..续本文上一页necessarily difficult or complicated for themselves or for others. But one way of looking at religious conventions, such as the Theravadan School, where the emphasis is on the Vinaya discipline, practising meditation, the purity of the tradition, is

　　as concepts that are true but not right, right but not true.

　　At one time I went to see a teacher who said that we don”t need the discipline or the Vinaya rules: "All you have to do is be mindful. Mindfulness is enough." So I went back and told Ajahn Chah, and he said: "True but not right, right but not true!" Because, ultimately, we don”t need rules, just being mindful is the Way. But most of us don”t start from the enlightened experience, we more or less have to use expedient means to contemplate and to develop mindfulness. So the meditation techniques, disciplinary rules and so on are tools for reflection and mindfulness.

　　The religious life is a life of renunciation. We are renouncing, abandoning, letting go of things. To the worldly mind, it might sound as though we”re getting rid of something, or condemning the sense world, the pleasures and the beauty that we can all experience as human beings; rejecting it, because we see it as evil or wrong. But renunciation isn”t a moral judgement against anything. Rather, it”s a moving away from that which complicates and makes life difficult, towards the ultimate simplicity of pure mindfulness in the present moment; because enlightenment is here and now, the Truth is now. There is not anyone who can become anything, there is not anyone who is born or who will die - there is only this eternal now. This awareness is what we can tune into, as we let go of the appearances and the habitual tendencies, and incline towards this simple reflection on the present.

　　Now we say this and we can understand it and it sounds quite simple. But the tendency of the mind is to make it into a problem. We don”t have the faith or the trust or the willingness to just totally let go in the moment. So the statement: "Enlightenment is now" can bring a feeling of uncertainty or bewilderment.

　　There are different ideas about enlightenment: instant or gradual. Some may say: "Enlightenment is now", while others say that

　　it has to be done gradually, stage by stage, lifetime by lifetime. Both these are true - but not right, right but not true. They are just different ways of contemplating and reflecting on the experience of the moment. The idea of instant enlightenment is very appealing to the modern mind: one LSD tablet and we”re there - without having to go through a monastic training or give up anything at all; instant enlightenment!

　　But we have to recognise the limitation of the thinking mind. These concepts - instant and gradual - are just ways of reflecting, they”re not positions that we take. Take the word, ”enlightenment”, itself: maybe we see it as some kind of absolutely fantastic experience in which we are completely taken over by the light and totally transformed from a selfish, deluded being into a completely wise one - seeing it as something very great and grand. Most of us feel that we cannot reach such a high state, because the personality view is very negative. We tend to emphasise what is wrong, our faults, weaknesses, our bad habits; these are seen as obstructions to this experience of enlightenment. But such thoughts cannot be trusted. So I often say to people: "Whatever you think you are, that”s not what you are!"

　　The aim of Buddhist meditation is to let go of these conditions of the mind, which doesn”t mean denying, or getting rid of, or judging them. It means not believing them or following them; instead we listen to them as Dhamma, as conditions of the mind that arise and cease.With an attitude of awakened, attentive awareness, we learn to trust …

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