..续本文上一页y with treatment, then take medicine. If it”s one that goes away whether we treat it or not, why bother

　　 This is what it means to have discernment.

　　Ignorant people don”t know which kinds of stress should be treated and which kinds shouldn”t, and so they put their time and money to waste. As for intelligent people, they see what should be treated and they treat it using their own discernment. All diseases arise either from an imbalance in the physical elements or from kamma. If it”s a disease that arises from the physical elements, we should treat it with food, medicine, etc. If it arises from kamma, we have to treat it with the Buddha”s medicine. In other words, stress and pain that arise from the heart, if we treat them with food and medicine, won”t respond. We have to treat them with the Dhamma. Whoever knows how to manage this is said to have a sense of how to observe and diagnose stress.

　　If we look at it in another way, we”ll see that aging, illness, and death are simply the shadows of stress and not its true substance. People lacking discernment will try to do away with the shadows, which leads only to more suffering and stress. This is because they aren”t acquainted with what the shadows and substance of stress come from. The essence of stress lies with the mind. Aging, illness, and death are its shadows or effects that show by way of the body. When we want to kill our enemy and so take a knife to stab his shadow, how is he going to die

　　 In the same way, ignorant people try to destroy the shadows of stress and don”t get anywhere. As for the essence of stress in the heart, they don”t think of remedying it at all. This ignorance of theirs is one form of avijja, or unawareness.

　　To look at it in still another way, both the shadows and the real thing come from tanha, craving. We”re like a person who has amassed a huge fortune and then, when thieves come to break in, goes killing the thieves. He doesn”t see his own wrong-doing and sees only the wrong-doing of others. Actually, once he”s piled his house full in this way, thieves can”t help but break in. In the same way, people suffer from stress and so they hate it, and yet they don”t make the effort to straighten themselves out.

　　Stress comes from the three forms of craving, so we should kill off craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, and craving for no becoming. These things are fabricated in our own heart, and we have to know them with our own mindfulness and discernment. Once we”ve contemplated them until we see, we”ll know: ”This sort of mental state is craving for sensuality; this sort is craving for becoming; and this sort, craving for no becoming.”

　　People with discernment will see that these things exist in the heart in subtle, intermediate, and blatant stages, just as a person has three stages in a lifetime: youth, middle age, and old age. ”Youth” is craving for sensuality. Once this thirst arises in the heart, it wavers and moves — this is craving for becoming — and then takes shape as craving for no further becoming — a sambhavesin with its neck stretched out looking for its object, causing itself stress and pain. In other words, we take a liking to various sights, sounds, smells, flavors, etc., and so fix on them, which brings us stress. So we shouldn”t preoccupy ourselves with sights, sounds, etc., that provoke greed, anger, or delusion (craving for sensuality), causing the mind to waver and whisk out with concepts (this is craving for becoming; when the mind sticks with its wavering, won”t stop repeating its motions, that”s craving for no further becoming).

　　When we gain discernment, we should destroy these forms of craving with anulomika-ñana, knowledge in accordance with the four Noble Truths, knowing exactly how much ease and pleasure the mind has…

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