Digesting the Dharma Learned in Samādhi Is Unrelated to Chan Meditation and Contemplative Practice (2025-06-23)

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: How did I come to develop such observational wisdom? Ever since I attained meditative absorption (samādhi), and after listening to your teaching, Master, on how to practice Chan in motion—contemplating the meaning of the Dharma within movement and within concentration—whatever I do is Chan investigation; it is not that only sitting counts as Chan investigation. Therefore, whatever sense objects I see, a questioning doubt arises in my mind, and the questioning doubt about Mahāyāna prajñā keeps arising without cease.

Master, you taught me to raise questioning doubt and investigate Chan in all states. Once, I saw a large tree swaying, and my mind was suddenly and greatly shaken. I clearly recalled that you had previously used a large tree as a metaphor for the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) body of sentient beings. At the time I did not understand what it meant, but now I suddenly understood in my mind: is this using the tree roots as a metaphor for the tathāgatagarbha of sentient beings? In the material bodies of us sentient beings, these eight consciousnesses: the leaves, flowers, and fruits are a metaphor for the first six consciousnesses; the branches are a metaphor for the manas (the seventh consciousness); and the tree roots are a metaphor for the tathāgatagarbha.

Assessment: The metaphor of the large tree that I spoke of in the past is not what Ven. Shi Ruyuan understood. She did not understand it before, and she still does not understand it now—she is thoroughly muddled. Her understanding of the tree metaphor is to decompose the large tree into the eight consciousnesses. In fact, the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, is not at all the tree roots and cannot be placed side by side with the seven consciousnesses on the same tree, because they are not of the same kind. The metaphor that the tree roots give rise to branches and leaves, representing the tathāgatagarbha giving rise to the seven consciousnesses and the five aggregates, is extremely far-fetched; the two cannot be compared analogically.

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: Because of this questioning doubt, I attentively kept it in mind for a long time. Starting from the branches and leaves, I searched downward in turn for the powerful roots of this large tree, making use of that formless power of its which supports the luxuriant branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits. Are not the five aggregates bodies of us sentient beings all born from the combination of the seeds of the seven great elements within the tathāgatagarbha? Whether it is flowers, grass, trees, or the five aggregates material bodies of sentient beings, all myriad dharmas or countless billions of dharmas are all operating equally through the power of prajñā wisdom. These questioning doubts presented themselves involuntarily in my mind. Apart from the sound of the Buddha's name and the prajñā questioning doubts playing on a loop in my head, my mind was a blank. My questioning doubt was: who is it that drags the five aggregates body of sentient beings around everywhere? He manifests His wondrous functions everywhere.

Assessment: This passage is all Ven. Shi Ruyuan's groundless speculation; there is no logical connection between the parts—it is forcibly pieced together, and her emotional thinking and intellectual interpretation are quite serious. "Making use of that formless power of its" is a speculation about a function resembling that of the tathāgatagarbha, and has nothing to do with the tathāgatagarbha. She says that the five aggregates body is composed of the seeds of the seven great elements within the tathāgatagarbha—this is borrowed language, knowledge learned from others; her words have no evidence at all, ranging freely and wildly, and the distance between this and true wisdom is enormous—about an immeasurable kalpa. The text shows that she currently does not know what investigation is or what contemplation is; the imagined content is considerable.

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: After the questioning doubt about the large tree arose, I contemplated its equal operation upon all dharmas. Now, I do not know why, but in my mind I always clearly perceive that the power of prajñā wisdom operates equally pervading all places and all dharmas; He pervades everywhere and reaches everywhere; His essence is equality-nature. Now this meaning of the Dharma keeps revolving in my mind. Whatever dharma-object state it may be, all myriad dharmas and billions of dharmas are the power of prajñā wisdom, functioning with the operation of His power of equality-nature; apart from the power of His functional operation, everything is nothing. That I could cultivate some meditative absorption wisdom is all due to your dedication and teaching, my revered Master.

Assessment: The questioning doubt about the large tree is fundamentally off track; the doubt she raised is somewhat senseless. Without having realized the tathāgatagarbha, she already comes to contemplate its equal operation—a leap far too great. In fact, she was digesting and understanding the Dharma teachings she had learned within meditative concentration, which has nothing to do with Chan investigation and nothing to do with contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā). If similar descriptions appear in the future, they will likewise have nothing to do with Chan investigation, contemplative practice, or realization, and will no longer be very credible.

A person who is at all times in meditative concentration has very poor verbal and written expression, because language and writing are functions of the mind consciousness. In deep levels of meditative concentration, the functions of the manas basically take the leading role. Functions such as recollection, recall, imagination, deliberation (manasikāra), and analysis, which the mind consciousness has, the manas simply does not possess; therefore the capacity for self-expression is very weak, and one can only express through body language, facial expressions, and movements of the body faculty. Such modes of expression are very hard for ordinary people of insufficient wisdom to understand—one could say they do not quite resonate.

When my power of meditative concentration is better in ordinary times, when communicating with people, often the words reach the tip of my tongue but I do not know how to express them; searching for vocabulary in my mind is very laborious, and sometimes when I really cannot find the words I give up and do not say that sentence. The words that are hard to find are often relatively simple content requiring recollection, such as names of people, names of things, certain noun concepts, and so on; whereas dharmas that do not require memory but rely on wisdom can be narrated and expressed with ease. When I wrote essays in school, argumentative essays could always be completed smoothly without much deliberation, but narrative essays and other articles recounting miscellaneous affairs, people, and things gave me headaches—I was unwilling to ramble on.

In a case like Ven. Shi Ruyuan's, constantly abiding in concentration without emerging, doing anything is very difficult; she can only do few things and keep to herself in concentration. I once tried to get her to carefully polish and refine her writing—at the very least the wording should be more accurate, with fewer typos and mostly correct punctuation—but after several attempts, I found it was useless. The reason is that she has not cultivated any substantial merit; she is not interested in cultivating blessings. Apart from meditative concentration, she lacks interest in everything else, so her wisdom regarding worldly dharmas is low and her understanding of the Buddha-dharma is not thorough. It is precisely because she is not interested in anything else that she can single-mindedly enter concentration, and within concentration some meanings of the Dharma can automatically arise. From the perspective of the Small Vehicle, her practice looks easy, but her Mahāyāna wisdom is insufficient. Because Mahāyāna requires merit and favorable conditions, requires the bodhisattva's resolve, requires a spirit of selfless dedication forgetting oneself—Ven. Shi Ruyuan is currently still lacking in these.

If I were like Ruyuan, in meditative concentration all day long, I could not accomplish anything, and propagating the Dharma would be utterly impossible. Yet some profound dharmas must be expounded through contemplative practice in deep concentration, so the matter of meditative concentration must still be handled with balance: having none will not do, but being too deep will not do either. That is, when one needs to deliberate on the meaning of the Dharma, one must enter concentration; when one needs to propagate the Dharma and handle affairs, one must emerge from concentration, or maintain shallow concentration. Such a state is not easy to balance and manage. The manas has the function of selective memory: what it is interested in it automatically remembers, and what it is not interested in it does not remember, which manifests in the mind consciousness as forgetting and poor memory.