..续本文上一页easiest to you. All count as ways in which your discernment is making itself ingenious and astute. When it”s sufficiently developed, you”ll be wise to all of these things, and they”ll be clear to your heart without your having to ask anyone else about them at all.

　　The more you investigate the body until you understand it clearly, the more clearly you will understand the affairs of feelings, mind, and phenomena, or feelings, labels, thought-formations, and cognizance, because all these things are whetstones for sharpening discernment step by step. It”s the same as when we bail water out of a fish pond: The more water we bail out, the more clearly we”ll see the fish. Or as when clearing a forest: The more vegetation we cut away, the more space we”ll see. The things I”ve just mentioned are the factors that conceal the mind so that we can”t clearly see the mental currents that flow out from the heart to its various preoccupations. When you use discernment to contemplate in this way, the currents of the heart will become plain. You”ll see the rippling of the mind clearly every moment it occurs -- and the heart itself will become plain, because mindfulness is strong and discernment quick. As soon as the mind ripples, mindfulness and discernment -- which are there in the same place -- will be able to keep track of it and resolve it in time. But be aware that in investigating the five khandhas or the four frames of reference (satipatthana), we aren”t trying to take hold of these things as our paths, fruitions, and nibbana. We”re trying to strip them away so as to see exactly what is the nature of the fish -- namely, the heart containing all sorts of defilements.

　　The more you investigate... You needn”t count how many times you do it in a day. Focus instead on how expert and agile you can make your mind at investigating. The more you investigate -- and the more skillful you get at investigating -- the more the astuteness of your discernment, which is sharp and flashing as it deals with you yourself and with conditions of nature in general, will develop until it has no limit. You”ll eventually have the knowledge and ability to realize that the conditions of nature you have been investigating in stages -- beginning with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations throughout the cosmos, and turning inward to your own body, feelings, labels, thought-formations, and cognizance -- are not defilements, cravings, or mental effluents in any way. The heart alone is what has defilements, cravings, and mental effluents with which it binds itself. Nothing else has the power to reach into the heart so as to bind it. Aside from the heart that is ignorant about itself -- searching for shackles for its neck and setting the fires of delusion to burn itself to no purpose -- there are no traces of enemies to the heart anywhere at all. We can compare this to a knife, which is a tool made to benefit intelligent people, but which a foolish person grabs hold of to kill himself and then accuses the knife of being his enemy. What precedent is there for making such a charge

　　 All conditions of nature in general are like useful tools, but a stupid person grabs hold of them to bind himself and then claims that the conditions of nature throughout the world have put their heads together to abuse him. Who can decide such a case

　　 -- for the plaintiff has already killed himself. If we decide that the instrument of death loses the case to the dead plaintiff, what sort of vindication is the plaintiff going to gain to give him any satisfaction

　　The heart that”s deluded about itself and about its own affairs is in the same sort of predicament. Thus when discernment begins to penetrate in to know the conditions of nature -- beginning with the body -- it will also…

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