..续本文上一页rs that can magnify every detail. This is called ñana — intuitive awareness that can know everything in the world: Lokavidu.
The discernment here isn”t ordinary knowledge or insight. It”s a special cognitive skill, the skill of the Noble Path. We”ll give rise to three eyes in the heart, so as to see the reds and greens, the highs and lows of the mundane world: a sport for those with wisdom. Our internal eyes will look at the Dhamma in front and behind, above and below and all around us, so as to know all the ins and outs of goodness and evil. This is discernment. We”ll be at our ease, feeling pleasure with no pain interfering at all. This is called vijja-carana-sampanno — being fully equipped with cognitive skill.
A person whose heart has discernment is capable of helping the nation and the religion, just as a farmer who grows rice that can be sold both inside and outside the country strengthens the nation”s economy. A person without discernment will make the religion degenerate. When he brings disaster on himself, the disaster will have to spread to others as well. In other words, a single, solitary person with no goodness to him — nothing but defilements and craving — can do evil to the point where he wipes himself out, and it will spread to wipe out people all over the country. But when a person has the three above virtues in his or her heart, they will turn into the strength of concentration. The heart will be as clear as crystal or a diamond. The whole world will become transparent. Discernment will arise, the skill of liberating insight, and intuitive understanding, all at once.
Whoever sees the world as having highs and lows doesn”t yet have true intuitive discernment. Whoever has the eye of intuition will see that there are no highs, no lows, no rich, no poor. Everything is equal in terms of the three common characteristics: inconstant, stressful, and not-self. It”s like the equality of democracy. Their home is the same as our home, with no differences at all. People commit burglaries and robberies these days because they don”t see equality. They think that this person is good, that person isn”t; this house is a good place to eat, that house isn”t; this house is a good place to sleep, that house isn”t, etc. It”s because they don”t have insight, the eye of discernment, that there”s all this confusion and turmoil.
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Keep your attention focused exclusively on the body — a cubit wide, a fathom long, a span thick. This is the middle path. If you make your awareness of the breath too narrow, you”ll end up sitting stock stiff, with no alertness at all. If you make your awareness too broad — all the way to heaven and hell — you can end up falling for aberrant perceptions. So neither extreme is good. You have to keep things moderate and just right if you want to be on the right track. If you don”t have a sense of how to practice correctly, then even if you ordain until you die buried in heaps of yellow robes, you won”t succeed in the practice. You lay people can sit in concentration till your hair turns white, your teeth fall out, and your backs get all crooked and bent, but you”ll never get to see nibbana.
If we can get our practice on the Noble Path, though, we”ll enter nibbana. Virtue will disband, concentration will disband, discernment will disband. In other words, we won”t dwell on our knowledge or discernment. If we”re intelligent enough to know, we simply know, without taking intelligence as being an essential part of ourselves. On the lower level, we”re not stuck on virtue, concentration, or discernment. On a higher level, we”re not stuck on the stages of stream-entry, once-returning, or nonreturning. Nibbana isn”t stuck on the world, the world isn”t stuck on nibbana. Only at this point can we use the ter…
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