..续本文上一页only need to maintain a modest level of samadhi, your main function is to direct your attention to observing the conditions of the world around you. You contemplate steadily the process of cause and effect. Using the clarity of the mind, you reflect on all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations you experience, and how they give rise to different moods: good, bad, pleasant or unpleasant. It”s as if someone were to climb up a mango tree and shake the fruit down while you wait underneath to collect up all those that fall. You reject any mangoes which are rotten, keeping only the good ones. That way, you don”t have to expend much energy, because rather than climbing the tree yourself, you simply wait to collect the mangoes at the bottom.

　　This means that when the mind is calm, all the mind-objects you experience bring you knowledge and understanding. Because there is awareness, you are no longer creating or proliferating around these things. Success and failure, good reputation and bad reputation, praise and criticism, happiness and suffering, all come and go by themselves. With a clear, still mind that is endowed with insight, it”s interesting to sift through them and sort them out. All these mind-objects which you experience – whether it”s the praise, criticism or things that you hear from other people, or any of the other kinds of happiness and suffering which you experience – become a source of benefit for you. Because someone else has climbed up the mango tree and is shaking it to make the mangoes fall down to you. You can gather them up at leisure. You don”t have to fear anything – why should you fear anything when it”s someone else who is up the tree, shaking the mangoes down for you

　　 All forms of gain and loss, good reputation and bad reputation, praise and criticism, happiness and suffering, are like the mangoes which fall down on you. The calm mind forms the basis for your contemplation, as you gather them up. With mindfulness, you know which fruits are good and which are rotten. This practice of reflection, based on the foundation of calm, is what gives rise to panna and vipassana. It”s not something that has to be created or concocted – if there is genuine insight, then the practice of vipassana will follow automatically, without you having to invent names or labels for it. If there is a small amount of clarity, this gives rise to small vipassana; if it”s deeper insight, it is “medium vipassana”. If there is complete knowledge and insight into the truth of the way things are, it is “complete vipassana”. The practice of vipassana is a matter of panna. It”s difficult. You can”t do it just like that. It must proceed from a mind that already has achieved a certain level of calm. Once this is established, vipassana develops naturally with the use of panna – it”s not something you can force on the mind.

　　As a result of his experience, the Buddha taught that the practice has to develop naturally, according to conditions. Having reached this level, you allow things to develop according to your accumulated wholesome kamma and parami. This doesn”t mean you stop putting effort into the practice, but that you continue with the understanding that whether you progress swiftly or slowly, it”s not something you can force. It”s like planting a tree, it knows by itself the appropriate pace to grow at. If you crave to get quick results, see that as delusion. Even if you want it to grow slowly, see that as delusion also. As with planting the tree, only when you do the practice will you get the result. If you plant a chilly bush for instance, your duty is simply to dig the hole, plant the seeding, give it water and fertilizer and protect it from insects. This is your job, your part of it. Then it”s a matter of trust. For the…

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