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Chapter Fifteen: Entrusting 6
The Founding Master said, “If you continue to progress in your practice just as you did when you first aroused the aspiration to follow me, no one will not succeed. However, in cases where one is trying to rise from inferior spiritual capacity to middle spiritual capacity, or starts from middle spiritual capacity but is unable to get over the threshold, then one will be afflicted by all kinds of symptoms of disease and one will most likely fail to reach superior spiritual capacity. Thus, you must work especially hard to get over this perilous hill of middle capacity. The disease of middle capacity starts, first, with becoming bored with spiritual practice. The symptom of this disease is finding all things to be troublesome and tedious so that one’s thoughts and words are sometimes inferior even to those of secular people. Second, being neither authentically enlightened nor utterly ignorant, one sometimes says or writes things that impress many people, who in turn admire and applaud one. Thus one assumes that one is superior to everyone else and, being overconfident, forgives all one’s own faults. One recklessly criticizes senior teachers, casts skeptical doubts on the dharma and the truth, and becomes obstinate about one’s own views. If one is not careful, these symptoms may even destroy all the merits one has been accumulating and ultimately may readily destroy the great enterprise involving an eternity of kalpas. Thus, the Buddha and the enlightened masters of the past warned about these symptoms of skeptical doubt and a lack of faith. Nowadays, there are quite a few among you who have caught this disease. Hence, it would be good if you would reflect on this yourselves and free yourselves from that state; but if you don’t, you will not only destroy yourselves in the future but it will also become a major problem for the order. Therefore, you must arouse great zeal and focus your energies on the practice that will overcome this situation. The method of easily surmounting middle spiritual capacity involves devoting yourself without deception to a teacher who possesses the dharma, while at the same time reflecting on your own original vows and recollecting often the dangerous consequences of middle spiritual capacity. Once you overcome this situation, you will speed toward buddhahood as if flying in an airplane.”
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