“With the Dhamma, it’s like going to the home of friends or relatives and they give you some fruit. When you take the fruit in your hand, you don’t know whether it’s sour, sweet, or unripe. In other words, if you simply hold the fruit in your hand, you can’t know its taste. To know the taste, you have to bite into it and chew it. That’s when you’ll know that it’s sour or sweet or what its various flavors are, in line with your own perceptions.
It’s the same with the Dhamma. In everything, the Buddha has you take yourself as your own witness. You don’t have to take anyone else. The affairs of other people are hard to judge because they’re the affairs of other people. If something is your own affair, it’s easy—because the truth lies within you. It has you as its witness. When you hear the Dhamma, you have to meditate on it to be complete in study, practice, and attainment. Pariyatti is study so as to know. When you know, then patipatti: You put it into practice. With pativedha, attainment, knowledge in line with the truth arises within you. If you simply listen, your knowledge is just perceptions and concepts. If you talk about it, you speak in line with your concepts. You aren’t bringing the truth out to talk about. This means you haven’t reached the Dhamma, haven’t contemplated the Dhamma. Your heart isn’t Dhamma, but you can speak the Dhamma and act as if you were Dhamma. This is called being incomplete according to the standards of the Buddha’s teachings.”