..续本文上一页In other words, if something seems attractive, you look for its unattractive side. If something seems unattractive, you look for its attractive side. As Ajaan Lee says, be a person with two eyes, not just one.

　　This is why we chant that passage for the contemplation of the body. It doesn”t tell us not to look at the body; it says to look more carefully at the body. Look at the parts that aren”t attractive to balance out the one-sided view that simply focuses on a few attractive details here and there and tends to blot out everything else in order to give rise to lust. After all, it”s not the body that”s productive of lust. The mind produces lust. Many times the mind wants to feel lust and so it goes out looking for something to incite the lust, and grabs hold of whatever little details it can find, even when those details are surrounded by all sorts of unclean things.

　　So keep watch on what comes out of the mind and what comes in. For lay people, this means being careful about the friends you associate with, the magazines you read, the TV you watch, the music you listen to. Be very careful about how you look at these things, how you listen to these things. After a while you find that this is not a case of restricting yourself so much as it is learning to see things more carefully, more fully, because you”re seeing both sides of whatever it is that used to seem solely attractive or solely unattractive. This takes some effort. You have to be more energetic in watching out for how you look and listen. But the benefit is that the mind is put in much better shape to meditate because you”re not filling it up with all kinds of garbage, poison, or junk food that”s going to harm it, weaken it, that”s going to get in the way. So many times when you sit down to meditate, if you”ve been careless about what”s been coming in and out of your mind, you find it”s like cleaning out a shed after a year of neglect. There”s just so much garbage in there that you spend almost the whole hour cleaning it out and then realize you have only five minutes for any real stillness at the end. So keep the mind clean from the beginning, all the time. Don”t let any garbage in the door or in the windows. That way you find that you have a much nicer place to sit down and settle in when you create your meditation home.

　　The third principle for creating a good environment for meditation in your life is restraint in your conversation. When I first went to stay with Ajaan Fuang he said that lesson number one in meditation is keeping control of your mouth. In other words, before you say anything, ask yourself: “Is this necessary

　　 Is this beneficial

　　 Is there a good reason to say this

　　” If there is, then go ahead and say it. If not, then just keep quiet. As he said, if you can”t control your mouth there”s no way that you”re going to control your mind. And when you make a habit of asking yourself this question, you find that very little conversation really is necessary. If you”re at work and you need to talk to your workers, okay, that counts as necessary. If you need to talk to your fellow workers in order to create a good atmosphere in the office, that also count as necessary speech. But so often social-grease speech goes beyond that. You start getting careless, running off with your mouth, and that turns into idle chatter, which is not only a waste of energy, but also a source of danger. Often the things people say that cause the most harm are when they”re just allowing whatever comes in their mind to go right out their mouth without any restraint at all.

　　Now if observing this principle means that you gain a reputation for being a quiet person, well that”s fine. You find that your words, if you”re more careful about doling them out, start taking on more worth. And at t…

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