What determines the height of a person's existence?

Living in the mundane world, if one had to choose between high technology and high moral character, which would everyone choose? Which one determines the quality of a person's life? Or replace high technology with high academic credentials, high culture, and high personal quality, or with high position, great wealth and honor, and great power. High quality does not entirely refer to the enjoyment of the physical body and material pleasures; it mainly refers to the mind's enjoyment, as well as one's present and future karmic retribution. Within the six realms of saṃsāra, the heavenly realm has a higher quality of existence than the human realm, the human realm has a higher quality of existence than the three evil realms, and the sages who transcend the six realms of saṃsāra have a higher quality than ordinary sentient beings.

The reason I raise the above questions is that recently, as well as some time ago, I have seen elementary and middle school teachers with virtually no teacherly virtue, and even university teachers lacking the deportment of a teacher; even some undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and international students have very poor moral character, regardless of gender or age. Seeing these people, I know that the current educational environment is extremely poor; the goal of education is not virtue, but knowledge, diplomas, degrees, and credentials—emphasizing the external while neglecting the internal. If teachers are like that, can they educate students to be excellent in both character and learning? Learning can be excellent, but character cannot be. Education increasingly neglects the quality of the mind and heart; there is no education aimed at elevating the mind and heart, and even scholarship is merely used as window dressing, for the sake of acquiring all kinds of worldly resources. Is education abroad good? It is not good either; likewise there is no education of the mind and heart, no attention to people's moral character and quality.

Is the Buddhist community good? Likewise not good. The monastics and laypeople in Buddhism all come from the mundane world and cannot separate from it; the old defilements cannot be removed, and the new defilements cannot be blocked off. Buddhist educators cannot even resolve their own afflictions—especially laypeople, whose worldly minds and selfish desires are heavy—so how can they educate their students well? If things continue like this, what hope is there for humanity? Data and materials from various sources show that humanity is on a downhill path; when it descends to a certain point, it will slide down—slide into the three evil realms. Not many people will remain in the human world, and the numbers will grow fewer and fewer.

Modern culture and knowledge cannot fill people with positive energy, cannot elevate humanity's thought and morality, cannot sublimate the mind and heart; likewise, the knowledge and theories in Buddhism have not raised the personal cultivation and quality of Buddhist practitioners—with the exception of a few individuals of high quality and awakening. Then can the quality of life be good for people of low quality, without cultivation and without virtue? Whether it is good or not, just look at the world's overall environment in recent years: all kinds of disasters, natural calamities and man-made catastrophes occurring frequently, small-scale wars unceasing, and there is no guarantee that large-scale wars will not break out. People's hearts have become more selfish and all are short-sighted, caring only about the square inch before their eyes, unable to plan for the long term, let alone consider matters of future lives. Judging from the overall world situation and its trajectory, the outlook for humanity is very bleak.

Then, from a longer-term perspective, from the perspective of cause and effect across the three lifetimes, what influences humanity's destiny—cultural knowledge and theories, high technology, or humanity's own moral character, cultivation, and practice? What determines cause and effect? Is it determined by the cultural knowledge, status, power, wealth, and other things that represent human identity as recognized by the mundane masses, or by humanity's thought and morality, and their concrete, actual bodily, verbal, and mental actions? If it is the former, then where are all the successful people of past and present, those of great fame and great wealth and honor? Search through the six realms—in which realm are they? How many have attained human bodies? How many have ascended to heaven? And how many are in the three evil realms? Why did the emperors and nobles of the past fall into the three evil realms after death, while today there are reports of farmers and ordinary people at the bottom of society being directly reborn as humans? What determines such cause and effect?

I once said to a disciple that regarding a child's education, cultural knowledge should be roughly adequate and there is no need to compare with others, spending high prices to learn knowledge that is of no benefit to birth-and-death saṃsāra, theories unrelated to one's own moral character—those things cannot determine the direction of birth and death, and may even increase the karma of birth and death. A person should be more practical. What is practical? What concerns the great matter of birth and death is the most practical; everything else can just be gotten through and is unimportant. What future prospects, what wealth and honor, what superiority over others—none of it is necessary. Look high and far, harbor great aspirations, do not drift along with the worldly current of the masses; only by transcending the mundane is there a good future.

From middle school onward, when I studied I considered practicality; I always wondered what use studying this subject was, what use studying that subject was. What I deemed useless, I just muddled through without studying seriously—especially the liberal arts subjects requiring memorization, which I generally did not study. In high school, my studying depended on the teacher's attitude: if the attitude was good, I studied carefully and thoroughly; if not, I just muddled through. When I was in a good mood I took first place in exams; when not, I hovered around upper-middle, so the teachers dared not criticize me. In university, I evaluated every subject one by one and found that ninety percent of the courses were useless, so I studied extracurricular books; when disturbed, I went to the school library to read, and when I found nothing worth reading there, I went to the city library. Every day I would go to the classroom to check the situation and leave before class started; when class ended I returned to the classroom to read by myself. For exams I crammed at the last minute, yet remarkably never failed a single one and never needed a makeup exam. Thus I muddled through to the end of my student days.

Be practical as a person. What is practical transcends the mundane; what is worldly and vulgar is not practical. What is not real cannot last long; who knows when it will vanish without a trace, and you would not even know where to chase after it.

"The mind is the master of the myriad things; it does not wither with the four seasons." In worldly dharma, if one does not attend to the actions of the mind, one cannot obtain good karmic retribution; in supramundane dharma it is even more so. Studying Buddhism and cultivating practice is precisely cultivating the mind; the goal is to change the actions of the mind—the mind is the target of all cultivation. If one does not attend to the actions and nature of the mind, but only delves into theoretical knowledge and engages in techniques, this is the behavior of abandoning the root to chase the branches. Many people just keep reading books, researching, pondering, and speculating, paying no attention at all to the nature of the mind; they do not cultivate the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment, do not practice the bodhisattva's six perfections, do not bring forth the bodhi mind, and only want the fruit, not knowing what is called fruit, where the fruit comes from, or what the fruit represents. With heavy utilitarian minds they take shortcuts, yet in the end they circle around the longest detour. The mind is the root; the shortcut is precisely cultivating the mind. If the mind is good, everything is good; if the mind is not good, nothing is good. Knowledge, theories, and various techniques, if unrelated to the mind, are merely techniques, and there is no fruit.

What is fruit? In fact there is no fruit at all. The so-called fruit is merely a term chosen to express and explain the degree of purity of the mind. If the mind is not pure, the word "fruit" cannot be used to express it. Fruit represents the pure state of the mind; if the mind is not pure, using techniques will not obtain fruit.

A few months ago I wanted to explain the Noble Eightfold Path in further detail, to discuss in detail what is right, and to what degree of rightness each aspect must be achieved before the Eightfold Path is considered fully cultivated, the conditions for realizing the fruit are complete, and the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) can be eradicated. To this day I have not been able to squeeze out the time to explain it. Not many people attend to the cultivation of the seven factors of enlightenment, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment—these are precisely the cultivation of the mind, the conditions for seeing the Path. People nowadays are short-sighted, ignorant and utilitarian, rushing only toward results, disregarding the process and the prerequisite conditions—what fruit can come of this? The fruit of birth-and-death saṃsāra, the fruit of the three evil realms—nothing else.

Most Buddhist practitioners cannot bring forth the bodhi mind; they have no vows or vowed conduct, ignore the affairs of Buddhism, disregard the affairs of sentient beings, close their eyes and care only about their own little affairs, extremely selfish, wanting only to receive and never to give, let alone to repay. "To repay upward the four kinds of kindness"—these matters have nothing to do with them; the kindness others have shown them is just what others were supposed to do anyway; they can barely take care of themselves, so what kindness do they care about? They owe the four kinds of kindness with a clear conscience, without any guilt. They offer not the slightest repayment or dedication to the Three Jewels community, to which they owe such deep kindness. "A drop of kindness should be repaid with a gushing spring," yet they, having received a gushing spring of kindness, are unwilling to repay even a drop. Such people who know neither kindness nor gratitude—no matter how much dharma they have studied, no matter how much knowledge they have acquired—gain not the slightest actual benefit; they will die just as they would have died, and transmigrate just as they would have transmigrated.