..续本文上一页ther words, if your concentration is strong and your discernment developed, the defilements enwrapping your mind will fall away in the same way as when the flowers of a fruit tree reach full bloom, the petals fall away, leaving the fruit. When the fruit develops till it”s fully ripe, the skin and flesh fall away, leaving just the seeds that contain all the makings for a new tree. When the mind is fully developed, then aging, illness, and death fall away. Mental stress and suffering fall away, leaving the mind in Right Concentration.

　　When Right Concentration is ripe, you”ll know the location of what dies and what doesn”t. If you want to die, then stay with what dies. If you don”t want birth, don”t stay with what takes birth. If you don”t want aging, don”t stay with what ages. If you don”t want illness, don”t stay with what grows ill. If you don”t leave these things, you have to live with them. If you leave them, your mind won”t age — it won”t be able to age; it won”t grow ill — it won”t be able to grow ill; it won”t die; it won”t be able to die. If you can reach this point, you”re said to have respect for the truth — for the teachings of the Buddha.

　　Respect for the truth isn”t a matter of bowing down or paying homage. It means having a sense of time and place: If something is possible, you do it. If it”s not, you don”t — and you don”t try to straighten it out, either. The defilements of unawareness, craving, and attachment are things that connect us with suffering, so don”t let them entangle the mind.

　　Unawareness is the mental state that is deluded about the past, present, and future. True awareness knows what”s past and lets it go; knows what”s future and lets it go; knows what”s present and doesn”t fall for it. It can remove all attachments. Unawareness knows, but it falls for these things, which is why it forms the fuel for suffering. True awareness knows what things are past, present, and future, but it doesn”t run out after them. It knows but it stays put — quiet and calm. It doesn”t waver up or down. It doesn”t seep out, and nothing seeps in. The past, the present, and the future it knows in terms of the principles of its nature, without having to reason or think. People who have to reason and think are the ones who don”t know. With knowledge, there”s no thinking or reasoning, and yet the mind knows thoroughly. This is true awareness. Aging, illness, and death all become an affair of release. In other words, nothing is fashioned in the mind, and when nothing is fashioned, there”s no aging, illness, or death.

　　As for attachment, it catches us and ties us to a stake, like a person being led to his execution with no chance to wiggle free. We”re tied with a wire stretching out to the past and future. Craving inches along the wire toward us, rolling his eyes and making horrible faces, so that we worry about the past and future. Behind us he splits into three: craving for sensuality, craving for possibilities, and craving for impossibilities. In front of us, he splits into three — the same three sorts of craving — and in the present he splits into the same three. With nine of them and only one of us, how can we expect to be a match for them

　　 In the end, we”re no match at all.

　　If we practice concentration and develop discernment, though, we”ll be able to cut the wire of Death. When the mental state that forms the path arises, our thoughts of past and future will all disband. This is the disbanding of stress. Attachment and craving won”t exist — so where will stress and suffering have a chance to arise

　　 People who have defilements — even if they earn $3,000 a day — can”t keep themselves from falling into hell. But people with no defilements, even if they don”t have anything at all, are happy nonetheless — because the mind has eno…

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