..续本文上一页 that kind of experience. You think that getting high is getting close. But the Unconditioned is as interesting as the space in this room. The space in this room – is it very interesting to look at

　　 It”s not to me: the space in this room is like the space in the other room. The things in this room might be interesting or uninteresting or whatever – good, bad, beautiful, ugly – but the space ... what is it

　　 There is nothing you can really say or think about it, it has no quality except being spacious. And to be able to be really spacious, one has to be patient.

　　As there is nothing one can grasp, one recognises space only by not clinging to the objects in the room. When you let go, when you stop your absorptions, judgements, criticisms and evaluations of the beings and the things in the room, you begin to experience the space of it. But that takes a lot of patience and humility. With conceit and pride we can form all our opinions ... about whether we like the Buddha

　　image or not, or the picture in the back, or the colour of the walls, whether we think the photograph of Ajahn Mun is an inspiring one, or the photograph of Ajahn Chah. But when we just sit here in the space ... the body starts becoming painful, we become restless, or sleepy. Then we endure, we watch and we listen. We listen to the mind – the complaining of the mind, the fears, the doubts and the worries – not in order to come up with some fascinating, interesting conclusions about ourselves as being anything, but just as a mere recognition, a bare recognition that all that arises passes away.

　　Buddha-wisdom is just that much: knowing the conditioned as the conditioned, and the Unconditioned as the Unconditioned. Buddhas rest in the Unconditioned, and no longer, unless it”s necessary, seek absorption into anything. They are no longer deluded by any conditions, and they incline to the Unconditioned, the spaciousness, the emptiness, rather than towards the changing conditions within the space.

　　In your meditation now, as you incline towards the emptiness of the mind, towards the spaciousness of the mind, your habitual grasping, fascination, revulsions, fears, doubts and worries about the conditions lessen. You begin to recognise they”re just things that come and go: they”re not-self, nothing to get excited about or depressed about, they are as they are. We can allow conditions to be just as they are, because they come and go – their nature is to go away, so we don”t have to make them go away. We”re free and patient and enduring enough to allow things to take their natural course. In this way, we liberate ourselves from the struggle, strife, and the confusion of the ignorant mind that has to spend all its time evaluating and discriminating, trying to hold onto something, trying to get rid of something.

　　So reflect on what I”ve said, and take all the time in the world to endure the unendurable. What seems to be unendurable is endurable if you are patient. Be patient with others and with the world as it is, rather than always dwelling on what”s wrong with it and how you”d like it to be if you had your way. Remember that the world happens to be as it is, and right now that”s the only way it can be. The only thing we can do is be patient with it. It doesn”t mean that we approve, or like it any the more. . . it means we can exist in it peacefully, rather than complaining, rebelling and causing more frictions and confusion, adding to the confusion through believing in our own confusion.

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　　THE PRACTICE OF METTA

　　For hatred is never appeasedby hatred in this world;only by kindnessis aversion appeased.This is the eternal law.

　　Dhammapada 5

　　THIS EVENING I would like to talk about the practice of me…

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