The Practice and Study of the Buddha's Teachings Has Stages.

Question: In the Buddhadharma, everything one learns must have practical value for actual cultivation. If one can only study theory without being able to practice it, it cannot be passed down. The Dharmalakṣaṇa-Yogācāra school has a method of practice called the "Fivefold Contemplation of Mere Consciousness," yet very few people practice it. Why is that?

Answer: Studying and practicing any dharma gate is for the sake of realization, growing wisdom, and attaining liberation, and this requires actual practice. Some theories are merely theories; they cannot guide actual practice, and thus realization is impossible. Left sitting there, they are mere ornaments, decorations for the facade. Studying and practicing the Dharmalakṣaṇa-Yogācāra school is like graduate and doctoral courses in worldly learning—extremely profound. This is a dharma gate that bodhisattvas begin to cultivate before attaining the bhūmis. Ordinary Buddhist learners lack a foundation in the Buddhadharma; even eradicating the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa) in the Hīnayāna is beyond their hope—how could they possibly study and understand it?

That is why in the Tang dynasty the Yogācāra school lasted only two generations before it could no longer be transmitted. One of the reasons was that Buddhist practitioners lacked the cultivation and realization of foundational Buddhadharma, so the profound Dharmalakṣaṇa-Yogācāra was even more impossible to actually practice. With theory and practice thus derailed from each other, how could Yogācāra be passed down? Without the realization of bhūmi-attained bodhisattvas, the Yogācāra school likewise could not be transmitted. So the Buddhadharma truly is divided into levels and stages of practice. Even worldly learning, so shallow by comparison, is divided into elementary, middle school, and university curricula; the profound Buddhadharma is even more so divided into levels. The cultivation time for attaining buddhahood spans three incalculable eons; only by realizing the foundational dharmas first can one actually practice the later Buddhadharma. It is like placing one foot onto the step ahead before the other foot can lift and step onto the next step—one cannot skip levels, otherwise one will fall and be unable to ascend the steps.