..续本文上一页really only namadhamma. Does "goodness" have any form

　　 Does evil

　　 Do happiness and suffering have any form

　　 You can”t find them. Are they round or are they square, short or long

　　 Can you see them. These things are namadhamma, they can”t be compared to material things, they are formless...but we know that they do exist.

　　Therefore it is said to begin the practice by calming the mind. Put awareness into the mind. If the mind is aware it will be at peace. Some people don”t go for awareness, they just want to have peace, a kind of blanking out. So they never learn anything. If we don”t have this "one who knows" what is there to base our practice on

　　If there is no long, there is no short, if there is no right there can be no wrong. People these days study away, looking for good and evil. But that which is beyond good and evil they know nothing of. All they know is the right and the wrong -- "I”m going to take only what is right. I don”t want to know about the wrong. Why should I

　　" If you try to take only what is right in a short time it will go wrong again. Right leads to wrong. People keep searching among the right and wrong, they don”t try to find that which is neither right nor wrong. They study about good and evil, they search for virtue, but they know nothing of that which is beyond good and evil. They study the long and the short, but that which is neither long nor short they know nothing of.

　　This knife has a blade, a rim and a handle. Can you lift only the blade

　　 Can you lift only the rim of the blade, or the handle

　　 The handle, the rim and the blade are all parts of the same knife: when you pick up the knife you get all three parts together.

　　In the same way, if you pick up that which is good, the bad must follow. People search for goodness and try to throw away evil, but they don”t study that which is neither good nor evil. If you don”t study this there can be no completion. If you pick up goodness, badness follows. If you pick up happiness, suffering follows. The practice of clinging to goodness and rejecting evil is the Dhamma of children, it”s like a toy. Sure, it”s alright, you can take just this much, but if you grab onto goodness, evil will follow. The end of this path is confused, it”s not so good.

　　Take a simple example. You have children -- now suppose you want to only love them and never experience hatred. This is the thinking of one who doesn”t know human nature. If you hold onto love, hatred will follow. In the same way, people decide to study the Dhamma to develop wisdom, studying good and evil as closely as possible. Now, having known good and evil, what do they do

　　 They try to cling to the good, and evil follows. They didn”t study that which is beyond good and evil. This is what you should study.

　　"I”m going to be like this," "I”m going to be like that,"... but they never say "I”m not going to be anything because there really isn”t any ”I”"...This they don”t study. All they want is goodness. If they attain goodness, they lose themselves in it. If things get too good they”ll start to go bad, and so people end up just swinging back and forth like this.

　　In order to calm the mind and become aware of the perceiver of sense impressions, we must observe it. Follow the "one who knows." Train the mind until it is pure. How pure should you make it

　　 If it”s really pure the mind should be above both good and evil, above even purity. It”s finished. That”s when the practice is finished.

　　What people call sitting in meditation is merely a temporary kind of peace. But even in such a peace there are experiences. If an experience arises there must be someone who knows it, who looks into it, queries it and examines it. If the mind is simply blank then that”s not so useful. You may see some people who look very restrain…

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