..續本文上一頁y little, since he understood that the heart is just the heart and thought is just thought. He didn”t confuse them and mix them together like an ignorant man does. The heart is just the heart. Thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be as they are. Let form be just form, let sound be just sound, let thought be just thought. Why should we bother to attach to them

　　 If we feel and think in this way, then there is detachment and separateness. Our thoughts and feelings will be on one side and our heart will be on the other. Just like oil and water - they are in the same bottle but they are separate.

　　Orphan

　　In the end, people become neurotic. Why

　　 Because they don”t know. They just follow their moods and don”t know how to look after their own minds. When the mind has no one to look after it, it”s like a child without a mother or a father. An orphan has no refuge, and without a refuge, he is very insecure. Likewise, if the mind is not looked after, if there is no training or maturation of character with right understanding, it”s really troublesome.

　　Ox Cart

　　Suppose we had a cart, and an ox to pull it. The wheels of the cart aren”t long, but the tracks are. As long as the ox pulls the cart, the tracks will follow. The wheels are round, yet the tracks are long. Just looking at the stationary cart, one couldn”t see anything long about the wheels, but once the ox starts pulling the cart, we see the tracks stretching out behind. As long as the ox keeps pulling, the wheels keep turning. But there comes a day when the ox gets tired and throws off its yoke. The ox walks off and the cart is left there. The wheels no longer turn. In time the cart falls apart. Its constituent parts go back into the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire. People who follow the world are the same. If one were to look for peace within the world, one would go on and on without end, just like the wheels of a cart. As long as we follow the world, there is no stopping, no rest. If we simply stop following it, the wheels of the cart no longer turn. There is stopping right there. Following the world ceaselessly, the tracks go on. Creating bad kamma is like this. As long as we continue to follow the old ways, there is no stopping. If we stop, then there is stopping. This is the practice of Dhamma.

　　Pool

　　Be mindful and let things take their natural course, then your mind will become quiet in any surroundings. It will become still like a clear forest pool and all kinds of wonderful and rare animals will come to drink from it. Then you will clearly see the nature of all things in the world. You will see many wonderful and strange things come and go. But you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha.

　　Rainwater

　　Actually the mind, like rain water, is pure in its natural state. If we were to drop green dye into clear rainwater, however, it would turn green. If yellow dye were added, it would turn yellow. The mind reacts similarly. When a comfortable mental im, pression drops into the mind, the mind is comfortable. When the mental impression is uncomfortable, the mind is uncomfortable. The mind becomes cloudy, like the colored water. When clear water contacts yellow, it turns yellow. When it contacts green, it turns green. It will change color every time. Actually the water that turned green or yellow is naturally clean and clear. This is also the natural state of the mind - clean and pure and unconfused. It becomes confused only because it pursues mental impressions. It gets lost in its moods.

　　River Flow

　　There”s nothing wrong with the way the body grows old and gets sick. It just follows its nature. So it”s not the body that causes us suffering, but our own wrong thinking. When we see the right wrongly, there”s bound to be c…

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