..續本文上一頁with our mind. In our mind there is a mental state called feeling. Since it is pain, feeling is the painful feeling. When Buddha said a monk contemplates feeling in the feeling, He means the monk is contemplating on that mental state and not necessarily on the pain there. In practice, when we have pain we have to concentrate on the pain and be mindful of it because that is practical. But actually, when we are making notes as, "pain, pain", we are really making notes of the mental state that feels the pain in the body. That feeling is of three kinds

　　 pleasant, unpleasant and neutral.

　　The third is consciousness. It is usually translated as mind, but I think consciousness is a better translation. The Pāli word is "citta". This means consciousness. In Buddhist psychology, mind is composed of four things. So what we call "mind" is a group of or combination of four things. Sometimes there may be confusion regarding these terms: mind and consciousness. Let us say mind is composed of two things first, consciousness and mental factors. Consciousness is defined as the awareness of an object. Here awareness is not like awareness in the practice of meditation. It is just mere awareness. It is like I am aware of someone there although I am looking this way. That kind of awareness is called consciousness. At least, it is called consciousness in Abhidhamma. The English word may mean more or less than that, I am not sure.

　　Please note that although we use the word consciousness for the word "citta", it is not an exact translation of the word. Consciousness is defined as a mental state which is the awareness of the object. Only when there is awareness of the object can there be contact with the object, feeling of the object, liking of the object, disliking of the object and so on. So, these mental states are subordinate to consciousness, but they are also components of the mind. So, mind is first pided into two

　　consciousness and mental factors. Contact, feeling, perception, attention, like, dislike and so on are all called mental factors. According to Abhidhamma there are fifty-two of them, and these fifty-two are grouped into three

　　feeling, perception and mental formations. So when we add consciousness to these three we get four kinds of mental states. It

　　s amazing that the Buddha could define and differentiate each of these mental states that arise simultaneously taking the same object.

　　When we practice meditation and say "sorry, sorry", that means we have a consciousness accompanied by sorrow or something like that. It could be contemplation on consciousness. When I say, "angry, angry", I am doing contemplation of consciousness.

　　The last one is the dhamma. This is one Pāli word that is most difficult to translate or that cannot be translated adequately. This word means different things in different contexts. You cannot translate the word "dhamma" with just one English word. If you do, you will be wrong. Here, dhamma simply means the objects that are mental hindrances, the five aggregates, the twelve bases, the seven Factors of Enlightenment and Four Noble Truths. They are called dhamma in this discourse. So, we cannot translate this word. Mostly it is translated as "mind object" or "mental object", but each of these translations is not satisfactory. Therefore it is better to keep the word "dhamma" untranslated to avoid confusion.

　　Dwelling on dhamma objects: if you concentrate on anger, then you are doing contemplation on the dhamma. Here dhamma does not mean the teachings or discourse or other things. If you see something and you are mindful of seeing, then you are doing dhamma object contemplation. So, the dhamma object contemplation is very wide and includes mental hindrances, aggregates, bases, Factors of Enlightenment and the Four Noble…

《The Four Foundations of Mindfulness: A Summary》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…