..续本文上一页n an instant, as if he had cut it away for you. For me, at least, that”s the way it would be. Sometimes I would have left him for only five or six days when a problem started bothering me, and I couldn”t stand to wait another two or three days. If I couldn”t solve this sort of problem the moment it arose, then the next morning I”d have to head right back to him, because some of these problems could be very critical. Once they arose, and I couldn”t solve them myself, I”d have to hurry back to him for advice. But other problems aren”t especially critical. Even when they arise, you can wait. Problems of this sort are like diseases. When some diseases arise, there”s no need to hurry for a doctor. But with other diseases, if we can”t get the doctor to come, we have to go to the doctor ourselves. Otherwise our life will be in danger.
When these critical sorts of problems arise, if we can”t handle them ourselves, we have to hurry to find a teacher. We can”t just leave them alone, hoping that they”ll go away on their own. The results that can come from these problems that we don”t take to our teachers to solve: At the very least, we can become disoriented, deluded, or unbalanced; at worst, we can go crazy. When they say that a person”s meditation ”crashes,” it usually comes from this sort of problem that he or she doesn”t know how to solve -- isn”t willing to solve -- and simply lets fester until one of these two sorts of results appear. I myself have had these sorts of problems with my mind, which is why I”m telling you about them so that you can know how to deal with them.
The day Ven. Acariya Mun died, I was filled with a strong sense of despair from the feeling that I had lost a mainstay for my heart, because at the time there was still a lot of unsettled business in my heart, and it was the sort of knowledge that wasn”t willing to submit easily to anyone”s approaches if they weren”t right on target -- the way Ven. Acariya Mun had been, and that had given results -- with the spots where I was stuck and that I was pondering. At the same time, it was a period in which I was accelerating my efforts at full speed. So when Ven. Acariya Mun died, I couldn”t stand staying with my fellow students. My only thought was that I wanted to live alone. So I tried to find a place where I could stay by myself. I was determined that I would stay alone until every sort of problem in my heart had been completely resolved. Only then would I stay with others and accept students as the occasion arose.
After Ven. Acariya Mun”s death, I went to bow down at his feet and then sat there reflecting with dismay for almost two hours, my tears flowing into a pool at his feet. At the same time, I was pondering in my heart the Dhamma and the teachings he had been so kind to give me during the eight years I had lived with him. Living together for such a long time as this, even a husband and wife or parents and children who love one another deeply are bound to have some problems or resentments from time to time. But between Ven. Acariya Mun and the students who had come to depend on his sheltering influence for such a long time, there had never been any issues at all. The longer I had stayed with him, the more I had felt an unlimited love and respect for him. And now he had left me and all my well-intentioned fellow students. Anicca vata sankhara: Formations -- how inconstant they are! His body lay still, looking noble and more precious than my life, which I would have readily given up for his sake out of my love for him. My body was also still as I sat there, but my mind was in agitation from a sense of despair and my loss of his sheltering influence. Both bodies were subject to the same principle of the Dhamma -- inconstancy -- and followed the teaching that say…
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