..续本文上一页e course of practice, things which would normally seem unlikely to happen might actually come up, so you can”t always trust yourself. What would you do in such a situation

　　 I”m always careful about this.

　　In my first two or three years of practice I still couldn”t really trust myself, but after I became more experienced in meditation and began to have some insight into the dynamics of the mind, there were no problems. Whatever manifests in the course of the practice, let it happen. Don”t try to resist it. If you understand how to practice, all these things will cease harmlessly by themselves. They turn into objects for contemplation and you can use them as material for your meditation and continue in a relaxed way. Perhaps you still have not tried this out. You have done some meditation before, haven”t you

　　 Sometimes in the course of meditation, things that shouldn”t normally go wrong can go wrong. For instance, you might begin sitting with a determination: “This time no mucking about, I”m really going to concentrate the mind”. But that day you don”t get anywhere. However, we like to make determinations in that way. Actually, I”ve observed that usually the practice develops according to it”s own causes and conditions. Some nights you might begin sitting meditation with the thought: “Right, tonight I”m not going to get up from my mat until at least one in the morning.” Thinking like that, you”ve already put yourself in an unskillful state of mind, because in no time at all feelings of pain and discomfort will be invading your senses from every direction, to the point where it becomes so unbearable you might even think you are going to die. In fact, the mind sets a length of time for sitting quite naturally by itself without you having to estimate or establish fixed limits. There”s no fixed point or particular time to reach in the practice. Whether it”s seven, eight or nine o”clock, that”s not the most important thing; just keep meditating, maintaining your equanimity and without forcing things. Don”t be too compulsive or fixed in your views about things, and don”t try to coerce the heart with over ambitious declarations of how this time you are really going to do it for certain. Of course it”s at those times that things become all the more uncertain.

　　You have to allow the mind to relax. Let the breath flow easily, without making it too short or too long. Don”t try to do anything to it. Let the body be at ease and keep putting effort into the meditation. A voice will come up and ask: “How many hours will you practice tonight

　　 What time will you stop meditating

　　” It will keep coming back to ask you, so cut it off: “Hey you, don”t interfere!” You have to keep subduing it, because all such thoughts are just the defilements in one form or another, coming to bother you. Don”t pay any attention to them, just rebuke them: “Whether I wish to stop early or late is none of your damn business! If I were to sit meditation the whole night through, it”s not going to harm anybody, so just leave me alone!” Keep cutting them off like this and then keep practicing at your own pace. By letting the mind be at ease it will become calm and you will gain a better understanding of the power of attachment and how much you are affected by the tendency to create stories and give undue importance to things. It might take what seems like forever (maybe more than half the night) before you find that you can sit with ease, but this is an indication that you have found the right way in meditation. Then you will have some insight into how your attachment and clinging truly is defilement and that it exists because the mind gets caught in wrong view.

　　There are some people who will light a stick of incense in front of them before they sit down to meditate and then m…

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