..续本文上一页”re called neutral fabrications: thinking that isn”t yet either good or bad.
These forms of fabrication are also demons of defilement. They”re the children of Mara, but they rarely show their faces in public. They”re like the children of nobility, children in the royal palace. They hardly ever show their faces outside, so very few people know their names, very few people have seen their faces. Unless you develop the mind in concentration you won”t get to see these beauties. If you develop concentration, you can peer inside, using your discernment to part the curtains, and then you”ll get to see these children of Mara.
The mother of Mara, ignorance, lies even deeper inside. Ignorance means not being acquainted with your own mind — mistaking your thinking for your mind; mistaking your knowledge for the mind; thinking that your thoughts of the past or future are the mind; thinking that the body is the mind or the mind is the body; that feeling is the mind or the mind is feeling; that mental qualities are the mind, or that the mind is mental qualities; that the mind is the self or the self is the mind; not being able to separate these things from yourself, getting yourself all entangled: that”s called ignorance. In short, ignorance means getting caught up on the present.
All of the things I”ve mentioned so far are called the demons of defilement. They bother us all the time, get in our way all the time, which is why they”re called the demons of defilement. How are they demons
When you get really greedy, for instance, it gets in the way of your being generous and giving donations. You simply want to get and don”t want to give. That”s how greed is a demon. When we get possessive of things, holding on tight, and someone destroys what we”re holding onto, we get upset and feel mistreated. This puts our mind into a turmoil and gets it all stirred up. This is how greed is a demon.
The same holds true for anger. Once it arises, you don”t give a damn about anything. You see other people as nothing more than red or black ants: all you have to do is step on them and they”re done for. The explosive power of anger is more violent than anything else. Whether or not you”ll actually be able to get your way, you don”t care. You”re brazen and foolhardy. But if anyone comes along at that time and tries to persuade you to act in a skillful way, you don”t want anything of what they have to say. The anger has to go its course until it runs out on its own. This is why it”s called a demon, because you can”t do anything good while you”re under its power.
Delusion is even worse. Delusion seeps into you, the way blood seeps throughout every part of your body. When we do evil, we”re deluded. When we do good, we”re still deluded. Even though we”re well-educated in the Dhamma, we can”t yet escape from the power of delusion. No matter who we are, it stays right on our heels. We may want to make merit, but when we”re deluded we don”t know what”s right and what”s wrong. We simply want the merit. We observe the precepts because we want to be good, but we don”t know what real virtue is. It”s the same when we practice concentration. We want to get results, but we can”t tell right concentration from wrong. We simply keep on wanting. This is called delusion, in that our knowledge isn”t in line with the truth. It”s not that we don”t know anything. We know, but what we know goes straying away from the truth. We”re like a person who has lost his way: he can still keep going; it”s just that he”s not on the right path. Suppose, for instance, that we want to go to Bangkok but we get confused about the way and start heading to BangPuu. We”re off the path as far as Bangkok is concerned, but we”re on the right path for BangPuu — and we can keep on going. It”s not the case t…
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