..续本文上一页 chilly plant, how it grows is it”s own affair – it”s not your business. You can”t go pulling at it to make it grow faster. Nature doesn”t work like that. Your job is just to water it and give it fertilizer.
When you practice like this, there”s not much suffering. Whether you reach enlightenment in this lifetime or the next, is not important. If you have faith and confidence in the efficacy of the practice, then whether you progress quickly or slowly, can be left up to your accumulated good kamma, spiritual qualities and parami. If you see it this way, you feel at ease with the practice. It”s like when you are driving a horse and cart, you don”t put the cart before the horse. Before you were putting the cart before the horse. Or if you were ploughing a field, you would be walking ahead of the buffalo, in other words, the mind would have been restless and impatient to get quick results. But once you reflect like this and are practicing accordingly, you no longer walk ahead of the buffalo, you walk behind.
So, with the chilly plant you bring water and fertilizer and chase away any ants or termites that come. Just that much is enough for it to grow into a beautiful bush by itself. Once the plant is flourishing, it”s not your business to try and force it to flower right away. Don”t practice that way. It”s just creating suffering for no reason. The chilly plant grows according to it”s own nature. Once it flowers, don”t try to force it to produce seeds right away. It won”t work and you”ll just suffer. That”s really suffering. When you understand this, it means you know your own part in the practice and you know the part of the mind-objects and defilements. Each has it”s own separate part to play. The mind knows it”s role and the work it has to do. As long as the mind doesn”t understand what it”s job is, it will always try and force the chilly plant to grow up, flower and produce chilly peppers, all in the same day. That is nothing other than samudaya – the Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering.
If you have had insight into this, it means you know when the mind is deluded and goes off. Once you know the correct way to practice, you can let go and allow things to follow naturally in accordance with your accumulated wholesome kamma, spiritual qualities and parami. You simply keep practicing without having to worry about how long it will take. You don”t have to worry whether it will take one hundred or one thousand lives before you get enlightened. Whichever life it will be, it doesn”t really matter, you just continue practicing at whatever pace you can be at ease with.
Once the mind has entered the stream it cannot turn back. It has gone beyond even the smallest evil action. The B, uddha taught that the mind of the sotapanna (stream-enterer) has inclined or entered into the stream of Dhamma and cannot return. Those who have practiced to this point can no longer fall back and be born into the apaya realms or the hell realms again. How could they possibly fall back when, having clearly seen the harm and danger, they have already cut off the roots of all unwholesome kamma. They are no longer able to commit unwholesome acts of body and speech. Once they have refrained from committing unwholesome acts of body and speech, how can they possibly fall into apaya realms or the hell realms
Their minds have entered the stream. Once the mind has entered the stream through meditation, you know your duty and the work you have to do. You know the path of practice and how it progresses. You know when to exert and when to relax in the practice. You know the body and you know the mind. You know materiality and mentality. Those things which should be let go of and abandoned, you let go of and abandon them, without getting caught in doubt and uncertainty.…
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