..續本文上一頁to amass as much as possible, thinning if he gets enough his suffering will get less. It”s like trying to lighten your load by putting more things on your back. This is how people think, but thinking is astray of the true path, just like one person going northward and another going southward, and yet believing that they are going in the same direction.

　　Going Into Town

　　Some people get confused because these days it seems like there are so many teachers and so many different systems of meditation. But it”s just like going into town. One can approach the town from many directions. Whether you walk one way or another, fast or slow, it”s all the same. Often the different systems of meditation differ outwardly only. There”s one essential point that all good practice must eventually come to - not clinging. In the end, you must let go of all meditation systems, even the teacher himself. If a system leads to relinquishment, to not clinging, then it is correct practice.

　　Good Digestion

　　Don”t be in a hurry to get rid of your defilements. You should first patiently get to know suffering and its causes well, so that you can then abandon them completely, just as it”s much better for your digestion if you chew your food slowly and thoroughly.

　　Grand Central Station

　　When it comes to practice, all that you really need to make a start are honesty and integrity. You don”t have to read the Tipitaka to have greed, hatred and delusion. They are all already in your mind, and you don”t have to study books to have them. Let the knowing spread from within you, and you will be practicing rightly. If you want to see a train, just go to the central station. You don”t have to travel the entire Northern Line, Southern Line, Eastern and Western Lines to see all the trains. If you want to see trains, every single one of them, you”d be better off waiting at Grand Central Station. That”s where they all terminate. Some people tell me that they want to practice but don”t know how, or that they”re not up to studying the scriptures, or that they”re getting old, so that their memory”s not so good any more. Just look right here, at Grand Central Station. Greed arises here, anger arises here, delusion arises here. Just sit here and you can watch all these things arise. Practice right here, because right here is where you”re stuck, and right here is where the Dhamma will arise.

　　Hair in Your Soup

　　Why does the body attract you and you get attached to it

　　 Because your body-eye sees and not your heart-eye. The real nature of our body is that it is not clean, not pretty, but impermanent and decaying. See the body like a hair in your soup. Is it pretty

　　 See clearly that the body is nothing but earth, fire, water and air - nobody there. You only fall down when you want to make it beautiful.

　　Hair that Hides a Mountain

　　Our opinions, attachments, and desires are like a hair that can hide a whole mountain from our view, because they can keep us from seeing the most simple and obvious things. We get so caught up in our ideas, our self, our wants, that we can”t see how things really are. And that”s when even a hair can keep us from seeing a whole mountain. If we”re attached to even a subtle desire, then we can”t see that which is true, that which is always very obvious.

　　Hall

　　We are only visitors to this body. Just like this hall here, it”s not really ours. We are simply temporary tenants, like the rats, lizards and geckos that live in it, but we don”t realize this. Our body is the same. Actually the Buddha taught there is no abiding self within this body, but we believe it to be our self, as really being us. This is wrong view.

　　Handful of Mud

　　If you grab a handful of mud and squeeze it, it will ooze through your fingers. People who suffer are the same. When…

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