..续本文上一页d more disciples, more people seeking me out. Living and practicing in the forest was something that attracted people to come and pay respects. So as the number of followers increased, I was forced to start facing things. I couldn”t run away anymore. My ears had to hear sounds, my eyes to see. And it was then, as an Ajahn, that I started gaining more knowledge. It led to a lot of wisdom and a lot of letting go. There was a lot of everything going on, and I learned not to grasp and hold on, but to keep letting go, and it made me a lot more skillful than before.
When some suffering came about, it was OK; I didn”t add on to it by trying to escape it. Previously, in my meditation, I had only desired tranquility. I thought that the external environment was only useful insofar as it could be a cause to help me attain tranquility. I didn”t think that having right view would be the cause for realizing tranquility.
I”ve often said that there are two kinds of tranquility. The wise have pided it into peace through wisdom and peace through samatha. In peace through samatha, the eye has to be far from sights, the ear far from sounds, the nose far from smells, and so on. Then not hearing, not knowing, and so forth, one can become tranquil. This kind of peacefulness is good in its way. Is it of value
Yes, it is, but it is not supreme. It is short-lived. It doesn”t have a reliable foundation. When the senses meet objects that are displeasing, it changes, because it doesn”t want those things to be present. So the mind always has to struggle with these objects, and no wisdom is born, since the person always feels that he is not at peace because of those external factors.
On the other hand, if you determine not to run away but to look directly at things, you come to realize that lack of tranquility is not due to external objects or situations, but only happens because of wrong understanding. I often teach my disciples about this. I tell them, when you are intently devoted to finding tranquility in your meditation, you can seek out the quietest, most remote place, where you won”t meet with sights or sounds, where there is nothing going on that will disturb you. There the mind can settle down and become calm because there is nothing to provoke it. Then, when you experience this, examine it to see how much strength it has: when you come out of that place and start experiencing sense contact, notice how you become pleased and displeased, gladdened and dejected, and how the mind becomes disturbed. Then you will understand that this kind of tranquility is not genuine.
Whatever occurs in your field of experience is merely what it is. When something pleases us, we decide that it is good, and when something displeases us, we say it isn”t good. That is only our own discriminating minds giving meaning to external objects. Understanding this, then we have a basis for investigating these things and seeing them as they really are. When there is tranquility in meditation, it”s not necessary to do a lot of thinking. This sensitivity has a certain knowing quality that is born of the tranquil mind. This isn”t thinking; it is dhammavicaya, the factor of investigating Dharma.
This sort of tranquility does not get disturbed by experience and sense contact. But then there is the question, If it is tranquility, why is there still something going on
There is something happening within tranquility; it”s not something happening in the ordinary, afflicted way, where we make more out of it than it really is. When something happens within tranquility, the mind knows it extremely clearly. Wisdom is born there, and the mind contemplates ever more clearly. We see the way that things actually happen; when we know the truth of them, then tranquility becomes all-inclusive. Wh…
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