The Content of Cultivation After Enlightenment

For practitioners of the Chan school, after seeing one’s true mind and attaining enlightenment through investigating Chan, continuing onward in practice is called "cultivating after enlightenment." Before enlightenment, because one has not realized the true mind, the tathāgatagarbha, one’s wisdom has not arisen, and there is no way to truly cultivate anything. After enlightenment, because one has realized the tathāgatagarbha and wisdom has arisen, one knows what content one needs to cultivate. Having entered the door after enlightenment, one discovers that there is an enormous amount of Buddhist dharma to be cultivated, and so one eagerly wishes to devote all one’s time to the Buddha-dharma, not wanting to waste energy and time in worldly affairs. Some people choose to go into retreat for practice. At this point, one’s own practice generally will not go astray, for one has gained a certain degree of discernment regarding the meaning of the dharma; as long as one applies effort, one’s progress on the Path can advance.

What dharma is cultivated after enlightenment? Cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) after enlightenment is one aspect—cultivating the four dhyānas and eight concentrations, so that one’s power of concentration and power of the Path grow stronger. Attaining the first dhyāna enables one to sever afflictions, attain liberation of mind, and gain the ability to pass through the three checkpoints of the Chan school, entering the house of the Tathāgata and becoming a true son of the Buddha. All the various contemplative practices (vipaśyanā-caryā) after enlightenment are inseparable from meditative concentration; otherwise one cannot pass through the three checkpoints and cannot realize the deeper teachings of the Buddha-dharma. Another aspect is that after enlightenment one needs to read the Buddhist sūtras and study the scriptures; the Tripitaka and twelve divisions of the canon must gradually be mastered. Because after realizing the tathāgatagarbha one can understand the sūtras more easily than before, one can increase one’s prajñā wisdom through reading the sūtras and give rise to the wisdom acquired subsequently. After enlightenment, one must cultivate up to the ten stages of devotion, the ten stages of conduct, and the ten stages of dedication, pass through the three checkpoints of the Chan school, or enter the first bhūmi—all of these are the content of cultivating after enlightenment.

There is a great deal of dharma to cultivate after enlightenment. The patriarchs of the Chan school generally choose to go into retreat only after enlightenment, not before. Before enlightenment, they go to various practice centers to search for good spiritual teachers to investigate, doing everything possible to seek enlightenment; they do not choose retreat, because without knowing the ins and outs of the Buddha-dharma and not understanding Chan investigation, retreat is useless and only a waste of time.

Only after enlightenment do they choose retreat, because having attained the general-characteristic wisdom of the Buddha-dharma, they have the wisdom to observe and investigate the tathāgatagarbha, and their practice will not go astray. During quiet retreat practice, one must observe the functioning of the tathāgatagarbha in the various dharmas in order to obtain deeper specific-characteristic wisdom, and one must also study the sūtras to raise and advance one’s wisdom. As for the content of post-enlightenment practice: having passed the first checkpoint, there is still the second, and the third checkpoint of the Chan school—all of these require calm, focused cultivation after enlightenment. In particular, the Mahāyāna sūtras and the Tripitaka with its twelve divisions require retreat for quiet cultivation, requiring dedicated time for practice, so as not to be disturbed by worldly dharmas.

After the Sixth Patriarch was enlightened, because he was uneducated, he could not study the Tripitaka and twelve divisions, so he chose to cultivate meditative concentration. For fifteen years in the hunters’ camp he cultivated samādhi, while also engaging in contemplative practice within concentration, observing the combined functioning of the tathāgatagarbha and the five aggregates (pañcaskandha), and his prajñā wisdom grew ever deeper. After cultivating for fifteen years, his meditative concentration was accomplished and supernatural powers emerged. At that point, the Sixth Patriarch felt that the conditions for propagating the dharma had arrived, and only then did he leave the hunters’ camp.

In the fifteen years after the Sixth Patriarch’s enlightenment, when he delivered that Platform Sutra, he never said anything about the need to "sustain and guard" (the realization) after enlightenment, because his sitting meditation was not about sustaining anything—making the mind consciousness not give rise to thoughts so as to purify the mind. Quite the contrary: the Sixth Patriarch knew that the true mind is intrinsically pure and need not be made pure again—that would be superfluous.

Moreover, the true mind is simply as it is; external force cannot change Him—only the deluded mind can be changed. The Sixth Patriarch also never said anything about sustaining the tathāgatagarbha while sitting in meditative absorption, because the tathāgatagarbha does not need to be sustained. After his enlightenment and realization of the tathāgatagarbha, once he had confirmed the true mind of the tathāgatagarbha, he would never regress again—what would there be to sustain? No need to sustain it. What the Sixth Patriarch cultivated was the four dhyānas and eight concentrations, along with observing the functioning of the tathāgatagarbha, perfecting specific-characteristic wisdom, and then passing through the three checkpoints of the Chan school—this was what the Sixth Patriarch cultivated. The content cultivated by other Chan patriarchs differed from one another, each having its distinctions, but broadly speaking all was for the sake of attaining deeper wisdom.