..续本文上一页thing experiences change and estrangement. This is a fact of life that we can do nothing to remedy. But the Buddha said that what we can do is to contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is "me" or "mine." They have a merely provisional reality. It”s like this house: it”s only nominally yours, you couldn”t take it with you anywhere. It”s the same with your wealth, your possessions and your family -- they”re all yours only in name, they don”t really belong to you, they belong to nature. Now this truth doesn”t apply to you alone; everyone is in the same position, even the Lord Buddha and his enlightened disciples. They differed from us in only one respect and that was in their acceptance of the way things are; they saw that it could be no other way.

　　So the Buddha taught us to scan and examine this body, from the soles of the feet up to the crown of the head and then back down to the feet again. Just take a look at the body. What sort of things do you see

　　 Is there anything intrinsically clean there

　　 Can you find any abiding essence

　　 This whole body is steadily degenerating, and the Buddha taught us to see that it doesn”t belong to us. It”s natural for the body to be this way, because all conditioned phenomena are subject to change. How else would you have it be

　　 Actually, there”s nothing wrong with the way the body is. It”s not the body that causes you suffering, it”s your wrong thinking. When you see the right wrongly, there”s bound to be confusion.

　　It”s like the water of a river. It naturally flows down the gradient, it never flows against it; that”s its nature. If a person were to go and stand on a river bank and, seeing the water flowing swiftly down its course, foolishly want it to flow back up the gradient, he would suffer. Whatever he was doing his wrong thinking would allow him no peace of mind. He would be unhappy because of his wrong view, thinking against the stream. If he had right view he would see that the water must inevitably flow down the gradient, and until he realized and accepted that fact, the person would be agitated and upset.

　　The river that must flow down the gradient is like your body. Having been young your body has become old and now it”s meandering towards its death. Don”t go wishing it was otherwise, it”s not something you have the power to remedy. The Buddha told us to see the way things are and then let go of our clinging to them. Take this feeling of letting go as your refuge.

　　Keep meditating, even if you feel tired and exhausted. Let your mind dwell with the breath. Take a few deep breaths, and then establish the mind on the breath using the mantra "Buddho." Make this practice habitual. The more exhausted you feel, the more subtle and focused your concentration must be, so that you can cope with the painful sensations that arise. When you start to feel fatigued then bring all your thinking to a halt, let the mind gather itself together and then turn to knowing the breath. Just keep up the inner recitation: "Bud-dho, Bud-dho."

　　Let go of all externals. Don”t go grasping at thoughts of your children and relatives, don”t grasp at anything whatsoever. Let go. Let the mind unite in a single point and let that composed mind dwell with the breath. Let the breath be its sole object of knowledge. Concentrate until the mind becomes increasingly subtle, until feelings are insignificant and there is great inner clarity and wakefulness. Then when painful sensations arise they will gradually cease of their own accord. Finally, you”ll look on the breath as if it was a relative come to visit you.

　　When a relative leaves, we follow him out and see him off. We watch until he”s walked or driven out of sight and then we go back indoors. We watch the breath in the same …

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