..续本文上一页hamma, which are always effacing each other. For example: Eating food from the bowl spoils your digestion. Eating outside of the bowl improves your digestion and fattens the defilements -- but the Dhamma grovels and can”t get up because not-Dhamma has kept stomping on it in this way without mercy from every side all along.
Actually, when food is mixed in the bowl, it”s an excellent sermon. Before eating, we contemplate. While eating, we contemplate the incongruity of food and we”re bound to get unusual tactics for training the mind from the food that is mixed together -- because we don”t eat for enjoyment, for beautification, for pride, or for recklessness. We eat enough to keep the body going, to practice the holy life so as to take the defilements and the mental effluents -- poisons that are buried deep, cluttering the heart -- and wash them away by contemplating them aptly, using these ascetic practices as our tools.
Refusing food that is brought afterwards: This too is to prevent us from being greedy and forgetting ourselves. Even when there”s a lot of food -- more than enough -- greed, you know, has no land of enough. That”s good. This is good. The more food there is, the wider our mouth, the longer our tongue, the bigger our stomach. These are always overtaking the Dhamma without let-up. This is sweet. That”s aromatic. This is rich -- everything keeps on being good. There”s no brake on our wheels -- no mindfulness -- at all. Actually, the word ”good” here is a title conferred by defilement to erase our contentment with little, our fewness of wants as meditators, without our realizing it. This is why we tend to be carried away by the lullaby of the defilements” word ”good.”
As for whether the Dhamma is good or not, that”s another matter entirely. If the food is sweet, we know. If it”s aromatic, we know. If the mind is attached to the flavor, we have to try to know. To be careful. To thwart the defilement that wants to get a lot and eat a lot. The Dhamma has us take just enough, or just a little, in keeping with the Dhamma; to eat just enough for the body, or just a little, without being greedy for food or other items of consumption. We eat just enough to keep going. We aren”t stuffed and lethargic, aiming more at our beds than at the persistent effort to abandon defilement.
We monks, when we eat a lot and have a lot of extraneous gains, get fat and strong, but the mind forgets itself and doesn”t feel like meditating. This is good for nothing at all. We simply have food fattening the body, without any Dhamma to fatten the mind. The mind that used to have Dhamma to some extent gets thinner and more emaciated day by day. If it”s never had any Dhamma -- such as the Dhamma of concentration -- the situation is even worse. It has no goals at all. The ascetic practices thus have to put a brake on our greed for food so that the mind can have a chance to follow the Dhamma. The defilements won”t have to be fattened, the body will be light, the mind will be still and light while making its effort -- more easily stilled than when the belly is stuffed tight with food. This is something really embarrassing in meditating monks: the way we take our stomachs, instead of the Dhamma, to show off to the world.
Living in the forest: How does it differ from living in villages
It has to differ, which is why the Buddha taught us to live there. And living in an ordinary forest vs. living in a lonely forest: How does this feel to the person living there
For a person aiming at the Dhamma, there”s a big difference between living in a forest and living in a lonely forest, including the effort required to make the mind quiet. In a lonely forest, the mind becomes still easily because we aren”t complacent. We”re watchful over ourselves. Wherever …
《Things as They Are - Principles in the Practice, Principles in the Heart》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…