..續本文上一頁 I feel that letting go is really the way of peace. Touching a head is against our customs, but in reality it is nothing. When they agree to having it touched there”s nothing wrong with it, just like touching a cabbage or a potato.

　　Accepting, giving up, letting go — this is the way of lightness. Wherever you”re clinging there”s becoming and birth right there. There”s danger right there. The Buddha taught about convention and he taught to undo convention in the right way, and so reach Liberation. This is freedom, not to cling to conventions. All things in this world have a conventional reality. Having established them we should not be fooled by them, because getting lost in them really leads to suffering. This point concerning rules and conventions is of utmost importance. One who can get beyond them is beyond suffering.

　　However, they are a characteristic of our world. Take Mr. Boonmah, for instance; he used to be just one of the crowd but now he”s been appointed the District Commissioner. It”s just a convention but it”s a convention we should respect. It”s part of the world of people. If you think, "Oh, before we were friends, we used to work at the tailor”s together," and then you go and pat him on the head in public, he”ll get angry. It”s not right, he”ll resent it. So we should follow the conventions in order to avoid giving rise to resentment. It”s useful to understand convention, living in the world is just about this. Know the right time and place, know the person.

　　Why is it wrong to go against conventions

　　 It”s wrong because of people! You should be clever, knowing both convention and Liberations. Know the right time for each. If we know how to use rules and conventions comfortably then we are skilled. But if we try to behave according to the higher level of reality in the wrong situation, this is wrong. Where is it wrong

　　 It”s wrong with people”s defilements, nothing else! People all have defilements. In one situation we behave one way, in another situation we must behave in another way. We should know the ins and outs because we live within conventions. Problems occur because people cling to them. If we suppose something to be, then it is. It”s there because we suppose it to be there. But if you look closely, in the absolute sense these things don”t really exist.

　　As I have often said, before we were laymen and now we are monks. We lived within the convention of "layman" and now we live within the convention of "monk." We are monks by convention, not monks through Liberation. In the beginning we establish conventions like this, but if a person merely ordains, this doesn”t mean he overcomes defilements. If we take a handful of sand and agree to call it salt, does this make it salt

　　 It is salt, but only in name, not in reality. You couldn”t use it to cook with. It”s only use is within the realm of that agreement, because there”s really no salt there, only sand. It becomes salt only through our supposing it to be so.

　　This word "Liberation" is itself just a convention, but it refers to that beyond conventions. Having achieved freedom, having reached liberation, we still have to use convention in order to refer to it as liberation. If we didn”t have convention we couldn”t communicate, so it does have its use.

　　For example, people have different names but they are all people just the same. If we didn”t have names to differentiate between them, and we wanted to call out to somebody standing in a crowd, saying, "Hey, Person! Person!", that would be useless. You couldn”t say who would answer you because they”re all "person." But if you called, "Hey, John!", then John would come, the others wouldn”t answer. Names fulfill just this need. Through them we can communicate, they provide the basis for social behavior.

　　So you should …

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