Only through rational contemplation, contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), and investigative inquiry within profound meditative concentration can one truly realize the Buddha's Dharma

In truth, everywhere in all ways, the green mountains fill the eyes with no wild grass. Every stem and leaf, every blade of grass, every single thread is real and not empty, yet leaves no trace. Having sought him a thousand times in the crowd, suddenly turning one's head—the lights are dim and scattered—everywhere in all ways, where is it not? Speechless and choked with emotion: in the past the mind was blind and the eyes even blinder; now the eyes are full of golden light. Such is the lament of one who has awakened to the Way.

When the conditions for realizing the fruits and for seeing one's true mind are complete, then upon encountering causes and conditions—no matter what kind—one can realize the fruits and awaken to the true mind. If one encounters the Buddha teaching the Dharma, realizing the fruits and seeing the true mind and one's nature becomes all the more possible, for the Buddha's majestic power of blessing is immense, and the field effect of the Buddha's Dharma assemblies is considerable. Moreover, practitioners in the Buddha's time generally possessed profound dhyāna; their minds were very pure, they all had the mind of renunciation, their afflictions were slight, and their roots of goodness and merit were deep. Thus, upon hearing the Dharma, they could engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and deliberation following the sound of the Buddha's voice, and immediately realize the fruits and awaken to the true mind.

We sentient beings of the Dharma-ending age cannot compare with those of the Buddha's time: our roots of goodness are scant and our merit thin, our minds restless and scattered, and we have no dhyāna at all. No matter how detailed the Buddha's Dharma is, it cannot enter our minds, so none of us can truly realize any fruit of attainment; at best we can merely understand it intellectually, which is already quite good. Precisely because sentient beings in general lack dhyāna and cannot fulfill the requirement of dhyāna, a certain claim has arisen: that without cultivating meditative concentration, one can directly engage in contemplative practice of the Buddha's Dharma. But without dhyāna, how can one have the capacity for contemplative practice? What could one contemplate? For how long could one contemplate? To what degree? Everyone can test this for themselves: compare contemplative practice before dhyāna with contemplative practice after dhyāna, and see how great the difference in effect is. It can be said the difference is enormous—they are fundamentally not the same thing.

For a single point of Dharma meaning, deliberation with dhyāna and deliberation without dhyāna differ as heaven from earth. That is why many people who deliberate on the Buddha's Dharma cannot truly understand it at all; they misinterpret and misunderstand far too much and simply cannot grasp the true meaning. To actually realize it and contemplate it with valid direct cognition is truly, truly difficult. Even so, many people place great confidence in their own comprehension, casually citing a passage of sutra to prove their point of view. In fact, the meaning of the sutra passage and their own view do not accord; they have misinterpreted a great deal without knowing it themselves.

Many who study the scriptures simply cannot understand the true meaning of the texts thoroughly and accurately, yet still think themselves quite capable. In fact, the Buddha's Dharma can never be worked out through research; only through deep dhyāna, with deliberation, contemplative practice, and investigation in accord with the Dharma, can one truly understand and truly realize. Research cannot bring realization.

Some people, seeing the records in the sutras of sentient beings realizing the fruits and awakening to the true mind in the very moment of hearing the Buddha teach, note that those people had not cultivated dhyāna yet realized the fruits directly, and so it seems that as long as one can hear the Dharma and reflect on it a little, one can realize the fruits without specially cultivating concentration. This is a very great misunderstanding. They do not know that those who realized the fruits upon hearing the Dharma had already fulfilled dhyāna, with deep roots of goodness and abundant merit, lacking only the causes and conditions. Encountering the most supreme cause and condition of the Buddha teaching the Dharma, of course they could realize the fruits and see the true mind and their nature with great ease.

Such people see only the final result of those who realized the fruits, but cannot see how long a path of practice those people had already walked, how they exerted themselves before hearing the Buddha teach the Dharma, how they made aspirations and conducted themselves, how they strove to cultivate dhyāna. Ignoring all these necessary conditions, they single out only the final segment of realizing the fruits—this is the most serious form of quoting out of context.

Modern people are so restless that they all want to take shortcuts—the simpler and more direct, the better. They do not want to walk the path the Buddha walked, believing their own methods more practical and more direct than the Buddha's, sparing themselves such hardship. Could it be that an ordinary being is superior to the Buddha, wiser than the Buddha? Was the Buddha's practice all a roundabout detour, while one's own path is the most direct—no need to lay a foundation, no need to pay any price, no need to labor at cultivating concentration to subdue one's own mind—just do some research and achieve great results? A fool's dream. The fruits produced by research are all made of paper: scattered and ruined at the first gust of wind, melted at the touch of fire. In today's world there are too many counterfeit fruits, all stamped with radish seals, unable to withstand the slightest stir of wind and grass; after death, the retributive results will be known to oneself.

Because sentient beings differ in ignorance and karmic power, they attract different retributive results, having different physical bodies as their direct retribution and different living environments as their circumstantial retribution. When a karmic retribution ends, they enter into another karmic retribution. Because karmic retributions differ, the physical bodies differ, the brain's tissue structure differs, the wisdom that manifests differs, and behavioral expressions differ.