Meditative Concentration Is for Attaining the Wisdom of Liberation

When practicing meditative concentration, if the practice contains too much of the non-Buddhist (tīrthika) type of concentration, then practicing concentration is a waste of precious cultivation time. At the time of death, one will discover that a lifetime of cultivation amounted to nothing—no wisdom whatsoever was gained—and one will still have to continue transmigrating according to the karmic conditions of birth and death, in the ocean of saṃsāra and karma. Many people are quite proud of their excellent meditative concentration: once they enter concentration, they know nothing at all, or all sorts of miraculous things appear. In the end, however, all of these will vanish without a trace, and they will still gain nothing. The purpose of practicing meditative concentration is to let the mind settle down, and then to single-mindedly deliberate (manasikāra) and engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the Buddha's teachings, in the hope of realizing the Dharma and attaining the wisdom of liberation. If the wisdom of liberation cannot be attained, then that meditative concentration is not worth pursuing.

The mind must have right mindfulness. After meditative concentration has been developed, one should mindfully focus on true suchness (tathatā), recollect that the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) are without self, and recollect that all dharmas are impermanent. When the mind dwells on the Buddha's teachings, that is right; when the mind's thoughts are scattered, that is not right. Since one already knows that neither the body nor the conscious mind is the self, this should be the result of deliberation and contemplative practice. Observing that the mind currently engaged in doing all sorts of things is not the self—this is contemplative practice. While doing things, one asks oneself: How could this be me? How is this not me? This is contemplative practice. When contemplation within concentration can penetrate deep into the manas, the manas participates in the contemplative practice and accords with it. Practicing in this way is very good, and there is hope of realizing the Path.

If the mind consciousness can leap outside its own physical body to observe itself, observing itself from the standpoint of a bystander, this is the self-validating cognition (svasaṃvedana) function of the mind consciousness—the mind consciousness's reflective function, the power of introspection (pratyavekṣā-bala), also called the power of wisdom (prajñā-bala), which can clearly illuminate one's own mental activities and afflictive habits. Since it is called a "power," it has force: it can untangle the doubts in the mind and solve problems—this is right cultivation. Of course, when problems are solved, the power of the manas is also involved; by relying on the mind consciousness, the manas has also observed the state of its own mental activities and thereby decides to change itself, and the tathāgatagarbha then helps bring about that change.

Those who sit cross-legged in meditation all day long, no matter how they sit or how concentrated they become, still cannot observe their own minds, cannot introspect, and lack the power of awareness and the power of wisdom. They still do not know that the five aggregates are without self, cannot give rise to the liberating wisdom of no-self, and cannot resolve the great matter of birth and death. We should cultivate diligently according to the method of the four foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna); there will surely be great gains, and gradually we will all be able to observe as they truly are that the functions of the five aggregates are all unreal and none of them is the self.

Only by leaping the mind consciousness out of the body to observe oneself can one come to have any awakening. If one is completely fused together with the physical body, the power of awareness will be lost. When we need to examine our own mental activities, we must likewise leap the mind out and introspect ourselves; only then can we observe our own mental activities. Finally, one observes that both the observing subject and the observed object are not the self; the mind abides in a state of equanimity, and all marks are extinguished within the mind. One must naturally arrive at that conclusion of no-self and unreality, without mechanically forcing it or far-fetchedly imposing it.