Digesting the Learned Dharma in Meditative Concentration Is Unrelated to Investigating Chan and Contemplative Practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) (2025-06-23)

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: How did I come to develop such observational wisdom? Ever since I attained meditative absorption (samādhi), and after hearing my master teach me how to practice moving Chan, contemplating the Dharma meaning within movement and within samādhi, whatever I do is Chan investigation—it is not that only sitting counts as Chan investigation. So now whatever sense-object I see, questioning doubt arises in my mind, and the questioning doubt of Mahāyāna prajñā keeps appearing without cease.

Master, you taught me to raise questioning doubt and investigate Chan upon every state of experience. Once I saw a large tree swaying, and my mind was suddenly and profoundly shaken. I clearly recalled how you had previously used a great tree as a metaphor for the five aggregates of sentient beings. At the time I did not understand what it meant, but now I suddenly understood in my heart: is this using the tree's roots as a metaphor for the tathāgatagarbha of sentient beings? Of the eight consciousnesses on the material body of us sentient beings: 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's roots are a metaphor for the tathāgatagarbha.

Assessment: The great tree metaphor I spoke of in the past is not what 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 great tree metaphor is to dismantle the tree into the eight consciousnesses. In fact, the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, is not at all the tree's 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 of tree roots producing branches and leaves as a metaphor for the tathāgatagarbha producing the seven consciousnesses and the five aggregates is extremely forced; the two cannot be analogized.

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

Assessment: This passage is all groundless speculation on Shi Ruyuan's part, with no logical connection between beginning and end, forcibly pieced together; her emotional thinking and intellectual interpretation are quite serious. "Making use of that formless power of its" is her imagining something resembling the function of the tathāgatagarbha, which has nothing to do with the tathāgatagarbha. She says the five aggregates are all formed from the combination of the seeds of the seven great elements within the tathāgatagarbha—this is book learning, knowledge acquired from study, spoken without any evidence whatsoever, rambling freely; true wisdom is far from this, differing by roughly an immeasurable kalpa. Her words show that at present she still does not know what investigation is or what contemplation is; the content of her imagination is considerable.

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: After the questioning doubt about the great tree arose, I contemplated its equal operation upon all dharmas. Now, I do not know why, but in my mind I constantly and clearly perceive the power of prajñā wisdom operating equally, pervading all places and all dharmas. He is present everywhere, reaching everywhere; His essence is precisely the nature of equality. Now this Dharma meaning keeps revolving in my mind. Whatever mental-object states there may be, all myriad dharmas and billions of dharmas are the power of prajñā wisdom, exerting the operation of His functional power of equality; apart from the power of His functional operation, there is nothing at all. That I could cultivate some wisdom of samādhi is all due to your, my master's, dedication and instruction.

Assessment: The questioning doubt about the great tree is fundamentally off track; the doubt she raised is somewhat senseless and ungrounded. Not yet having realized the tathāgatagarbha, she comes to contemplate its equal operation—a leap far too great. In fact, she is digesting and understanding the Dharma meanings she has learned within meditative concentration, which has nothing to do with Chan investigation and nothing to do with contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā). If there are further descriptions of this kind in the future, they will all 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 ability in language and writing, because language and writing are functions of the mind consciousness. In deep levels of meditative concentration, the functions of the manas become dominant; functions such as recollection, reminiscence, imagination, thinking, and analysis that the mind consciousness has, the manas simply does not possess. Therefore one's capacity for self-expression is very weak, and one can only express through body language, facial expressions, and movements of the physical body. Such modes of expression are very hard for ordinary people of insufficient wisdom to understand; one might say they do not resonate well.

When my meditative power is somewhat good in ordinary times, when I converse with people, often the words are on 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 truly 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, and certain noun concepts, whereas all 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 matters, people, and things gave me headaches; I was unwilling to be long-winded.

With someone like Shi Ruyuan, who constantly abides in samādhi without emerging, doing anything is very difficult; she can only do few things and keep to herself in samādhi. I once tried to get her to carefully polish and refine her writing—at the very least to use words more accurately, have fewer typos, and use punctuation more or less correctly—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 merit. Apart from meditative concentration, she lacks interest in everything else, so her wisdom in worldly matters 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 samādhi, and within samādhi some Dharma meanings can automatically arise. From the perspective of the Small Vehicle, her practice looks easy, but her Mahāyāna wisdom is insufficient. This is because Mahāyāna requires merit and karmic conditions, requires the bodhisattva's resolve, requires a spirit of selfless dedication forgetting oneself—and Shi Ruyuan is currently still lacking in these.

If I, like Ruyuan, were in meditative concentration all day long, I could accomplish nothing, and propagating the Dharma would be utterly impossible. Yet some profound dharmas must be articulated through contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) in deep samādhi, so the matter of meditative concentration must still be handled with care: not having it will not do, but going too deep will not do either. That is, when one needs to contemplate Dharma meanings, one must enter samādhi; when one needs to propagate the Dharma and handle affairs, one must emerge from samādhi, or maintain shallow samādhi. Such a state is not easy to manage and handle. The manas has the function of selective memory: what it is interested in it remembers automatically, and what it is not interested in it does not remember, which manifests in the mind consciousness as forgetting and poor memory.