It is a sheer misapprehension that what Chan self-cultivation requires a practitioner to fulfill consists only of

<1> doing seated meditation, <2> reciting Buddha’s name and recalling his great deeds, and <3> performing worshipping rites and chanting the Buddhist Scriptures.

The three form a ritual trinity for a practitioner of course and are in a sense indispensable for Buddhism as a whole. But the said ritual trinity is at its best a secondary dharma-gate to contribute to a practitioner’s self-cultivation career and does not constitute a universally feasible policy needed for ensuring the success of a self-cultivation program, even though the trinity can exercise some positive influence on or strengthen the intensity of some practitioners’ self-cultivation programs. If a practitioner would choose to prioritize the secondary dharma-gate over any other related dharma-gate, that would certainly result in either an impaired self-cultivation foundation or a retarded progress in self-cultivation. So far as seated meditation is concerned, it should be counted an important procedure in the spacious precincts of self-cultivation. But practicing seated meditation in order to secure Samadhi is not resorted to by Buddhists alone. A spectrum of other religious faiths than Buddhism—such as Yogic meditation practiced by Yogis in India, Taoism in China—also practice the seated meditation. Besides there are some varied patterns of seated meditation such as “vowed silence precept” (默语戒), “meditation executed behind closed door” (闭关). In a word, it is not wise for a Chan practitioner to cling to, or to drop, a certain secondary dharma-gate simply out of loyalty to a certain Buddhist sect or order. What need to be taken into consideration by a Chan practitioner in opting for a secondary dharma-gate are

<1> his or her own specific capacity for absorbing the impact a proposed dharma-gate is supposed to exert, and <2> his or her concrete habits and living conditions.

As for the primary dharma-gate a Chan practitioner is required to adopt, he or she must absolutely not try to shun it. (From My Heart My Buddha)