..续本文上一页—as the Buddha says, “things in the world,” things that other people are doing—you miss what you”re doing. So you focus right here, get yourself in the present moment, not simply because the present moment is a good moment in and of itself, but because it”s the only place where you”re going to see your intentions in action. In this way, mindfulness puts you in a position to develop the second factor for Awakening: the discernment factor, called “analysis of qualities.” The qualities here are qualities in the mind, mental states, in the present. The food for this factor is appropriate attention to the skillful and unskillful states arising in the mind. You pay attention to what intentions you act on, trying to see what”s skillful and what”s not. And again the test for judging whether your actions are skillful is by their results: how much harm do they cause

　　 How much happiness

　　Discernment focuses on actions in terms of cause and effect, and works at developing greater and greater skill in acting, to the point where your actions are so skillful that they lead to the Deathless.

　　This may sound unusual, for we”re often taught that Buddhist discernment focuses on seeing things in terms of the Three Characteristics: inconstancy, stress, and not-self. We”re taught to look for the inconstancy, impermanence of things, and then to see that if they”re inconstant they must be stressful; if they”re stressful they must be not self. Well, those teachings have to be placed in context. That context is the act of judging the results of our actions. The Three Characteristics are designed so that we don”t content ourselves with only a middling level of skillfulness. In other words you might be skillful enough to have a good job, a nice place to live, a good family life—in other words, ordinary, mundane wellbeing. And a lot of people get satisfied right there. Or you might get satisfied with a nice state of concentration. You might be able to get the mind centered pretty much at will; things don”t disturb you too much. A lot of people stop right there—it”s good enough for them.

　　This is where the teachings on the Three Characteristics kick in, in judging the results of your actions: “Are they really satisfactory

　　 Do they give permanent results

　　” Well, no. If not, you”re setting yourself up for stress, suffering, disappointment. You”re setting yourself to latch onto things that aren”t totally under your control. In other words, they”re not yours. You can”t say, “O.K., body, don”t get old. Go back and get younger to the way you were, say, five years ago, ten years ago.” You can”t tell your painful feelings to turn into pleasure. You can”t arrange for only good and useful thoughts to come into your mind. The purpose of the Three Characteristics is so you don”t get complacent. They help in that process of heedfulness, so that your standards for judging your actions stay high. In judging the results of your actions, you”re not going to settle for anything that falls under the Three Characteristics. You”ll keeping trying to become more skillful in your actions until you gain results that aren”t inconstant or stressful, results where self and not-self don”t apply.

　　In our culture at present it”s considered psychologically unhealthy to set very high standards for yourself. What does that do

　　 It creates a society of very middling people, mediocre people, people who experience a mediocre level of happiness. The Buddha, though, was very demanding, first with himself, and then with his followers. He said, “Don”t satisfy yourself with just ordinary, everyday wellbeing,” because it”s not well all the time. If you”re going to set your sights, set your sights on something of more permanent value, what he called “the noble search”: the search for what doesn”t age, d…

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