..續本文上一頁ade a mistake, his wife is right, he was exaggerating, and he can say, "Oh dear, I got carried away. I exaggerated, I praised myself, and I promise, my dear, that I won”t do that again." Then the wife can forgive him easily, and she loses her internal formation, and she admires him because he is able to recognize his mistakes. But if he has a skilful way of talking, he is a clever talker, and he really was telling a lie, but he doesn”t admit it, then the internal formation will not dissolve. When he makes the same mistake sometime in the future, the first internal formation will grow stronger than it was before. Therefore, clever talking in order to get out of the fact we made a mistake won”t help us at all. He might tell his wife, "You know, you misunderstood me, you didn”t hear correctly what I said." Or he may say, "Yes, I did tell a lie, I”m very sorry, I won”t do it again." That”s the way to resolve the internal formation of his wife. But using clever speech, to escape from the wrongdoing he has done, won”t help anything. It will lead to his wife looking down on him even more, and in the end, she won”t love him any more. When love is no longer there, there will be a lot of despising, and they will leave each other.

　　(Bell)

　　We must recognize an internal formation as soon as it is born in our hearts, and we must do all we can to resolve that internal formation, the sooner the better. The longer it is in our hearts, or in another”s heart, it will grow. This is called recognizing the internal formation. In our homes, sometimes we have been out, and we come home, and we see water everywhere, and we know that there”s something wrong with the plumbing. We have to recognize that there”s water everywhere in the house, that there must be a water pipe broken, and we need to take action right away. We turn off the water at the base, and we call the plumber to come and repair the pipe, because we know that if we leave it like that, it will destroy everything in the house. So we have to act right away—turn off the water, call the plumber. This is a kind of internal formation that can happen in our house or our apartment, and we take care of it right away. If we are angry, if we are suspicious or attached or craving, this is an internal formation which takes place in our hearts, and usually we don”t look after it straight away. That is a big mistake on the part of many people.

　　When anger or jealousy or anxiety or fear or craving arises in our hearts, we have to know, "Here is an internal formation." And we have to do something to resolve it, not allowing it to drag on day after day. This is practicing mindfulness. If we know how to practice walking in mindfulness, breathing in mindfulness, working in mindfulness, we are aware of what is happening in the present moment. When we have an internal formation, we will recognize it straight away. When someone else has an internal formation, such as someone close to us, we will also recognize it straight away, and straight away we will begin to manage our internal formation, so that we can help it to transform. For example, this morning I was angry, and when I”m angry I return to my breathing, and I have an opportunity to look at my anger. Just as when I see the water in the house, and I have to go and see where the pipe is broken, I look at my anger and I say, "Where”s it coming from

　　", it could be like this. This anger might have been there before, I might have had a little internal formation in my heart before, but I covered it up with happiness, busyness, and forgot about it, and pretended it wasn”t there. But it was still there. Today, the other person said something, and it touched that internal formation, and the energy of anger arose. When we look deep into the energy of anger, we see …

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