..續本文上一頁is like harvesting your crop of inner worth and eating it. If you don”t harvest it, it”ll spoil. If you eat it in time, it”ll nourish your body. If you don”t eat it in time, it”ll go to waste. If you don”t take your inner worth into your heart, you”ll never feel full.

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　　Generosity is something that poor people can”t practice, but crazy people can. Virtue is something that crazy people can”t practice, but poor people can. As for meditation, everyone can practice it, no matter what their age, sex, or station in life.

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　　A mind without concentration is like a pile of wooden posts left lying on the ground for people and animals to step all over. But if we stand the posts up and plant them in the soil, we can get good use out of them. Even if they”re not tall — only a meter or so — but we put them close together in a line, we can fence in our yard and prevent people and animals from coming in and traipsing all over our property. It”s the same with the mind. If we take a firm stance in concentration as the heart”s foundation, keeping our mindfulness and alertness close together in line, we can keep defilements from slipping into the mind and making it soiled.

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　　The Dhamma is something constant and true. The reason we don”t see the truth is because we”re always on the move. If we”re riding in a car, we can”t clearly see the things that pass near by us on the road, such as how big the stones on the ground are, their color or shape. We look at trees and mountains, and they all seem to be on the move. If we”ve been in a car since birth, without stopping to get out and walk around on our own, we”re sure to think that cars run, trees run, and mountains run. What we see isn”t in line with the truth. The running is in us, in the car, not in the mountains and trees.

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　　Whoever develops concentration will end up with three eyes. In other words, your outer left eye will see good things, your outer right eye will see bad things, and they”ll send them in to the inner eye, which will remain normal. You”ll also have three ears: Your outer left ear will hear praise, your outer right ear will hear criticism, and they”ll send them in to the inner ear, which will stay normal. This is how you can receive all the guests the world sends your way. As for the eye of the mind — intuitive insight — it will receive your defilements. Once it really understands them, it will be able to send them packing. That way you”ll be able to live in the world without suffering.

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　　If you really apply yourself, you can accomplish all kinds of things even with a single pocket knife. In the same way, if you really apply yourself to making the mind still, you can get much better results than a person who studies and memorizes hundreds and thousands of texts. Making the mind still is something we can all do. If it were beyond our powers, the Buddha wouldn”t have taught us to do it.

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　　The paths and fruitions leading to nibbana aren”t the property of stupid people, and they don”t belong to smart people, either. They belong to those who are true and really determined in developing goodness for themselves.

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　　The body is like a mountain containing all kinds of minerals. There”s gold, silver, and diamond ore buried here in this rock — i.e., the Unconditioned is in here. And there”s also the Conditioned, which is like trees, weeds, dirt, and rocks where all sorts of people and animals — monkeys, tigers, and elephants — dwell. As for the gold and silver, they”re not a dwelling place for animals at all. So if we act like monkeys, tigers, and elephants, we”ll meet up with nothing but trees, weeds, dirt, and rocks. We”ll never meet up with things of value like silver or gold.

　　To act like monkeys means that we never apply ourselves to anything. We wander everywhere, with no…

《The Skill of Release - Why Meditate

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