..续本文上一页ry. Go from the upwind side, he said, not from the downwind side. Don”t begin by looking at new corpse. Look at the old ones first. Keep contemplating the theme of your meditation and gradually move on until you know that the mind has enough mindfulness and discernment to contemplate a new corpse. Only then should you move on to a new corpse -- because a new corpse still has regular features. If the person who just died had beautiful features, it might cause desire to flare up, and you”d end up with an out-of-the-ordinary meditation theme, which is why you have to be careful.
The Buddha taught stage by stage, to visit the cemetery at intervals or in steps, and to contemplate it at intervals in keeping with your capabilities. He wouldn”t have you go storming right in, for that wouldn”t be fitting. He taught all the steps. Don”t be in a hurry to contemplate a corpse that hasn”t fallen apart or been bitten, a corpse that is still new and hasn”t swollen or grown foul. Don”t be in a hurry to approach such a corpse. And be especially careful with a corpse of the opposite sex -- that”s what he said -- until the mind is capable enough in its contemplation. Then you can contemplate anything.
Once we”ve contemplated death outside until we gain clear evidence, we then turn inward to contemplate the death in our own body until we catch on to the principle within the mind. Then the external cemetery gradually becomes unnecessary, because we”ve caught on to the principle within ourselves and don”t need to rely on anything outside. We contemplate our body to see it as a cemetery just like the external cemetery, both while it”s alive and after it dies. We can compare each aspect with the outside, and the mind gradually runs out of problems of its own accord.
The practice of not lying down: This is simply a way of training ourselves to make a great effort. It doesn”t mean that we take not-lying-down as a constant practice. We may resolve, for example, not to lie down tonight as our ascetic practice. This is a practice to be observed on occasion -- or you might resolve not to lie down for two or three nights running, depending on the resolution you make.
The practice of living in whatever dwelling is assigned to one: This is another ascetic practice. They”re all ways of getting monks to subdue the defilement of forgetting oneself.
A monk who observes the ascetic practices well, who is solid in his observance of them, is one who is solid in his practice, truly intent on the Dhamma, truly intent on subduing defilement. He”s not a person ordained to do nothing or who forgets himself. All thirteen ascetic practices are tools for subduing the defilements of those who follow them. There”s nothing about them that anyone can criticize -- except for Devadatta and his gang.
A monk who doesn”t observe any of these practices is an empty monk who forgets himself, who has nothing but the outside status of a monk. He wraps himself in a yellow robe, calls himself venerable -- and becomes haughty as a result. Even more so when he”s given ecclesiastical rank: If the heart is taken with that sort of thing, it”ll have to get excited over its shadow, without any need for backup music to get it going. The mind gets itself going through the power of the clay on its head, thinking that it has a crest. Since when has this defilement ever been willing to yield to anyone
People of this sort forget all the affairs of monks and become part of the world -- going even further than the world. Rank is given for the sake of encouraging good practice and conduct, but if the mind becomes haughty, rank becomes a way of destroying oneself, killing oneself with various assumptions. The King bestows ranks and names, this and that, and we assume them to be a crest. Actually…
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