..续本文上一页he tendency of the modern mind is to think that there”s some ogre lurking way down deep inside, just waiting for an unguarded moment to overwhelm you and drive you permanently insane. Some people actually live their whole lives with that kind of fear, and every time the monster starts to come up: ”Oh-oh.... !” But monsters are just another sankhara [compounded phenomenon], another grain of sand of the Ganges River. Maybe an ugly sand grain, but that”s all. If you”re going to get upset every time you see an ugly sand grain, you”re going to find life increasingly more difficult. Sometimes we have to accept the fact that some sand grains are ugly. Let them be ugly; don”t get upset. If you saw me sitting beside the Ganges River looking at ugly sand grains, saying, ”I”m going to go crazy!” you”d think, ”Ajahn Sumedho is crazy!” Even a really ugly sand grain is just a sand grain.
So what we”re doing is looking at the common factor of all these different qualities – hidden monsters, latent repressed energies and powers and archetypal forces - they are all just sankharas, nothing much. You take the position of the Buddha: being the knowing.
Even the unknown – we see it as just another changing condition – sometimes there”s knowing, sometimes not-knowing; one conditions the other. The black hole, sunlight, night and day are all change; there”s no self, nothing to become if you”re being the knowing. But if you”re reacting to all the qualities of samsara [See Note 3] , you get really neurotic. That”s endless, just like reacting to all the sand grains of the Ganges River. How many lifetimes does it take to react to all the sand grains of the Ganges River
Do you think you have to emotionally respond to each sand grain of the Ganges River, being ecstatic over the beautiful and depressed over the ugly ones
Yet that”s what people do, they dull themselves, get worn down and exhausted with this emotional turmoil all the time, and finally want to annihilate themselves. So they start taking drugs, drinking all the time to desensitise themselves.
What we are doing, instead of building a shell and hiding ourselves away in fear and dullness, is to observe that none of this is self. So we don”t have to desensitise ourselves: we can become even more sensitive, clear and bright. In that clarity and brightness there is the knowing: that if it arises, it passes away – and that”s what Buddhas know!
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Notes
1. Simply translated, anatta is ”not-self”, and shunyata (a Sanskrit word) is “emptiness”
2. anicca (impermanent, transitory); dukkha (imperfect, unsatisfying); and anatta (impersonal, ”not-self”) are the three characteristics of all worldly phenomena, according to the Buddha.
3. samsara: the unenlightened, unsatisfactory experience of life; the world as conditioned by ignorance.
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THE FIVE HINDRANCES
Just as, 0 King, the bhikkhu, so long asthese Five Hindrances are not put awaywithin him, looks upon himself as in debt,diseased, in prison, in slavery, lost ona desert road. But when these FiveHindrances have been put away withinhim, he looks upon himself as freed fromdebt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free manand secure...
Digha Nikaya 11 - 73
IN MEDITATION one develops an understanding of the Five Hindrances [See Note 1] – how, when one of them is present, you investigate it, you understand it, you accept its presence and you learn how to deal with it. Sometimes you can just tell it to go away and it goes; sometimes you just have to allow it to be there till it wears out.
We have subtle ways of being averse to that which is unpleasant and we tend not to be very honest about our intent…
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