Mind Like a Wall Enters the Path

Question: One night, I entered a meditative state in my dream. My mind was clear and bright, fully aware of the people and things around me, yet I felt as if these matters had no connection to me and could not affect me. It was as if I were in a vacuum, without a single distracting thought in my mind—only one thought contemplating the Dharma (though I can no longer recall the specific teaching). It felt like a solitary sun shining in the sky without a trace of cloud. Simultaneously, my entire body and mind experienced an indescribable lightness and ease, and I finally understood how profoundly comfortable meditation could be! Even after waking, I could still feel that comfort. If such a meditative state truly exists, I would genuinely no longer crave worldly pleasures. That feeling of lightness, ease, and freedom is incomparable to the pleasures of the five desires in the mundane world. Venerable Master, may I ask: Why did this state, which I have never experienced in reality, appear in my dream?

Answer: This dream state reflects the condition of meditative contemplation within samādhi, where there is both concentration (śamatha) and wisdom (vipassanā), the dual practice of stillness and insight. In your past lives, you cultivated this type of samādhi—specifically, the "access concentration" (anāgamya-samādhi). Your mental faculty (manas) experienced it before and retains the memory. Now, your heart yearns for it and wishes to experience this meditative state again. However, in your current life, you are relatively busy, and the conditions for cultivating concentration are not yet complete. Thus, your mental faculty resorts to dreaming, allowing you to enjoy the joy of samādhi and contemplation in your dream. It seems the mental faculty is rather pitiable and helpless—modern society is too chaotic and distracting, making it impossible to renounce the clamor of life and wholeheartedly pursue the path.

In the dream, your consciousness was in a clear, thoughtless state—lucid and aware, without any discursive thoughts. This likely corresponds to the access concentration. However, your mental faculty was actively engaged in investigating the Dharma, contemplating the Buddha's teachings. Only through such contemplation of the Dharma can fundamental problems be resolved and realization be attained. This state of meditative inquiry (chan) is precisely what you experienced: not a single distracting thought in the mind, external phenomena not entering the heart, the mind unmoving like an impregnable wall. Bodhidharma said that a mind like a wall can enter the path—this is what he meant. If your samādhi and contemplation do not reach this level, do not expect to attain realization.

This state of inquiry and contemplation by the mental faculty can only arise and remain continuous under conditions of extreme stillness. Only then can it investigate the profound and subtle principles of the Dharma. Therefore, genuine practitioners renounce all external distractions, embracing absolute solitude and isolation. They have no companions, for the path is a great undertaking for the solitary; it cannot be accomplished amidst noise or in the company of others. Those who cannot endure solitude will not tread the true path of cultivation. Samādhi subdues and severs afflictions, bringing lightness, ease, joy, and happiness. Nothing brings greater joy than cultivating the path. Thus, those with samādhi do not cling to worldly dharmas; their minds do not attach to the world. They do not pursue wealth, sensual pleasures, fame, food, sleep, reputation, or gain, nor do they crave power, status, or position. Clinging to worldly dharmas is truly unwise.

Some claim that merely contemplating the Dharma without distraction for ten or so minutes can lead to the attainment of fruition and the realization of the mind. Such statements are utterly reckless. Contemplating the Dharma for such a short time cannot possibly lead to profound or subtle reflection, nor can it cultivate the state of meditative inquiry where concentration and wisdom are in equipoise. It is like trying to boil a large pot of water: it requires an hour. If you heat it for five or ten minutes and then stop, resuming the next day, even after a year or a decade of such intermittent heating, the water will never boil. To treat the Dharma so frivolously, to toy with it, brings exceedingly unwholesome karmic retribution. If the Dharma were so easy to cultivate and realize, how could there be so many sentient beings in the three lower realms? People in the world love speculative shortcuts, but the result of such shortcuts only harms themselves. You reap what you sow. To achieve anything, you must relinquish body and mind and be willing to put in the effort.