..續本文上一頁ainty, still another. When these things get stuck in the heart, how can it possibly be bright

　　 It”s dark on all sides. Now, when you develop your meditation and bring the mind to stillness, that”s called getting the sleep out of your eyes. Directed thought loosens it up, and evaluation rinses it out. Once your eyes gets rinsed and washed clean this way, they can see clearly. The eye of your mind becomes the eye of discernment. This is called dibba-cakkhu.

　　Dibba-sota: clairaudience. There are two levels of ears, as well. The outer ears are the ones made of skin. The inner ear is the ear of the heart. The ear of the heart doesn”t appear for the same sort of reason: its full of earwax. You never clean it out. You don”t build up any goodness in the area of the mind. The mind isn”t in concentration. When it”s not in concentration, and hears an attractive sound, it can”t stay still. Your ears are full of wax. You hear people gossiping or cursing each other out, and you love to hear it. This is a humongous hunk of wax stuck in your ear. As for the Dhamma, you”re not really interested in listening, which is why there”s nothing but earwax: earwax stuck in your mind, earwax all over everything outside. This is why your powers of clairaudience don”t arise.

　　Clairaudience is really refreshing. You don”t have to waste your time listening. If you feel like listening, you can hear anything. What the hungry shades are talking about, what common animals are talking about, what the devas are talking about -- how fantastic it is to be in heaven -- you can hear it all, unless you don”t want to listen. Like a radio: If it”s turned on, you can hear it loud and clear. If it becomes a nuisance, you don”t have to keep it on. If you have this skill, you can turn it on to listen for the fun of it; if you don”t want to listen, you can turn it off in an instant. This is called clairaudience, one of the skills of concentration practice.

　　Another skill is cetopariya-nana, the ability to read minds, to see if people are thinking good thoughts or bad, high, low, crude, evil: you can use this insight to know. This is called cetopariya-ñana, an important skill.

　　Then there”s pubbenivasanussati-nana, the ability to remember previous lives, and asavakkhaya-nana, the ability to clean out the mind, washing away all the ignorance, craving, and clinging inside it. You can keep ignorance from arising in the heart. You can keep craving from taking charge of the heart. You can make sure that there”s no clinging or attachment. When you can let go of your defilements -- kama-jaho, when you”re not stuck on sensual objects or sensual desires; ditthi-jaho, when you”re not stuck on views and opinions; avijja-jaho, when you don”t mistake ignorance for knowledge and can let it go without any attachment -- when you don”t latch onto evil, when you don”t latch onto your own goodness, when you can spit out evil and goodness, without holding onto them as your own, letting them go in line with their nature: That”s called asavakkhaya-nana, the knowledge of the ending of the fermentations in the mind. This is the third noble truth: the truth of cessation, achieved through the practices that give rise to knowledge and skill.

　　These are the skills that arise from meditation practice. They”re uparima-vijja, higher learning in the area of the religion. When you”ve got them, you can be at your ease -- at ease if you die, at ease if you don”t. You don”t have to build a rocket to go to Mars. You can live right here in the world, and nothing will be able to harm you. In other words, you know what things are dangerous, what things are harmful, and so you leave them alone and don”t touch them. This way you can live in safety and peace. The heart can stay blooming and bright like this at all times.

　　This is why we should be earnest and strict with ourselves in the practice, so that we can achieve the aims we all want. Here I”ve explained the eight knowledges in brief. If I were to go into detail, there would be lots more to say. To boil it down:

　　All these forms of knowledge come from stillness. If the mind isn”t still, they don”t arise. At best, if the mind isn”t still, you can gain knowledge only from listening, reading, or thinking things over. But the person who can stop thinking, stop pondering, and yet can still be intelligent: That”s something really amazing, something that goes against the currents of the world. Normally, people in the world have to study and read, think and ponder, if they want to be intelligent. But with the Dhamma, you have to stop thinking, stop writing, stop memorizing, stop doing, in order to gain the highest level of knowledge. This is something that goes against the currents of the world, and that human beings find hard to do.

　　But when you become intent in the practice that gives rise to knowledge, you”ll succeed in line with your aspirations.

　　Having talked on the theme of vijja-carana-sampanno, I”ll end right here.

《Eight Types of Knowledge》全文閱讀結束。