..续本文上一页icca. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral it makes no difference. When you start realising the fact that even the most pleasant sensations you experience are dukkha (suffering), then you are coming nearer to liberation.

　　Understand why pleasant sensations are dukkha. Every time a pleasant sensation arises, you start relishing it. This habit of clinging to pleasant sensations has persisted for countless lifetimes, and it is because of this that you have aversion. Craving and aversion are two sides of the same coin. The stronger the craving, the stronger aversion is bound to be. Sooner or later every pleasant sensation turns into an unpleasant one, and every unpleasant sensation will turn into a pleasant one; this is the law of nature. If you start craving pleasant sensations, you are inviting misery.

　　The Buddha”s teaching helps us to disintegrate the solidified intensity that keeps us from seeing the real truth. At the actual level, there are mere vibrations, nothing else. At the same time, there is solidity. For example, this wall is solid. This is a truth, an apparent truth. The ultimate truth is that what you call a wall is nothing but a mass of vibrating subatomic particles. We have to integrate both these truths through proper understanding.

　　Dhamma develops our understanding, so that we free ourselves from the habit of reacting and understand that craving is harming us, aversion is harming us. And then we become more realistic: "See, there is ultimate truth, but there is also apparent truth, which is also a truth."

　　The process of going to the depth of the mind to liberate yourself is done by you alone; but you must also be prepared to work with your family, with society as a whole. The yardstick to measure whether love, compassion and goodwill are truly developing within you is whether these qualities are being exhibited toward the people around you.

　　The Buddha wanted us to be liberated at the deepest level of our minds. And that is possible only when three characteristics are realised: anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anattā (egolessness). When the mind starts to become deconditioned, layer after layer becomes purified until the mind is totally unconditioned. Then purity becomes a way of life. You will not have to practise mettā (compassionate love) as you do now at the end of your one-hour sitting. Later, mettā just becomes a part of your life. All the time you will remain suffused with love, compassion and good will. This is the aim, the goal.

　　The path of liberation is the path of working at the deepest level of the mind. There is nothing wrong with giving good mental suggestions, but unless you change the blind habit of reacting at the deepest level, you are not liberated. Nobody is liberated unless the deepest level of the mind is changed. And the deepest level of the mind is constantly in contact with bodily sensations.

　　We have to pide, dissect and disintegrate the entire structure to understand how mind and matter are interrelated. If you work only with the mind and forget the body, you are not practising the Buddha”s teaching. If you work only with the body and forget the mind, again you are not understanding the Buddha properly.

　　Anything that arises in the mind turns into matter, into a sensation in the material field. This was the Buddha”s discovery. People forgot this truth, which can only be understood through proper practice. The Buddha said, "Sabbe dhammā vedanā samosaraṇā:, anything that arises in the mind starts flowing as a sensation on the body.

　　The Buddha used the word asava, which means flow or intoxication. Suppose you have generated anger. A biochemical flow starts, which generates very unpleasant sensations. Because of these unpleasant sensations, you start reacting with anger. As …

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