The Difference Between Modern and Ancient Buddhist Practitioners

The characteristic of modern people is that the environment they live in is complex, and the realms of the six sense objects are too alluring. Learning the Dharma is easy, knowledge is abundant, and the mind consciousness is extremely clever—extraordinarily clever—yet meditative concentration (samādhi) is hard to cultivate, so they cannot cultivate the Path or attain the Way. Therefore they can only be called learners of Buddhism; there are very few who actually cultivate the Path. Ancient people lived in a simple environment; obtaining the Dharma was not easy, they had little knowledge and little theory, and their minds were simple and pure, so meditative concentration was easy to cultivate. Hence there were many who cultivated the Path, and many who attained the Way as well. 

Abundant knowledge ultimately becomes an obstruction to cultivating the Path, turning into an obstruction to the knowable (jñeyāvaraṇa). The theory is sufficient, yet the Way does not appear—one dies beneath theory, like someone dying of thirst at the edge of the sea. 

The ancients asked: How did you modern people all die? The modern people answered: Crushed to death by theory, poisoned to death by knowledge, or dead from being too clever. There is yet another kind of death—dying from research.