..續本文上一頁ignorance. Therefore it takes time to feel sensations, to go to the root of the problem. When you get addicted to liquor, or addicted to drugs, you cannot know the reality of what is happening within the framework of the body. There is darkness in your mind. You cannot understand what is happening inside, what keeps on multiplying inside. We have found that in cases of alcohol addiction, people generally start benefiting more quickly than people who are addicted to drugs. But the way is there for everyone to come out of misery, however addicted they may be, however ignorant they may be. If you keep working patiently and persistently, sooner or later you are bound to reach the stage where you start feeling sensations throughout the body and can observe them objectively. It may take time. In ten days you may only make a slight change in the habit pattern of your mind. It doesn”t matter: a beginning is made and if you keep on practising morning and evening, and take a few more courses, the habit pattern will change at the deepest level of the mind and you will come out of your ignorance, out of your reaction.
We keep advising people who are addicted to tobacco smoking even ordinary tobacco smoking that if an urge arises in the mind, not to take the cigarette and start smoking. Wait a little. Just accept the fact that an urge to smoke has arisen in the mind. When this urge arises, along with it there is a sensation in the body. Start observing that sensation, whatever the sensation may be. Do not look for a particular sensation. Any sensation at that time in the body is related to the urge to smoke. And by observing the sensation as impermanent, anicca, it arises, it passes, it arises, it passes and in ten minutes, fifteen minutes, this urge will pass away. This is not a philosophy but the experiential truth.
Similarly for those who are addicted to alcohol or addicted to drugs, when an urge arises, we advise them not to succumb immediately, just wait ten or fifteen minutes, and accept the fact that an urge has arisen and observe whatever sensation is present at that time. And they have found that they are coming out of their addictions. They may not be successful every time, but if they are successful even one time out of ten, a very good beginning is made because the root has started changing. The habit pattern lies at the root of the mind, and the root of the mind is strongly related to the sensations on the body: mind and matter are so inter-related, they keep on influencing each other.
If this law, if this nature, is merely accepted at the intellectual level, or devotional level, the benefit will be minimal it may inspire you to practise. But the real benefit accrues through the actual practice. It is good that all of you have come and given a trial to this technique for ten days. If you are convinced by this trial: that it is a good path, a scientific path, that no blind faith is involved, no dogma is involved, no conversion from one organised religion to another organised religion is involved, that no gurudom is involved, that no guru will liberate you from your addictions or from your miseries, that you have to work out your own salvation; if in these ten days you are convinced that this is a good path, then I would say that you have been successful. It is a long path, a lifetime job. Even a journey of ten thousand miles must start with the first step. For one who has taken the first step it is possible that one will take the second step, the third step, and like this, step by step, one will reach the final goal of full liberation.
May you all come out of all your addictions. Not merely addiction to drugs or alcohol: the addiction to the mental impurities is stronger than these. It has been with you for so many lives; a very strong behaviour pattern, which you have to break to come out of your misery. It is a big job. A big responsibility. And you are not doing it to oblige anybody; not to please any God Almighty, not to please your teacher. You are doing it to oblige yourself; for your own good, for your own benefit, for your own liberation. And the process is such that when you start to benefit from the technique, from the path, you cannot resist helping others. It is then not merely for your own good, for your own benefit, for your own liberation, but also for the good, the benefit and the liberation of so many. So many people are suffering all around: may they all come in contact with pure Dhamma and come out of their misery. May they start enjoying peace and harmony; peace and harmony of the liberated mind, liberated from all the defilements.
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