..续本文上一页es we wanted to; the mind was saying, "What a rip-off! What are we paying this man all this money for

　　"

　　Our practice was right there; the tentmaker was our monastery. So without denying the necessity and the challenge of living in the world, we also recognise the inner world. If we view those two worlds skilfully we find a balance between conventional reality and the inner work. Then the tentmaker becomes a person with whom I learn to stand up for what is right, rather than putting my tail between my legs and running away. He helps me learn to be patient.

　　This inner world is what we work with on a retreat. Although we should not forget the conventional world - Buddhism is not just a weird experience called retreat! We cannot spend our life on a retreat, we have to live in the world. The gift of a retreat, of course, is that we don”t have to do so much social re-organising. If the toast is burned, it”s burned; we don”t sue the cooks. So we work with whatever we have, and we have the freedom to observe. A retreat offers the opportunity to look at suffering and non-suffering.

　　"The hub of the wheel is the centre of knowing and being; this can take it all. This is where the unconditioned lies."

　　Maybe in your own lives you have difficulties to deal with - mortgages or recalcitrant teenagers

　　 Don”t try to solve those problems now! Instead, I suggest you work with that very feeling of anxiety or worry as a present condition. This is the skill of moving from the conventional, social level of "me", as a person, to the impersonal level of basic Dhamma elements. This level of the teaching then breaks down our conscious experience to fundamentals which we can look at, no matter what our social situation is. For example, thought - mental activity - is one of the fundamental things we have been looking at. If this activity is always kept on the personal level, it”s, "Well, what am I going to do tomorrow

　　 I don”t know... We need to do this; but what if we do that

　　 Yes, let”s try this, then we”ll do that... " All that is on the personal level - but on the Dhamma level, this is simply planning, worry, thought.

　　If we remain on the personal level, there will always be this to-ing and fro-ing - struggling. It is only on that impersonal level of consciousness that we can understand not-self anatta. It”s not that life itself is impersonal - we still have our inpidual kamma, but it is on this level that we can penetrate to a liberating understanding, by passing beyond ignorance. We are not going to avoid the tentmakers and the joiners altogether; life is always going to be that way.

　　There are many teachings that can help us; for example the Four Noble Truths or Dependent Origination paticca-samuppada. Sometimes, we might feel over-whelmed if we try to figure these out, but in time we come to see that it”s a really beautiful package, intellectually very lovely. More than that, these teachings encourage us to look in the right place, and show us the path to freedom. They take us away from the personal situation with the joiner or the tentmaker, directly to a fundamental sense of stress. So we develop the ability to examine on this level all the time. If I can look at the "aggro" I feel towards the joiner and take it out of the personal realm by simply looking at it as stress, then I will be able to understand any "aggro" I may have for the rest of my life and know how to deal with it.

　　Last night we talked about craving tanha, the sense of wanting: wanting to become, wanting to get rid of, or simply wanting something essentially nice. Craving is a fundamental human characteristic, neither right nor wrong, just part of the package. The three kinds of tanha - bhava tanha, vibhava tanha and kama tanha - should be understood.

　　Bhava tanha is the cr…

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