..续本文上一页let it go... just leave it at the nose! When the bodily feelings arise, let go of the like or dislike that follow, let them go back to their birth-place. The same for mental states. All these things, just let them go their way. This is knowing. Whether it”s happiness or unhappiness, it”s all the same. This is called meditation.

　　Meditation means to make the mind peaceful in order to let wisdom arise. This requires that we practice with body and mind in order to see and know the sense impressions of form, sound, taste, smell, touch and mental formations. To put it shortly, it”s just a matter of happiness and unhappiness. Happiness is pleasant feeling in the mind, unhappiness is just unpleasant feeling. The Buddha taught to separate this happiness and unhappiness from the mind. The mind is that which knows. Feeling 10 is the characteristic of happiness or unhappiness, like or dislike. When the mind indulges in these things we say that it clings to or takes that happiness and unhappiness to be worthy of holding. That clinging is an action of mind, that happiness or unhappiness is feeling.

　　When we say the Buddha told us to separate the mind from the feeling, he didn”t literally mean to throw them to different places. He meant that the mind must know happiness and know unhappiness. When sitting in samadhi, for example, and peace fills the mind, then happiness comes but it doesn”t reach us, unhappiness comes but doesn”t reach us. This is to separate the feeling from the mind. We can compare it to oil and water in a bottle. They don”t combine. Even if you try to mix them, the oil remains oil and the water remains water. Why is this so

　　 Because they are of different density.

　　The natural state of the mind is neither happiness nor unhappiness. When feeling enters the mind then happiness or unhappiness is born. If we have mindfulness then we know pleasant feeling as pleasant feeling. The mind which knows will not pick it up. Happiness is there but it”s "outside" the mind, not buried within the mind. The mind simply knows it clearly.

　　If we separate unhappiness from the mind, does that mean there is no suffering, that we don”t experience it

　　 Yes, we experience it, but we know mind as mind, feeling as feeling. We don”t cling to that feeling or carry it around. The Buddha separated these things through knowledge. Did he have suffering

　　 He knew the state of suffering but he didn”t cling to it, so we say that he cut suffering off. And there was happiness too, but he knew that happiness, if it”s not known, is like a poison. He didn”t hold it to be himself. Happiness was there through knowledge, but it didn”t exist in his mind. Thus we say that he separated happiness and unhappiness from his mind.

　　When we say that the Buddha and the Enlightened Ones killed defilements, 11 it”s not that they really killed them. If they had killed all defilements then we probably wouldn”t have any! They didn”t kill defilements; when they knew them for what they are, they let them go. Someone who”s stupid will grab them, but the Enlightened Ones knew the defilements in their own minds as a poison, so they swept them out. They swept out the things which caused them to suffer, they didn”t kill them. One who doesn”t know this will see some things, such as happiness, as good, and then grab them, but the Buddha just knew them and simply brushed them away.

　　But when feeling arises for us we indulge in it, that is, the mind carries that happiness and unhappiness around. In fact they are two different things. The activities of mind, pleasant feeling, unpleasant feeling and so on, are mental impressions, they are the world. If the mind knows this it can equally do work involving happiness or unhappiness. Why

　　 Because it knows the truth of these things. Someone who doesn”t k…

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