Mind Like a Wall Can Enter the Path

Question: One night, while dreaming in my sleep, I entered meditative concentration. My mind was bright and lucid, and I was clearly aware of the people and things around me, yet I felt as if these people and affairs had no connection with me whatsoever, and could not affect me. It was as if I were in a vacuum, without a single distracting thought in my mind—there was only one thought contemplating the Dharma (I cannot remember exactly which Dharma teaching it was), like a lone sun shining in the sky without a single dark cloud. At the same time, my whole body and mind felt incomparably tranquil and comfortable. I finally realized how blissful it is to be in meditative concentration! Even after waking up, I could still feel that comfort. If one has this kind of meditative concentration, one truly would no longer crave worldly pleasures. That feeling of tranquility and ease is something the pleasures of the five desires in the world cannot compare with. May I ask, Master: why would such a state, which I have never experienced in waking life, appear in a dream?

Answer: This kind of dream is a state of investigating Chan within meditative concentration, possessing both concentration and wisdom, with śamatha and vipaśyanā operating together. You cultivated this kind of meditative concentration in past lives—it was preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi). Your manas experienced it in a previous life and has a memory of it. Now you yearn for it in your heart and wish to experience this state of meditative concentration again, but your present life is rather busy, and the conditions for cultivating concentration are not complete. So the manas could only dream, enjoying in the dream the bliss of meditative concentration and Chan investigation. It seems the manas is quite pitiable and helpless—modern society is so chaotic that one cannot even withdraw from a tumultuous life to cultivate the Path single-mindedly.

In the dream, the mind consciousness was in a lucid, thought-free state, bright and clear, without thoughts—it should have been in preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi)—while the manas was functioning in a state of investigating the Dharma, deliberating (manasikāra) on the Buddha's teachings. Only by such deliberation on the Dharma can the fundamental problem be solved and the Path be realized. Investigating Chan is precisely this state: without a single distracting thought in the mind, external objects do not enter the mind, and the mind remains immovable in suchness (tathatā-acalita) like walls of bronze and iron. Patriarch Bodhidharma said that when the mind is like a wall, one can enter the Path—that is exactly what he meant. If your meditative concentration and contemplation cannot reach this level, do not expect to realize the Path.

This deliberating and investigating state of the manas can only arise and be sustained continuously under conditions of extreme quietness; only then can one investigate the profound and extremely subtle principles of the Dharma. Therefore, a true practitioner will cut off all external conditions, in absolute solitude and loneliness, alone without companions. Cultivating the Path is a great undertaking that must be done in solitude; it cannot be accomplished amid clamor and in company. Those who cannot endure loneliness cannot walk the path of genuine cultivation. Meditative concentration can subdue and eradicate afflictions, and can bring tranquility, joy, and happiness—nothing brings more happiness than cultivating the Path. Therefore, those who possess meditative concentration do not relish worldly dharmas; their minds do not cling to the world, they do not pursue wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep, nor gain and honor, and they do not crave power and status. Being greedy for worldly dharmas is truly unwise conduct.

Some people say that as long as one can contemplate the Dharma without distracting thoughts for a dozen or so minutes, one can attain realization and see the mind. Such talk is simply absurd. With such a short time of contemplating the Dharma, it is utterly impossible to have any deep and subtle contemplation, nor is it possible to cultivate to the state of the equal cultivation of Samādhi and Prajñā in investigating Chan. It is like boiling a large pot of water, which requires an hour; if you stop the fire after five or ten minutes and continue boiling the next day, then even boiling it this way for a year or ten years will never bring the water to a boil. To treat the Buddha's Dharma as child's play in this way brings quite unwholesome retribution. If the Dharma were so easy to cultivate and realize, how could there be so many beings in the three evil destinies? People in the world all love to take shortcuts, yet the result of taking shortcuts is harming oneself. As you sow, so shall you reap; if you wish to achieve something, you must relinquish body and mind and be willing to put in real effort.