What Is Actual Practice and Actual 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 remains only at the stage of the mind consciousness's intellectual grasp of the Dharma; in the Chan school this is called emotional thinking and intellectual interpretation, the mind consciousness's conjecturing. As to what its meaning ultimately is, and why it is so, one neither knows nor realizes it; one only knows the conclusion, without any process of verification.

Realization, by contrast, is the process of verification, in which the conclusion reached matches the established answer. This answer was given by the Buddha, and the process of verification is each person's process of genuine practice and 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 becoming a Buddha lies in wisdom, without meditative concentration, how can true wisdom be brought forth? Some practitioners want only the final wisdom, without wanting concentration—like eating only the last pancake while having no interest in the earlier pancakes. Wisdom without meditative concentration is like that last pancake: speaking of food does not fill the belly—discoursing loftily on an empty stomach.

Those with insufficient wisdom often only enjoy others' lofty discourse and grand pronouncements, and cannot discern whether there is anything of real substance within their bellies. In this way it is easy to delay 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 fact one is still very far from it.