..续本文上一页the body, it”s like cutting away the dead parts of a plant so that it can begin to grow again.

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　　Directed thought, focusing on the breath, is like putting food in your mouth. Evaluation — adjusting, spreading, and improving the breath — is like chewing your food. If you chew it carefully before swallowing, the food will digest easily and give full benefits to your body. The digesting is the duty of the body, but if you want to get good results you have to help with the chewing. The more refined you can make the breath, the better the results you”ll get.

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　　There are two kinds of evaluation when we meditate on the breath. The first is to evaluate the in-and-out breath. The second is to evaluate the inner breath sensations in the body until you can spread them out through all the properties of the body to the point where you forget all distractions. If both the body and mind are full, there”s a sense of rapture and ease that results from our directed thought and evaluation. This is Right Action in the mind.

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　　One of the benefits from working with the breath is that the properties of the body become friendly and harmonious with one another. We spread the breath all over the body, and then when it grows still it gives you a sense of physical seclusion. This is one of the physical benefits. As for the mental benefits, mindfulness becomes enlarged. When mindfulness is enlarged, awareness is enlarged. The mind becomes an adult and doesn”t go sneaking off like an ordinary mind. If you want it to think, it thinks. If you want it to stop, it stops. If you want it to go, it goes. When the mind is well-trained it gains knowledge, like an educated adult. When you converse with it, you understand each other. The mind of a person who hasn”t trained it is like a child. This kind of mind doesn”t understand what you say and likes to slip off to roam around — and it goes without saying good-bye. You have no idea what it takes with it when it goes, or what it brings back when it returns.

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　　When the breath, mindfulness, and awareness are all enlarged, they all become adults. They don”t get into spats with one another: the body doesn”t quarrel with the mind, mindfulness doesn”t quarrel with the mind. That”s when we can be at our ease.

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　　When you spread the breath as you evaluate it, mindfulness runs throughout the body like an electric wire. Making yourself mindful is like letting the current run along the wire. Alertness is like the energy that wakes the body up. When the body is awake, pains can”t overcome it. In other words, it wakes up the properties of earth, water, fire, and wind so that they get to work. When the properties are balanced and full, they put the body at ease. When the body is nourished with breath and mindfulness like this, it grows into an adult. When the properties are at peace, they all become adults: the great frame of reference (mahasatipatthana). This is called threshold concentration, or evaluation.

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　　When the mind is broad, wandering after outside perceptions, it loses the strength it needs to deal with its various affairs. Whatever it thinks of doing will succeed only with difficulty. It”s like a gun with a broad-gauged barrel. If you put tiny bullets into it, they rattle around inside and don”t come out with much force. The narrower the gauge of the barrel, the more force the bullets will have when you shoot them. It”s the same with the breath: The more you refine your focus, the more refined the breath will become, until eventually you can breathe through your pores. The mind at this stage has more strength than an atomic bomb.

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　　Making the mind snug with mindfulness and the breath is like weaving cloth. If the weave is so fine that water won”t pass through, the cloth will fetch a high price. If you u…

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