..续本文上一页n the threefold training — virtue, concentration, and discernment — we won”t have any chance to reach the ultimate. But if we gather these practices within ourselves and advance in them, our minds will develop the knowledge and awareness that will be capable of pushing us on to an advanced point, to nibbana.
* * *
Noble disciples are like people who realize that rain water is the vapor that heat sucks up from the salt water of the ocean and then falls down as rain — and so that rain water is ocean water, and ocean water is rain water. Ordinary run-of-the-mill people are like people who don”t know what rain water comes from. They assume that rain water is up there in the sky and so they deludedly wait to drink nothing but rain water. If no rain comes, they”re sure to die. The reason for their ignorance is their own stupidity. They don”t know enough to search for new resources — the qualities of the Noble Ones — and so will have to keep gathering up the same old things to eat over and over again. They keep spinning around in the cycle of rebirth in this way, with no thought of searching for a way out of this mass of suffering and stress. They”re like a red ant that keeps probing its way around and around the rim of a bushel basket — whose circumference isn”t even two meters — all because it doesn”t realize that the rim of the basket is round. This is why we keep experiencing birth, aging, illness, and death without end.
As for the Noble Ones, they see that everything in the world is the same old stuff coming over and over again. Wealth and poverty, good and bad, pleasure and pain, praise and censure, etc., keep trading places around and around in circles. This is the cycle of defilement, which causes ignorant people to misunderstand. The world itself spins — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then back to the same old Sunday all over again. January, February, March, April, May, etc., up to November and December, and then back to January. The year of the rat, the ox, the tiger, all the way up to the year of the pig, and then back to the same old year of the rat all over again. Everything is like this, night following day, day following night. Nighttime isn”t for sure: Our daytime is other people”s nighttime, their daytime is our nighttime. Things keep changing like this. This is called the wheel of the world, which causes people with only partial knowledge to misunderstand and to quarrel.
When Noble Ones see in this way, they develop a sense of dispassion and don”t ever want to be born in a world again — for there are all sorts of worlds. Some worlds have nothing but cold, others nothing but heat — no living beings can be born there. Some have only sunlight; others only moonlight; still others, neither sunlight nor moonlight. This is what is meant by lokavidu.
For this reason, once we”ve learned this, we should take it to think over carefully. Whatever we see as worthy of credence, we should then use to train our hearts so that the paths and their fruitions will arise within us. Don”t be heedless or complacent in anything you do, for life is like dew on the grass. As soon as it”s touched by the light of the sun, it vanishes in no time without leaving a trace.
We die with every in-and-out breath. If we”re the least bit careless, we are sure to die, for death is something that happens very easily. It”s lying in wait for us at every moment. Some people die from sleeping too much, or eating too much, or eating too little; of being too cold, too hot, too happy, too sad. Some people die from pain, others die without any pain. Sometimes even when we”re sitting around perfectly normal we can still die. See that death has you surrounded on all sides — and so be earnest in developing as much goodness as you can, both in the area of the world and in the Dhamma.
《Inner Strength - Part Two:Inner Skill》全文阅读结束。