What Should a Buddhist Practitioner Who Truly Aspires to Liberation Do?

Buddhist practitioners who truly wish for liberation should, in their daily lives, carefully examine the various feelings and sensations within their own minds—examining what they are craving and attached to, what matters they care about, and what they devote their thoughts and energy to. Once these are identified, they should analyze what kind of mentality this is, what significance it has, and what the outcome will be. Then they should find ways to counteract their own cravings and feelings; in this way, practice will sweep away obstructions, and progress on the path will be swift.

Our craving habits accumulated over beginningless kalpas are very heavy, and we ourselves find them very hard to detect, because we have grown accustomed to them and take them for granted. Only those who have walked the path and eliminated or subdued their craving habits can detect their own and others' craving minds. It is like one who has long dwelt in a fragrant hall no longer notices the fragrance, and one who has long stayed in a dung pit no longer notices the stench—only those outside the fragrant hall can smell its pure scent, and only those outside the dung pit can detect its foulness.

The scope of craving is very broad: any dharma within the desire realm, so long as one is fond of it, is craving. Those literary masters skilled in poetry and verse, and painters who wield their brushes with effortless flair, have almost all gone off to frolic in the ghost realm, because all of that belongs to craving—let alone other matters. Romantic love is even more certainly craving, making it impossible to escape rebirth in the ghost realm. Those who often paint horses, painting them with lifelike spirit, are reborn into a horse's womb after death; those who often write ghost stories, writing them with extraordinary vividness, are reborn as ghosts after death. Whatever the mind frequently dwells upon, after death one goes to keep company with that very thing. A painter who paints horses with great concentration has a mind resonating with horses, and in the next life will be reborn as a horse; those who often write novels about ghosts and spirits pour their minds into ghosts and spirits, resonating with them, and after death will become ghosts. Now we recollect the Buddha, and our minds resonate with the Buddha, so we will be born at the Buddha's side. When the mind resonates with the wholesome, one will be reborn in wholesome destinies; when the mind resonates with the unwholesome, one will be reborn in unwholesome destinies.

When the karmic retribution of the ghost realm ends, those who still have some merit go to take rebirth in the animal realm; when the karmic retribution of the animal realm ends, only those who still have some merit remaining will return to take rebirth in the human world. Therefore, the time one obtains a human body is extremely brief, while the time spent in the three evil destinies is extremely long. Every sentient being undergoes much suffering and very little happiness. So we should still think of our future lives, enjoy less felicity now, and leave more merit for later lives; only with great merit can one be reborn as a human as quickly as possible.

Those with deep roots of goodness and abundant merit stay at the Buddha's side, receiving the Buddha's guidance and edification, and their practice advances very quickly. Without the Buddha, being at the side of a bodhisattva who has severed afflictions, or at the side of an arhat, one's practice also advances very quickly—as the saying goes, near vermillion one becomes red, near ink one becomes black. Coarser craving can still be observed with some care, but subtle craving is extremely numerous, and almost no one can observe it—unless they are one who has severed afflictions. How rare is the opportunity to obtain a human body, how brief the time one has it, and how scarce and difficult it is to attain realization and liberation with a human body. For those of us who have already obtained human bodies, how to seize this rare opportunity and diligently cultivate realization to gain even a small measure of liberation—this is a question we should ponder deeply and often.