..續本文上一頁of the mind.

　　It is helpful, here, to clarify the difference between silent awareness of the present moment and thinking about it. The simile of watching a tennis match on TV is informative. When watching such a match, you may notice that, in fact, there are two matches occurring simultaneously-there is the match that you see on the screen, and there is the match that you hear described by the commentator. Indeed, if an Australian is playing a New Zealander, then the commentary from the Australian or New Zealand presenter is likely to be much different from what actually occurred! Commentary is often biased. In this simile, watching the screen with no commentary stands for silent awareness in meditation, paying attention to the commentary stands for thinking about it. You should realize that you are much closer to Truth when you observe without commentary, when you experience just the silent awareness of the present moment.

　　Sometimes it is through the inner commentary that we think we know the world. Actually, that inner speech does not know the world at all! It is the inner speech that weaves the delusions that cause suffering. It is the inner speech that causes us to be angry with those we make our enemies, and to have dangerous attachments to those we make our loved ones. Inner speech causes all of life”s problems. It constructs fear and guilt. It creates anxiety and depression. It builds these illusions as surely as the skilful commentator on TV can manipulate an audience to create anger or tears. So if you seek for Truth, you should value silent awareness, considering it more important, when meditating, than any thought whatsoever.

　　It is the high value that one gives to one”s thoughts that is the major obstacle to silent awareness. Carefully removing the importance one gives to one”s thinking and realizing the value and truthfulness of silent awareness, is the insight that makes this second stage-silent awareness of the present moment-possible.

　　One of the beautiful ways of overcoming the inner commentary is to develop such refined present moment awareness, that you are watching every moment so closely that you simply do not have the time to comment about what has just happened. A thought is often an opinion on what has just happened, e.g. ”That was good”, ”That was gross”, ”What was that

　　”. All of these comments are about an experience that has just passed by. When you are noting, making a comment about an experience that has just passed, then you are not paying attention to the experience that has just arrived. You are dealing with old visitors and neglecting the new visitors coming now!

　　You may imagine your mind to be a host at a party, meeting the guests as they come in the door. If one guest comes in and you meet them and start talking to them about this that or the other, then you are not doing your duty of paying attention to the next guest that comes in the door. Because a guest comes in the door every moment, all you can do is to greet one and then immediately go on to greet the next one. You cannot afford to engage in even the shortest conversation with any guest, since this would mean you would miss the one coming in next. In meditation, all experiences come through the door of our senses into the mind one by one in succession. If you greet one experience with mindfulness and then get into conversation with your guest, then you will miss the next experience following right behind.

　　When you are perfectly in the moment with every experience, with every guest that comes in your mind, then you just do not have the space for inner speech. You cannot chatter to yourself because you are completely taken up with mindfully greeting everything just as it arrives in your mind. This is refined present moment awareness to…

《The Basic Method of Meditation》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…