..续本文上一页ever visitors arrive they will find that there is only one chair available and as long as you occupy it, they will have nowhere to sit down. They come with the intention of speaking with you, but there is nowhere for them to settle down. However many times these visitors come, they keep meeting the same person sitting in the same seat receiving guests, and that person never seems to go. How many times will they keep coming back

　　 All you have to do is sit there receiving them and you will come to know them all. Everything that you have ever experienced since you first had knowledge of the world, will come to visit right at that place. You only have to know this much.

　　If you watch and contemplate the Dhamma just at this one place, you will be able to develop insight which is capable of penetrating everything. This is where you watch, investigate and contemplate for yourself.

　　This is just talking about Dhamma practice, I can”t talk about much else. This is the way I talk about the Dhamma, but in the end it”s still just talking about the practice. What”s appropriate now is actually to do the practice. When you start doing it, you will meet with various experiences in the course of the practice. There are, of course, given directions to follow telling you where to go and what to do…if this happens, do that and so on, but often when you proceed and it doesn”t work out well, you have to reflect and adjust your approach. You may have to travel a long way to come across a signpost, before you realize which is the right way to go. It comes down to the fact that you learn through making mistakes and through working with your experience until you become established in the right way of practice and you are beyond doubt. If you still haven”t found the correct way to practice, you”re bound to meet with some doubt or obstruction, so then you must keep prodding and poking right at the spot. Once you investigate, consider it from various angles, talk it through with yourself, this will really make an impression on the mind and you”ll know what to do. If you really get stuck, you can consult the teacher, who has plenty of experience in confronting obstacles whilst training the mind and he”ll be able to advise on the way to practice with them and get beyond them. Having access to a teacher can be immensely valuable – someone who”s been there, who knows the terrain. Someone you can take your confusion to, someone you can discuss your practice with.

　　Consider practicing with mind-objects such as sound. There is hearing and there is sound – you can be aware of the sound without making anything out of it. Make use of natural phenomena like this to contemplate the truth, until the mind is able to separate the mind from the object. This distinction comes to be discernible because the mind doesn”t go out and get involved with things. When the ear hears a sound, watch to see whether the mind gets tangled up or carried away with it. Is it disturbed

　　 If you can know and see just this much, you”ll be able to hear sounds without being disturbed by them. This is the cultivation and establishment of mindfulness right here, close at hand. It”s not something you have to go elsewhere to do. Even if you want to avoid sound, you can”t really get away from it. It”s only really possible to “get away” from sounds by practicing. That means training the mind until it is firm enough in the practice of mindfulness to be able to let go when there is sense contact. There is still hearing, but at the same time you let the object go. In this case when there is mindfulness, this letting go is natural. You let it be as it is. You don”t have to struggle to separate the mind from the object, the separation is quite obvious to you because you are practicing abandoning, letting go. E…

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