..续本文上一页e it, you get overpowered by the misery of the craving and without even knowing it, you become addicted to craving. This only intensifies it and makes the situation far worse.

　　When you start observing sensations, a stage will come sooner or later, where you will understand that you are actually not craving for any object. You are craving for a particular sensation. When you crave for anything, a sensation arises. When that craving is fulfilled, the sensation ceases but you want that sensation again, so you have to crave for something else. Each time the object is attained it becomes stale. Each time your craving is fulfilled, you want something else. You have become addicted to this craving.

　　For example someone lives quite happily in a small one-bedroom cottage. Suddenly the thought comes to his mind that it is too small. He must have a big house with at least three bedrooms. So he acquires a three-bedroom house. Now it must be beautifully furnished in the latest style. He furnishes it and then that becomes stale. Now he must equip it with the latest equipment: a colour TV, a washing machine, all the most sophisticated electronic systems—the whole house is filled with machines. Yet there is no satisfaction because he keeps craving.

　　He has an ordinary car but now it seems just a rust heap! Now he must have a new model, say a Toyota. Once the Toyota arrives, he doesn”t want it. It must be a BMW. Even that is not good enough. It must be a Mercedes Benz, then a Rolls Royce. Even that is not good enough.

　　Other people have their own helicopters, so he must also have one. Then he must have his own airplane. Now he needs a spacecraft to go to the moon. Even this becomes stale. Now he must have a spacecraft to go to Mars or to some other planet or to a different galaxy!

　　Even the sky is not the limit: craving is a bottomless bucket which can never be filled because the addiction is to the craving, not to the object. It is craving for the sake of craving, and this makes the situation far worse. This is what happens. As you proceed on the path, it will become so clear.

　　When someone is described as being addicted to alcohol or drugs, it only appears so at the surface level. Actually the addiction is to the sensation. When he takes a drink, the alcoholic feels a certain sensation, and he wants that sensation over and over again. So he has to take alcohol again and again. Similarly a drug user has to take the drug again and again. The sensation is so important.

　　This was the Buddha”s discovery. Unless you learn how to observe your sensation, you cannot come out of any addiction. Addiction to alcohol and drugs is nothing compared to your addiction to craving and aversion. There are so many impurities of the mind, and you are addicted to all of them. You keep repeating them again and again because you are addicted to a particular type of sensation. You want that sensation again and again, so you keep generating certain impurities to get that sensation. This has become the habit pattern of the mind. How to end it

　　There is misery but there is also a way out of misery. You learn how to observe the misery, without reacting. Whatever is happening, you are a silent witness. You are like a person sitting at the bank of the river and watching it flowing. You have to do nothing about it; the river just flows naturally. Sitting at the bank, you just observe. Similarly, you feel a flow of vibration, of sensation, throughout the body.

　　You observe it like a scientist in a research laboratory. A liquid chemical is heated in a glass tube and some of this volatile matter evaporates. It passes into another tube, where it condenses and re-emerges again as liquid. The scientist just observes. When the liquid evaporates, he doesn”t start mourning for the loss of his chemical. When it again liquefies, he doesn”t start celebrating; he just understands the process. Yet all this scientific understanding is only at the intellectual level. He is not experiencing it.

　　Here you are experiencing the form and function of the entire physical and mental structure; the combination of the two; the interaction between the two. You experience how each influences the other; how matter causes mind to originate and how mind causes matter to originate. At times, it seems as if matter is changing into mind. At other times it seems as if the mind is changing into matter.

　　When you experience all this, it makes so much difference. The wisdom that you gain is your own wisdom. It is not just an acceptance of the Buddha”s words or your teacher”s words or some passage in the scriptures. This truth is a universal law of nature, which has nothing to do with any organized religion. This universal, natural law will become clearer and clearer if you keep working.

　　It was so in the past, it is so now, it will be so in the future. It is so whether or not a Buddha is present. As the Buddha said, whether an enlightened person is present or not, the law of nature remains the same; it is eternal. Negativity always brings suffering, and the eradication of negativity always brings liberation from suffering.

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