..续本文上一页āra”s snare is

　　 Are you deepening that understanding

　　A story: A parrot came to stay in the hermitage where a bhikkhu meditated a very peaceful place with many fruit trees. The bhikkhu tried to teach the parrot, saying to it, "Oh parrot, there is a danger here. A hunter will come and scatter some grains; you will be attracted to them. He will throw his net; you will be caught in it. A great danger; you must be very careful. The grains that he scatters are very dangerous, because through them you will be caught in the net. A great danger. Oh parrot, the hunter will come. He will throw some grains. You will be attracted towards the grains. He will throw his net and you will be caught. Be careful. Oh parrot, be careful!"

　　The parrot learned to repeat these words. It would keep on reciting, "Oh parrot, be careful! Oh parrot, be careful! The hunter will come and scatter grains. Don”t be attracted to them. He will throw his net and you will be caught. Be careful! Be careful!"

　　And exactly as the bhikkhu had warned, one day the hunter came and scattered some grains. The parrot was attracted to them and the hunter threw his net, ensnaring the parrot. The hunter caught hold of the parrot, which still kept on reciting the same words: "Oh parrot, be careful! The hunter will come. He will scatter grains. He will throw his net. Be careful, be careful!"

　　A Vipassana meditator who relishes the grains of the hunter becomes entangled in Māra”s net. And these pleasant sensations on the body are the grains. This is Māra”s snare. When you start relishing them, you are caught. Yet you imagine that, because you are practicing Vipassana, you are becoming liberated, you are approaching the experience of nibbāna. Instead you are running in the opposite direction.

　　This is how the wheel of misery keeps rotating. It always starts with pleasant sensations and with craving towards them. Aversion simply follows. One is not entangled in Māra”s snare by the unpleasant sensations. So long as you have craving and clinging for pleasant sensations, you will have aversion towards the unpleasant. The root is your craving for the pleasant.

　　And when free flow occurs you face a dangerous situation. This is the stage at which a subtle craving will start. At the surface of the mind, at the conscious, intellectual level, you will keep saying, "This is anicca, anicca." But deep inside you will start clinging to the experience. You will behave exactly like the parrot that keeps repeating, "Oh parrot, be careful; oh parrot, be careful!" even after he has been caught because of his craving for the grains scattered by the hunter. You have craving, and as long as the craving exists you cannot come to the end of vedanā.

　　This craving must go away. You must learn to stop relishing the pleasant sensations. You must discern the danger in them; you must recognize that this is a frightening situation. And you must understand that you have to come out of it. A feeling of disgust arises towards the pleasant sensations themselves: "What is really pleasant here

　　 I have been caught in this snare in countless lives in the past, and I continue to be caught in it in this life as well."

　　A pleasant sensation appears to be pleasant but it is really suffering because it enmeshes one in the old habit of relishing it, of clinging to it. It is dukkha, it is bondage. As the Buddha said, "Yaṃ kiñci vedayitaṃ, taṃ pi dukkhasmiṃ Whatever sensation one is experiencing, it is actually dukkha, dukkha, dukkha."

　　As long as there is vedanā, there will be dukkha, because the process of multiplication of misery is operating. The fire is burning, and you are giving it fuel. Let the fire be extinguished. Then you will come to the end of vedanā, the end of suffering.

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