If Wisdom Is Insufficient, Nothing Can Be Done Well.

If a person lacks the wisdom of direct perception, then even wanting to rely on the standard of correct scriptural teaching is not easy. The Buddhist scriptures are there in black and white, yet how many people misunderstand them, how many misinterpret them? Even when reciting the sutra text verbatim, word for word without the slightest alteration, the moment the sound comes out with its rises and falls in intonation, the meaning of the sutra text can be changed. In the modern Tripitaka, many texts have been re-edited and re-proofread by modern people, and even the punctuation marks have been wrongly placed. Classical Chinese Buddhist scriptures generally consist of four-character phrases; after modern people proofread them, they changed them to modern punctuation, and then the meaning of the sutra text became twisted, so that the original meaning can no longer be seen. In a word, foolishness means insufficient wisdom, and insufficient wisdom means one cannot do anything well.