How to correctly practice the Buddhist path
According to Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha, "One who is established in discipline having engaged in
listening and contemplation, should apply themselves at meditation." In the beginning, ordinary individuals should properly request the individual liberation vows. Not only should you take these vows, but most importantly, you should also guard them without ever transgressing them.
You should properly engage in listening to the excellent dharma without sectarianism. Moreover, the meaning of listening is the supreme method of correctly understanding the essential points of adopting and discarding, namely that the class of non-virtuous conduct should be rejected and the class of virtuous conduct should be adopted. If you take the meaning of listening to be merely relying on texts, then you will not fulfill the true meaning of listening at all. Thus, to the extent of your ability, you should reflect again and again on the meaning of what you have listened to. Why is that? Because by this practice, you will gain the capacity to generate the firm conviction in the meaning of what is to be adopted and discarded.
You should not only engage in listening and contemplation, but you should also definitely practice meditating on the meaning which you have listened to and contemplated. In reliance on the practice of meditation, in general one will not transgress the teachings of the Buddha, and in particular, one will not violate the word of one's own root guru.
Moreover, as stated in the Mahoshnisha Sutra, "Having engaged in listening and contemplating for many eons, if one then meditates on the meaning of reality for a single day, this is greatly meritorious. Why is that? Because by means of that, one will separate himself from the path of birth and death."
Accordingly, the benefits of meditative concentration include: overcoming the mentality that is attached to sense-pleasures; the ability to cut off all sources of doubt, progressively higher states of mental and physical happiness; the power to gain and sustain meditative experiences; the ability to give rise in one's mental continuum to clairvoyance, concentration, great compassion, precious bodhichitta, and so forth; the ability to directly encounter Buddha nature (Sugatagarbha), which is the cause for remaining forever and always in the nature of mind, the nature of reality of all phenomena, or dharmata; the ability to guide one's own disciples on the path to the temporal status of the higher realms, and ultimately to also establish them in the state of complete enlightenment.
Moreover, according to the Dashacakra-kshitigarbha Sutra, "By means of training in meditative concentration, one will cut off doubts. But without realizing that, one will otherwise not be able to do so. Thus, meditative concentration is supreme, and knowledgable ones should exert themselves at that." Therefore, in summary, if you properly practice listening, contemplation, and meditation side-by-side, then this is the true meaning of obtaining a precious human rebirth and the meaning of the intent of the earlier masters. By means of this practice, you will repay the kindness of your parents, and since all sentient beings without exception have been your parents in one lifetime or another, you will accomplish the greatest aim of the present and future lives of both yourself and all others.