..续本文上一页terly sincere and really determine your heart and mind to do it.
If you truly want to practice, you must make a determined effort not to proliferate or think too much. If you start meditating with craving to have a certain kind of experience or gain some kind of state, then it”s better to stop. When you experience some calm, if you start thinking, “Is this it
” or “Have I attained that
” you should take a break and gather up all that theoretical knowledge and just put it away in a box somewhere. Don”t bring it up for discussion. The kind of knowledge which arises during meditation is not of that order. It”s a completely new kind. When you experience some genuine insight, it”s not the same as the theory. For instance, when you write the word “greed” down on paper, it”s not the same as having the experience of greed in the mind. This applies to anger in just the same way; the written word is one thing, but when you actually experience it in the mind, you”ve got no time to read anything – you experience it right there in the mind. It is very important to understand this.
The written theory is correct, but the Dhamma must really be opanayiko
(leading inwards). You must internalize it. If you don”t internalize it, you won”t really gain understanding or insight. You won”t experience the truth for yourself. I was the same in my youth. I didn”t study all the time, though I had taken the first three levels of exams on the theory of Dhamma-Vinaya. I had the chance to go and hear different teachers talking about their meditation practice, but at first I was heedless and didn”t know how to listen properly. I didn”t understand the way the meditation masters expressed themselves when they talked about the practice. They spoke directly from their personal experience, describing how they came to see the Dhamma from within their own minds rather from the books. Later on, after I had done more of the practice for myself, I began to see the truth in the same way as described by those teachers. I was able to understand for myself, from within my own mind, what they had been teaching. Eventually, after many years of practice, I realized that all that knowledge which they had imparted in their teaching came from what they had seen and directly experienced for themselves – they didn”t just speak from the books. If you follow the path of practice which they described, you will experience the Dhamma to just the same profundity. I concluded that this was the right way to practice. There might well be other ways to practice, but just this much was enough for me, and I stuck to it.
You must keep putting effort into the practice. In the beginning the important thing is to be doing it. Whether the mind is actually peaceful or not, it doesn”t matter – you just have to accept it the way it is. You are concerned with creating wholesome causes. If you are diligent in the practice, you don”t need to worry about what the results will be like. You shouldn”t be afraid that you won”t gain any results from your practice. Worrying like that just prevents the mind from becoming peaceful. Persevere with it. Of course, if you don”t do the practice then who will gain anything
Who will realize the Dhamma
Only the one who seeks will realize the Dhamma. It is the one who satisfies his hunger, not the one who reads the menu. Each and every mood is lying to you; if you are aware of it happening just ten times, that”s better than nothing. The same old person keeps lying about the same old things. If you are simply aware of what goes on that”s already good, because it takes so long before you even become aware of the truth. The defilements are trying to delude you all the time.
Practice means to establish sila, samadhi and panna in your mind. Recollect the qualities of the…
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