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+ | ====== Buddho ====== | ||
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+ | Summary: | ||
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+ | When you go to study meditation with any group or teacher who is experienced in a particular form of meditation, you should first make your heart confident that your teacher is fully experienced in that form of meditation, and be confident that the form of meditation he teaches is the right path for sure. At the same time, show respect for the place in which you are to meditate. Only then should you begin practicing. | ||
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+ | Teachers in the past used to require a dedication ceremony as a means of inspiring confidence before you were to study meditation. They would have you make an offering of five pairs of beeswax candles and five pairs of white flowers — this was called the five //khandha// — or eight pairs of beeswax candles and eight pairs of white flowers — this was called the eight //khandha// — or one pair of beeswax candles each weighing 15 grams and an equal number of white flowers. Then they would teach you their particular form of meditation. This ancient custom has its good points. There are many other ceremonies as well, but I won't go into them. I'll mention only a very simple, easy-to-follow ceremony a little further on. | ||
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+ | Only after you have inspired confidence in your heart as already mentioned should you go to the teacher experienced in that form of meditation. If he is experienced in repeating //samma araham,// he will teach you to repeat //samma araham, samma araham, samma araham.// Then he'll have you visualize a bright, clear jewel two inches above your navel, and tell you to focus your mind right there as you continue your repetition, without letting your mind slip away from the jewel. In other words, you take the jewel as the focal point of your mind. | ||
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+ | If you go to a teacher experienced in meditating on the rising and falling of the abdomen, he'll have you meditate on rising and falling, and focus your mind on the different motions of the body. For instance, when you raise your foot, you think // | ||
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+ | If you go to a teacher experienced in psychic powers, he'll have you repeat //na ma ba dha, na ma ba dha,// and focus the mind on a single object until it takes you to see heaven and hell, deities and brahmas of all sorts, to the point where you get carried away with your visions. | ||
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+ | If you go to a teacher experienced in breath meditation, he'll have you focus on your in-and-out breath, and have you keep your mind firmly preoccupied with nothing but the in-and-out breath. | ||
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+ | If you go to a teacher experienced in meditating on //buddho,// he'll have you repeat //buddho, buddho, buddho,// and have you keep the mind firmly in that meditation word until you're fully skilled at it. Then he'll have you contemplate //buddho// and what it is that's saying //buddho.// Once you see that they are two separate things, focus on what's saying //buddho.// As for the word //buddho,// it will disappear, leaving only what it is that was saying //buddho.// You then focus on what it is that was saying //buddho// as your object. | ||
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+ | People of our time — or of any time, for that matter — regardless of how educated or capable they may be (I don't want to criticize any of us as tending to believe in things whose truth we haven' | ||
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+ | Buddhism teaches us to penetrate into the heart and mind, which are mental phenomena. As for the body, it's a physical phenomenon. Physical phenomena have to lie under the control of mental phenomena. When we begin to practice meditation and train the mind to be quiet and untroubled, I can't see that we're creating any problems at that moment for anyone at all. If we keep practicing until we're skilled, then we'll be calm and at peace. If more and more people practice this way, there will be peace and happiness all over the world. As for the body, we can train it to be peaceful only as long as the mind is in full control. The minute mindfulness lapses, the body will get back to its old affairs. So let's try training the mind by repeating //buddho.// | ||
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+ | ===== Preliminary Steps to Practicing Meditation ===== | ||
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+ | Before practicing meditation on the word //buddho,// you should start out with the preliminary steps. In other words, inspire confidence in your mind, as already mentioned, and then bow down three times, saying: | ||
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+ | — The Blessed One is pure and fully self-awakened. | ||
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+ | //Buddham bhagavantam abhivademi// | ||
+ | — To the Blessed, Awakened One, I bow down. | ||
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+ | (Bow down once.) | ||
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+ | — the Dhamma is well-taught by the Blessed One. | ||
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+ | //Dhammam namassami// | ||
+ | — To the Dhamma, I bow down. | ||
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+ | (Bow down once.) | ||
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+ | — The Community of the Blessed One's disciples have conducted themselves rightly. | ||
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+ | //Sangham namami//\\ | ||
+ | — To the Community, I bow down. | ||
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+ | (Bow down once.) | ||
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+ | (Think of the virtues of the Buddha, the foremost teacher of the world, released from suffering and defilement of every sort, always serene and secure. Then bow down three times.) | ||
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+ | //Note:// These preliminary steps are simply an example. There' | ||
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+ | Now, sit in meditation, your right leg on top of left, your hands palm-up in your lap, your right hand on top of your left. Sit straight. Repeat the word //buddho// in your mind, focusing your attention in the middle of your chest, at the heart. Don't let your attention stray out ahead or behind. Be mindful to keep your mind in place, steady in its one-pointedness, | ||
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+ | When you enter into concentration, | ||
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+ | The mind in true concentration is the mind in a state of one-pointedness. If the mind hasn't reached a state of one-pointedness, | ||
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+ | Before you practice meditation, you should first learn the difference between the heart and the mind, for they aren't the same thing. The mind is what thinks and forms perceptions and ideas about all sorts of things. The heart is what simply stays still and knows that it's still, without forming any further thoughts at all. Their difference is like that between a river and waves on the river. | ||
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+ | All sciences and all defilements are able to arise because the mind thinks and forms ideas and strays out in search of them. You'll be able to see these things clearly with your own heart once the mind becomes still and reaches the heart. | ||
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+ | Water is something clean and clear by its very nature. If anyone puts dye into the water, it will change in line with the dye. But once the water is filtered and distilled, it will become clean and clear as before. This is an analogy for the heart and the mind. | ||
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+ | Actually, the Buddha taught that the mind is identical with the heart. If there is no heart, there is no mind. The mind is a condition. The heart itself has no conditions. In practicing meditation, no matter what the teacher or method: If it's correct, it'll have to penetrate into the heart. | ||
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+ | //When you reach the heart, you will see all your defilements, | ||
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+ | When doctors are going to cure a disease, they first have to find the cause of the disease. Only then can they treat it with the right medicine. | ||
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+ | As we start meditating longer and longer, repeating //buddho, buddho, buddho,// the mind will gradually let go of its distractions and restlessness, | ||
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+ | Practice meditation the same way farmers grow rice. They' | ||
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+ | The same holds true with meditation. You can't be in a hurry. You can't skip any of the steps. You have to make yourself firmly confident that, "This is the meditation word that will make my mind concentrated for sure." Don't have any doubts as to whether the meditation word is right for your temperament, | ||
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+ | Once in the Buddha' | ||
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+ | When the mind is intent on staying within the bounds of its meditation word //buddho,// with mindfulness in control, it's sure to grow out of its rebelliousness. We have to train and restrain it, because we're looking for peace and contentment for the mind. Ordinarily, the mind tends to be preoccupied with looking for distraction, | ||
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+ | This is one of the distractions that prevent new meditators from attaining concentration. You have to pull your mind back to //buddho, buddho, buddho,// and tell yourself, " | ||
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+ | After a moment, the mind will go straying out again, this time to your family — your children, your wife or husband: How are they getting along? Are they healthy? Are they eating well? If you're far apart, you wonder about where they' | ||
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+ | Or if you're still young and single, you think about having fun with your friends — the places you used to go together, the good times you had, the things you used to do — to the point where you actually say something or laugh out loud. This sort of defilement is the worst of the bunch. | ||
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+ | When you're meditating //buddho, buddho, buddho,// your defilements see that the situation is getting out of hand and that you'll escape from their control, so they look for things to tie you down even more tightly all the time. Never from the day of your birth have you ever practiced concentration at all. You've simply let the mind follow the moods of the defilements. Only now have you begun to practice, so when you repeat //buddho, buddho, buddho// to get the mind to settle down with //buddho,// it's going to wriggle away in the same way that fish try to wriggle back into the water when they' | ||
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+ | //Buddho is something cool and calm. It's the path for giving rise to peace and contentment — the only path that will release us from the suffering and stress in this world.// | ||
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+ | So you pull the mind back to //buddho.// This time it begins to settle down. As soon as you feel that it's staying put, you begin to get a sense that when the mind stays put, it's rested and at ease in a way different from when it's not still, when it's restless and upset. You make up your mind to be careful and alert to keep the mind in that state and... Oops. There it goes again. Now it's taking your financial interests as an excuse, saying that if you don't do this or search for that, you'll miss out on a really great opportunity. So you focus your mind on that instead of your meditation word. As for where //buddho// has gone, you haven' | ||
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+ | Sometimes, after you've been sitting in meditation a long time, you begin to worry that your blood won't be flowing properly, that your nerves will die from lack of blood, that you'll grow numb and end up paralyzed. If you're meditating far from home or in a forest, it's even worse: You're afraid that snakes will bite you, tigers will eat you, or ghosts will haunt you, making all kinds of scary faces. Your fear of death can whisper to you in all sorts of way, all of which are simply instances of you yourself scaring yourself. The truth is nothing at all like what you imagine. Never from the day of your birth have you ever seen a tiger eat even a single person. You've never once seen a ghost — you don't even know what it would look like, but you fashion up pictures to scare yourself. | ||
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+ | The obstacles to meditation mentioned here are simply examples. There are actually many, many more. Those who meditate will find this out for themselves. | ||
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+ | //If you hold buddho close to the heart, and use your mindfulness to keep the mind with nothing but buddho, no dangers will come your way.// So have firm faith in //buddho.// I guarantee that there will be no dangers at all — unless you've done bad kamma in the past, which is something beyond anyone' | ||
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+ | When people begin meditating, their confidence tends to be weak. No matter what their meditation subject, these sorts of defilements are sure to interfere, because these defilements form the basis of the world and of the mind. The minute we meditate and make the mind one-pointed, | ||
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+ | When we see how really serious and harmful they are, we should make our minds forthright and our confidence solid and strong, telling ourselves that we've let ourselves be deceived into believing the defilements for many lifetimes; it's time now that we be willing to believe the Buddha' | ||
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+ | When you first enter concentration, | ||
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+ | At that moment you'll feel as if you are in another world (the world of the mind), with a sense of ease and solitude to which nothing else in the world can compare. When the mind withdraws from concentration, | ||
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+ | You have to train the mind to enter this sort of concentration often, so as to become skilled and adept, but don't try to remember your past states of concentration, | ||
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+ | After the mind has first attained to concentration, | ||
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+ | What I've mentioned here is simply to be taken as an example. When you follow these instructions, | ||
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+ | No matter what method you use — //buddho,// rising & falling, or //samma araham// — when the mind is about to settle down in concentration, | ||
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+ | The heart and the mind. Let's talk some more about the heart and mind so that you'll understand. After all, we're talking about training the mind in concentration: | ||
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+ | Everyone born — human or animal — has a heart and mind, but the heart and mind have different duties. The mind thinks, wanders, and forms ideas of all sorts, in line with where the defilements lead it. As for the heart, it's simply what knows. It doesn' | ||
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+ | The heart doesn' | ||
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+ | People in general are always talking about the heart: "My heart feels happy... sad... heavy... light... down..." | ||
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+ | The mind is what thinks and forms ideas. It has to make use of the six senses as its tools. As soon as the eye sees a visual object, the ear hears a sound, the nose smells an aroma, the tongue tastes a flavor, the body comes into contact with a tactile sensation — cold, hot, hard or soft — or the intellect thinks of an idea in line with its defilements, | ||
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+ | When you train the mind — or, in other words, practice concentration — you have to get control over the mind that's wriggling after the six senses, as already explained, and make it stop still with one thing: its meditation word, //buddho.// Don't let it go straying out ahead or behind. Make it stay still, and know that it's staying still: That's the heart. The heart has nothing to do with any of the six senses, which is why it's called the heart. | ||
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+ | When people in general talk about the heart of something, they' | ||
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+ | If you want to understand what the heart is, you can try an experiment. Breathe in deeply and hold your breath for a moment. At that point there won't be anything at all except for one thing: neutral awareness. That's the heart, or 'what knows.' | ||
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+ | (Holding the breath can help reduce physical pain. People who are suffering from great pain have to hold their breath as one way — fairly effective — of relieving their pain.) | ||
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+ | Once you realize that the heart and mind have different duties and characteristics like this, you'll find it easier to train the mind. Actually, the heart and the mind are really the same thing. As the Buddha said, the mind is identical with the heart. When we practice concentration, | ||
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+ | Once the mind has been fully trained by using mindfulness to keep it with //buddho// as its only preoccupation, | ||
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+ | In addition, if you've developed a lot of potential in previous lifetimes, all sorts of amazing things can happen. For example, you may gain knowledge of heavenly beings or hungry ghosts. You may learn about your own past and future, and that of other people: In that particular lifetime you were like this; in the future you'll be like that. Even though you didn't intend to know these things, when the mind attains concentration it can know on its own in a very amazing way. | ||
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+ | This sort of thing is something that really fascinates beginning meditators. When it happens to them, they like to brag to other people. When those people try to meditate, but don't get the knowledge or abilities, they become discouraged, | ||
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+ | As for those who see these sorts of things, when that knowledge or ability deteriorates — because they' | ||
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+ | The Buddha taught that whether his teachings will flourish or degenerate depends on those who practice them. The teachings degenerate when meditators get just a little bit of knowledge and then go bragging to other people, talking about external matters with no substance at all, instead of explaining the basic principles of meditation. When they do this, they make the religion degenerate without their even realizing it. | ||
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+ | Those who make the religion flourish are those who speak about things that are useful and true. They don't speak just for the fun of it. They speak in terms of cause and effect: "When you meditate like this, repeating the meditation word in this way, it will make the mind gather into one and snuff out its defilements and restlessness like this..." | ||
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+ | //When you meditate on buddho, be patient. Don't be in a hurry.// Be confident in your meditation word and use mindfulness to keep the mind with its //buddho.// Your confidence is what will make the mind firm and unwavering, able to let go of all its doubts and uncertainties. The mind will gather in on its meditation word, and mindfulness will keep it solely with //buddho// at all times. Whether you sit, stand, walk, lie down, or whatever work you do, mindfulness will be alert to nothing but //buddho.// If your mindfulness is still weak, and your techniques still few, you have to hold on to //buddho// as your foundation. Otherwise your meditation won't progress; or even if it does progress, it won't have any foundation. | ||
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+ | //For concentration to be strong, the mind has to be resolute.// When mindfulness is strong and the mind resolute, you decide that this is what you want: "If I can't catch hold of //buddho,// or see //buddho// in my heart, or get the mind to stay put solely with //buddho,// I won't get up from my meditation. Even if my life will end, I don't care." When you do this, the mind will gather into one faster than you realize it. The meditation word //buddho,// or whatever it is that may have been bothering or perplexing you, will vanish in the flash of an eye. Even your body, which you've been attached to for so long, won't appear to you. All that remains is the heart — simple awareness — cool, calm, and at ease. | ||
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+ | People who practice meditation really like it when this happens. The next time around, they want it to happen again, and so it doesn' | ||
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+ | If you're impatient, things get even more fouled up. You have to be very patient. Whether or not the mind is going to attain concentration, | ||
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+ | Knowing how to meditate, but not doing it right; having done it right once, and wanting it to be that way again, and yet it doesn' | ||
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+ | //In meditating on buddho, you have to get so that you're quick and adept.// When a good or a bad mood strikes you, you have to be able to enter concentration immediately. Don't let the mind be affected by that mood. Whenever you think of //buddho,// the mind gathers immediately: | ||
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+ | When you've practiced so that you're adept and experienced in this way, after a while you'll find that your defilements and attachments to all things will gradually disappear on their own. You don't have to go clearing away this or that defilement, telling yourself that this or that defilement has to be removed with this or that teaching or this or that method. Be content with whatever method you find works for you. That's plenty enough. | ||
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+ | To have the defilements gradually disappear with the method I've just explained is better than trying to arrange things, entering the four levels of absorption, abandoning directed thought, evaluation, rapture and pleasure, leaving just one-pointedness and equanimity; or trying to arrange the first stage of the path to nibbana by abandoning self-identity views, uncertainty, | ||
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+ | So hold firmly to your meditation word, //buddho.// Even if you don't attain anything else, at least you've got your meditation word as your foundation. The various preoccupations of the mind will lessen or may even disappear, which is better than not having any foundation to hold to at all. | ||
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+ | Actually, all meditators have to hold firmly to their meditation word. Only then can they be said to be meditating //with a foundation.// | ||
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+ | The Buddha taught that people who make the effort to abandon defilement have to act like old-time warriors. In the past, they'd have to build a fortress with strong walls, moats, gates, and towers to protect themselves from enemy attack. When an intelligent warrior went out to battle and saw that he was no match for the enemy, he would retreat into his fortress and defend it so that the enemy couldn' | ||
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+ | // | ||
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+ | Even those who are said to attain Awakening with 'dry insight': | ||
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+ | When your concentration is solid and steady to the point where you can enter and leave it at will, you'll be able to stay with it long and contemplate the body in terms of its unattractiveness or in terms of its physical elements. Or, if you like, you can contemplate the people of the world until you see them all as skeletons. Or you can contemplate the entire world as empty space... | ||
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+ | Once the mind is fully centered, then no matter whether you are sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, the mind will be centered at all times. You'll be able to see clearly how your own defilements — greed, anger, and delusion, which arise from the mind — //arise// from this and that cause, how they //remain// in this or that way, and you'll be able to find means to //abandon// them with this or that technique. | ||
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+ | This is like the water in a lake that has been muddy for hundreds and hundreds of years suddenly becoming clear so that you can see all the things lying along the lake-bottom — things you never dreamed were there before. This is called insight — seeing things as they truly are. Whatever sort of truth they have, that's the truth you see, without deviating from that truth. | ||
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+ | Forcing the mind to be still can make it let go of defilement, but it lets go in the same way a person cuts grass, cutting just the part above ground, without digging up the roots. The roots are sure to send up new shoots when rain falls again. In other words, you do see the harm of the preoccupations that arise from the six senses, but as soon as you see it, you retreat into stillness without contemplating those preoccupations as carefully as you do when the mind is in concentration. In short, you simply want stillness, without wanting to spend any time in contemplation — like a ground lizard that relies on its hole for safety. As soon as it sees an enemy coming, it runs into its hole, escaping danger only for a while. | ||
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+ | If you want to uproot your defilements, | ||
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+ | If you examine the visual object, you see that it's just a physical phenomenon. Whether it's good or bad, it doesn' | ||
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+ | When you turn to examine the eye that sees the visual object, you find that the eye goes looking for objects and, as soon as it finds one, light gets reflected into the optic nerves so that all kinds of visible forms appear. The eye doesn' | ||
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+ | As for the other senses and their objects, attractive or unattractive, | ||
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+ | When you contemplate in this way, you'll see clearly that all the things in the world that become objects of defilement do so because of these six senses. If you contemplate the six senses so that you don't tag along after them, defilements won't arise within you. //On the contrary: Insight and discernment will arise instead, all because of these same six senses.// The six senses are the media of goodness and evil. We'll head for a good or a bad destination in the next life because of the way we use them. | ||
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+ | The world seems broad because the mind isn't centered and is left free to wander among the objects of the six senses. The world will narrow down when the mind has been trained in concentration so that it lies under your control and can contemplate the six senses exclusively within it. In other words, when the mind is fully concentrated, | ||
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+ | When your concentration is fully solid and strong, you'll be able to contemplate this //world of the mind,// which gives rise to sensory contact, perceptions, | ||
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+ | The heart and the mind have different characteristics. The mind is what thinks, forming perceptions and preoccupations to the point of latching on, holding them to itself. When it sees the suffering, harm, and stress that come from holding onto all the defilements, | ||
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+ | The heart is what's neutral and still. It doesn' | ||
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+ | So we can conclude that the true heart is still and neutral awareness. //Wherever there' | ||
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+ | When people in general talk about the heart, that's not the true heart. It's simply a set of muscles and valves for pumping blood throughout the body to keep it alive. If this pump doesn' | ||
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+ | But as for the mind, which is a mental phenomenon, Buddhism teaches that it continues to exist and can take birth again. This mental phenomenon will stop only when insight discerns its causal factors and uproots their underlying causes. | ||
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+ | None of the various subjects and sciences of the world have an end point. The more you study them, the more they fan out. Only Buddhism can teach you to reach an end. In the first stage, it teaches you to acquaint yourself with your body, to see how it's made up of various things (the 32 parts) put together, and what their duties are. At the same time, Buddhism teaches you to see that the body is inherently unattractive. It teaches you to acquaint yourself with this world (the world of a human being), which is made up of suffering and stress, and which will ultimately have to fall apart by its very nature. | ||
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+ | So now that we've received this body — even though it's full of foul and unattractive things, and even though it's made up of all kinds of suffering and stress — we're still able to depend on it for a while, so we should use it to do good to repay our debts to the world before we leave it at death. | ||
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+ | The Buddha teaches that although the nature of a person (this world) is to fall apart and die, the mind — the overseer of this world — must come back to be reborn as long as it still has defilements. Thus he teaches us to practice concentration, | ||
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+ | The senses are the best means for taking the measure of your own mind. When sensory contact strikes the mind, does it have an impact on you? If it has a lot of impact, that shows that your mindfulness is weak and your foundation is still shaky. If it has only a little impact, or no impact at all, that shows that your mindfulness is strong and you're fully able to care for yourself. | ||
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+ | These things are like Devadatta, who created trouble for the Bodhisattva all along. If not for Devadatta, the Bodhisattva wouldn' | ||
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+ | //As long as the inner senses still exist, mental contact is still a preoccupation.// | ||
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