..續本文上一頁has different levels. This is the final thing I want to discuss here about mindfulness, the different levels of mindfulness.

　　We actually find out that mindfulness of daily life is just so dull and useless for wisdom. It has got very little sharpness or depth at all. When we start developing meditation, we get sharper and more agile. By sharper and agile I mean we can sustain attention on very fine areas of existence, and the attention is very bright as well. However, as we develop the meditation deeper and deeper, we find we have to develop mindfulness to become ever more subtle, agile and sharp. As the meditator develops these different levels it happens so often that they lose the focus of awareness. For example if the breath is one”s object, one loses the breath, and often people ask why. What has happened here

　　 What has happened is that the breath has become soft and subtle, but the mindfulness is still too coarse. It hasn”t been able to keep up with the development of the breath. If that”s happened, one should go back to the stage before. This can happen at any time, but especially when one has full-sustained attention on the breath at stage four.

　　Sometimes the breath disappears and a Nimitta can come up, but you can”t sustain that Nimitta. This is because the quality of mindfulness necessary to sustain a Nimitta has to be very refined, and you haven”t built up that level of refined mindfulness yet. So you have to go back to the stage before the Nimitta comes up. Go back to full awareness of the beautiful breath, which is a coarser object than the Nimitta, and let the mindfulness develop further on that. But if your mindfulness is fully developed at the fifth stage, when the Nimitta comes up, mindfulness can handle the more refined object. You will find as this mindfulness becomes more and more sharp and agile, it can sustain attention even on the most subtle objects. But first you have to learn how to sustain attention on the coarser objects. At each of these successive stages the mindfulness has a higher quality to it, far more agile and sharp than at the previous stage. To return to the simile of the mindfulness of the surgeon, the mindfulness required to hold a Nimitta is like the skill required of a surgeon operating on the brain, while the mindfulness required to hold the breath is like the skill required for peeling potatoes. You need quite a different refinement at the subtle level. If you move straight from peeling potatoes onto being a brain surgeon, you”re going to make a lot of mess. The same as if you move too quickly from the breath onto the Samadhi Nimitta. You”re going to lose it. You”re not going to be able to keep it there.

　　With development, you can experience immovable mindfulness. The mindfulness that is on one thing entirely -- very clear, very sharp. It doesn”t move at all. The Buddha said this reaches its peak in the fourth Jhana. That”s the peak of mindfulness, where one has complete equanimity. You”re just fully aware of one thing, fully aware, unmoving. That”s as powerful as mindfulness can get. Once you know that type of mindfulness, then you know how ridiculous it is to think you can become Enlightened without Jhanas. Without such powerful mindfulness you can”t get the powerful insights. So you begin to realise for yourself what mindfulness can be, and the sort of mindfulness you need to become Enlightened. The powerful states of mindfulness, not the coarse ones, are the ones that will dig deeply into the nature of things.

　　So you can see that there are many different levels of mindfulness, and mindfulness isn”t just one little thing which is there in daily life and which is the same in deep meditation. Know that mindfulness has many different degrees of power, subtlety and penetration. There are many types of knives -- blunt ones and sharp ones, some for peeling potatoes and some for operating on brains. That”s just like mindfulness.

　　This has been an exposition of what mindfulness means in Buddhism, in Buddhist meditation. Know how to develop it and how to make it very sharp and very agile and how eventually to generate that mindfulness which you can use to dig deep into the nature of your mind and uncover the beautiful treasures of "impermanence", "unsatisfactoriness" and "non-self" (Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta). It”s amazing. You can say words like "the great treasures" of Buddhism and people think: "They can”t be treasures. How can ”suffering” be a treasure

　　 How can ”impermanence” be a treasure

　　 How can ”non-self” be a treasure

　　 We want something really marvelous and uplifting like ”beauty”, ”transcendence”, ”cosmic consciousness”, or ”The essence of all being”." This is why people don”t find the treasures, they don”t know what they”re looking for...

《The Quality of Mindfulness》全文閱讀結束。