The Difference Between the Gate of Understanding and the Gate of Practice

Understanding (jie), as the name implies, means comprehension. It starts from the level of principle, engaging in deliberation and digestion, including imagination, inference, organizing, summarizing, speculation, and so on. It can also be called the preparatory work before realization. If this preparatory work is carried too far, affecting and obstructing the deepening of contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), it becomes very difficult to attain personal realization. In short, the gate of understanding enters through principle, and is the digestion and dissolution of principle. This is the easiest and least laborious entry method for learning Buddhism and practicing, and beginners all remain stuck at this stage, unable to get past it.

Practice (xing), as the name implies, means action. It is the action taken toward realization after one has understood and grasped the principle, such as contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā), investigation, searching and examining (vitarka-vicāra), and so on. The gate of practice involves concrete action; only action can achieve the goal, whereas understanding has not yet been put into practice and lacks the power of action, so it cannot achieve the goal. The implementation steps include keeping precepts, cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi), cutting off evil and cultivating goodness, subduing afflictions, repenting of karmic obstructions, removing hindrances, and then, within meditative concentration, investigating Chan, investigating, personally realizing, contemplating, and many other practical methods. This is a practical process that is necessary for the realization and personal verification of the Buddha-dharma. The saying "true knowledge comes from practice" refers to exactly this principle. Without this process, true knowledge cannot emerge, and even if one knows something, it is not true knowledge.

Many people do not clearly understand the distinction between understanding and practice, and cannot differentiate them. They often take the gate of understanding to be the ultimate gate of practice and the final place of entering the Path, blocking their own gate of enlightenment—a great pity. Understanding is like imagination; practice is like contemplation. Contemplation and imagination differ greatly. Imagination is completely fabricating realms out of nothing, equivalent to what the secular world calls "filling in with the brain"—no realm automatically appears before one, let alone a realm of meditative absorption (samādhi). Even if one imagines and fabricates with complete accuracy, it still does not equal having contemplated it. Contemplation, on the other hand, is when the practice has matured and the realm naturally appears, presenting itself automatically and spontaneously; then one sees the realm as it truly is—as the realm is, so it is seen, with nothing extra added—and moreover, a realm of meditative absorption (samādhi) will appear along with it.

Those who claim enlightenment without being enlightened are basically in the following situation: taking the dharma they have imagined to be the dharma of realization they have contemplated—a very serious misunderstanding. The difference between direct perception (pratyakṣa) observation and imagination—probably one hundred percent of people cannot distinguish it clearly. Therefore, of nearly all who believe themselves enlightened or believe others enlightened, almost one hundred percent have a greater component of imagination, and it is not what was observed through direct perception; their contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) is severely insufficient. The reason I have not said that all enlightenment is one hundred percent false enlightenment is that one should leave some room when speaking, and also show mercy with one's mouth—I do not wish to hurt people, still less to offend people and make everyone hate me.

Only after realization and personal verification can understanding and practice correspond. What one has understood is confirmed; what one has realized accords with what one has understood. After confirmation, questioning doubt is severed, the bonds and fetters are severed, coarse afflictions are severed, and one's bodily, verbal, and mental actions accord with and conform to the principle. Principle and phenomena are initially fused without divergence; what one says is in accord with principle, what one does is reasonable, mouth and mind are as one, body and mind are consistent—there is no phenomenon of speech and action running counter to each other, of bodily, verbal, and mental actions running counter to principle. Only when understanding and practice do not correspond is it like this, which shows there has been no realization.