Jeff Ratner:
What is the difference between a student studying then grasping calculus or physics and a student studying then grasping the Four Noble Truths or other key Buddhist concepts?
There is largely no difference as in both cases the mind is conceiving of and grasping at conceptual thoughts.
Jeff Ratner:
Can someone who is not skilled at meditating but is skilled at keeping focus on a subject, thinking through and truly understanding get to the same place as a skilled meditator?
No, as it is not the same kind of understanding. In all forms meditation with the aim of developing direct knowledge, insight and understanding into all phenomena as it actually is the preliminary step is always to bring the all efforts of conceiving and maintaining conceptions to a halt. Steadiness of perception can either be achieved by remaining steadily with one form of conception or by abandoning conception. In steadying perception on one conception or perception there is no diversity of perceptions which can be observed. It is by observing the natural diversity of perceptions without any accompanying conceptions that is the cause for direct knowledge, insights and understanding to arise and develop.
To understand the Dhamma in the manner the Buddha intended for it to be understood one proceeds by initially limiting to some degree the proliferation of conceptions and one then examines perceptions just as they are arising and passing by means of discernment including any remaining conceptions. As a result of insight meditation like this direct knowledge unmodified by proliferation of conceptualizations can accumulate. As a result of the accumulation of direct knowledge and sufficient degrees of insight into this knowledge types of liberating understanding arise which are not at all the same as conceptual understanding, which is not similarly liberating. Liberating in what sense? Liberating in terms of liberation from self delusion and liberation from craving, aversion and clinging in regards to the compounded mentality and materiality of being and becoming. As such, conceptual understanding of the Dhamma, although it may be correct understanding, can not suffice to serve as the cause for liberating understanding of the Dhamma.