Only through wise reflection, contemplative practice, and investigation within profound meditative concentration can one actually realize the Buddha Dharma.

Reality—everywhere, in every place, the eyes are filled with green mountains and no wild grass. Every stem and leaf, every blade of grass, every single thread is real and not empty, yet leaves no trace. Having searched for Him a thousand times in the crowd, suddenly turning one's head, the lamplight is dim—yet everywhere, in every place, where is He not? Speechless and choked with emotion: in the past the mind was blind and the eyes even blinder; now the eyes are filled with golden light. This is the heartfelt sigh of one who has awakened to the Way.

When the conditions for attaining realization of the fruits and seeing the mind are complete, then upon encountering causes and conditions—no matter what kind—one can attain the fruits and see the mind. If one encounters the Buddha expounding the Dharma, one can all the more attain the fruits and realize mind-seeing and nature-seeing, for the Buddha's power of majestic virtue and blessing is immense, and the magnetic field effect of a Dharma assembly where the Buddha teaches is considerable. Moreover, practitioners in the Buddha's time generally possessed profound meditative concentration (dhyāna), their minds were pure, they all had the mind of renunciation, their afflictions were slight, and their roots of goodness and merit were deep—so upon hearing the Dharma, they could immediately engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and deliberation following the sound of the Buddha's voice, and instantly attain the fruits and see the mind.

We sentient beings of the Dharma-ending age cannot compare with those of the Buddha's time: our roots of goodness are scant and our merit thin, our minds restless and agitated, and we have no meditative concentration. No matter how detailed the Buddha's teachings, they cannot enter our minds, so none of us can truly and genuinely realize any fruit of attainment—at most we can reach some understanding, which is already quite good. Precisely because sentient beings today generally lack meditative concentration and cannot fulfill it, a certain claim has arisen: that without cultivating concentration, one can directly engage in contemplative practice of the Dharma. But without meditative concentration, how can one have the capacity for contemplative practice? What could one contemplate? For how long could one contemplate? To what degree? Everyone can test this for themselves: compare the effect of contemplative practice before having meditative concentration with that after having it—the difference is enormous; in essence, they are simply not the same thing.

For a single point of Dharma meaning, deliberating with meditative concentration versus without it is as different as heaven and earth. Therefore many people who deliberate on the Dharma cannot truly understand it at all; they misinterpret and misunderstand far too much, utterly failing to grasp the true meaning. To actually realize it and contemplate it in direct perception is truly, truly difficult. Even so, many people place great faith in their own power of comprehension, casually citing a passage of sutra text to prove their point. In fact, the meaning of the sutra text and their own view do not accord at all—they have misinterpreted a great deal without even knowing it.

Many who study the scriptures simply cannot understand the true meaning of the classics thoroughly and as they really are, yet still think themselves quite capable. In truth, the Buddha's Dharma can never be figured out through research and study; only through profound meditative concentration, with deliberation in accordance with reality, contemplative practice, and personal investigation can one truly understand and truly realize it. Research cannot yield realization.

Some people, seeing the records in the sutras that sentient beings attained the fruits and saw the mind at the very moment of listening to the Buddha's teaching, note that those people had not cultivated meditative concentration yet directly attained the fruits—as if merely hearing the Dharma and deliberating a little were enough to attain the fruits, without needing to cultivate concentration specifically. This is a tremendous misunderstanding. They do not know that those who attained the fruits at the moment of hearing the Dharma had already fulfilled meditative concentration, with deep roots of goodness and abundant merit, lacking only the causes and conditions—and encountering the supremely excellent condition of the Buddha expounding the Dharma, of course they could attain the fruits and realize mind-seeing and nature-seeing with great ease.

Such people see only the final result of those who attained the fruits, but cannot see how long a path of practice those people had already walked, how they applied effort before listening to the Buddha's teaching, how they made their aspirations and carried out their conduct, how they strove to cultivate meditative concentration. Ignoring all these necessary conditions, they single out only the final segment of attaining the fruit—this is the most egregious form of quoting out of context.

Modern people are so restless they all want to take shortcuts—the simpler and more direct, the better. They do not want to walk the path the Buddha himself walked, believing their own methods are more practical and more direct than the Buddha's, sparing them such hardship. Could it be that an ordinary person is superior to the Buddha, more wise than the Buddha? Was the Buddha's cultivation all a roundabout detour, while one's own path is the most direct—no need to lay a foundation, no need to pay any price, no need to laboriously cultivate concentration to subdue one's own mind—just do some research and achieve great results? That is a fool's dream. The fruits produced by research are all made of paper—scattered and ruined at the first gust of wind, melted at the touch of fire. Today the world is full of fake fruits, all stamped with radish seals that cannot withstand the slightest disturbance; after death, the karmic retribution will be known to themselves.

Because sentient beings differ in ignorance and karma, they attract different karmic retributions, having different physical bodies as their direct retribution and different living environments as their circumstantial retribution. When one karmic retribution ends, they enter into another. Because the karmic retributions differ, the physical bodies differ, the brain's organizational structures differ, the wisdom that manifests differs, and the patterns of behavior differ.