..续本文上一页e between the end of the out-breath and the beginning of the in-breath. It is very calming but we don”t tend to notice it, because we want excitement – we seek to react to difficult or frightening things.

　　The practice of vedanupassana requires refined attention; taking this theme for contemplation to break down the whole self-structure. So no matter what you may be as a self, as a person, suggest to yourself that today you are going to simply try to notice attraction and repulsion in the mind. That way you are contemplating Dhamma, instead of just being a person. Then ask, "What is it that knows that which you are noticing

　　" That knowing is where we find our freedom. This structure is very analytical, but in Buddhism we need a certain amount of analysis.

　　You have a body with senses; you live in an environment with which you have contact; that contact produces pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings. Right there is where you work. Then you have tanha: wanting the pleasant, not wanting the unpleasant, and the sleepiness and delusion around the neutrality. When that wanting arises, there might be grasping of it, believing in it; you really think that if you follow it you will be truly happy, or that to get rid of it will be the right thing to do. So there is belief in the wanting, and the grasping upadana. From the grasping comes the sense of becoming; one gets involved in this whole process and is reborn into the new situation. From there emerges the sense of dissatisfaction, and you get lost in that: "Oh, here I go again!"

　　Notice how birth and death work. You are bored with meditation, your knees are hurting, you want to get up and do something interesting. Then we get a pleasant beautiful, creative idea that is really going to help the world. Rather than simply noticing this as a pleasant idea, craving develops to keep it going. We start to think, we grasp the craving and them we create something. This is where we seek rebirth; we go on from one to the next to another. It is important to notice this, because at that point we have a choice. If we can see craving clearly and not grasp it, we save ourselves a rebirth, and experience the silence of the mind. If, on the other hand we choose to be reborn then out next option will be a death. Death is when the dancing will not stop; it continues on and on in the mind. That is the decline the kamma of attachment; rather that face that decline into despair and boredom, we seek an alternative rebirth. That is why boredom and disillusionment are so very important. If we can simply bear to be with the ending of a cycle, that acceptance can take us beyond rebirth.

　　So we choose. Sometimes we will be able to notice that movement towards the pleasant, and we will say, "No, I don”t really need that". At other times we will get caught up with the pleasure. Then we will experience its decline, and have to bear with that. Remember that if you are reborn, you will need to die again!

　　Nibbana, liberation, is that which is not born and does not die, it carries us beyond the cycle - not in terms of whether we will be a rabbit in the next life - but right now. If you get that principle right, it will always work for us in this way.

《The End of Rebirth》全文阅读结束。