Do the Four Dhyānas and Eight Samāpattis Cultivated by Non-Buddhists Have Any Use?

For anyone, if they have cultivated the four dhyānas and eight samādhis, they will effectively subdue afflictions and afflictive obstructions (kleśāvaraṇa), and the obstacles to seeing the Way will be greatly, greatly reduced. More than half of the thirty-seven factors of the Path will already have been cultivated; only the correct knowledge and view for seeing the Way is insufficient and lacking. If one's roots of goodness and merit are complete, and upon encountering correct knowledge and view one can believe and accept it without doubt, then wisdom will no longer be obscured, and it becomes possible to see the Way immediately. In the Buddha's time, quite a few non-Buddhists heard the Buddha teach the Dharma and at that very moment attained purity of the Dharma eye, becoming anāgāmins or arhats of the fourth fruit, and there were also some of the first and second fruits.

In what does the merit of meditative concentration (samādhi) lie? It lies in being able to subdue the manas's scatteredness and grasping, and the six consciousnesses will thereby also be subdued, no longer discriminating and fabricating in all directions. In this way the mind can at any time be concentrated on one place, with strong deliberation (manasikāra/manana), and wisdom can then be developed. If one has fully attained the four dhyānas and eight samādhis shared with non-Buddhists, and then contemplates the Buddha's Dharma, realization and enlightenment become relatively much easier. Therefore, meditative concentration is one of the necessary and indispensable conditions for realizing all dharmas, and also the most important direct condition.

Wisdom is born in stillness and in extreme stillness. When the mind settles down, it becomes pure; purity gives rise to wisdom, whereas turbid water disturbs the will and harms the emotions. If one does not cultivate meditative concentration yet wishes to attain the fruits and see the mind, that is absolutely impossible; what one obtains is a fruit like foam, without practical value, and after being watched for a long time, it will also burst and vanish.