..续本文上一页e start grumbling, “Oh, I need more time!” and go into the usual plans and plots, views and opinions. If you start with ignorance, you will end up with suffering. Avijjapaccaya sankhara is the term found in the teachings on dependent origination (paticcasamuppada). Avijja is ignorance, and that conditions (paccaya) the mental formations (sankharas), which then affect everything and you end up with grief, sorrow, despair, and anguish (soka-parideva-dukkha-domanassupayasa) as a result.

　　I encourage you to start not from avijja, but from awareness (vijja) and wisdom (panna). Be that wisdom itself, rather than a person who isn”t wise trying to become wise. As long as you hold to the view that “I”m not wise yet, but I hope to become wise,” you”ll end up with grief, sorrow, despair, and anguish. It”s that direct. It”s learning to trust in being the wisdom now, being awake – even though you may feel emotionally inadequate, doubtful or uncertain, frightened or terrified of it.

　　Emotions are like that. Be the awareness of the emotions: “Emotion is like this.” Emotionally we are conditioned for ignorance. I am emotionally conditioned to be a person. I am emotionally conditioned to be Ajahn Sumedho.

　　“Ajahn Sumedho, you are wonderful!”

　　And the emotions go, “Oh

　　”

　　“Ajahn Sumedho, you are a horrible monk with terrible vinaya!”

　　And the emotions go, “Grrrrr!!”

　　Emotions are like that. If my security depends on being praised and loved, respected and appreciated,

　　being successful and healthy, everything going nicely and everyone around me being in harmony, the world around me being so utterly sensitive to my needs, I will feel all right when everything seems all right. But then it goes the other way – the earthquakes, the persecution, the abuse, the disrobing, the blame, the criticism – and then I think, “Ugh! Life is horrible. I can”t stand it anymore! I”m so hurt, so wounded. I”ve tried so hard and nobody appreciates me. Nobody loves me.” That”s the emotional dependency of the person. That”s personal conditioning.

　　Awareness includes those emotions as mental objects (arammana), rather than as subjects. If you don”t know this, you tend to identify with your emotions and your emotions become yourself. You become this emotional thing that has become terribly

　　upset because the world is not respecting you enough. Our refuge is in the deathless reality rather than the transient and unstable conditions. If you trust in awareness, then the self and the emotions about oneself, whatever they might be, can be seen in terms of what they are – not judged, not made into a problem, but just noticed: “It”s like this.”

　　Be wisdom itself, rather than a person who isn”t wise trying to become wise.

　　It”s that direct.

　　It”s learning to trust in being the wisdom now,

　　being awake – even though

　　you may feel inadequate,

　　doubtful, or frightened by it.

　　Ajahn Sumedho is abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in Hemel Hemstead,England. Born in Seattle, he went to Thailand in 1966 to practice meditation, where he became a student of the late Ajahn Chah. This teaching is adapted from his book, Intuitive Awareness, published by Amaravati Publications and available online at http://www.amaravati.org. or from Abhayagiri”s website at http://www.abhayagiri.org/index.php/main/book/289/.

《The Problem with Personality》全文阅读结束。