With
this article we come to the last and final of the series in Inward and Outward
Realities. In the previous article, I discussed practicing the Dharma. Those
who practice the Dharma should train themselves to understand in the following
stages:
The
training that is easy to learn, gives immediate results, and is suitable for
every time, every place, for people of every age and either sex, is to study in
the school of this body — a fathom long, a cubit wide, and a span thick — with
its perceiving mind in charge. This body has many things, ranging from the
crude to the subtle, that are well worth knowing.
The
steps of the training:
1.
To begin with, know that the body is composed of various physical properties,
the major ones being the properties of earth, water, fire, and wind; the minor
ones being the aspects that adhere to the major ones: things like color, smell,
shape, etc.
These
properties are unstable (inconsistent), stressful, and unclean. If you look
into them deeply, you will see that there's no substance to them at all. They
are simply impersonal conditions, with nothing worth calling "me" or
"mine." When you can clearly perceive the body in these terms, you
will be able to let go of any clinging or attachment to it as an entity, your
Self, someone else, this or that.
2.
The second step is to deal with mental phenomena (feelings, perceptions,
thought-formations, and consciousness). Focus on keeping track of the truth
that these are characterized by arising, persisting, and then disbanding. In
other words, their nature is to arise and disband, arise and disband,
repeatedly. When you investigate to see this truth, you will be able to let go
of your attachments to mental phenomena as entities, as your Self, someone
else, this or that.
3.
Training on the level of practice doesn't simply mean studying, listening, or
reading. You have to practice so as to see clearly with your own mind in the
following steps:
a.
Start out by brushing aside all external concerns and turn to look inside at
your own mind until you can know in what ways it is clear or murky, calm or
unsettled. The way to do this is to have mindfulness and self-awareness in
charge as you keep aware of the body and mind until you have trained the mind
to stay firmly in a state of normalcy, i.e., neutrality.
b.
Once the mind can stay in a state of normalcy, you will see mental formations
or preoccupations in their natural state of arising and disbanding. The mind
will be empty, neutral, and still — neither pleased nor displeased — and will
see physical and mental phenomena as they arise and disband naturally, of their
own accord.
c.
When the knowledge that there is no self to any of these things becomes
thoroughly clear, you will meet with something that lies further inside, beyond
all suffering and stress, free from the cycles of change — deathless — free
from birth as well as death, since all things that take birth must by nature
age, grow ill, and die.
d.
When you see this truth clearly, the mind will be empty, not holding onto
anything. It won't even assume itself to be a mind or anything at all. In other
words, it won't latch onto itself as being anything of any sort. All that
remains is a pure condition of Dharma.
e.
Those who see this pure condition of Dharma in full clarity are bound to grow
disenchanted with the repeated sufferings of life. When they know the truth of
the world and the Dharma throughout, they will see the results clearly, right
in the present, that there exists that which lies beyond all suffering. They
will know this without having to ask or take it on faith from anyone, for the
Dharma is paccattam, i.e., something really to be known for oneself. Those who
have seen this truth within themselves will attest to it always.
