..续本文上一页n the desire to kill somebody. But that is something you don”t act upon. You just recognise. You can recognise it”s only a condition and not ”self”, not a personal problem. Have any of you ever had any murderous impulses

　　 Wanting to kill somebody

　　 I have. I can understand murder. I”ve never murdered anybody – never came close – but I have certainly had murderous thoughts.

　　So where do those thoughts come from

　　 Is there something rotten inside me that I should start worrying about, or is it just the natural tendency of a mind – that when you feel totally repelled and averse to something, you try to annihilate it

　　 That”s natural enough. Murder is part of nature; it goes on all the time. Animals murder each other. Just listen some nights in the forest. You hear murders going on all the time: rabbits screaming as foxes grab their throats.

　　Murder is a natural inclination, it”s nothing abnormal; but for the moral, responsible human being, the religious seeker, although we might have murderous impulses, we do not act on them. Instead, we fully recognise these impulses as that – as impulses, as conditions. What I mean by ”recognising” is the realisation, ”They are just that” – not creating a problem, not making it complicated by saying, ”We shouldn”t have such impulses,” or ”l am a bad and evil man because such an impulse came through my mind,” and so start creating a neurosis around it. Just that clear realisation of it as it really is, because that”s what we can know directly, without speculation, without belief.

　　So that”s a realisation, isn”t it

　　 Realising the conditioned as the conditioned.

　　Now, as we are more at ease with the conditioned

　　 rather than deluded, helplessly reacting to conditions, absorbed into them, rejecting or annihilating them – we begin to be aware of the Unconditioned, the space of the mind. You think that conditions are everything. Conditions have to come from something, don”t they

　　 Since they are impermanent, where do they come from and what do they disappear into

　　 As you watch, you begin to feel or experience the emptiness or the wholeness or the Unconditioned – whatever word you use isn”t quite it. We say ”the Unconditioned”, that which is not born, does not die.

　　That”s realisation too, for those of you who have realised that. That”s reality. The conditioned is reality, but the quality or appearance of a condition is not reality, ultimate reality. It”s only a conventional appearance, the way things seem to be on a habitual, conventional level. Buddhist meditation is the practice of being awakened, being Buddha by recognising, by realising the way things really are, as you directly experience whatever it is: pain in your knees, a feeling of happiness, any sensation, thought, memory or emptiness ... without grasping, without selecting, picking or choosing. We develop the equanimous heart, the mind that is balanced, full, complete and whole, seeing things as they really are, no longer deluded by anything, by no-thing or by nothing.

　　When I talk about realisation, do you see what I mean

　　 It”s a realising. It”s not a searching for ”God”, or ”Ultimate Truth” as if it were some ”thing”. Look at the word itself. You say ”God”, and it makes it sound like some ”thing”, doesn”t it

　　 It does to me, anyway: the word ”God” sounds like something, somebody, as if it were a kind of condition. So, at the intellectual level, you can only go so far on the religious path, only as far as a belief. If you believe in words or ideas but never get beyond that, you”re still caught in an attachment to an idea about the truth rather than knowing the truth.

　　That”s why the Buddha did not teach any kind of doctrine or belief system. I hear Buddhists say, ”Buddhists don”t believe in God, and we don”t believe in the soul. If you”re a real …

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