Cultivation of Concentration and Chan Meditation for Realization of the Way (Part 1)
Preface
In the Dharma-ending age, sentient beings have meager merit (alpa-puṇya). Living in an era of advanced information and technology, with fierce competition and great pressure of life, their minds are chaotic and impure, and they also lack the environmental conditions for cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi). Moreover, sentient beings love broad learning and strong memorization, and their minds are restless and agitated; therefore meditative concentration is very difficult to cultivate, and the power of concentration is generally insufficient. Yet meditative concentration is precisely the key factor in the cultivation and realization of the Buddha-dharma; it is one of the three important untainted studies (tri-viśiṣṭa-śikṣā) emphasized by the Buddha, and the key to obtaining the wisdom of liberation. Without concentration there is no wisdom. Therefore, if one wishes to attain liberation, cultivating concentration is an urgent matter.
How to cultivate meditative concentration well is the most practical problem facing practitioners, because without meditative concentration, the cultivation and realization of all Buddha-dharmas cannot even begin. The three studies of precepts (śīla), concentration (samādhi), and wisdom (prajñā) are equally important in the process of Buddhist practice; not one can be lacking. The study of concentration occupies the second position, which shows that the power of concentration is of vital and crucial importance to practice. It is the golden key that opens the treasure trove of wisdom, and the boat that carries one to the other shore of nirvāṇa.
Nowadays, the bottleneck for most practitioners lies in meditative concentration. When concentration is not cultivated well, the mind is scattered and impure, afflictions cannot be subdued, and one feels inadequate when contemplating the Buddha-dharma in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), and thus cannot attain realization. The World-Honored One taught his disciples in the Sūtra on the Methods of Sitting in Meditative Concentration (Zuochan Sanmei Famen Jing) that the reason the mind, being scattered, cannot give rise to meditative concentration is that it is obscured by the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion; the mind contains many attachments and concerns, making it very difficult to settle into stillness. The Buddha taught his disciples that before cultivating meditative concentration, they should use wisdom to remove the various initial application and sustained examination (vitarka-vicāra) and remove scattered thinking, use wisdom to contemplate these afflictions, and then give rise to meditative concentration, and subsequently subdue and eradicate the afflictions.
The common phenomenon among present-day Buddhist learners is that both the conditions and the merit for cultivating concentration are insufficient, so the power of concentration is very hard to develop. On the surface, many people's material living standards have indeed improved, but the merit available for the supramundane dharma of Buddhism is very lacking. Those who cannot cultivate meditative concentration well and whose minds are not purified and emptied should frequently examine and introspect on whether their minds are filled with the wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep of the desire realm; whether they are attached to the various people, affairs, and things of the desire realm; and whether they have deep obsessions with the dharmas of the desire realm. These attachments are the fundamental causes obstructing the cultivation of concentration. Once this root of the disease is found, one must find ways to remove it to ensure that meditative concentration is cultivated well.
If a person loves fine food, loves comfort, loves enjoyment, loves praise, is attached to all the dharmas of the human world in the desire realm, and is mindful of and concerned about everything in the human world, meditative concentration is impossible to cultivate. The more one pursues in life, the more hope and interest one has in life, the harder it is to attain meditative concentration, because when things block the mind, the burden on the mind is heavy; it cannot be empty and tranquil, and one cannot attain tranquility (praśama). If these attachments and grasping can be subdued and lightened, meditative concentration will quickly appear.
Only when one can give rise to a mind of weariness and detachment from the world of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), having few desires or no desires for life in the human world of the desire realm, can the concentration of the desire realm appear; only when one is weary of the five-aggregate living environment of the devas of the desire realm can the concentration of the form realm appear. If one always craves all the dharmas of the world and the mind always rushes toward sense objects, it is difficult to accommodate anything more excellent and more sublime. Therefore it is necessary to free oneself from the various desires and cravings within the mind. With few desires and contentment, the mind will inevitably become pure, and meditative concentration will inevitably appear.
