..续本文上一页tastes, tactile sensations, and the various things of the world in general have been cut away from the mind by using continual mindfulness and discernment to the point where we have no more doubts. It”s as if the outside world didn”t exist. There remain only the preoccupations that form — blip, blip, blip — in the mind. This is where the rebellious monarch lies. The one who concocts and creates, the one who struggles and writhes restlessly in big and little ways, lies right here.

　　Before, we didn”t know in what ways the mind was writhing. All we knew were the results that appeared, unsatisfactory every time, giving us nothing but suffering and stress, which no one in the world wants. Our own heart was so burdened with stress that it couldn”t find a way out, because it had no inkling of how to remedy things. But now that we know, these things gradually disappear so that we know and see more and more clearly at the mind, which is where unawareness is performing as an actor, as an issue-maker, here inside us. It can”t find anything to latch onto outside, so it simply acts inside. Why doesn”t it latch on

　　 Because mindfulness and discernment understand, and have it surrounded. So how could it latch onto anything

　　 All it does is go ”blip, blip, blip” in the mind. We now see it more clearly and focus our investigation on it, scratch away at it, dig away at it with mindfulness and discernment until we have it surrounded every time the mind makes a move. There are no longer any lapses in alertness as there were in the first stages when mindfulness and discernment were still stumbling and crawling along.

　　Our persistence at this level is no longer a matter of every activity. It becomes a matter of every mental moment in which the mind ripples. Mindfulness and discernment have to know both when the rippling comes out and when it vanishes — and so there are no issues that can arise in the moment the mind is fashioning a thought, an assumption, or an interpretation. This is because our rocket-fast mindfulness and discernment can keep up with things. As soon as a rippling occurs, we know. When we know, it vanishes. No issues can arise or connect. They vanish the moment they appear. They can”t branch out anywhere because the bridges to outside matters have been cut by mindfulness and discernment.

　　When mindfulness and discernment are exploring earnestly, relentlessly, unflaggingly, they want to know, to see, and to destroy whatever is hazardous. ”What causes us to take birth as inpiduals and beings

　　 What leads us to wander in the round of rebirth

　　 What are the causes, what are the conditions that connect things

　　 Where are they right now

　　” This is called scratching away with mindfulness and discernment, digging away at the mind of unawareness. There is no way we can escape knowing, seeing, and severing the important cause and condition that creates suffering and stress for the beings of the world: namely, the defilement of unawareness that has infiltrated the mind in an insidious way. See

　　 This is the power of mindfulness, discernment, conviction, and persistence on this level, something that meditators never imagine will be possible to this extent.

　　This is where defilements begin to reveal themselves, because they have no place to hide. They no longer have the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations in which they used to hole up, because the bridges have been cut. Their only hideout is in the mind: The mind is the hideout of unawareness. When we go ransacking through the mind until everything is smashed completely to smithereens with nothing left — in the same way that we used discernment to investigate phenomena in general — then when the mind of unawareness is ransacked in this way, ultimately the supreme defilement — unawarene…

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