..續本文上一頁ng automatically follows. Or when you investigate feelings, this leads straight to the body, to sañña, sankhara, and viññana, which have the same sorts of characteristics — because they come from the same current of the mind. To put it briefly, the Buddha taught that each of the five khandhas is a complete treasury or complete heap of the three characteristics.

　　What do they have that”s worth holding on to

　　 The physical elements, the physical heap, all physical forms, are simply heaps of the elements. Vedana, sañña, sankhara, and viññana are all mere mental phenomena. They appear — blip, blip, blip — and disappear in an instant. What value or substance can you get from them

　　 Discernment penetrates further and further in. It knows the truth, which goes straight to the heart, and it lets go with that straight-to-the-heart knowledge. In other words, it lets go straight from the heart. When the knowledge goes straight to the heart, it lets go straight from the heart. Our job narrows in, narrows in, as the work of discernment dictates.

　　This is the way it is when investigating and knowing the path of the mind that involves itself with various preoccupations. We come in knowing, we come in letting go step by step, cutting off the paths of the tigers that used to roam about looking for food — as in the phrase from the Dhamma textbooks: ”Cutting off the paths of the tigers that roam about looking for food.” We cut them out from the paths of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body along which they used to roam, involving themselves with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations, gathering up poisonous food and bringing it in to burn the heart.

　　Discernment thus has to roam about investigating the body, feelings, sañña, sankhara, and viññana by probing inward, probing inward along the paths that the tigers and leopards like to follow, so as to cut off the paths along which they used to go looking for food. The Buddha teaches us to probe inward, cutting off the paths until we have the tigers caged. In other words, unawareness, which is like a tiger, converges in at the one mind. All defilements and mental effluents converge in at the one mind. They can”t go out roaming freely looking for food as they did before.

　　The mind of unawareness: You could say that it”s like a football, because discernment unravels it — stomps on it, kicks it back and forth — until it is smashed to bits: until the defilement of unawareness is smashed inside. This is the level of the mind where defilement converges, so when discernment unravels it, it”s just like a football that is stomped and kicked. It gets kicked back and forth among the khandhas until it”s smashed apart by discernment. When the conventional mind is smashed apart, the mind released is fully revealed.

　　Why do we say the ”conventional mind” and the ”mind released”

　　 Do they become two separate minds

　　 Not at all. It”s still the same mind. When conventional realities — defilements and mental effluents — rule it, that”s one state of the mind; but when it”s washed and wrung out by discernment until that state of mind is smashed apart, then the true mind, the true Dhamma, which can stand the test, doesn”t disappear with it. The only things that disappear are the things inconstant, stressful, and not-self that had infiltrated the mind — because defilements and mental effluents, no matter how refined, are simply conventions: inconstant, stressful, and not-self.

　　When these things disappear, the true mind, above and beyond convention, can then appear to its full extent. This is what”s called the mind released. This is what”s called the pure mind, completely cut off from all connections and continuations. All that rem…

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