..续本文上一页uffering. To practice correctly – samma patipada – you must follow the middle way. To walk the middle way, following the path of the Buddha, is difficult and involves some suffering. If you don”t find satisfaction when your mind craves pleasant feelings, it”s just suffering. It seems that all that exists is just these two extremes of happiness and suffering and as long as you still believe in these things, you”ll tend to attach to them and get involved with them. It means that when you become angry with someone, you immediately start looking for a piece of wood to go and hit them with – there”s no patience and endurance. If you like someone, then you like to spend your whole time with them, getting lost completely. That”s right isn”t it

　　 You always tend towards these two ends, the middle way never gets a look in. But the Buddha didn”t teach us to follow the extremes, He said that we should gradually let them go. This is the way of samma patipada – the way out of becoming and birth. It”s the way without becoming or birth, without happiness or sadness and without good or bad.

　　As ordinary human beings who are still subject to becoming, each time you fall into this process of becoming, you fail to see that middle point of balance. You go rushing by, on and on, as if you”re falling headlong and you end up attaching to the extreme of happiness. If you don”t get what you want, you still meet suffering from the other direction, missing the mid point time again. Rushing back and forth, you don”t come to rest at that point in the middle which is free from becoming and birth. Why

　　 – it”s because you don”t like it. Getting tangled in becoming is like falling into a realm where you get savaged by ferocious dogs, and then, though you try climbing upwards to get away, your head gets pecked and torn apart by the iron beaks of demonic vultures and crows. It”s like being caught into a never ending hell-realm. That”s what the true nature of becoming is like.

　　So the place where there is no becoming and birth, humans don”t really notice. The unenlightened mind fails to see it and consequently just passes back and forth over it. Samma patipada is the middle way which the Buddha followed until he was liberated from becoming and birth. It is abayakata dhamma – neither good nor bad – because the mind has let everything go. This is the way of the samana. One who doesn”t follow this way cannot be a true samana, because they won”t experience true inner peace. Why is that

　　 Because they are still involved in becoming and birth; they are still caught up in the cycle of birth and death. But the middle way is beyond birth and death, high and low, happiness and suffering, good and bad. It is the straight way and the way of calm and restraint. It is a calm that lies beyond happiness and suffering, good moods and bad moods. This is the nature of the practice. If your heart has experienced this true peace, it means you are able to stop. You are able to stop asking questions. There”s no longer any need to ask anybody. This is why the Buddha taught that the Dhamma is paccatam veditabbo vinnuhi – it”s something which each inpidual has to know clearly for themselves. You see how it all accords exactly with what the Buddha taught and then you”ve no need to ask anybody else.

　　So I have talked briefly about my own experience and practice: I didn”t have so much external knowledge or study the scriptures that much. By experimenting and investigating. I learned from my own mind in a natural way. Whenever liking arose, I observed it and watched where it led the mind. All it does is drag you towards suffering. So what you do is keep practicing with your own mind until you gradually develop awareness and understanding… until you see the Dhamma for yourself. But you must be ut…

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