..续本文上一页 practice is still not perfect. If it reaches the point of perfection, the mind will automatically let things go. Look at the practice in this way. You really have to look deeply into your mind for the practice to become paccatam. If you tried to describe the mind and mental factors in terms of the number of separate moments of consciousness and their different characteristics in accordance with the theory, it still wouldn”t be nearly enough. The truth has much more to it than this. If you are really going to learn about these things, you must gain clear insight and direct understanding to penetrate them. If you don”t have any true insight, how will you ever get beyond theory
There”s no end to it. You would have to keep studying it indefinitely.
Thus the practice is thus the most important thing. In my own practice, I didn”t spend all my time studying all the theoretical descriptions of the mind and mental factors - I watched ”that which knows”. When the mind had thoughts of aversion I asked, ”Why is there aversion
” If there was attraction I asked, ”Why is there attraction
” This is the way to practice. I didn”t know all the finer points of theory or go into a detailed analytical break down of the mind and the mental factors. I just kept prodding at that one point of the mind, until I was able to settle the whole issue of aversion and attraction and make it completely vanish. Whatever happened, if I could bring my mind to the point where it stopped liking and disliking, it had gone beyond suffering. It had reached the point where it could remain at ease, whatever it was experiencing. There was no craving or attachment…it had stopped. This is what you”re aiming for in the practice. If other people want to talk a lot about theory that”s their business. In the end, though, however much you talk about it, the practice has to come back to this point. Even if you don”t talk much about it, the practice still comes back to this point. Whether you proliferate a lot or a little, it all comes back to this. If there is birth, it comes from this. If there is extinction, this is where the extinction occurs. However much the mind proliferates, it doesn”t make any difference. The Buddha called this place ”that which knows”. It has the function of knowing according to the truth of the way things are. Once you have really discerned the truth, you automatically know the way the mind and the mental factors are.
The mind and the mental factors constantly deceive you, never letting up for a moment. When studying about these things, they”re deceiving you - there”s no other way of putting it. Even though you are aware of them, they are still deluding you right at that moment. This is the way it is. The Buddha didn”t intend that you should only know about suffering and the defilement”s by name, his aim was for you to actually find the way of practice which will lead you to transcend suffering. He taught to investigate and find the cause of suffering from the most basic to the most refined level. As for myself, I have been able to practice without a great amount of theoretical knowledge. It”s enough to know that the Path begins with sila (moral restraint). Sila is that which is beautiful in the beginning. Samadhi is that which is beautiful in the middle. Panna (wisdom) is that which is beautiful in the end. As you deepen your practice and contemplation of these three aspects, they merge and become one thing, although you can still see them as three separate parts of the practice.
As a prerequisite for training in sila, panna must actually be there, but we usually say that the practice begins with sila. It”s the foundation. It”s just that panna is the factor that determines just how successful and complete the practice of sila is. You need to contemp…
《The Key to Liberation》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…