What Is Genuine Practice and Realization

So-called genuine practice, if it does not include the cultivation of meditative concentration (dhyāna), if one does not cultivate meditative concentration, how can what is cultivated be genuine? Without meditative concentration, or when concentration is very shallow, there can be wisdom, but such wisdom is only wisdom at the level of intellectual understanding, and there can be no wisdom of realized realization. Wisdom at the level of understanding merely remains at the mind consciousness's intellectual grasp of the Dharma; the Chan school calls this "emotional thinking and intellectual interpretation," the mind consciousness's guessing and conjecturing. As for what the meaning ultimately is, and why it is so, one neither knows nor realizes it—one only knows the result, without any process of proof.

Direct realization, on the other hand, is the process of proof, and the conclusion reached accords with the established answer. This answer was given by the Buddha, and the process of proof is each person's process of genuine contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā). Without meditative concentration, how can one engage in contemplative practice? How can wisdom be brought forth? Although liberation lies in wisdom and buddhahood lies in wisdom, without meditative concentration, how can true wisdom be brought forth? Some practitioners want only the final wisdom, without wanting concentration—like someone eating who is interested only in the last pancake and does not want to eat the ones before it. Wisdom without meditative concentration is just like that last pancake: speaking of food does not fill the belly; one expounds loftily on an empty stomach.

Those with insufficient wisdom often only appreciate others' lofty discourse and grand pronouncements, and cannot discern whether there is anything of real substance in their bellies. In this way one easily delays one's own progress on the Path, thinking that understanding all the Dharma means having realized it, having wisdom, and being able to attain liberation—when in reality one is still very far from it.