Direct Realization of the Buddhadharma Must Be Direct Perception

The actual realization of the Buddha-dharma does not rely on inference, but on direct perception and observation; it does not rely on reasoning, speculation, or deduction, nor on research, but on contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and meditative investigation within meditation. Only conclusions reached in this way are direct perception, are reliable, and can discover the truth and realize the truth, thereby gaining genuine benefit, eradicating doubt, and giving rise to faith.

Inference is somewhat like guessing; correct guesses are not frequent, and the proportion of correct guesses is not high. Even if a guess is correct, it is still not equivalent to direct perception and observation. For example, seeing smoke rising from behind a mountain, one infers by inference that there must be a fire on the other side of the mountain; in reality, it is not necessarily a fire—perhaps wet grass is being smoked, and so on, and flames do not necessarily appear. Another example: seeing a woman pregnant, one assumes she must have engaged in sexual intercourse in order to conceive; in reality, a person of high meditative concentration (samādhi) can enter the womb without going through sexual intercourse. The Fifth Patriarch's conception was like this, and in the Tang and Song dynasties, some Chan masters of high meditative concentration also entered the womb in this way.

There are also extremely many examples showing that inference is not equivalent to direct perception. Inference relies entirely on the mind consciousness's understanding, its analogizing, its reasoning, and its speculation; as long as the mind consciousness is somewhat clever, it can be done—this is not difficult. There are plenty of people in the world with petty cleverness. The difficulty lies in direct perception and observation, which is why countless people cultivate practice seeking liberation, yet those who truly attain liberation are as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. Genuine sages and saints are forever and always an extreme minority; the proportion of saints to ordinary beings is not balanced.

Conclusions reached through speculation and reasoning are not equivalent to actual realization. Even if the deduction is correct and happens to accord with the facts, it still cannot eradicate doubt, and there is no liberating merit and benefit. For example, all ordinary sentient beings believe that their five aggregates (pañca-skandha) and eighteen realms are the real self. On the surface, every ordinary sentient being seems to have no doubt and is fully convinced. But if sentient beings were truly and genuinely convinced of this, then why is it that when the Buddha taught that the five aggregates are without self, some sentient beings gave rise to doubt, and went on to cultivate meditative concentration and contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) to investigate the principle of the Four Noble Truths, finally eradicating their doubt and proving that their former understanding was wrong? This shows that what sentient beings call firm conviction without doubt is also unreliable; otherwise, how would the Buddha be able to liberate sentient beings? By the same token, many people's mind-consciousness reasoning, deduction, and research have not eradicated doubt in their minds; sooner or later they will overturn the conclusions they derived, and only then achieve genuine, actual realization.

Take another example: scientists, through various scientific means of research, arrive at a conclusion. Even if everyone agrees with this conclusion, it is not necessarily fact, not necessarily true. Otherwise, later scientists would not have overturned the conclusions of earlier scientists through more modern technological means. If scientists' deductions and research were all correct and without error, all according with fact, then scientists should possess great wisdom completely equal to the Buddha's, able to fully explore what the truth of the universe is, to know what the essence of worldly phenomena is; their conclusions should not contradict the Buddha's noble teachings, and they would all become sages and saints within the Buddha-dharma, becoming teachers and guides of sentient beings. But the facts are not so: they all have very deep and heavy ignorance (avidyā), remain thoroughly ordinary beings, and do not know what the true reality of the dharma realm is.

From this it can be seen that inferential methods such as reasoning, deduction, and research cannot be used in the cultivation of the Buddha-dharma, and cannot be taken as a means of actually realizing the Buddha-dharma. Even if one has great faith in and acceptance of a result reached through reasoning, it is not true faith and acceptance; the manas has doubt and cannot decide, and one does not even know it oneself. At the end of life, the answer will become clear—at that point, will it still be too late to turn back?