..續本文上一頁ur control. If you can”t control them, don”t have anything to do with them. They might lead you astray. But if you can put them through their paces, they can be of use to you later on.

　　To put them through their paces means to change them at will, through the power of thought (patibhaga nimitta) -- making them small, large, sending them far away, bringing them up close, making them appear and disappear, sending them outside, bringing them in. Only then will you be able to use them in training the mind.

　　Once you”ve mastered these signs, they”ll give rise to heightened sensory powers: the ability to see without opening your eyes; the ability to hear far-distant sounds or smell far-distant aromas; the ability to taste the various elements that exist in the air and can be of use to the body in overcoming feelings of hunger and desire; the ability to give rise to certain feelings at will -- to feel cool when you want to feel cool, hot when you want to feel hot, warm when you want to feel warm, strong when you need strength -- because the various elements in the world that can be physically useful to you will come and appear in your body.

　　The mind, too, will be heightened, and will have the power to develop the eye of intuition (ñana-cakkhu): the ability to remember previous lives, the ability to know where living beings are reborn after they die, and the ability to cleanse the heart of the fermentations of defilement. If you have your wits about you, you can receive these guests and put them to work in your home.

　　These are a few of the incidentals of breath meditation. If you come across them in your practice, examine them thoroughly. Don”t be pleased by what appears. Don”t get upset or try to deny what appears. Keep your mind on an even keel. Stay neutral. Be circumspect. Consider carefully whatever appears, to see whether it”s trustworthy or not. Otherwise, it might lead you to mistaken assumptions. Good and evil, right and wrong, high and low: All depend on whether your heart is shrewd or dull, and on how resourceful you are. If you”re dull-witted, even high things can become low, and good things evil.

　　Once you know the various aspects of the breath and its incidentals, you can gain knowledge of the four Noble Truths. In addition, you can relieve physical pains as they arise in your body. Mindfulness is the active ingredient in the medicine; the in-and-out breath is the solvent. Mindfulness can cleanse and purify the breath. A pure breath can cleanse the blood throughout the body, and when the blood is cleansed, it can relieve many of the body”s diseases and pains. If you suffer from nervous disorders, for instance, they”ll completely disappear. What”s more, you”ll be able to strengthen the body so that you feel a greater sense of health and well-being.

　　When the body feels well, the mind can settle down and rest. And once the mind is rested, you gain strength: the ability to relieve all feelings of pain while sitting in meditation, so that you can go on sitting for hours. When the body is free from pain, the mind is free from Hindrances (nivarana). Body and mind are both strong. This is called samadhi-balam -- the strength of concentration.

　　When your concentration is strong like this, it can give rise to discernment: the ability to see stress, its cause, its disbanding, and the path to its disbanding, all clearly within the breath. This can be explained as follows:

　　The in-and-out breath is stress -- the in-breath, the stress of arising; the out-breath, the stress of passing away. Not being aware of the breath as it goes in and out, not knowing the characteristics of the breath, is the cause of stress. Knowing when the breath is coming in, knowing when it”s going out, knowing its characteristics clearly -- i.e., …

《Keeping the Breath in Mind and Lessons in Samadhi》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…