Why Is It Difficult for Modern Buddhist Practitioners to Cultivate Meditative Concentration

The common phenomenon among present-day Buddhist practitioners is that both the conditions and the merit needed for cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) are insufficient, and therefore meditative power is very hard to develop. On the surface, many people's material living standards have indeed improved, but the merit they can devote to transcendental worldly Dharma—the Buddha's teachings—is very much lacking.

Those who cannot cultivate dhyāna well, whose minds are not purified and emptied, should frequently examine and introspect upon their own minds, to see whether their minds are filled with the wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep of the desire realm, whether they are attached to the various dharmas, people, affairs, and things of the desire realm, and whether they have deep attachments to these desire-realm dharmas. These attachments are all the diseased roots that obstruct the cultivation of samādhi, making dhyāna very difficult to develop. Once this diseased root is found, one must find a way to remove it, continually contemplating, analyzing, and observing the illusory and unreal nature of these dharmas, in order to lessen the attachment.

If a person loves fine food, loves comfort, loves enjoyment, loves praise, is attached to everything in the dharmas of the human world of the desire realm, cares about everything, and is mindful of and attentive to all affairs in the human world, then samādhi 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 dhyāna, because when things block the mind, the mind's burden is heavy; it cannot be emptied and stilled, and cannot attain tranquility (praśama). If we can subdue somewhat our various attachments, loves, hatreds, jealousies, and resentments toward the human world, samādhi will quickly appear.

If we are attached, thought after thought, to the world of the five aggregates (pañcaskandha), with heavy grasping and clinging, samādhi will not arise. Only when the mind of revulsion toward and renunciation of the world of the five aggregates arises, with no craving, can the desire-realm concentration appear; only when one becomes weary of the living environment of the five aggregates of desire-realm devas and humans can the form-realm concentration appear. If we always have longing for everything in the world, and the mind is always rushing toward objects, it will be very difficult to accommodate anything more excellent and more sublime.