How to Train Your Own Awareness?

In Germany, a wealthy man had a son who was born deaf-mute and paralyzed. He did not want to give up on this paralyzed son, believing that through effort he could raise him to become a talented person. So he drew up a plan to train his son's sensory perception through the five faculties. First, he trained the eyesight: he placed a bright, glowing toy in front of his son's eyes, continuously moving the glowing toy up and down, left and right before him. Finally, one day the son's vision recovered—his eyes could not only see the toy but also follow it as it moved, becoming lively and alert. The wealthy man continued training his son to improve his concentration, awareness, and observational ability. For hearing training, he used an object that could make sounds, repeatedly striking it to produce noises beside his son's left and right ears. In the end, the son's hearing recovered—he could hear sounds and was able to turn his head toward where the sounds came from.

The wealthy man was not satisfied with his son merely being able to see and hear normally; he also wanted to enhance his son's perception and observational powers in vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, as well as his concentration, thinking ability, imagination, and so on. When the son grew a little older, he used all kinds of questions to inspire his mind and improve his capacity for discernment. In the end, by the age of fourteen, this son became a genius with extraordinary intelligence. So-called intelligence includes meditative concentration, concentration power, observational ability, thinking ability, memory, awareness, power of insight, and so on. When all these powers are combined, they amount to the power of meditative concentration (samādhi) and the power of wisdom (prajñā-bala). "Crowd" refers to the multitude of people; when humans excel among the crowd of people, it is called "surpassing the crowd"—surpassing the human crowd, not surpassing the crowd of celestial beings or the crowd of sages and saints. But surpassing the human crowd is enough to satisfy humanity; ordinary people have no aspiration or pursuit of surpassing the celestial crowd or the crowd of sages and saints.

Therefore, an ordinary person is not necessarily ordinary for a lifetime; through all kinds of training and all kinds of effort, one can train oneself to become talented and capable, becoming an extraordinary, outstanding talent. So-called excellence means strong power of wisdom, including concentration power, awareness, alertness, insight, executive ability, power of insight, comprehension, power of awakening, and so on. Cases like this of being trained into talent in the worldly realm can be entirely replicated in the practice and realization of the Buddha-dharma. The practice of the Buddha-dharma and training in worldly dharmas follow the same principle and can be applied interchangeably; and once the practice of the Buddha-dharma succeeds, it can be fully applied to worldly dharmas. The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice is to perfect worldly dharmas, to apply wisdom to worldly dharmas, and to make worldly dharmas as perfect as possible. If the Buddha-dharma cannot be applied to worldly dharmas, then the Buddha-dharma one has learned is useless and without any meaning.

Our Buddha, Śākyamuni Buddha, long ago paved the path for sentient beings' practice, formulated a practice plan, and provided the simplest and most effective method of practice—the contemplation of the four foundations of mindfulness. The "contemplation" here means observation, alertness, awareness, personal realization, awakening, experience, and so on. Just like the case above, through training in these ways, one enhances one's various abilities—that is, observation, perception, and thinking power in the five sense faculties—and thereby enhances the power of wisdom, recognizes the truth, and liberates oneself from self-imposed bondage.

However, some people, upon seeing that the four foundations of mindfulness belong to the Hīnayāna scriptures, develop a contemptuous attitude, do not take them seriously, and casually skip over them without practicing. These people with deeply entrenched arrogance do not know the importance of the contemplation of the four foundations of mindfulness, do not know that it is a precious dharma treasure for training one's various mental powers. Abandoning it and not using it, how can one enhance one's alertness and enhance the power of wisdom of the first seven consciousnesses? And once the various powers of the seventh consciousness are enhanced, the contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom of the Mahāyāna dharma also rises accordingly, like a boat rising with the tide, and is enhanced along with it; seeing the mind and seeing the nature in the Mahāyāna will also come quickly. As long as the various abilities of the seventh consciousness mind are enhanced, wherever they are applied there will be power of wisdom. It is like a pure pearl: no matter which pond it is cast into, the pond water will become clear.

The initial method of practicing the four foundations of mindfulness is contemplating the material body, starting with contemplating the breath, training one's concentration power and awareness, after which the other powers will also become complete. Then one contemplates the bodily actions of the material body: whenever the body performs each movement, the mind must be aware of it, must be alert to it. Gradually a power will arise that separates the mind from the body, whereby one becomes alert to the fact that the body seems false and unreal, as if it were not one's own. At this point the mind accords with emptiness. This is called "investigating things to extend knowledge"—it is genuine personal experience, vastly different from understanding gained through reading books, even completely opposite. When each person personally experiences it, they will know: "So that's how it is! I have truly misused my mind before—it was simply wild fanciful thinking. That so-and-so is now just like I was before, engaged in wild fanciful thinking, interpreting meaning according to the words, scratching an itch through a boot."

After investigating things to extend knowledge, the four aids to enlightenment before seeing the path appear. At this time one may be at the stage of heat, or at the stage of the summit, or perhaps at the stage of patience. When the mind's separation from the body grows ever stronger, and accords ever more with emptiness, one will transcend the worldly supreme dharma of the four aids to enlightenment, and the Hīnayāna sees the path. This process will inevitably appear as long as one makes effort, and it is an indispensable link in seeing the path; without this link one cannot see the path—seeing the path has nothing to do with how much theory one knows. Those who talk eloquently often disdain such arduous practice, valuing only theory, because they like to collect other people's theoretical viewpoints. Unable to develop meditative concentration, if the mind cannot become still, there is no alertness whatsoever, and of course the power of wisdom cannot arise either.

After the mind has separated from the body, one will personally experience how false the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) of the material body are—they are simply not mine. Every action and every mental thought feels unfamiliar, and one will feel that the world is utterly boring, no longer interested in anything, somewhat melancholy. As for the emptiness conceived by those who excel in theory, it is simply hard to describe in one word—vastly divergent from personal experience. Speculation is, after all, speculation; body and mind remain exactly as they were before, and perhaps may even go downhill.

People before and after seeing the path feel: what did I do in the past? It was all meaningless. Looking at others, they also sigh endlessly—what are they all grasping at in the world? What is there to grasp? How foolish! And those who grasp at worldly dharmas, looking at these people, also think they are truly foolish—attentive to nothing, pursuing nothing. The result is that each side considers the other foolish, and if these two kinds of fools cannot be reconciled, then they must temporarily part ways. Personal experience is far better than being obsessed with the Tripiṭaka. What good does it do to read through and memorize all three piṭakas and twelve divisions of the scriptures? The sutras are the sutras, and you are still you; the two have no intersection. Greed, hatred, and delusion remain greed, hatred, and delusion—without the slightest benefit, without the slightest change. How wonderful genuine practice is: learning while practicing, practicing while realizing; after realization, whatever one learns becomes thoroughly understood, and after thorough understanding one can further genuinely realize. Wisdom develops in a rolling fashion, and buddhahood has a set date. Why cling to other people's words while having not half a measure of merit of one's own to use?