and so they lack a long-term mind and are unwilling to spend time and energy cultivating meditative concentration step by step. Second, the wisdom and cognition that arise from contemplative practice and reflection are extremely attractive—people all want to know more, longing to know all dharmas; once they know the dharma, their minds are satisfied, and so they neglect meditative concentration. Third, there is a sense of urgency, an eagerness to know the final result, without paying attention to the actual process of cultivation and realization. Fourth, one is accustomed to using the shallow thinking of the mind consciousness, and is not accustomed to the deep and subtle deliberation (manana) and investigation of the manas.

Therefore, when I teach the parts about cultivating the mind, actual practice, and laying foundations, quite a few people do not like to follow along and learn, feeling it is too slow and dull, lacking the patience to cultivate step by step; they raise objections with me, or gradually fall away. But for the long-term and genuine benefit of sentient beings and of Buddhism, I cannot simply cater to everyone's psychology, abandoning the part of actual practice and only teaching the theory that sentient beings find interesting, leaving sentient beings merely standing by the water's edge coveting the fish instead of weaving a net.

The long-term benefit for sentient beings should be: having a solid foundation, a transformation of one's disposition, and mastery of the methods of practice, so that even if one later cannot meet a suitable teacher, one still knows how to cultivate on one's own, has the ability for self-cultivation, and has the ability to discern true from false. This ability can be carried into future lives for countless kalpas—nothing could be better. Such a person is a true talent of Buddhism. To be a responsible Dharma-transmitting master is to cultivate talents with genuine practice and genuine learning, not to cultivate theorists of book knowledge. Talents are passed down from generation to generation, whereas knowledge and theory, passed down for only one or two generations, will disappear and cannot go far, because there is nothing of real substance to transmit.