..续本文上一页at it means, "Drill the hole right in line with the dowel." Don”t go drilling far away. Drill right there at the dowel.

　　It”s the same as when we step on a thorn. You take a needle and probe right there where the thorn is. Don”t go probing anywhere else. Probe right where the thorn is stuck in your foot. Even if it hurts, you have to endure it. Keep probing all around it and then pry it out. That”s how you get the thorn out. If the thorn is stuck in your foot, but you go probing around your rear, when will you ever be done with it

　　So I contemplated this. "Oh. Teachers meditate in line with the language of their own minds. They don”t go groping around in the formulations in the books the way we do. Their own formulations arise from reality."

　　So what comes low and what comes high

　　"If it comes low, jump over its head. If it comes high, slip under it." I kept contemplating this. Here he was talking about my moods and preoccupations. Some of them come low; some of them come high. You have to watch them to see how you can avoid them. If they come low, jump over their heads. If they come high, slip under them. Do what you can so that they don”t hit you.

　　This is the practice. You contemplate right where you”re deluded so that you”ll know right there. Any other issue is just duck shit and chicken shit. You don”t have to go groping after it. That”s how you have to take things on in meditation.

　　But actually, it”s not a matter of taking. You take them on by abandoning them. This is how the suppositions of language have things all backwards. You let things go. You practice letting go. You don”t have to become a stream-winner or a once-returner. You don”t have to make those suppositions. You don”t have to be those things. If you are anything, it”s a turmoil. If you are this or are that, you are a problem. So you don”t have to be anything. There”s nothing but letting go — letting go and then knowing in line with what things do. When you know in line with what things do in every way, there”s no more doubt. And you aren”t anything.

　　Think about it in a simple way. If someone yells at you but you don”t rear up in response, that”s the end of the matter. It doesn”t reach you. But if you grab hold of it and won”t let go, you”re in bad shape. Why put their words into yourself

　　 If they yell at you, just leave it at that. But if they yell at you over there in the ordination hall and you bring it into your ears while you”re sitting here, it”s as if you like to suffer. This is called not understanding suffering. You stir things up with your thinking and give rise to all kinds of issues.

　　The practice is actually something short, and not at all long. If you say it”s long, it”s longer than long. If you say it”s short, it”s shorter than short. When it comes to the practice, you can”t use your ordinary ways of thinking.

　　You need to have patience and endurance. You need to make an effort. Whatever happens, you don”t have to pick it up and carry it around. When things are a certain way, that”s all they are. When we see the Dhamma in this way, we don”t hold onto anything. Pleasure we know. Pain we know.

　　The Buddha and his arahant disciples, when they gain awakening: It”s not the case that coconut-milk sweets aren”t sweet for them. They”re sweet in the same way they”re sweet for us. When the noble ones eat a sour tamarind, they squeeze their eyes shut just like us. Do you understand

　　 Things are just the same way they were before, simply that noble ones don”t hold onto them or get fixated on them. If you argue with them that the tamarind is sour, they”ll say, "Sour is fine. Sweet is fine. Neither sour nor sweet is fine." That”s what they”ll say.

　　The same principle applies here. When people come and say wrong things, we can hear them and it doesn”t matter.…

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