..续本文上一页or trucks can run along it. When concentration gets extinguished in this way, you can”t practice insight meditation. There”s nothing left but thoughts about insight, thoughts about concentration, thinking, guessing, groping in line with your old preconceptions. The virtues of your heart disappear without your realizing it. If you want to go back and start all over, it”s hard — like going back over a washed-out road.
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The mind in concentration is like genuine silver, malleable and white because nothing else is adulterating it. We can make it into whatever we want, easily and quickly, without having to waste time placing it in a crucible and heating it to get rid of the impurities. The mind not in concentration is like imitation or adulterated silver: hard, brittle, and black, because it”s mixed with copper or lead. The more the impurities, the lower its value.
A pure mind is thus like genuine silver. The various thoughts that darken the mind are like the impurities that make the silver black, brittle, and dull. So if we let thoughts get mixed up in the mind, we turn the mind into imitation silver. We won”t be able to find any purity in it at all. When this is the case, the mind will have no stillness. But if we brush away the various thoughts and preoccupations adulterating the mind, it will become firmly established in concentration, in line with the factors of the path. Once the mind turns into the path, we have to watch over it carefully, in the same way that we try to keep a road from washing out. We have to survey it continually to see where it”s getting rutted or forming potholes. Wherever it needs repairing, we fix it right away. If we don”t fix it immediately, and let it get full of potholes or wash away, it”ll be really hard to repair. Once the mind is following the path, any Hindrances that interfere are a break in the road. If we don”t hurry up and repair it, the break will get wider and deeper until the road turns into an ordinary piece of ground.
So while you”re trying to develop the path, if you let yourself be forgetful — if you let your mindfulness lapse, letting distractions into the mind — the state of mind that forms the path will immediately be destroyed. Your meditation will be spoiled, your concentration will be spoiled, the mind will return to its ordinary state and won”t be able to find the path to genuine goodness.
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While we”re sitting in concentration, if our mind doesn”t stay with the body in the present, it”s as if we”ve earned some food but don”t watch over it. Dogs and cats are bound to come and eat it. The dogs and cats, here, are the five Hindrances — sensual desire, ill will, torpor & lethargy, restlessness & anxiety, and uncertainty — that we like to keep as our pets. As soon as our back is turned, they”re going to sneak in and eat up our food — the happiness and inner worth that we should have received from our practice.
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Being lost is better than being asleep. Being aware, even if you have defilements, is better than being absent-minded. If you know you have defilements, you can work to end them. A person who”s not aware is dead.
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If your mind doesn”t stay in one place, it”s like standing on a lawn: If you stand in ten different places, the grass will grow in all ten places, because first you stand here for a while and then go stand there for a while and then go stand over there. If you don”t stay long in any one place, grass will grow everywhere. But if you really stand still in one place, how will the grass grow there
No grass will be able to grow on the spot where the soles of your feet are standing. In the same way, if your mind stands firm in one place, always mindful of the in-and-out breath, no Hindrances or defilements will be able to arise.
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The path we”re …
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