..续本文上一页 is one stage: When the mind hasn”t yet made a complete break — when it doesn”t yet have adequate strength — it will start out by knowing at intervals in this way.
The next time you investigate, you know in this way again and it keeps seeping in, seeping in, until your knowledge on this level becomes adequate and lets go. Like duckweed that keeps moving in, moving in to cover the water: After you spread it apart, the duckweed comes moving in again, and you spread it apart again. This is how it is when discernment investigates these things, making forays into these things or unraveling them. As soon as discernment retreats, subtle defilements come moving in again, but after you have investigated many, many times, the duckweed — the various types of defilement — begins to thin out. Your investigation of these phenomena becomes more and more effortless, more and more proficient, more and more subtle, step by step, until it reaches a point of sufficiency and the mind extricates itself automatically, as I have already explained.
The mind — when its mindfulness and discernment are sufficiently strong — can extricate itself once and for all. This knowledge is clear to it, without any need to ask anyone else ever again. The heart is sufficient, in and of itself, and sees clearly as ”sanditthiko” in the full sense of the term, as proclaimed by the Dhamma, without any issues to invite contradiction.
A third point: Sometimes, when investigating the body, the mind makes contact with a feeling of pain, and so turns to investigate it. This all depends on the mind”s temperament. In the same way, when we turn to investigate the feeling, the mind sends us back to the body. This is because the body and the feeling are interrelated and so must be investigated together at the same time, depending on what comes naturally to us at that particular time, that particular feeling, and that particular part of the body.
When the mind investigates a feeling of pain, the pain is nothing more than ”a pain.” The mind looks at it, fixes its attention on it, examines it, and then lets it go right there, turning to look at the body. The body is the body. The feeling is a feeling. Then we turn to look at the mind: The mind is the mind. We investigate and experiment to find the truth of the body, the feeling, and the mind — all three of which are the troublemakers — until we have a solid understanding of how each has its own separate reality.
When the mind pulls back from the body and the feeling, neither the body nor the feeling appears. All that appears is simple awareness. When a mental current flashes out to know, the feeling then appears as a feeling. These currents are the means by which we know what phenomenon has appeared, because this knowledge gives a meaning or a label to the phenomenon as being like this or like that.
If we”re going to think in a way that binds us to ”ourself” — in other words, in the way of the origin of stress — we have to make use of this act of labeling as what leads us to grasp, to become attached, to make various assumptions and interpretations. If we”re going to think in the way of discernment, we have to make use of the discernment that is this very same current of the mind to investigate, contemplate, until we see clearly by means of discernment and can withdraw inwardly in a way that is full of reason — not in a way that is lazy or weak, or that is groveling in abject surrender with no gumption left to fight.
In investigating feeling, when a sañña flashes out, mindfulness is alert to it. If our investigation of feeling has become refined and precise, then when a sañña simply flashes out, we know. When sankharas form, they are just like fireflies: blip! If no sañña labels them or p…
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