..续本文上一页ull capacity, to full sensitivity, in order to know that in this present moment the conditions that you are aware of, what you are feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, are impermanent.
Impermanence is a characteristic common to all phenomena, whether it is a belief in God or a memory of the past; whether it”s an angry thought, or a loving thought; whether it”s high, low, coarse, refined, good, bad, pleasurable or painful. Whatever its quality might be, you are looking at it as an object. All that arises, ceases. It is impermanent.
Now what this opening of the mind does, as a way of practice and reflection on life, is allow you to have some perspective on your emotions and ideas, on the nature of your own body, as well as the objects of the senses.
Getting back to consciousness itself: modern science, empirical science, considers the real world to be the material world that we see and hear and feel, as an object to our senses. So the objective world is called reality. We can see the material world, agree to what it is, hear it, smell it, taste it, touch it or even agree on a perception or a name for it. But that perception is still an object, isn”t it
Because consciousness creates the impression of a subject and an object, we believe that we are observing something that is separate from us.
The Buddha, by his teaching, took the subject-object relationship to the ultimate point. He taught that all perceptions, all conditions that go through our minds, all emotions, all feelings, all material-world objects that we see and hear, are impermanent. About all of it, he said, "What arises, ceases." And this the Buddha kept pointing out over and over again in his teachings: this is a very important insight that frees us from all kinds of delusions. What arises, ceases.
Consciousness can also be defined as our ability to know, the experience of knowing. The subject knowing the object. When we look at objects and name them, we think we know them. We think we know this person or that person because we have a name or a memory of them. We think we know all kinds of things because we remember them. Our ability to know, sometimes, is of the conditioned sort, knowing about, rather than knowing directly.
The Buddhist practice is to abide in a pure mindfulness in which there is what we call insight knowing, or direct knowledge. It is a knowledge that isn”t based on perception, an idea, a position, or a doctrine: and this knowledge can only be possible through mindfulness. What we mean by mindfulness is the ability to not attach to any object, either in the material realm or mental realm. When there is no attachment, then the mind is in its pure state of awareness, intelligence, and clarity. That is mindfulness. The mind is pure and receptive, sensitive to the existing conditions. It is no longer a conditioned mind that just reacts to pleasure and pain, praise and blame, happiness and suffering.
For example, if you get angry, right now, you can follow the anger. You can believe it, and go on and on creating that particular emotion, or you can suppress the anger and try to stop it out of fear or aversion. However, instead of doing any of these, you can reflect on the anger, because it is something that we can observe. Now if anger were our true self, we wouldn”t be able to observe it, this is what I mean by reflection. What is it that can observe and reflect on the feeling of anger
What is it that can watch and investigate the feeling, the heat in the body, or the mental state. That which observes and investigates is what we call a reflective mind. The human mind is a reflective mind.
The Revelation of Truth Common to All Religions
We can ask questions: Who am I
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《Is Buddhism A Religion
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