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　　At that point, I began to feel amazed. There was no pain left. The body had disappeared. Only one thing hadn”t disappeared: an awareness so refined I couldn”t describe it. It simply appeared there. You couldn”t say anything else about it. The thing that simply appeared there: That was the great marvel at that moment. There was no motion in the heart, no rippling, nothing of anything at all. It stayed fixed and still like that until enough time had elapsed and then it moved. The mind began to withdraw and rippled — blip — and then was quiet.

　　This rippling happens on its own, you know. We can”t intend it. If we intend it, the mind withdraws. What happens is that the mind has had enough, of its own accord. When it ripples in a ”blip” like this, it”s aware of the fact. As soon as the ”blip” appears, it vanishes. After a moment it ripples — blip — again, and disappears in the same instant. Then the rippling gradually becomes more and more frequent.

　　When the mind withdraws after having fully settled down to its foundation, it doesn”t withdraw all at once. I could clearly see this at that moment. The mind rippled slightly: A sankhara formed in a ”blip” and then disappeared before it had amounted to anything at all. It rippled — blip — and disappeared right then and there. After a moment it rippled — blip — again. Gradually it became more and more frequent until finally I came back to ordinary consciousness, to the ordinary level of the mind. I was aware of the body, but the pain was still gone. When the mind came back out, there was still no pain. It was still quiet until time came for the pain to reappear.

　　This is where I got my standard and my certainty. I realized that I had arrived at a basic principle in contending with pain: ”So this is how it is. Pain is actually something separate. The body is separate. The mind is separate, but because of one thing — delusion — all three converge into one, and the whole mind becomes delusion, the whole mind is the one deluded. Even though pain may simply arise in line with its own nature, if we grab hold of it to burn ourselves, it”s hot — because our labeling makes it hot.”

　　After a fair while, the pain returned, so I had to tackle it again, without retreating. I had to dig on down, exploring again as I had explored before, but this time I couldn”t use the tactics I had used in investigating and remedying the pain the last time around. I needed fresh tactics, newly devised by mindfulness and discernment so as to keep up with events. It was pain just the same, but the tactics simply had to be pertinent to the moment. I couldn”t remedy matters by holding to the old tactics I had used to investigate and know in the past. They had to be fresh, hot tactics devised in the present to cure the present. The mind then settled down firmly in stillness as it had done before.

　　In that first night, the mind settled down three times, but I had to go through three bouts of hand-to-hand combat. After the third time, dawn came — the end of the final showdown using reason with real mindfulness and discernment. The mind was audacious, exultant, and had no fear of death. ”However great the pain may be, that”s its own ordinary business. As long as we don”t enter in and load ourselves down with it, pain has no significance in the heart.” The mind knew clearly that the body has no significance in terms of itself, in terms of the feeling, or in terms of us — unless the mind gives it a significance and then gathers in the suffering to burn itself. There”s nothing else that can come in and make the mind suffer.

　　Getting up that morning, I felt audacious in an extraordinary way. I wanted to tell Venerable Acariya Mun of my knowledge and capabilities. This was because I felt daring in a w…

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