..续本文上一页ire, then let me know. I won”t accept your giving in like this. To give in like this is just a ruse. I won”t go along with it.”

　　I kept on contemplating every facet to find which facet would make the mind feel desire, to see at which moment the desire would arise, so that I could then take whatever might appear and focus on it as the object to be contemplated and uprooted. The night got later and later, and I kept on focusing in — but I wasn”t focused on contemplating unattractiveness at that point. I was contemplating nothing but attractiveness for those entire four days, because I was determined to find an approach to test and learn the truth of the situation.

　　After about 9 or 10 p.m. the night of the fourth day, there was a flickering, as if the mind was going to feel lust for that beautiful body that had been clinging to me constantly during that period. It was a peculiar sort of flickering. Mindfulness was alert to it, because mindfulness was there all the time. As soon as the flickering appeared, I kept encouraging it. ”See that flickering

　　 We”ve caught the criminal who has been in hiding. See

　　 So how can it be gone

　　 If it”s gone, why does it have to behave like this

　　” I focused in on it. That flickering was simply a condition of the mind that appeared only slightly, with no effect on the body at all. It was inside the mind. When I encouraged it, it would flicker again, which proved that it wasn”t all gone.

　　So now that it wasn”t all gone, what was I supposed to do

　　I now had to take a new approach, by alternating my tactics. Since this was a path I had never taken before, something I had never known before, it was very difficult to proceed. As soon as I”d focus on unattractiveness, attractiveness would vanish in the flash of an eye. It would vanish extremely fast because I was already adept at unattractiveness. As soon as I”d focus on unattractiveness, the body would turn immediately into a pile of bones, so I would have to focus on attractiveness to make it beautiful again. I kept changing back and forth between the two this way. This took a long time because it was a path I had never trod. I didn”t understand, so I had to try out different methods until I could be sure and settle on one path or another.

　　I finally came to the truth when I was sitting visualizing an image of unattractiveness right in front of me. The mind focused on unattractiveness standing still right there. I wouldn”t let it move or change in any way. I had it stay right there like that. If it was an image of bones wrapped in skin or a pile of bones with the skin removed, I had it stay right there in front of me. The mind stared right at it, with mindfulness focused, waiting to learn the truth from that image of unattractiveness, to see what it would do, how this pile of unattractiveness would move or change.

　　However I stared at it, that”s how it would stay, because of the adeptness of the mind. If I wouldn”t have it destroy the image, it wouldn”t destroy it. I forced it not to destroy it. If I had focused on destroying it, it would have been demolished in an instant because of the speed of discernment. But I didn”t let the mind destroy it. I had it stay right there in front of me in order to exercise and experiment to find the truth of which I could be certain.

　　As I kept focusing in, the image of unattractiveness standing there before me was gradually sucked into the mind, absorbed into the mind, so that I finally realized that unattractiveness was a matter of the mind itself. The state of mind that had fixed on the idea of unattractiveness sucked it in — which meant that attractiveness and unattractiveness were simply a matter of the mind deceiving itself.

　　The mind then let go in a flash. It let go of external unattractiveness. It understood now …

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