..续本文上一页r legs," we don”t want them to hurt, these arms are "our arms," we don”t want anything to go wrong with it. We”ve got to cure all pains and illnesses at all costs.

　　This is where we are fooled and stray from the truth. We are simply visitors to this body. Just like this hall here, it”s not really ours. We are simply temporary tenants, like the rats, lizards and geckoes... but we don”t know this. This body is the same. Actually the Buddha taught that there is no abiding self within this body but we go and grasp on to it as being our self, as really being "us" and "them." When the body changes we don”t want it to do so. No matter how much we are told we don”t understand. If I say it straight you get even more fooled. "This isn”t yourself," I say, and you go even more astray, you get even more confused and your practice just reinforces the self.

　　So most people don”t really see the self. One who sees the self is one who sees that "this is neither the self nor belonging to self." He sees the self as it is in Nature. Seeing the self through the power of clinging is not real seeing. Clinging interferes with the whole business. It”s not easy to realize this body as it is because upadana clings fast to it all.

　　Therefore it is said that we must investigate to clearly know with wisdom. This means to investigate the sankhara [63] according to their true nature. Use wisdom. To know the true nature of sankhara is wisdom. If you don”t know the true nature of sankhara you are at odds with them, always resisting them. Now, it is better to let go of the sankhara or to try to oppose or resist them. And yet we plead with them to comply with our wishes. We look for all sorts of means to organize them or "make a deal" with them. If the body gets sick and is in pain we don”t want it to be, so we look for various Suttas to chant, such as Bojjhango, the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta, the Anattalakkhanasutta and so on. We don”t want the body to be in pain, we want to protect it, control it. These Suttas become some form of mystical ceremony, getting us even more entangled in clinging. This is because they chant them in order to ward off illness, to prolong life and so on. Actually the Buddha gave us these teaching, s in order to see clearly but we end up chanting them to increase our delusion. Rupam aniccam, vedana anicca, sañña anicca, sankhara anicca, viññanam aniccam... [64] We don”t chant these words for increasing our delusion. They are recollections to help us know the truth of the body, so that we can let it go and give up our longing.

　　This is called chanting to cut things down, but we tend to chant in order to extend them all, or if we feel they”re too long we try chanting to shorten them, to force nature to conform to our wishes. It”s all delusion. All the people sitting there in the hall are deluded, every one of them. The ones chanting are deluded, the ones listening are deluded, they”re all deluded! All they can think is "How can we avoid suffering

　　" Where are they ever going to practice

　　Whenever illnesses arise, those who know see nothing strange about it. Getting born into this world entails experiencing illness. However, even the Buddha and the Noble Ones, contracting illness in the course of things, would also, in the course of things, treat it with medicine. For them it was simply a matter of correcting the elements. They didn”t blindly cling to the body or grasp at mystic ceremonies and such. They treated illnesses with Right View, they didn”t treat them with delusion. "If it heals, it heals, if it doesn”t then it doesn”t" -- that”s how they saw things.

　　They say that nowadays Buddhism in Thailand is thriving, but it looks to me like it”s sunk almost as far as it can go. The Dhamma Halls are full of at…

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