..續本文上一頁k yourself: Is it good for me
Can I handle it
Are my teeth strong enough
Some people have nothing but empty gums and yet they want to eat sugar cane: It”s not normal. Some people, even though their teeth are aching and falling out, still want to eat crunchy foods. So it is with the mind: As soon as it”s just a little bit still, we want to see this, know that -- we want to take on more than we can handle. You first have to make sure that your concentration is solidly based, that your discernment and concentration are properly balanced. This point is very important. Your powers of evaluation have to be ripe, your directed thought firm.
Say you have a water buffalo, tie it to a stake, and pound the stake deep into the ground. If your buffalo is strong, it just might walk or run away with the stake. You have to know your buffalo”s strength. If it”s really strong, pound the stake so that it”s firmly in the ground and keep watch over it. In other words, if you find that the obsessiveness of your thinking is getting out of hand, going beyond the bounds of mental stillness, then fix the mind in place and make it extra still -- but not so still that you lose track of things. If the mind is too quiet, it”s like being in a daze. You don”t know what”s going on at all. Everything is dark, blotted out. Or else you have good and bad spells, sinking out of sight and then popping up again. This is concentration without directed thought or evaluation, with no sense of judgment: Wrong Concentration.
So you have to be observant. Use your judgment -- but don”t let the mind get carried away by its thoughts. Your thinking is something separate. The mind stays with the meditation object. Wherever your thoughts may go spinning, your mind is still firmly based -- like holding onto a post and spinning around and around. You can keep on spinning, and yet it doesn”t wear you out. But if you let go of the post and spin around three times, you get dizzy and -- Bang! -- fall flat on your face. So it is with the mind: If it stays with the singleness of its preoccupation, it can keep thinking and not get tired, not get harmed, because your thinking and stillness are right there together. The more you think, the more solid your mind gets. The more you sit and meditate, the more you think. The mind becomes more and more firm until all the Hindrances (nivarana) fall away. The mind no longer goes looking for concepts. Now it can give rise to knowledge.
The knowledge here isn”t ordinary knowledge. It washes away your old knowledge. You don”t want the knowledge that comes from ordinary thinking and reasoning: Let go of it. You don”t want the knowledge that comes from directed thought and evaluation: Stop. Make the mind quiet. Still. When the mind is still and unhindered, this is the essence of all that”s skillful and good. When your mind is on this level, it isn”t attached to any concepts at all. All the concepts you”ve known -- dealing with the world or the Dhamma, however many or few -- are washed away. Only when they”re washed away can new knowledge arise.
This is why you should let go of concepts -- all the labels and names you have for things. You have to let yourself be poor. It”s when people are poor that they become ingenious and resourceful. If you don”t let yourself be poor, you”ll never gain discernment. In other words, you don”t have to be afraid of being stupid or of missing out on things. You don”t have to be afraid that you”ve hit a dead end. You don”t want any of the insights you”ve gained from listening to others or from reading books, because they”re concepts and therefore inconstant. You don”t want any of the insights you”ve gained by reasoning and thinking, because they”re concepts and therefore not-self. Let all these insights disappear, …
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