..續本文上一頁d yon like those people to whom the Buddha applied the simile "smoke by night, fire by day."

　　"Smoke by night" refers to sleeplessness, restlessness. A sufferer from this complaint lies all night with hand on brow, planning on going after this and that, working out how to get money, how to get rich quickly and get the various things he desires. His mind is full of "smoke." All he can do is lie there until morning, when he can get up and go running off in obedience to the wishes of the "smoke" he has been holding back all night. This fervent activity is what the Buddha referred to as "fire by day." These are the symptoms of a mind that has not achieved tranquillity, a mind that has been deprived of spiritual nourishment. It is a pathological hunger and thirst induced by the defilement called craving. All night long the victim represses the smoke and heat, which in the morning becomes fire, and then blazes hot inside him all day. If a person is obliged, throughout his entire life, to suppress the "smoke by night," which then becomes "fire by day," how can he ever find peace and coolness

　　 Just visualize his condition. He endures suffering and torment all his life, from birth up until he enters the coffin, simply for lack of the insight that could completely extinguish that fire and smoke. To treat such a complaint one has to make use of the knowledge provided by the Buddha. The smoke and fire diminish in proportion to one”s degree of understanding of the true nature of things.

　　As we have said, Buddhism has a number of different aspects or sides. Just as the same mountain when viewed from a different direction presents a different appearance, so different benefits are derived from Buddhism according to how one looks at it. Even Buddhism has its origins in fear--not the foolish fear of an ignorant person who kneels and makes obeisance to idols or strange phenomena, but a higher kind of fear, the fear of perhaps never attaining liberation from the oppression of birth, ageing, pain and death, from the various forms of suffering we experience. The real Buddhism is not books, not manuals, not word for word repetition from the Tipitaka, nor is it rites and rituals. These are not the real Buddhism. The real Buddhism is the practice, by way of body, speech and mind that will destroy the defilements, in part or completely. One need not have anything to do with books or manuals. One ought not to rely on rites and rituals, or anything else external, including spirits and celestial beings. Rather one must be directly concerned with bodily action, speech and thought. That is, one must persevere in one”s efforts to control and eliminate the defilements so that clear insight can arise. One will then be automatically capable of acting appropriately, and will be free of suffering from that moment right up to the end.

　　This is the real Buddhism. This is what we have to understand. Let us not go foolishly grasping at the tumour that is obscuring Buddhism, taking it for the real thing.

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