..续本文上一页rticular instances. From my own experience of being a Buddhist monk, I can see how wise that is because it really makes you quite careful about how you say things. Sometimes you can get very enthusiastic about your practice, or you have insights and the thoughts do come up: "Oh, I”m enlightened" And if you go round telling everyone, then that can be very misleading.

　　In fact when monks would get that way my teacher, Ajahn Chah, would say- "OK, now you stay off in your little kuti and don”t talk to anyone until you calm down"

　　The tendency to interpret these experiences from self - view - "I am" - is the danger; not that the experiences are wrong but you really need to be non-attached to the memories of them or to an interpretation of them from this position of "I AM ..."

　　There is suffering and there is the end of suffering: that”s all the Buddha ever really said. The Brahmin priests were always trying to push him into making metaphysical statements, ultimate doctrinal statements about the I AM, or THE ONE and so forth. And he would always say: "I teach there is suffering, there is the end of suffering" Sometimes the Brahmin priests would say: "Well obviously he doesn”t know, otherwise if he knew he could tell us" But then by telling people, as with all the metaphysical, doctrinal teachings of religion, what happens

　　 People tend to just grasp the doctrine.

　　So if you believe in a metaphysical doctrine, then how you tend to interpret life will come from that belief. The Buddha approached it from existential experience - experience of existence - suffering and the end Of suffering. However, the danger from that is to become nihilistic: to say that there”s no God, nothing, that there”s just the arising and ceasing, empty phenomena rolling on, meaningless nothing and so forth. That”s the opposite of the eternalist view where there is a God and eternal life. The Buddhist approach is to neither extreme but to this penetration in the present, through the here and now, through mindfulness. And the key, the clue, is that suffering: the experience of suffering and the experience of non-suffering.

　　Now how many of you realize non-suffering

　　 You don”t suffer all the time, but are you really aware when you”re not suffering

　　 Just question yourself in that way, because the unenlightened human being tends to assume that one is a person that has suffered a lot in one”s life. This kind of basic assumption from the personality position, tends to colour everything that we do. We can be living in a situation where we”re not suffering at all but assuming that we suffer - even when there isn”t any suffering. But through mindfulness, you”re noticing non-suffering; I always bring to my attention as much as I can to the non-suffering. Before, I would assume that I was a person who suffered a lot. And so even in the most pleasant situations, if something was really nice and there was no suffering, then I”d tend to grasp: "Well what”ll happen when I lose it

　　" Whenever this habit of I AM starts, you know "What”ll I do if I lose this

　　 What if it changes, or it”s taken away from me, or I get sick, or something changes in a way that I don”t want

　　" - with that habit, even when things are going along very nicely, one is creating suffering around the possibility of suffering in the future. What the Buddha”s saying is notice now, be aware, and that even in situations that one might interpret as suffering - for example, physical pain, cold, hunger, disease, loss of loved ones, one needn”t suffer. The more mindful you are, and reflective an that, then you”re not creating suffering onto the actual misfortune, or the unpleasantness, or the pain that you”re experiencing. Through this awakened mind you”re not creating, not complicating the way life happens to be with…

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