How Can One Genuinely Cultivate Practice and Realization to Attain Direct Perception Wisdom

Many people take the Dharma as they understand it to be their realization, and their understanding is often quite shallow—sometimes the Dharma is merely guessed, inferred, or conjectured. They cannot distinguish the boundaries and differences between intellectual understanding, interpretive awakening, and realization-enlightenment. This great misunderstanding leads to the grave false speech of claiming realization one does not have. Many answers and conclusions in the Buddha-Dharma were given by the Buddha himself, and some were expounded by the great bodhisattvas and good spiritual teachers. When, in the course of one's practice, one comes to understand these conclusions and answers, this is not realization; it does not even count as interpretive awakening—it is still very far from it.

What, then, is realization? For example, the Buddha said that all dharmas are like a dream, like an illusion. This is a conclusion the Buddhas arrived at through cultivation and realization; it is the Buddha's realized attainment. When others come to understand it, it is merely understanding—not even interpretive awakening. Only when one truly realizes that all dharmas are like a dream and an illusion does one reach the bodhisattva stage of the ten dedications, soon qualifying to enter the first bhūmi. So can ordinary sentient beings, merely by reading and understanding that all dharmas are like a dream and an illusion, directly become great bodhisattvas at the stage of the ten dedications? Obviously impossible. Without the precepts, meditation, and wisdom—the bodhisattva's six perfections—being complete, with nothing cultivated to perfection, not even counting as an initial enlightenment, how could one leap over nearly a great asaṃkhyeya kalpa of time to become a great bodhisattva at the stage of the ten dedications?

To realize that all dharmas are like a dream and an illusion, one must, on the foundation of fully cultivating the precepts, meditation, and wisdom and the bodhisattva's six perfections, engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and investigation proceeding from the shallow to the deep, realizing the Dharma at each level in sequence—from the first and second barriers of the Chan school all the way to the third barrier—before one can finally attain the illusion-like contemplation. This takes many kalpas, an amount of cultivation approaching one great asaṃkhyeya kalpa. Understanding of "like a dream, like an illusion" itself has many levels; even a complete, utterly thorough understanding does not equal realization, because there has been no actual process of investigation, no proof—the conclusion was not arrived at by oneself.

It is like a geometry proof problem: the final conclusion is given by the teacher, ready-made, not derived by oneself. One must prove it step by step oneself, with a process and steps, and only then can one prove the final conclusion the teacher has given. If the process is incomplete or untrue, even if one arrives at a conclusion consistent with the teacher's, it is still wrong—not attained through valid direct cognition. The Buddha-Dharma works by the same principle: everyone can state the final conclusion that all dharmas are like a dream and an illusion. Though what they say is correct principle, it is still not their own realization through valid direct cognition.

In the Buddha-Dharma, the Buddha has given us countless final answers and conclusions, contained in the Tripiṭaka and the twelve divisions of the scriptures. Even if we memorized the entire Tripiṭaka and its twelve divisions, even if we expounded them with eloquence flowing like a river, it would still not be our own realized attainment—merely a representation of our understanding, still far from interpretive awakening, let alone realization-enlightenment. Every dharma the Buddha taught, even every single sentence, requires us to deliberate and investigate within profound meditative concentration (samādhi), engaging in contemplative practice in accordance with reality and principle, before we can possibly realize them one by one. Only wisdom after realization is one's own wisdom of valid direct cognition; otherwise, no teaching is one's own realization, and true wisdom will not accord with what is said.

If one truly wants to realize and achieve something, one must even forget the finer details of contemplating the five aggregates (pañcaskandha), casting them behind. Just devote oneself to contemplative practice and investigation; the details must be clarified by oneself during the contemplative practice, and only then can wisdom arise. Many people cannot apply their effort to the manas. That is because their meditative concentration is severely insufficient, and they can never experience how to let the manas alone deliberate (manana). With insufficient power of concentration, how could there be such an experience? When one lacks meditative concentration, it is best not to investigate anything at all. A clever mind consciousness will "understand" quite a lot, but it has no real use—it may serve for playing with words, but it has no practical value. For the mind consciousness to "understand" the Dharma this way is worse than not understanding at all. It is best to preserve and deepen one's meditative concentration, and investigate when the conditions are complete.