..续本文上一页tilde;ña is what hoodwinks the heart, making it fall for labels until it can”t see the harm they wreak in the five khandhas. Sañña is the primary culprit. Meditation circles are well aware of it, which is why they warn us.
When the mind has things like this burying it, obstructing it, and coercing it, it can”t display even the least little bit of ingenious strategy, because they have it overpowered. For this reason, we have to force the mind to investigate and unravel its various preoccupations so that it can see its way clear. Its various labels and interpretations are gradually peeled off or removed, step by step. Mindfulness and discernment are then freed to think and develop more of their own strength. When we reach the stage where mindfulness and discernment come out to investigate, nothing can stay hidden. Mindfulness and discernment will probe into everything, into every nook and cranny, understanding continually more and more — engrossed in their contemplations and explorations, engrossed in the results that keep appearing — because to probe with discernment is a direct way of cutting defilement away so that we see results, step by step, without pause.
Concentration is simply a tactic for herding the various defilements into one focal point so that we can rectify or destroy them more easily. To put it simply, concentration is strength for discernment. When the mind gathers in the levels of concentration, it is content to work from various angles in the area of mindfulness and discernment. When it”s working, the results of its work appear. The defilements fall away one after another. The heart becomes engrossed in the results of its work and investigates even more, never having its fill, like spring water flowing continually throughout the rainy season.
So focus right here. Don”t go anywhere else. The Noble Truths are right here in the body and heart. Ultimately, they come down solely to the heart. Probe down into the heart. How is it that we don”t know
Where did the Buddha know
He knew right here in the area of these four Noble Truths. He knew in the area of these four foundations of mindfulness, which lie in the bodies and hearts of us all. The Buddha knew right here and he taught right here. So investigate to see clearly right here. Defilement, the paths, the fruitions, and nibbana lie right here. Don”t imagine them to be anywhere else. You”ll simply be pouncing on shadows outside of yourself and grasping fistfuls of water, without ever meeting with the real Dhamma.
In focusing your investigation when a feeling arises in the mind — as for feelings in the body, we”ve discussed them at great length already — when a feeling of stress or pain, such as a mood of distress, arises within the mind, focus on that feeling of distress. Take that feeling of distress as the target of your watchfulness and investigation. Keep alert to it. Don”t set up any desires for it to vanish once it has appeared in the mind. Make yourself aware that the feeling of distress arising in the mind has to have a cause. It can”t just come floating in without a cause. If you don”t know its cause, focus on the result — the distress itself — as the heart”s preoccupation. Keep aware right at the heart. Focus on contemplating and unraveling the feeling of distress right there. Don”t let go of that feeling to go looking or investigating elsewhere. Otherwise you will make the mind waver, without ever being able to establish a foothold and it will become shiftless and irresolute.
However long that distress will have to last, keep looking at it to see if it”s really constant, solid, and lasting. Your mind is something more lasting than the feeling, so why won”t it be able to investigate it
The feeling arises only for a period and the…
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