..續本文上一頁continually in place. No matter where I”d go or where I”d stay, I wouldn”t let mindfulness lapse. Even if I was to be on the verge of death, I wouldn”t let mindfulness slip away from buddho. If the mind was going to regress, this was the only place where I”d try to know it. I wouldn”t concern myself with the matter in any other way. As a result, the mind was able to establish a foundation for itself because of the meditation word buddho.

　　After that came my second Rains Retreat with Ven. Acariya Mun. Before the rains began, my mind felt still and firm in its concentration, with no regressing at all. Even then, I refused to let go of my meditation word. This kept up to the point where I was able to sit in meditation without changing to any other position from early night until dawn.

　　During my second rains with Ven. Acariya Mun, I held to sitting in meditation until dawn as more important than any other method in my practice. After that I gradually eased back, as I came to see the body as a tool that could wear out if I had no sense of moderation in using it. Still, I found that accelerating my efforts by means of sitting all night until dawn gave more energy to the heart than any other method.

　　The period in which I was sitting up all night until dawn was when I gained clear comprehension of the feelings of pain that arise from sitting in meditation for long periods of time, because the pain that arose at that time was strange and exceptional in many ways. The discernment that investigated so as to contend with the pain kept at its work without flagging, until it was able to understand the affairs of every sort of pain in the body -- which was a solid mass of pain. At the same time, discernment was able to penetrate in to know the feelings of the heart. This did a great deal to strengthen my mindfulness, my discernment, and my courage in the effort of the practice. At the same time, it made me courageous and confident with regard to the future, in that the pains that would appear at the approach of death would be no different from the pains I was experiencing and investigating in the present. There would be nothing about those pains that would be so different or exceptional as to have me deceived or confused at the time of death. This was a further realization. The pain, as soon as discernment had fully comprehended it, disappeared instantaneously, and the mind settled down into total stillness.

　　Now at a point like this, if you wanted to, you could say that the mind is empty, but it”s empty in concentration. When it withdraws from that concentration, the emptiness disappears. From there, the mind resumes its investigations and continues with them until it gains expertise in its concentration. (Here I”ll ask to condense things so as to fit them into the time we have left.) Once concentration is strong, discernment steps up its investigation of the various aspects of the body until it sees them all clearly and is able to remove its attachments concerning the body once and for all. At that point the mind begins to be empty, but it doesn”t yet display a complete emptiness. There are still images appearing as pictures within it until it gains proficiency from its relentless training. The images within the heart then begin to fade day by day, until finally they are gone. No mental images appear either inside or outside the heart. This is also called an empty mind.

　　This kind of emptiness is the inherent emptiness of the mind that has reached its own level. It”s not the emptiness of concentration, or of sitting and practicing concentration. When we sit in concentration, that”s the emptiness of concentration. But when the mind has let go of the body because of the thorough comprehension that comes when its internal images are all go…

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