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Observations on the Art of Meditation by Translated from the Thai This work may be freely copied, printed, and redistributed
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Try keeping your awareness with the breath to see what the still
mind is like. It's very simple, all the rules have been laid out, but
when you actually try to do it, something resists. It's hard. But when
you let your mind think 108 or 1009 things, no matter what, it's all
easy. it's not hard at all. Try and see if you can engage your mind
with the breath in the same way it's been engaged with the
defilements. Try engaging it with the breath and see what happens.
See if you can disperse the defilements with every in-and-out breath.
Why is it that the mind can stay engaged with the defilements all day
long, and yet go for entire days without knowing how heavy or subtle
the breath is at all?
So try and be observant. The bright, clear awareness that stems
from staying focused on the mind at all times: Sometimes a strong
sensory contact comes and can make it blur and fade away with no
trouble at all. But if you can keep hold of the breath as a reference
point, that state of mind can be more stable and sure, more insured.
It has two fences around it. If there's only one fence, it can easily
break. K. Khao-suan-luang
Normally the mind isn't willing to stop and look, to stop and
know itself, which is why we have to keep training it continually so
that it will settle down from its restlessness and grow still. Let
your desires and thought-processes settle down. Let the mind take its
stance in a state of normalcy, not liking or disliking anything. To
reach a basic level of emptiness and freedom, you first have to take a
stance. If you don't have a stance against which to measure things,
progress will be very difficult. If your practice is hit-or-miss -- a
bit of that, a little of this -- you won't get any results. So the
mind first has to take a stance.
When you take a stance that the mind can maintain in a state of
normalcy, don't go slipping off into the future. Have the mind know
itself in the stance of the present: "Right now it's in a state of
normalcy. No likes or dislikes have arisen yet. It hasn't created any
issues. It's not being disturbed by a desire for this or that."
Then look on in to the basic level of the mind to see if it's as
normal and empty as it should be. If you're really looking inside,
really aware inside, then that which is looking and knowing is
mindfulness and discernment in and of itself. You don't need to
search for anything anywhere else to come and do your looking for you.
As soon as you stop to look, stop to know whether or not the mind is
in a state of normalcy, then if it's normal, you'll know immediately
that it's normal. If it's not, you'll know immediately that it's not.
Take care to keep this awareness going. If you can keep knowing
like this continuously, the mind will be able to keep its stance
continuously as well. As soon as the thought occurs to you to check
things out, you'll immediately stop to look, stop to know, without any
need to go searching for knowledge from anywhere else. You look, you
know, right there at the mind, and can tell whether or not it's empty
and still. Once you see that it is, then you investigate to see
how it's empty, how it's still. It's not the case that once
it's empty, that's the end of the matter; once it's still, that's the
end of the matter. That's not the case at all. You have to keep
watch of things, you have to investigate at all times. Only then will
you see the changing -- the arising and disbanding -- occurring in
that emptiness, that stillness, that state of normalcy. K. Khao-suan-luang
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