..续本文上一页” But if someone says, ”That person”s really bad!” you feel angry. If you hate somebody and someone else praises him, you also feel angry. You don”t want to hear how good your enemy is. When you are full of anger, you can”t imagine that someone you hate may have some virtuous qualities; even if they do have some good qualities, you can never remember any of them. You can only remember all the bad things. When you like somebody, even his faults can be endearing -- ”harmless little faults”.

　　So recognise this in your own experience; observe the force of like and dislike. Patient-kindness, metta, is a very useful and effective instrument for dealing with all the petty trivia which the mind builds up around unpleasant experience. Metta is also a very useful method for those who have discriminative, very critical minds. They can see only the faults in everything, but they never look at themselves, they only see what”s ”out there”.

　　It is now very common to always be complaining about the weather or the government. Personal arrogance gives rise to these really nasty comments about everything; or you start talking about someone who isn”t there, ripping them apart, quite intelligently, and quite objectively. You are so analytical, you know exactly what that person needs, what they should do and what they should not do, and why they”re this way and that. Very impressive to have such a sharp, critical mind and know what they ought to do. You are, of course, saying, ”Really, I”m much better than they are.”

　　You are not blinding yourself to the faults and flaws in everything. You are just peacefully co-existing with them. You are not demanding that it be otherwise. So metta sometimes needs to overlook what”s wrong with yourself and everyone else -- it doesn”t mean that you don”t notice those things, it means that you don”t develop problems around them. You stop that kind of indulgence by being kind and patient -- peacefully co-existing.

　　Mindfulness of the Ordinary

　　Now for the next hour we”ll do the walking practice, using the motion of walking as the object of concentration, bringing your attention to the movement of your feet, and the pressure of the feet touching the ground. You can use the mantra ”Buddho” for that also -- ”Bud” for the right, ”-dho” for the left, using the span of the jongrom path. See if you can be fully with, fully alert to the sensation of walking from the beginning of the jongrom path to the end. Use an ordinary pace, then you can slow it down or speed it up accordingly. Develop a normal pace, because our meditation moves around the ordinary things rather than the special. We use the ordinary breath, not a special ”breathing practice”; the sitting posture rather than standing on our heads; normal walking rather than running, jogging or walking methodically slowly -- just a relaxed pace. We”re practising around what”s most ordinary, because we take it for granted. But now we”re bringing our , attention to all the things we”ve taken for granted and never noticed, such as our own minds and bodies. Even doctors trained in physiology and anatomy are not really with their bodies. They sleep with their bodies, they”re born with their bodies, they grow old, have to live with them, feed them, exercise them and yet they”ll tell you about a liver as if it was on a chart. It”s easier to look at a liver on a chart than to be aware of your own liver, isn”t it

　　 So we look at the world as if somehow we aren”t a part of it and what”s most ordinary, what”s most common we miss, because we”re looking at what”s extraordinary.

　　Television is extraordinary. They can put all kinds of fantastic adventurous romantic things on the television. It”s a miraculous thing, so it”s easy to concentrate on. You can get mesmerised by the ”telly”.…

《Mindfulness: The Path to the Deathless》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…