..续本文上一页 the pushing forward movement and the pushing forward movement is differentiated from the lifting or the placing movement. In this way, the illusion of continuity is seen through.

　　As the practice deepens, the meditators will experience subtler phenomena, such as the qualities of the essential body elements i.e. heaviness, lightness, heat, vibration, etc. By paying close attention to the stages of walking meditation, the four elements in their true essence are experienced, not as concepts, but as actual processes, as ultimate realities.

　　As the fluency of the practice increases, it will be realised that with every movement, there is also the concurrent knowing of the movement or the mind that knows the movement. There is the lifting movement and also the mind that is aware of the lifting. In the next movement, there is the pushing forward movement and also the mind that is aware of that movement. In addition, the meditator will realise that both the movement and the awareness of it arises and vanishes in that moment very quickly like a flash of lightning. The meditator will experience mind and matter (nama-rupa) arising and passing away from moment to moment.

　　Also the meditator has by now realised that a mental intention precedes every movement - that is, the mind leads the body. After the intention, movement occurs. So there arises an understanding of the conditionality of all these occurrences, that movements never arise by themselves without conditions: that there is a cause or condition for every movement and that the condition here is the mental intention preceding every movement.

　　When meditators comprehend mind and matter arising and disappearing at every moment then they will understand the impermanence nature of the body processes. That disappearing happens after arising is a characteristic by which we understand that something is impermanent. The next insight is unsatisfactoriness, which is seen because the constant arising and vanishing of phenomena undermines one sense of stability and therefore is stressful and unsatisfactory.

　　Then, after realising impermanence and the unsatisfactory nature of things, the meditator sees that he or she has no control over these things. That is, things are arising and passing away according to natural laws. A meditator at this level has therefore “insighted” into the universal characteristics of all conditioned phenomena: change, unsatisfactoriness, and insubstantiality.

　　What are the benefits of this

　　 Such knowledge will ultimately free us from attachment and desire, which the Buddha indicated as the root cause of suffering. By experientially knowing the three universal characteristics through Vipassana meditation, desire or hankering in the mind is eventually overcome. This being deeply realised, attachment and craving will end and with it comes absolute peace and freedom from all conditioned things!

《The Vipassana Retreat: 11· Investigating the Body’s Reality》全文阅读结束。