The Mind Aflame

　　July 28, 1959

　　If the heart doesn”t have any inner nourishment, it won”t have any strength, because it”s hungry and thin. When it doesn”t have any nourishment, it goes out eating whatever it can find — bones and old dry skins — without finding any decent food to eat or water to drink at all. This is why it ends up shriveled and dry, because the heart, if it doesn”t have any inner goodness, is thin and gaunt, and goes running around all sorts of back alleys, scraping together whatever it can find just for the sake of having something to stick in its mouth. It doesn”t get to eat anything good at all, though. It can”t find a single thing to give it any flavor or nourishment. But if the heart is strong and well-fed, then whatever it thinks of doing is sure to succeed.

　　The Buddha saw that we human beings are thin and malnourished in this way, which is why he felt compassion for us. He taught us, "The mind that goes around swallowing sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations is eating a ball of fire, you know. Not any kind of food." In other words, "The eye is burning." Everything we see with the eye is a form, and each of these forms contains a ball of fire, even though on the outside it”s coated to look pretty and attractive. "The ear is burning." All the pleasing sounds we search for, and that come passing in through our ears from the day we”re born to the day we die, are burning sounds, are flames of fire. The heat of the sun can”t burn you to death, but sounds can burn you to death, which is why we say they”re hotter than the sun. "The nose is burning." We”ve been smelling smells ever since the doctor cleaned out our nose right after birth, and the nature of smells is that there”s no such thing as a neutral smell. There are only two kinds: good smelling and foul-smelling. If our strength is down and we”re not alert, we swallow these smells right into the mind — and that means we”ve swallowed a time bomb. We”re safe only as long as nothing ignites the fuse. "The tongue is burning." Countless tastes come passing over our tongue. If we get attached to them, it”s as if we”ve eaten a ball of fire: As soon as it explodes, our intestines will come splattering out. If we human beings let ourselves get tied up in this sort of thing, it”s as if we”ve eaten the fire bombs of the King of Death. As soon as they explode, we”re finished. But if we know enough to spit them out, we”ll be safe. If we swallow them, we”re loading ourselves down. We won”t be able to find any peace whether we”re sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, because we”re on fire inside. Only when we breathe our last will the fires go out. "The body is burning." Tactile sensations are also a fire that wipes human beings out. If you don”t have any inner worth or goodness in your mind, these things can really do you a lot of damage.

　　* * *

　　Greed, anger, and delusion are like three enormous balls of red-hot iron that the King of Death heats until they”re glowing hot and then pokes into our heads. When greed doesn”t get what it wants, it turns into anger. Once we”re angry, we get overcome and lose control, so that it turns into delusion. We forget everything — good, bad, our husbands, wives, parents, children — to the point where we can even kill our husbands, wives, parents, and children. This is all an affair of delusion. When these three defilements get mixed up in our minds, they can take us to hell with no trouble at all. This is why they”re called fire bombs in the human heart.

　　But if, when greed arises, we have the sense to take only what should be taken and not what shouldn”t, it won”t wipe us out even though it”s burning us, because we have fire insurance. People without fire insurance are those with really strong greed to the point …

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