..续本文上一页 gives a general outline to tell which kind of desire functions in which way, you have to learn how to watch your own desires carefully and honestly to tell which kind of desire they are.

　　As you keep analyzing the present under the framework of these four categories, you”re tracing the Buddha”s steps as he approached Awakening. Having focused on clinging as the functional handle on suffering, he looked for the conditions that formed its basis, and found them in three types of craving or thirst: sensual craving, craving for states of being, and craving to destroy states of being. Then he identified the cessation of suffering as total dispassion for, cessation of, and release from those forms of craving. And he identified the mental qualities and practices that would lead to that cessation—right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration—all of which, in potential form, can be found in the present moment.

　　So instead of simply throwing the present moment at you as a monolithic whole, the Buddha points your attention to four significant things you might find there. This is because there”s a pattern to the changes we experience from moment to moment. Change is never so random or radical that knowledge gained from the past is useless in the present. Concepts still serve an important purpose even though they may lack the freshness of the immediate here and now. When you stick your finger into fire, it”s bound to burn. If you spit into the wind, it”s bound to come back at you. Lessons like these are good to keep in mind. Although the patterns underlying suffering may be more tangled than those underlying fire and wind, still they are patterns. They can be learned and mastered, and the four categories of appropriate attention are crucial for getting a handle on those patterns and directing them to suffering”s end.

　　In practical terms, distinguishing among categories is worthwhile only if you have to treat each of the different categories in a different way. A doctor who formulates a theory of sixteen types of headaches only to treat them all with aspirin, for example, is wasting her time. But one who, noting that different types of headaches respond to different types of medications, devises an accurate test to differentiate among the headaches, makes a genuine contribution to medical science. The same principle applies to the categories of appropriate attention. As the Buddha stated in his first account of his Awakening, once he had identified each of the four categories, he saw that each had to be treated in a different way. Suffering had to be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation fully developed.

　　What this means is that, as a meditator, you can”t treat everything in the present moment in the same way. You can”t simply stay non‐reactive, or simply accept everything that comes. If moments of stillness and ease arise in the mind, you can”t just note them and let them pass. You should develop them to jhana— the full‐body pleasure and rapture of right concentration that forms the heart of the path. When mental suffering arises, you can”t just let it go. You should focus whatever powers of concentration and discernment you have to try to comprehend the clinging that lies at its heart.

　　The Buddha expands on this point in the discourses where he shows how appropriate attention should be applied to various aspects of the present. Applied to the five aggregates of form, feeling, and so forth, appropriate attention means viewing them in such a way as to induce a sense of dispassion that will help alleviate clinging. Applied to perceptions of beauty or irritation, it means viewing them in such a way as to keep the…

《Untangling the Present The Role of Appropriate Attention》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…