Pitfall Three — Both studying and practicing, but with no connection between the two.
When studying and contemplating, people memorize many concepts; when practicing, they simply fumble along blindly. What they learn through study and contemplation cannot help their practice, and their practice cannot in turn enrich their study and contemplation. These people may have read many books, yet none of what they have learned is actually connected to their practice.
There are many people like this in our community. This is because we advocate both practice and study and contemplation. Study and contemplation can help practice, while practice can in turn make study and contemplation more refined and substantial. As a result, everyone studies and practices, yet the two remain disconnected. What is learned through study cannot be used to guide practice, and practice cannot make one's study and contemplation more purposeful or more refined.
What causes this situation? The main reason is the lack of guidance from someone who has genuinely gone through the process. As a result, view remains view, and practice remains practice. This is also quite problematic.
So what is the correct approach to practice? Theory and practice must interact with one another. We must study, contemplate, and practice the teachings related to renunciation and bodhicitta. After practicing them, we should examine whether what we have studied and contemplated has actually had an effect on our minds. This must be done continuously over a long period of time.
The practice of renunciation and bodhicitta is not measured by the number of practices completed. Rather, its goal is the generation of the corresponding mental attitudes. In fact, for many lay practitioners today, cultivating renunciation and bodhicitta may require an entire lifetime, continuing all the way until awakening.
After awakening, the realization of emptiness itself includes both renunciation and bodhicitta. A person who has realized emptiness will naturally have no attachment to worldly existence, and therefore renunciation is naturally complete. Moreover, because the self has been emptied, helping others becomes entirely natural, just as the left hand helps the right hand. When such a person helps others, it is done from the perspective of emptiness. Naturally, the aim is to help others attain Buddhahood, which fully accords with the fundamental requirement of bodhicitta. The realization of emptiness is itself the actualization of the correct view of emptiness.
Before awakening, however, it is essential to generate mental attitudes that accord with renunciation and bodhicitta. Producing these attitudes is what truly matters. It is certainly not a matter of how many practices one has completed. It is not the case that simply because one has completed a certain number of sessions or accomplished certain practices, one should automatically obtain a corresponding result.
——Excerpted and compiled from The Relationship Between Buddhist Theory and Practice
This article is a preliminary translation draft and has not yet been reviewed or proofread by the speaker.
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