Scholars and Meditators
A. N. VI. 46

By Madhyama

There is a common contention between practitioners or learners of Buddhadhamma that we can learn better from the meditating monks or nuns but not from the Buddhist scholars. The Dhamma scholars are disparaged in favour of the mediators. The discourse of Gotama Buddha on Scholars and Meditators (A. N. VI. 46) will dispels this unnecessary disputation or confusion which sours relations and will bring about subsequent remorse.

Ven. Mahācunda, one of the sterling disciples of Gotama Buddha, once addressed the monks at Sahajati thus:

There are Dhamma experts or Dhamma scholars who are not meditators and disparage the Dhamma scholars. Likewise, there are the meditators who are not Dhamma scholars anddisparage the Dhamma scholars. Each party claims themselves to be more superior than the others just because they follow different vehicles to investigate the Dhamma.

Ven. Mahacunda explained that the meditators , who are not Dhamma scholars, are outstanding people who are rare in this world. They have direct enlightened experience of Nibbāna. They are expert in appeasing their minds.

They have developed the wisdom to intuitively apprehend the Three Universal Characteristics and the Four Noble Truths. They should be extolled or praised by us. Likewise, the Dhamma scholars or Dhamma experts, who are not meditators, are outstanding intellectual learners who are rare in this world. They can by their wisdom clearly understand the abstruse or difficult subjects of Dependent Co-arising and Selflessness and other profound doctrines of the Buddha . Without profound comprehension of the Buddhist philosophy, a Buddhist scholar cannot be a prominent, outstanding or highly witted Buddhist professor and lecturer. They should be similarly extolled or praised. Hui-neng, the Sixth Chan Patriarch of China was not a meditator. He was merely a ordinary wood seller who could intuitively apprehend the abstruse Diamond Sūtra  which can not be easily comprehended by ordinary worldlings.

Gotama Buddha himself declares that it is possible to gain the taintless liberation of mind or self-enlightenment through four ways, namely:

1. Teaching
2. Study and Reflection
3. Investigation of the Dhamma, and
4. Meditation.

Meditation method is only one of the four bases of liberation or the four ways to Arahantship [AN. IV. 170]. A person who does not meditate but perfectly apprehends (parijanati) the true Dhamma through academic or intellectual understanding can be enlightened. This is called liberation by dry insight without prior development of the mental absorptions (jhānas). A tranquility and insight meditator is liberated by wet insight in which jhānas must be developed first before developing insight or wisdom of perceiving the insubstantiality of the Five Aggregates .

An enlightened Dhamma meditator is certainly more superior than an unenlightened Dhamma scholar. Likewise, an enlightened Dhamma scholar is more outstanding than an unenlightened Dhamma meditator. When both are enlightened, they should be equally venerated and praised. Vimalakīrti did not meditate but he was obviously more superior than the foremost disciple of Gotama Buddha, Sariputta who still meditated and was criticized by Vimalakīrti. All the foremost immediate disciples of Gotama Buddha feared Vimalakīrti out of sheer respect for his profound discernment of non-duality. Vimalakīrti did not meditate because he was able to maintain the perfection of wisdom without relying on the body, the mind and even without relying on ‘Not relying’. The ontological commitment is totally eliminated as full emptiness of emptiness is realized. I-ness was completely extinguished in him. He expressed non-duality with a golden ‘Silence’ to mirror the ineffable Nirvāṇa.