..續本文上一頁ith aversion, with craving, with aversion. You keep on generating different types of saṅkhāras, different types of negativities, different types of impurities, and the process of multiplication continues. You can”t stop it because there is such a big barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind. When you practise Vipassana you break this barrier. Without Vipassana the barrier remains.

　　At the conscious level of the mind, at the intellectual level of the mind, one may accept the entire theory of Dhamma, of truth, of law, of nature. But still one keeps rolling in misery because one does not realise what is happening at the depth of the mind. By experience, direct experience, one can understand this. Vipassana helps. And how does it help

　　 Observing your respiration for a few days, you come to a stage where the mind becomes very sharp and very sensitive. And if you work properly, patiently and persistently, most of you in the first ten days, others in the second ten days, come to a stage where you can feel sensations throughout the body. Sensations are there every moment. Every contact results in a sensation Phassa paccayā vedanā. This isn”t a philosophy, it is the scientific truth which can be verified by one and all.

　　The moment there is a contact, there is bound to be a sensation; and every moment the mind is in contact with matter throughout the physical structure. The deeper level of the mind keeps feeling these sensations and it keeps reacting to them. But on the surface the mind keeps itself busy with outside objects, or it remains involved with games of intellectualisation, imagination, or emotion. That is the job of your "tiny mind" (paritta citta), the surface level of the mind. Therefore you do not feel what is happening deep inside, and you do not feel how you are reacting to what is happening at the deeper level of the mind.

　　By Vipassana, when that barrier is broken, one starts feeling sensations throughout the body, not merely at the surface level but also deep inside; as throughout the entire physical structure there is sensation wherever there is life. And by observing these sensations you start realising the characteristic of arising and passing, arising and passing udaya-vaya. By this understanding you start to change the habit pattern of the mind.

　　Say, for example, you are feeling a particular sensation which may be due to the food you have taken, which may be due to the atmosphere around you, which may be due to your present mental actions, or which may be due to your old mental reactions that are giving their fruit. Whatever it may be, a sensation is there, and you are trained to observe it with equanimity and not to react to it: but you keep on reacting because of the old habit pattern. You sit for one hour, and initially you may get only a few moments when you do not react, but those few moments are wonderful moments. You have started changing the habit pattern of your mind by observing sensation and understanding its nature of impermanence. This stops the blind habit pattern of reacting to the sensation and multiplying the vicious cycle of misery. Initially in an hour you get a few seconds or a few minutes of not reacting. But eventually, with practice, you reach a stage where throughout the hour you do not react at all. At the deepest level you do not react at all. A deep change is coming in the old habit pattern. The vicious cycle is broken: the chemical process which was manifesting itself as a sensation, and which your mind was reacting to with a particular impurity, a particular defilement for hours together, is now getting a break for a few moments, a few seconds, a few minutes. As this habit pattern becomes weaker, your behaviour pattern is changing. You are coming out of your misery.

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