The Four Right Efforts Are a Hard Criterion for Actual Practice

Ru She's contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā): Usually I feel empty inside, without a root, without flavor. I pay more attention inward and less attention outward. Now I feel less toward sentient beings than before; I speak less in daily life. Although I still enjoy studying the meaning of the Dharma, I no longer have much interest in debating Dharma principles. When discussing questions with others, halfway through I no longer feel like talking. In the past, when troubles arose in work and life, I would lose sleep; now I eat when it is time to eat and sleep when it is time to sleep, and I can forget things just like that. Sometimes when I enter meditative concentration (samādhi), a disturbance will come to mind, and then it is forgotten again. When the manas stirs, I can feel that fabrication is beginning. The most obvious sign of the manas stirring is when greed and aversion arise. One must observe carefully: before doing anything, the manas moves first.

Assessment: When meditative concentration arises and contemplative practice keeps pace with it, the mind will undergo change. The difference between having meditative concentration and not having it is very great. With meditative concentration, outward grasping decreases, attention to trivial matters lessens, and interest in many things fades. Afflictions lighten and obsessions diminish, and wisdom will gradually arise. The benefits of meditative concentration are inexhaustible. If one does not cultivate meditative concentration, then one is not practicing at all; learning Buddhism is mere conceptual proliferation (prapañca), and realization is impossible. Only with meditative concentration can contemplative practice be carried out, and only then can it be detailed and thorough—able to grasp the great matters and let go of the small ones, to abandon many unnecessary things. A person will also become more accommodating and skillful in accord with conditions, stubbornness weakens, thoughts of aversion grow lighter, and greed diminishes.

After one has meditative concentration and cultivates contemplative practice, one can turn the light inward and reflect back upon the mind, so afflictions in the mind can be discovered in time and subdued at any moment. Unwholesome thoughts will grow fewer and fewer, while wholesome thoughts and thoughts of equanimity grow more and more. The Four Right Efforts (samyak-prahāṇa) will then be cultivated: unwholesome states not yet arisen do not arise; unwholesome states already arisen are eliminated; wholesome states not yet arisen arise; wholesome states already arisen grow and increase. If some people still have heavy afflictions, with few wholesome thoughts and many unwholesome ones, then the Four Right Efforts have not been cultivated well, the mind's disposition has not changed, and there is no hope of eliminating self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) and realizing the fruit.

Therefore, realizing the first fruit requires the elimination of gross afflictions (dausthulya); one's mental disposition must already be that of a sage. If someone claims to have eliminated self-view, or claims to have attained enlightenment, yet his afflictions still appear very heavy, with no fundamental change in his mental disposition—greed, aversion, jealousy, fighting everywhere, with body, speech, and mind all impure—such a person's claimed realization of the fruit and enlightenment is merely his own assumption; the tathāgatagarbha does not acknowledge it. Anyone who has not cultivated the precepts and meditative concentration, has not engaged in contemplative practice in accord with the Dharma, and has not cultivated the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, the Eightfold Noble Path, the Four Right Efforts, and so on, cannot possibly attain any seeing of the path of either the Great or the Small Vehicle. Thus the Four Right Efforts and the Thirty-seven Aids to Enlightenment are the yardstick of genuine practice.