The Reasoning and Speculation of Consciousness Are Irrelevant to Liberation

Genuinely realizing the truth in Buddhist practice is not so easy; understanding can be arrived at casually. When discussing key issues, 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 bring realization, and for one's personal practice it is harmful rather than beneficial. Nowadays, most people who study Buddhism use the mind consciousness's thinking, analysis, reasoning, and speculation; those who truly cultivate, truly investigate, and truly inquire, 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 buddhahood, it would be useless and utterly unrelated to liberation from birth and death; expounding the Dharma in the most dazzling ways is also useless, utterly unrelated to liberation from birth and death; writing ten thousand books in a lifetime is likewise utterly unrelated to liberation from birth and death.

Practice is about breaking through all marks; turning around on these marks is useless. Studying Buddhism with a mind of gaining something or seeking something, what one learns is also conditioned dharma, and all conditioned dharmas are karmic actions of birth and death. If one studies Buddhism not for the sake of no-self, not for liberation from afflictions, not for eliminating ignorance, then it is plainly for the worldly self and my this and that…. Such a person fundamentally cannot obtain 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 practice, all have a mind of seeking and a mind of gaining—that is the mind of birth and death, and it is also the karma of birth and death.

Nowadays, even if people studying Buddhism can become enlightened any number of times, they simply cannot eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi). Why? Because without solidly cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) 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 eradicate the view of self. The result is that it can be obtained by any means, yet the actual process of study and practice is about whatever means one uses to obtain it. On the question of practice, clever people are unwilling to labor diligently, while those who truly put in effort pursue it persistently like fools, caring only to cultivate and never asking about the harvest—yet the cleverer a person is, the more foolish they are. Practice is something fools do, not something clever people do.