..續本文上一頁e point that lets them argue — because the truth has to be found true in the inpidual heart. Once a person knows, he or she can”t help but speak with full assurance.

　　Thus the fact that our mind is surrounded, made to fear, to worry, to love, to hate, or whatever, is caused entirely by the symptoms of conventional reality, the symptoms of defilement. We have no mental power of our own. We have only the power of defilement, craving, and mental effluents pushing and pressuring us day and night while we sit, stand, walk, and lie down. Where are we going to find any happiness and ease as long as these things, which are constantly changing, keep provoking the mind to change along with them without our being aware of the fact

　　There can be no ease in this world — none at all — until these things can be completely eradicated from the heart. Until then, we can have no secure ease and relief in any way. We can only shift and change about, or lean this way and that, depending on how much we”re provoked by the things that come and involve us. This is why the Buddha teaches us to cleanse the mind, which is the same thing as cleansing ourselves of suffering.

　　There is no one who has genuinely penetrated the principles of the truth like the Lord Buddha. Only he can be called ”sayambhu” — one who needs no teaching or training from anyone else. In curing his heart of defilement, he performed the duties of both student and teacher, all by himself, until he awakened to the level of the superlative Dhamma, becoming the superlative person, the superlative Master.

　　This is not to deny that on the level of concentration — the development of mental stillness — he received training from the two hermits; but that in itself wasn”t the way of extrication leading to the level of omniscience (sabbaññu). By the time he was to attain omniscience, he had left the two hermits and was striving on his own. He came to know the Dhamma on his own and to see on his own, without anyone else”s teaching him. He then brought that Dhamma to teach the world so that it has known good and evil, heaven, hell, and nibbana ever since. Had there been no one to teach us, we of the world would be completely burdened with the mass of fire filling our hearts and would never see the day when we could put our burdens down.

　　This being the case, we should appreciate the worth of the Dhamma that the Buddha brought to the world after having endured hardships in a way no one else in the world could have managed.

　　So now, at present, what is it that covers the heart so that we can”t find its radiance and purity, even though each of us wants to find purity. What conceals it

　　 To answer in terms of natural principles, we should start with the five khandhas. As for the ”mind of unawareness,” we can save that for later. Let”s just start out with what”s really obvious — the five khandhas and their companions: sight, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations.

　　These make contact with the eye, ear, nose, tongue and body, and then link up with the mind, forming the basis for this assumption and that. The mind then takes the objects that have come passing by and uses them to bind itself, entangle itself, or encircle itself so that it is completely darkened with love, hate, anger, and all sorts of other states, all of which come from the things I have mentioned.

　　But what lies buried deep is our belief that the khandhas form our self. From time immemorial, whatever our language, whatever our race — even when we are common animals — we have to believe that these things are us, are ours; that they are a being, the self of a being, our own self. If we become deities, we believe that our pine bodies are ours. If we become hungry ghosts or whatever, the things we dwell in — gross bodies …

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