..续本文上一页s is a good lesson for the mind: When you sit in meditation, close only your eyes. Keep your mind bright and alert, like a tree that closes its leaves and thus doesn”t obstruct our view of the stars.
When you can think in this way you see the value of living in the forest. The mind becomes confident. Dhamma that you have studied — or even that you haven”t — will make itself clear because nature is the teacher. It”s like the sciences of the world, which every country has used to develop amazing powers. None of their inventions or discoveries came out of a textbook. They came because scientists studied the principles of nature, all of which appear right here in the world. As for the Dhamma, it”s just like science: It exists in nature. When I realized this I no longer worried about studying the scriptures, and I was reminded of the Buddha and his disciples: They studied and learned from the principles of nature. None of them followed a textbook.
For these reasons I”m willing to be ignorant when it comes to texts and scriptures. Some kinds of trees sleep at night and are awake during the day. Others sleep by day and are awake by night. The same is true of forest animals.
Living in the forest, you also learn from the vapors that each plant exudes. Some plants are good for your health, some are bad. Sometimes, for example, when I”ve been feverish, I”ve gone to sit under certain kinds of trees and my fever has disappeared. Sometimes when I”ve been feeling well I”ve gone to sit under certain kinds of trees and the elements in my body have become disturbed. Sometimes I”ve been hungry and thirsty, but as soon as I go sit under certain kinds of trees, my hunger and thirst disappear. Learning from trees in this way has caused me to think about the traditional doctors who keep a statue of a hermit on their altars. Those hermits never studied medical textbooks, but were able to teach about medicines that can cure disease because they had studied nature by training their minds the same way we do.
Similar lessons can be learned from water, earth and air. Realizing this, I”ve never gotten very excited about medicines that cure disease, because I feel that good medicines are everywhere. The important point is whether or not we recognize them, and this depends on us.
In addition, there”s another quality we need in order to take care of ourselves: the power of the mind. If we”re able to keep the mind quiet, its ability to cure disease will be tens of times greater than that of any medicine. This is called dhamma-osatha: the medicine of the Dhamma.
All in all, I can really see that I”ve gained from living in forests and other quiet places in order to train the mind. One by one I”ve been able to cut away my doubts about the Buddha”s teachings. And so, for this reason, I”m willing to devote myself to the duties of meditation until there”s no more life left for me to live.
The gains that come from training the mind, if I were to describe them in detail, would go on and on, but I”ll ask to finish this short description here.
《The Eye of Discernment - From the Autobiography》全文阅读结束。