..續本文上一頁ings. Even if you attain peace, throw out the peace. If knowledge arises, throw out the knowledge. If you know then you know, but if you take that knowing to be your own then you think you know something. Then you think you are better than others. After a while you can”t live anywhere, wherever you live problems arise. If you practice wrongly it”s just as if you didn”t practice at all.

　　Practice according to your capacity. Do you sleep a lot

　　 Then try going against the grain. Do you eat a lot

　　 Then try eating less. Take as much practice as you need, using sila, samadhi and pañña as your basis. Then throw in the dhutanga practices also. These dhutanga [45] practices are for digging into the defilements. You may find the basic practices still not enough to really uproot the defilements, so you have to incorporate the dhutanga practices as well.

　　These dhutanga practices are really useful. Some people can”t kill off the defilements with basic sila and samadhi, they have to bring in the dhutanga practices to help out. The dhutanga practices cut off many things. Living at the foot of a tree... Living at the foot of a tree isn”t against the precepts. But if you determine the dhutanga practice of living in a charnel ground and then don”t do it, that”s wrong. Try it out. What”s like to live in a charnel ground

　　 Is it the same as living in a group

　　DHU-TAN-GA: This translates as "the practices which are hard to do." These are the practices of the Noble Ones. Whoever wants to be a Noble One must use the dhutanga practices to cut the defilements. It”s difficult to observe them and it”s hard to find people with the commitment to practice them, because they go against the grain.

　　Such as with robes; they say to limit your robes to the basic three robes; to maintain yourself on almsfood; to eat only in the bowl; to eat only what you get on almsround, if anyone brings food to offer afterwards you don”t accept it.

　　Keeping this last practice in central Thailand is easy, the food is quite adequate, because there they put a lot of food in your bowl. But when you come to the Northeast here this dhutanga takes on subtle nuances -- here you get plain rice! In these parts the tradition is to put only plain rice in the almsbowl. In central Thailand they give rice and other foods also, but around these parts you get only plain rice. This dhutanga practice becomes really ascetic. You eat only plain rice, whatever is brought to offer afterwards you don”t accept. Then there is eating once a day, at one sitting, from only one bowl -- when you”ve finished eating you get up from your seat and don”t eat again that day.

　　These are called dhutanga practices. Now who will practice them

　　 It”s hard these days to find people with enough commitment to practice them because they are demanding, but that is why they are so beneficial.

　　What people call practice these days is not really practice. If you really practice it”s no easy matter. Most people don”t dare to really practice, don”t dare to really go against the grain. They don”t want to do anything which runs contrary to their feelings. People don”t want to resist the defilements, they don”t want to dig at them or get rid of them.

　　In our practice they say not to follow your own moods. Consider: we have been fooled for countless lifetimes already into believing that the mind is our own. Actually it isn”t, it”s just an impostor. It drags us into greed, drags us into aversion, drags us into delusion, drags us into theft, plunder, desire and hatred. These things aren”t ours. Just ask yourself right now: do you want to be good

　　 Everybody wants to be good. Now doing all these things, is that good

　　 There! People commit malicious acts and yet they want to be good. That”s why I say these things are tr…

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