..續本文上一頁st not done, it”s not our custom. Everyone knows that when you come back from a holiday you say you had a really wonderful time. Everyone knows that you write a postcard to your friends saying "having a wonderful time, wish you were here". No-one says "having a rotten time, wish I was back home!" So sometimes just be careful of the ways that we lie.
We don”t face reality because of our social conditioning. It”s the same as if you go to a funeral. I”ve been giving funeral services for a long time. Even for me, it took many years to get up the courage to tell a joke at a funeral service. You know that I like telling jokes. Because it”s not done to tell jokes at funeral services. You can do it at some other time, any other time, but the one time you”re not meant to tell a joke is when there”s a stiff in the coffin! It”s being disrespectful, isn”t it
But actually when I did get the courage to do it, all the people said "Thank you so much. It made us feel good and the person who died was always telling jokes and they would have really appreciated that one." I”m sure I could hear the coffin rattling as they were laughing!
But we have these taboos which are incredibly difficult to break. One of those taboos is facing up to that life is suffering. That”s a taboo that people don”t want to recognise. And that”s why you have to creep up on it and find that all this world is all suffering. You know the taboo of looking at a sunset or beautiful flower and, it”s really challenging to say that all flowers, even the most beautiful flower, is suffering. People think you”re just crazy or you”re weird, or you”ve been a monk too long, and you should come back into the real world! It”s a taboo - flowers are beautiful, everyone knows that. The sunset is so wonderful, the mountains, the forests…
To challenge that is very difficult to do. So this is where you do need to have that ability to go against preconceived notions which go so deep inside of you, you wouldn”t believe just how deeply they are embedded in you. And the most deeply embedded notion is not the idea that "life is happiness", but that "you are". That”s the deepest notion which is the hardest one to eradicate, the anatta, that "I am". And that view is just so tricky, so slippery, it”s just like trying to shoot a bird a million miles away through the eye with an arrow. It”s just so tricky to see this self, this "me". And this is why the Buddha gave, not just the jhanas to give the mind power, and to be able to see what it doesn”t want to see, but he also gave the four satipatthanas, as a way of not wasting time, to be able to focus on the four areas where the illusion of self really hangs out. Because there”s many places where you might try to look for the illusion of self, but the four main areas are the rupa, your body, vedana, the feelings, citta, the mind which knows, and the mental objects, dhamma, especially the doer, will. Those are the four areas. And so, having heard a teaching like the satipatthana, having practiced the Eightfold Path, when the mind is in jhanas and it comes out afterwards see if you can remember to employ the satipatthana, especially for one purpose and one purpose only: not to see anicca, but to see anatta, not-self. That is the deepest, most fundamental block which is stopping you from being enlightened, which stops you being free.
One of the ways which I practice myself, and teach other people to practice, is to ask yourself a question. Not "is there a self
", that”s just too philosophical. But to ask yourself: -"What do I take to be my self
Who do I think I am
Who do I perceive I am
What is this "me" I assume to exist
" When you ask that question, whatever comes up as an answer, challenge it. Am I this body
I look in the mirror each morning and smile…
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