The mind consciousness's inference and speculation are irrelevant to liberation

Genuinely realizing the truth through Buddhist practice and cultivation is not so easy; intellectual understanding (解) can be done at will. When discussing key questions, one may be able to discuss out a correct conclusion, but such discussion is merely reasoning, and the result of reasoning is understanding, not realization—it cannot be realization, and it does more harm than good to one's personal cultivation. Nowadays, most people who study Buddhism rely on the mind consciousness's thinking, analysis, reasoning, and speculation; those who truly cultivate, truly investigate, and truly inquire, those who put in hard effort, are very, very few. Even if one could guess the realm of an eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva, or guess the realm of the Buddha stage, it is all useless and has nothing whatsoever to do with liberation from birth and death; expounding the Dharma in the most dazzling ways is also useless and has nothing whatsoever to do with liberation from birth and death; writing ten thousand books in a lifetime likewise has nothing whatsoever to do with liberation from birth and death.

Cultivation is about breaking through all marks; turning around on these marks is useless. To study Buddhism with a mind of seeking gain or a mind of seeking something is to learn only conditioned dharmas, and conditioned dharmas are all karmic actions of birth and death. If one studies Buddhism not for the sake of no-self, not for the sake of liberating oneself from afflictions, not for the sake of eliminating ignorance, then it is plainly for the sake of the worldly self and my this and that. Such a person fundamentally cannot attain the wisdom of liberation and cannot escape birth and death—this is another kind of delusion and inversion. Those who study the Dharma wanting only results and answers, without the intermediate process of cultivation, all have a mind of seeking something and a mind of seeking gain—that is, the mind of birth and death, which is also the karma of birth and death.

Nowadays, even if people who study Buddhism can awaken any number of times, they still cannot eliminate the view of self. Why? Because without solidly cultivating meditative concentration and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), without genuinely putting in effort to investigate and seek verification, it is impossible to realize the truth, and one cannot eliminate the view of self. The result can be obtained by any means, yet the actual process of practice is about what means one uses to obtain it. On the question of cultivation, clever people are unwilling to labor diligently, while those who truly put in effort pursue it persistently like fools, caring only to plow and never asking about the harvest—yet the cleverer a person is, the more foolish he is. Cultivation is the work of fools, not the conduct of clever people.