..续本文上一页confident you become. The mind becomes truly stable - to the point where it can”t be swayed by anything at all. You are absolutely confident that no single mind-object has the power to shake it. Mind-objects are mind-objects; the mind is the mind. The mind experiences good and bad mental states, happiness and suffering, because it is deluded by mind-objects. If it isn”t deluded by mind-objects, there”s no suffering. The undeluded mind can”t be shaken. Simply speaking, this state that has arisen is the mind itself. If you contemplate according to the truth of the way things are, you can see that there exists just one path and it is your duty to follow it. If you attach to happiness, you are off the path - because attaching to happiness will cause suffering to arise. If you attach to sadness, it can be a cause for suffering to arise. You understand this - you are already mindful with right view - but at the same time, are not yet able to fully let go of your attachments.

　　So what is the correct way to practice

　　 You must walk the middle path, which means keeping track of the various mental states of happiness and suffering, while at the same time keeping them at a distance, off to either side of you.

　　This is the correct way to practise - you maintain mindfulness and awareness even though you are still unable to let go. It”s the correct way, because whenever the mind attaches to states of happiness and suffering, awareness of the attachment is always there. This means that whenever the mind attaches to states of happiness, you don”t praise it or give value to it, and whenever it attaches to states of suffering, you don”t criticise it. This way you can actually observe the mind as it is. Happiness is not right, suffering is not right. There is the understanding that neither of these is the right path. You are unable to drop them, but you can be mindful of them. With mindfulness established, you don”t give undue value to happiness or suffering. You don”t give importance to either of those two directions which the mind can take, and you hold no doubts about this; you know that following either of those ways is not the right path of practice, so at all times you take this middle way of equanimity as the object of mind. When you practise to the point where the mind goes beyond happiness and suffering, equanimity will necessarily arise as the path to follow, and you have to gradually move down it, little by little - the heart knowing the way to go to be beyond defilements, but, not yet being ready to finally transcend them, it withdraws and continues practising.

　　Whenever happiness arises and the mind attaches, you have to take that happiness up for contemplation, and whenever it attaches to suffering, you have to take that up for contemplation. Eventually, the mind reaches a stage when it is fully mindful of both happiness and suffering. That”s when it will be able to lay aside the happiness and the suffering, the pleasure and the sadness, and lay aside all that is the world and so become the ”knower of the worlds.” Once the mind - ”the one who knows” - can let go, it will settle down at that point.

　　It is here that the practice becomes really interesting. Wherever there is attachment in the mind, you keep hitting at that point, without letting up. If there is attachment to happiness, you keep pounding at it, not letting the mind get carried away with the mood. If the mind attaches to suffering, you grab hold of that, really getting to grips with it and contemplating it straight away. Even if the mind is caught in an unwholesome mental state, you know it as unwholesome and the mind is not heedless. It”s like stepping on thorns: of course, you don”t seek to step on thorns, you try to avoid them, but nevertheless sometimes you step on o…

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