..续本文上一页of mindfulness acts like the bank of a river, keeping discernment from going out of bounds. Discernment that goes out of bounds turns into labels. If it”s true discernment, it doesn”t go out of bounds, because it has mindfulness in charge.
If you use discernment to focus within the body, things will catch your attention at every step. Inconstancy (anicca), stress (dukkha), and not-selfness (anatta): One or another of these three characteristics is sure to appear, because all of them are always there in the nature of the body. When mindfulness and discernment reach this level, the mind and its objects will come into the present. You should know that no Dhamma has ever appeared because of past or future affairs. It appears only because of the present. Even if you contemplate matters of the past of future, you have to bring them into the scope of the present if you hope to gain any benefit from them. For example, if you see someone die, refer it to yourself: ”I”ll have to die as well.” As soon as the word ”I” appears, things come running back to you and appear in the present. Matters of past and future, if you want them to be useful, must always be brought into the present. For example, ”Yesterday that person died. Today or tomorrow I may die in the same way.” With the ”I”, you immediately come into the present. External matters have to be brought inward; matters ahead and behind have to be brought into the present if they are to serve any benefit. If you always use mindfulness and discernment to contemplate the conditions of nature -- such as the body -- all around you, then no matter what, things won”t lie beyond your grasp. You”ll have to understand them clearly.
In investigating phenomena, such as the body, analyze them into their parts and aspects, and use your discernment to contemplate them until they are clear. Don”t let thoughts or allusions drag you away from the phenomenon you are investigating, unless you are using thoughts as a standard for your discernment to follow when it doesn”t yet have enough strength for the investigation. Keep mindfulness firmly in place as a protective fence -- and you will come to understand clearly things you never understood before, because the conditions of nature are already there in full measure. You don”t have to go looking anywhere for inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness. They are qualities filling your body and mind at all times. The only problem is that mindfulness and discernment haven”t been able to ferret them out to make them your own wealth. But if you are set on investigating observantly day and night -- thinking not about how many times you do it in a day or night, but taking the skill and agility of your discernment as your standard -- keeping mindfulness as a steady flow in the present and radiating discernment all around you, then whatever makes a move in any direction, mindfulness and discernment will follow right after it. When we have trained mindfulness and discernment to be sufficient to the task like this, how will their foes be able to withstand them
After all, we haven”t made it our purpose to encourage such things as restlessness and distraction. We”re trying at all times to practice the Dhamma -- the means for stopping such things -- so as to keep abreast of the movements of the bandits always lying in wait to rob us at any moment.
We must thus force the mind to investigate in the way we”ve mentioned. Ferret out each part of the body so as to see it clearly, from the outside into the inside, or take just the inside and bring it out for a look. Look forwards and backwards, up and down, separating the body into pieces. You can imagine fire burning it into ashes and dust, or whatever other ways you can imagine it scattered into pieces, depending on what comes …
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