..续本文上一页know both convention and liberation. Conventions have a use, but in reality there really isn”t anything there. Even people are non-existent! They are merely groups of elements, born of causal conditions, growing dependent on conditions, existing for a while, or control it. But without conventions we would have nothing to say, we”d have no names, no practice, no work. Rules and conventions are established to give us a language, to make things convenient, and that”s all.

　　Take money, for example. In olden times there weren”t any coins or notes, they had no value. People used to barter goods, but those things were difficult to keep, so they created money using coins and notes. Perhaps in the future we”ll have a new king decree that we don”t have to use paper money, we should use wax, melting it down and pressing it into lumps. We say this is money and use it throughout the country. Let alone wax, it may even happen that they decide to make chicken dung the local currency — all the other things can”t be money, just chicken dung! Then people would fight and kill each other over chicken dung! This is the way it is. You could use many examples to illustrate convention. What we use for money is simply a convention that we have set up, it has its use within that convention. Having decreed it to be money, it becomes money. But in reality, what is money

　　 Nobody can say. When there is a popular agreement about something, then a convention comes about to fulfill the need. The world is just this.

　　This is convention, but to get ordinary people to understand liberation is really difficult. Our money, our house, our family, our children and relatives are simply conventions that we have invented, but really, seen in the light of Dhamma, they don”t belong to us. Maybe if we hear this we don”t feel so good, but in reality is like that. These things have value only through the established conventions. If we establish that it doesn”t have value, then it doesn”t have value. This is the way it is, we bring convention into the world to fulfill a need.

　　Even this body is not really ours, we just suppose it to be so. It”s truly just a supposition. If you try to find a real, substantial self within it, you can”t. There are merely elements which are born, continue for a while and then die. Everything is like this. There”s no real, true substance to it, but it”s proper that we use it. It”s a tool for your use. If it breaks there is trouble, so even though it must break, you should try your utmost to preserve it. And so we have the four supports 21 which the Buddha taught again and again to contemplate. They are the supports on which a monk depends to continue his practice. As long as you live you must depend on them, but you should understand them. Don”t cling to them, giving rise to craving in your mind.

　　Convention and liberation are related like this continually. Even though we use convention, don”t place your trust in it as being the truth. If you cling to it, suffering will arise. The case of right and wrong is a good example. Some people see wrong as being right and right as being wrong, but in the end who really knows what is right and what is wrong

　　 We don”t know. Different people establish different conventions about what”s right and what”s wrong, but the Buddha took suffering as his guide-line. If you want to argue about it there”s no end to it. One says, "right," another says, "wrong." One says "wrong," another says "right." In truth we don”t really know right and wrong at all! But at a useful, practical level, we can say that right is not to harm oneself and not to harm others. This way fulfills a use.

　　So, after all, both rules and conventions and liberation are simply dhammas. One is higher than the other, but they go hand in hand. There is no w…

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