The Snare of Māra

　　- by S. N. Goenka

　　(The following is an extract, edited and condensed, from one of the discourses for a long course. In it Goenkaji refers to Māra, meaning the forces opposed to liberation a kind of personification of one”s own negativities.)

　　It is easy to develop the faculty to feel bodily sensations but more difficult to maintain perfect equanimity towards them, understanding that they are all impermanent, anicca.

　　This is the most important aspect of the practice. Unless you develop the understanding of anicca at the level of bodily sensations, liberation is far away. The Buddha kept saying that if there is a sensation and, along with it, craving or aversion, nibbāna is far away from you. Vedanā and taṇhā; vedanā and taṇhā: so long as these come together, there is only dukkha-samudaya-gāminī paṭipadā a path that multiplies your misery, that generates misery for you. The fire and the fuel; the fire and the fuel; you can”t come out of burning. You have to understand at the experiential level, "Look: this is fire. Look: this is fuel. And look: if more fuel is given to the fire, I am not coming out of burning." With this understanding, one will try not to feed the fire. If you do not give more fuel, whatever fuel already there will sooner or later be consumed. When no new saṅkhāra of craving or aversion is given, the old saṅkhāras will automatically be consumed.

　　You can do nothing about the old saṅkhāras but you can certainly stop creating new ones. Once you do, the old ones will automatically be burnt out little by little. A time will come when there will be no more saṅkhāras of the past because you have stopped creating new ones. The law of nature is such that when you stop creating new saṅkhāras you are on the path of liberation, nirodha-gāminī paṭipadā. The Buddha called it dukkha-nirodha-gāminī paṭipadā, the path to eradicate all miseries; and he has also called it vedanā-nirodha-gāminī paṭipadā, the path to eradicate all vedanā. In other words, by walking on the path one reaches the stage where there is no more vedanā because one experiences something beyond mind and matter. Within the field of mind and matter there is constant contact, because of which there is vedanā, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. To come out of vedanā is to come out of misery. And the only way to come out of vedanā is to stop giving new fuel to the fire. Let it burn out. It is so simple and yet so difficult.

　　In spite of understanding everything at the intellectual level, at the actual level deep inside there is a tendency to cling to pleasant sensations. And that is the real danger. It is relatively easy to come out of aversion towards unpleasant sensations but it is very difficult to come out of craving and clinging towards pleasant ones.

　　You must explore the truth of the entire field of vedanā. As you work, you encounter unpleasant gross sensations, and initially you react with aversion because of the old habit pattern. Then you realize, "Look: there is a reaction towards unpleasant sensations." You keep training your mind: "This is impermanent, this is impermanent. I have experienced so many unpleasant sensations in the past and none of them remained forever. They all arose and sooner or later they passed away. How can the one that has come now remain forever

　　" In this way you train your mind not to react, understanding with experience the characteristic of anicca. To some extent you are successful.

　　Then the experience changes and you reach the stage of total dissolution, with no solidity anywhere; you observe a free flow of very subtle vibrations, an experience that is extremely pleasant. Without your realizing how or when, you start clinging to this; t…

《The Snare of Māra》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…