At the End of One's Rope
  
  
  Wherever there's religion, it's cool and peaceful.  Wherever a person 
  practicing the religion is lacking, it's hot and troubled.  If there's 
  no reli-gion, the heart is as hot as fire.  Whenever there's 
  religion--mindfulness and discernment--investigating, looking after 
  the heart, the heart is cool.
  
       When we first begin suppressing the rebels in the heart, we 
  suffer--because for the most part we're defeated by them--but at least 
  we still have the strength to fight with them.  Even though we may 
  lose out to them sometimes, it's better than groveling before them in 
  abject surrender with no way of putting up a fight at all.
  
       The practice in the area of the mind falls into stages--and there 
  are bound to be stages where it's complicated and difficult.  
  Especially at the beginning: It's difficult in that we can't see 
  beginnings or ends, causes or effects.  We don't understand anything 
  at all.  When we take the rudiments of Dhamma we have gained from the 
  texts or our teachers and put them into practice, sometimes right, 
  sometimes wrong, this is when it's very difficult.  The desire to know 
  and see is very strong, but the heart isn't willing to comply.  
  
       This is one kind of anxiety I've been through myself.  It 
  overflowed the heart.  To put it simply, it was as if the desire to 
  see and know the Dhamma in the heart was ready to overflow its banks.  
  But when practicing, the heart didn't comply with the desire to know 
  and see--and that had me upset and disappointed.  Sometimes I'd be 
  sitting and the tears would flow because of my self-recriminations: 
  'You don't have any potential to speak of.  You've ordained simply to 
  be a dead weight on the religion.  Here you are sitting in meditation 
  and can't find a way in or a way out.  You're just sitting buried in a 
  heap of suffering.'  The mind would think in all sorts of ways out of 
  self-pity--that I was a hopeless case, that I didn't have any 
  potential to speak of, didn't have the potential for the extraordinary 
  levels of Dhamma, didn't have any potential at all--total confusion!
  
       Actually, my practice wasn't yet right.  I was aiming at the 
  results--the income--without paying attention to whether I was doing 
  the work right or wrong.  The desire was strong, but when it wasn't 
  fulfilled, it caused suffering.  Had I paid some attention to whether 
  my practice was right or wrong, I might have come to my senses enough 
  to have evaluated things, to have abandoned some of my bull-headed 
  attachments, or to have cut back on my desires so that the suffering 
  would have become lighter.
  
       But whenever I'd meditate, whatever I'd focus on, all I wanted 
  was to know and see the paths, the fruitions and nibbana in line with 
  what I imagined them to be--heaven was like this, the  Brahma worlds 
  were like that, nibbana was like this.  I'd imagine.  Speculate.  The 
  desire was fierce.  I wanted to know, to see, to gain release from 
  suffering, but my practice wasn't making any headway.  All there was, 
  was simple desire: I would simply sit wanting, lie down wanting, walk 
  wanting, stand wanting.  I'd sit in meditation --wanting--but the mind 
  wasn't working at its meditation.  It just wanted.  I'd be doing 
  walking meditation, but the mind simply wanted--so much so that I'd 
  forget what I was doing.  I wasn't getting any results because there 
  weren't enough of the causes which would bring about the things I 
  aimed for, so how could I have reached the goal I aimed for?  This is 
  something I've been through.  The work of meditation struck me as 
  being more difficult than any other work.
  
  
  
       I'd be meditating, 'buddho, buddho, buddho,' but the desire would 
  always be getting in the way--because I wanted to know, I wanted the 
  mind to be like this or that, and so I'd get engrossed in my desires 
  and forget my work of meditation until I didn't know where 'buddho' 
  had gone. As a result, I didn't get anywhere at all.  I was constantly 
  feeling dreary and disappointed.  This is the way things always were 
  in the heart.
  
       But even so, this wasn't anything compared to the stage at which 
  the mind regressed.  When the mind regresses, it's really upsetting 
  because you used to see results.  You used to gain a sense of ease, 
  mental stillness and peace appearing clearly as a solid foundation in 
  the heart, but now it's deteriorated.  This makes the heart really 
  agitated--so much so that there is nothing to hold it in check.  
  Luckily, though, in spite of my agitation, I didn't retreat.  I was 
  simply determined to see things through.  I wasn't willing to retreat 
  or to slacken my efforts.
  
       The reason why the mind regressed and couldn't make a comeback 
  was the same sort of thing--desire, nothing mysterious.  The mind 
  wanted to know and see as it had before, but its work wasn't 
  coordinated or continuous.  All there was, was desire.  No matter how 
  much you desire, it doesn't give any results, because that would go 
  against the principle of causality.  If you don't make the causes as 
  complete as they should be, how can you expect to know as you want?  
  You can't.  Sitting, I'd be agitated.  Lying down, I'd be agitated.  
  I'd go into the forest, into the mountains, when the mind had 
  regressed, and nothing was any good at all.  I couldn't figure it out.
  
       Of the anxieties I've felt in my life as a monk, the anxiety I 
  felt during that period was the worst.  I was agitated because of my 
  desire to attain.  I was upset because the mind had regressed and 
  nothing I could do would bring it back.  At first it had regressed 
  just a little bit, and then it kept regressing, regressing until it 
  was all gone.  Nothing was left, not one red cent.  It was as if I had 
  never meditated at all.
  
       When I'd sit in this state, I was as agitated as if I were on 
  fire--because of the desire.  The disappointment that my attainments 
  had floated away and disappeared, plus the desire to get them back:  
  These two things came thronging in at the same time and so were really 
  strong.  Wherever I stayed was unsatisfactory and no help at all.  
  Even though I was suffering, I would simply keep suffering.  I didn't 
  know any way out.  Even though I wanted, I would simply keep wanting.  
  I didn't know how to get my concentration back.  All there was 
  desire--regret for the things that had once appeared to my surprise 
  and amazement, but now were gone.  There was nothing but 
  disappointment filling the heart,  nothing but simple desire, and it 
  couldn't bring back the Dhamma which had disappeared.  Finally I came 
  to feel despair--for everything.  This was when the mind gave up on 
  its desire.
  
       As for the results I had wanted, well, I had wanted them for a 
  long time.  As for the suffering, I had suffered immensely because of 
  the desires, but hadn't gained any-thing from them.  So now I wouldn't 
  have anything to do with them.  I'd throw them all out.  If I was 
  going to know, I'd know.  If not, so be it.  All I was after was 
  'buddho'.  Whatever the mind was going to think, I wouldn't be 
  will-ing to let mindfulness lapse.  'Get with it, then.  Can it really 
  be that I'm not going to know?  Whatever's going to happen, I'm ready 
  for it.'  
  
       As soon as I gave up on my desires, they were no longer so 
  fierce, and so the suffering gradually lessened.  I set my mind on my 
  work. Wherever I was, I would keep repeating, 'buddho, buddho, 
  buddho.'  It had always been a trait with me to be earnest:  Whatever 
  I'd do, I would really do it, and wouldn't just play around.  Now I 
  got to see this trait in action.  I didn't let up in my repetition of 
  'buddho'. Whether walking or doing my chores, I wouldn't be willing to 
  let it lapse.  I'd keep making the effort.  While sweeping the 
  monastery compound, I would try to keep up my guard --until the mind 
  let its work lapse for a moment.  I was alert to the fact, and the 
  mind got right back to work.  'There. Now that's the way it should 
  be.'
  
       After giving up its desires, the mind was no longer involved with 
  the past.  It stayed in the circle of the present, and would do 
  nothing but repeat or meditate on 'buddho' Whether or not it would get 
  any results would depend on what 'buddho' would grant.  Finally the 
  mind became still, and 'buddho' was no longer necessary, so I could 
  let go of the meditation word at that moment--and at that point the 
  mind was willing to settle down.  Before, it hadn't been willing.
  
       When the mind had settled down in stillness, there was no need to 
  repeat the word 'buddho.'  All that remained was simple 
  awareness--clear and conspicuous--so the mind stayed with that simple 
  awareness.  As soon as it withdrew, I would start pumping 'buddho' 
  back in.  I had no hopes, because I had already hoped in the past.  I 
  had no hopes for what would happen, no hopes for what the results 
  would be.  I had already hoped in the past, and it hadn't given me any 
  decent results at all.  I had seen the harm of hopes--the sort of 
  hollow, unreasonable hopes which won't do the work, and look only for 
  the results.
  
       So, now I was going to do nothing but work, nothing but work: 
  repeating 'buddho' without letting up even for a moment.  Once the 
  mind had received proper nourishment and care, it became 
  still--gradually more and more still, more and more steady, until it 
  reached the level it had been before it had visibly regressed.
  
       What was strange was that when it reached its old level, I still 
  abandoned my hopes.  'If it's going to regress.  I've had enough of 
  trying to resist it by using desire, which hasn't served any purpose, 
  not the least little bit.  So, how-ever the mind is going to regress, 
  let it regress, but I won't abandon "buddho".  I'm always going to 
  keep at it.' 
  
       When it reached the day when it would normally regress, it didn't 
  regress!  That made me a lot more sure of the causes.  So I stepped up 
  the causes--the repetition of  'buddho'--even more, without stopping.  
  I would stop only when the mind gathered in stillness.  The mind 
  became pro-gressively more and more firm.  Wherever I'd sit, it would 
  be bright.  Light.  Completely clear. I was sure of myself:  'Now it's 
  not going to regress.'  After one day, two days, one month, two 
  months, it still didn't regress.  
  
       Before, the mind would regress after two or three days.  After 
  two or three days it would come down with a crash, with nothing left 
  to show for itself.  I would have to keep trying to care for it for 14 
  or 15 days before it would reach its old level, and once it got there, 
  it would stay just a day or two, and then collapse in a flash, with 
  nothing left at all.  All that was left was dreariness and 
  disappointment.
  
       Now: 'If it's going to regress, let it regress.  I've hoped in 
  the past, and it hasn't served any purpose.  All I'm after is this, 
  just this one thing:  "buddho".'
  
       (Speaking of the suffering when the mind regresses, you really 
  feel a lot of anguish, so much so that you're ready to surrender.  But 
  I was lucky in one way, that the mind didn't retreat.  It was 
  determined to see things through, which was why I was able to bear 
  with it, able to stay.  Had the mind become discouraged--'It'd be 
  better to stop'--that would have been the end of me.  There would have 
  been nothing more to tell.)
  
       From then on, the mind kept progressing.  Month after month, it 
  became more and more stable, more and more firm.  As for my meditation 
  word, I wasn't willing to let up on it.  This kept up until the mind 
  was always prominent.  
  
       That was when I let the meditation word go.  In other words, the 
  awareness of the mind was pronounced, and that was enough for the mind 
  to depend on, so there was no need to rely on any meditation word for 
  further support. The mind fully knew itself and could sustain itself.  
  At this point I didn't have to repeat any meditation word because the 
  mind was prominent at all times.  I would focus right there.  Wherever 
  I went, I focused right there.  I knew right there, just as I had 
  focused on 'buddho'.  It could form a fine foundation for the mind.  I 
  was sure of myself that:
  
       (1) This foundation had become progressively more and more stable 
  until it was more stable than it had been the first time it had 
  progressed and then regressed.
  
       (2) As for focusing on awareness, when awareness was fully 
  pronounced, I should focus on that without let-up, in the same way I 
  had focused on repeating 'buddho' until the mind became more and more 
  refined.  This was a founda-tion for the mind on which I could depend.
  
       From that point on, I really stepped up my efforts.  The time I 
  started sitting in meditation all night until dawn came from this 
  point.  I started to sit one night, focusing on in, focusing on in, 
  and at first the mind had settled down because it was used to settling 
  down.  It settled down easily because it 'had a good foundation.'  I 
  kept focusing on in, and as long as no enormous pains arose, the 
  meditation went quietly.  But when I withdrew, a number of hours had 
  passed, and a huge pain arose, to the point where I almost couldn't 
  bear it.  The mind which had been quiet was totally overturned.  Its 
  'good foundation' had collapsed completely.  All that was left was 
  pain filling the body--but the mind wasn't agitated. Strange!
  
       The body was so pained that it was quivering all over.  This was 
  the beginning of the hand-to-hand combat in which I was to obtain an 
  important approach_-when really severe pain arose unexpectedly that 
  night.  I hadn't yet made up my mind to sit until dawn, you know.  I 
  hadn't made any resolutions or anything at all.  I was simply sitting 
  in meditation as usual, as usual, but when the pain arose in full 
  force: 'Eh? What's going on here? I'll have to tackle this feeling so 
  as to see results tonight!'  So I made a resolution in that very 
  moment: 'Okay, if the time doesn't come to get up, I won't get up.  
  I'll fight until the dawn of the new day. Tonight for once I'm going 
  to investigate pain so as to understand it clearly and distinctly.  If 
  I don't understand it, then even if I die, let me die.  Let me find 
  out.  So dig down!'  This is when discernment really began to work in 
  earnest.
  
       I had never known, never imagined, never dreamed that discernment 
  would become so sharp when it was at the end of its rope, when it was 
  really cornered with no way out.  Discernment really started spinning 
  away.  It went out digging, exploring, fighting, determined not to 
  withdraw its troops in retreat. When I was at the end of my rope, 
  discernment arose.  This made me realize, 'We human beings aren't 
  fated to be stupid forever.  When we're at the end of our rope, we're 
  sure to manage to find a way to help ourselves.'  So it was then: When 
  I was cornered, overwhelmed by severe pain, mindfulness and 
  discernment probed into the pain.
  
       When pain arises in full force like this, it fills the entire 
  body.  At  first it started in hot flashes along the backs of my hands 
  and feet, which wasn't much to speak of, but then when it really 
  flared up into something big, the entire body was ablaze.  All the 
  bones, as they were connected, were fuel feeding the fire in every 
  part of the body.  It was as if the body were going to fall apart 
  right then and there.  The neck bones were going to come apart.  Every 
  bone was going to come apart from its connections.  My head was going 
  to fall off and hit the floor.  When it's pained, everything is on a 
  par throughout the body.  You don't know where to hold it back enough 
  so that you can breathe, because everywhere there's nothing but a mass 
  of fire--pain in full force.  
  
       When I couldn't find a safe spot in which to place the mind, 
  mindfulness and discernment dug down into the pain, searching for the 
  spot where the pain was greatest.  Wherever the pain was greatest, 
  mindfulness and discern-ment would investigate and explore right there 
  by ferreting out the pain so as to see clearly,  'Where does this 
  feeling come from?  Who is pained?'  When they asked each part of the 
  body, each of them remained in keeping with its nature.  The skin was 
  skin, the flesh was flesh, the tendons were tendons, and so forth.  
  They had been that way from the day of birth, but they hadn't been 
  painful all along from the day of birth in the same way that they had 
  been flesh and skin from the day of birth.  'The pain has been arising 
  and van-ishing at intervals.  It hasn't been lasting like these parts 
  of the body.'
  
       I focused on down. 'Each part of the body which is a physical 
  form is a reality.  Whatever is a reality stays that way.  Right now 
  where is the feeling arising?  If we say that all these things are 
  painful, why is there one point where it's really severe?'  So I 
  separated things out.  At this point, mindfulness and discernment 
  couldn't slip away anywhere else.  They had to run along the areas 
  which hurt, and whirl around themselves, separating the feeling from 
  the body, observing the body, observing the feeling and observing the 
  mind:  These three are the important principles.
  
       The mind seemed comfortable. No matter how much pain was arising, 
  the mind wasn't writhing or suffering or anything.  But the pain in 
  the body was clearly very strong.  The nature of pain and of whatever 
  defilements we have is that they join together.  Otherwise the mind 
  won't be trou-bled or affected by the physical pain which is really 
  severe at that moment.  So discernment kept digging down until the 
  body, the feeling and the mind were all clear, each in line with its 
  individual truth.
  
       The mind was what labeled the feeling as being this or that:  
  This I could see clearly.  As soon as this was really clear in this 
  way, the feeling disappeared in a flash.  At that moment, the body was 
  simply the body in line with its reality.  The feeling was simply a 
  feeling, and it disappeared in a flash into the mind.  It didn't go 
  anywhere else.  As soon as the feeling disappeared into the mind, the 
  mind knew that the pain had vanished.  The pain had vanished as if it 
  had been snapped off and thrown away.  
  
       In addition, the body disappeared from my sense of awareness.  At 
  that moment, the body didn't exist in my awareness at all.  All that 
  was left was simple awareness, because there was only one 
  thing--awareness--and it was simply aware.  That's all.  The mind was 
  so refined that you could hardly describe it.  It simply knew, because 
  it was extremely delicate and refined within itself.  The body had 
  completely disappeared.  Feelings had disappeared.  No physical 
  feelings were left at all. The body sitting right there in meditation 
  had disappeared from my awareness. 
  
        All that was left was 'simple knowingness', without any thoughts 
  being fashioned about this or that.  At that point, the mind wasn't 
  forming any thoughts at all.  When it doesn't form thoughts, we say 
  that nothing at all makes the slightest move.  The mind is 
  fixed--firmly fixed in its own solitude.  It's a mind in its simple 
  form, on the level of a mind centered in stillness--but mind you, this 
  doesn't mean that there was no unawareness.
  
       Unawareness had infiltrated right there, because the mind hadn't 
  withdrawn from unawareness.  The mind and unawareness were quiet 
  together, because unawareness didn't get out to work.  When 
  discernment has it surrounded, unawareness shrinks in and hides out, 
  quiet in the heart, like the sediment in the bottom of a water jar.
  
       At that point, I began to feel amazed.  There was no pain left.  
  The body had disappeared.  Only one thing hadn't disappeared: an 
  awareness so refined I couldn't describe it.  It simply appeared 
  there.  You couldn't say anything else about it.  The thing which 
  simply appeared there:  That was the great marvel at that moment.  
  There was no motion in the heart, no rippling, nothing of anything at 
  all.  It stayed fixed and still like that until enough time had 
  elapsed, and then it moved.  The mind began to withdraw and 
  rippled--blip--and then was quiet.  
  
       This rippling happens on its own, you know.  We can't intend it.  
  If we intend it, the mind withdraws. What happens is that the mind has 
  had enough of its own accord.  When it ripples in a 'blip' like this, 
  it's aware of the fact.  As soon as the 'blip' appears, it vanishes.  
  After a moment it ripples--blip--again, and disappears in the same 
  instant.  Then the rippling gradually becomes more and more frequent.
  
       When the mind withdraws after having fully settled down to its 
  foundation, it doesn't withdraw all at once.  I could clearly see this 
  at that moment.  The mind rippled slightly:  A sankhara formed in a 
  'blip' and then disappeared before it had amounted to anything at all.  
  It rippled--blip--and disappeared right then and there.  After a 
  moment it rippled--blip--again.  Gradually it became more and more 
  frequent until finally I came back to ordinary consciousness, to the 
  ordinary level of the mind.  I was aware of the body, but the pain was 
  still gone.  When the mind came back out, there was still no pain.  It 
  was still quiet until time came for the pain to reappear.
  
       This is where I got my standard and my certainty.  I realized 
  that I had arrived at a basic principle in contending with pain: 'So 
  this is how it is. Pain is actually something separate.  The body is 
  separate.  The mind is separate, but because of one 
  thing--delusion--all three converge into one, and the whole mind 
  becomes delusion, the whole mind is the one deluded.  Even though pain 
  may simply arise in line with its own nature, if we  grab hold of it 
  to burn ourselves, it's hot--because our labeling makes it hot.'
  
       After a fair while, the pain returned, so I had to tackle it 
  again, without retreating.  I had to dig on down exploring again as I 
  had explored before, but this time I couldn't use the tactics I had 
  used in investigating and remedying the pain the last time around.   I 
  needed fresh tactics, newly devised by mind-fulness and discernment so 
  as to keep up with events.  It was pain just the same,  but the 
  tactics simply had to be pertinent to the moment.  I couldn't remedy 
  matters by holding to the old tactics I had used to investigate and 
  know in the past.  They had to be fresh, hot tactics devised in the 
  present to cure the present.  The mind then settled down firmly in 
  stillness as it had done before.
  
       In that first night, the mind settled down three times, but I had 
  to go through three bouts of hand-to-hand combat.  After the third 
  time, dawn came--the end of the final show-down using reason with real 
  mindfulness and discernment.  The mind was audacious, exultant, and 
  had no fear of death.  'However great the pain may be, that's its own 
  ordinary business.  As long as we don't enter in and load ourselves 
  down with it, pain has no significance in the heart.'  The mind knew 
  clearly that the body has no significance in terms of itself, in terms 
  of the feeling or in terms of us--unless the mind gives it a 
  significance, and then gathers in the suffering to burn itself.  
  There's nothing else which can come in and make the mind suffer.
  
       Getting up that morning, I felt audacious in an extra-ordinary 
  way.  I wanted to tell Venerable Acariya Mun of my knowledge and 
  capabilities.  This was because I felt daring in a way hard to 
  describe.  How was it that things could be so marvelous like this in a 
  way I had never encountered before? Ever since I had begun meditating, 
  nothing like this had ever happened.  The mind had completely cut off 
  all connection with any objects and had gathered within itself with 
  real courage. It had gathered by investigating all around itself, 
  which was why it had calmed itself inwardly like a thoroughbred.  When 
  it withdrew, it was still full of courage, with no fear of death at 
  all, owing to its conviction that, 'I investigated like this and this 
  when pain arose.  The next time it comes, I won't fear it because it's 
  the same old pain.  It's pain with the same old face.  The body is the 
  same old body.  Discernment is the same old discernment we've used 
  before.'  For this reason, the heart felt no fear of death--so much so 
  that it felt all sorts of things hard to describe.  To put it in 
  worldly terms, it was like defying someone right to his face, with no 
  fear of pain or death.
  
       See? When the mind is bold, it's bold all the way.  Daring all 
  the way.  It fights without retreating.   'Okay, I'll take you on.'  
  To put it simply and frankly, that's just how it feels.  When the time 
  comes to die, 'Okay, I'll take you on.'  The mind doesn't retreat.  
  'When the time comes to die, where will death find any pain for us 
  greater than this?  There's no such thing.  The only pain is the pain 
  in the khandhas.  It can be great or small, but we know it here in the 
  khandhas.  No matter how much or how heavy the pain may be, it can't 
  outstrip our knowledge and capabilities. It can't outstrip our 
  mindfulness and discernment.  Mindfulness and discernment are capable 
  of keeping track of it all, as they have already known and removed it 
  in the past.'  This is what made me feel really bold.  
  
       When the time would come to die, I didn't see that there would be 
  any problem, with mindfulness and discern-ment all around me like 
  this.  If the time came to die, then let me die.  Birth and death come 
  in a pair. You can't separate death from birth so as not to die, 
  because they are equal truths.
  
       The next time around, I took on the pain again, and knew in the 
  same way.  I kept on knowing in the same way and winning every time.  
  Once I had given it all my strength in that way, there was never a day 
  in which I'd say, 'Last night I stayed up in meditation all night 
  until dawn and didn't get anything out of it.'  But any night in which 
  the mind had difficulty investigating and settling down, I would come 
  out feeling battered all over my body.  I'd be all stiff and sore.  
  
       But as for getting tactics and strength of mind, I'd get them 
  every time, until I no longer had any fear of death at all--and where 
  would I get any fear?  Death was something ordinary.  In other words, 
  discernment had analyzed down to 'What dies?'  Hair, nails, teeth, 
  skin, flesh, bones:  They're simply their original element--solidity, 
  the earth element.  Since when did the earth element ever die?  When 
  they disintegrate, what do they become?  If we focus on down, we see 
  that they return to their original properties.  The water element 
  returns to its original property.  The wind and fire elements simply 
  return to their own original properties.  Nothing is annihilated.  The 
  elements have simply come together in a lump, and the mind comes in 
  and animates it--this super-deluded one comes in and animates it, 
  that's all--and then carries the entire burden:  'This is my self.'  
  It lays its claims: 'This is me. This is mine.'  And so it rakes in 
  every kind of suffering as if contracting for the whole mass, using 
  those assumptions simply to burn itself, and nothing else.
  
       The mind itself is the culprit.  The five khandhas are not the 
  culprits.  They're not our enemies or anything.  They simply have 
  their own reality, but we make assumptions and carry then as a burden.  
  This is why there is suffering and stress.  We manufacture it 
  ourselves.  These things don't manufacture it for us.  'There is 
  nothing which comes and gives us suffering:'  This is how the mind 
  came to under-stand things.  We are the ones who misconstrue things.  
  We are the ones who suffer because we misconstrue things.  This 
  produces suffering to burn and trouble the heart.  I could clearly see 
  that nothing dies.
  
       The mind doesn't die.  It becomes more pronounced.  When we fully 
  investigate the four elements--earth, water, wind, and fire--down to 
  their original properties, the mind becomes even more pronounced and 
  clear.  So where is there any death?  What dies?  None of these 
  conditions die.  The four elements--earth, water, wind, and fire:  
  They don't die.  And as for the mind, how can it die? It becomes more 
  aware.  More pronounced.  More conspicuous.  This doesn't die, so why 
  does it fear death?  We've been fooled all along, fooled for aeons and 
  aeons, for actually nothing dies
  
       Now, the word 'fooled' doesn't mean that anyone intended to fool 
  us. We've been fooled simply because of our own delusion--fooled into 
  fearing death.  Now we see:  This is how the world fears death--from 
  not having explored down to its truth, from not knowing what dies.  
  Because look:  Nothing dies.  Each thing simply has its separate 
  reality.  I saw this clearly.  The mind proclaimed itself by its very 
  nature.  I saw its marvelousness clearly, every time.  
  
       Even when the pain was as hot as fire in the body and seemed 
  ready to reach the clouds, it would vanish clear away, with nothing 
  left, due to the power of mindfulness and discernment; even the body 
  would vanish from my sense of consciousness and wouldn't appear at 
  all.  When every-thing disbanded completely as the result of my 
  investigation, all that remained was simple awareness, as if floating 
  in mid-space (although I didn't make the comparison at the moment.)  
  It was completely empty, but the awareness knew clearly.  There was 
  only one thing.  There was only one strange thing in the world: the 
  heart.
  
       Earth, water, wind and fire made no contact with the heart.  The 
  heart thus had no sense of earth, water, wind, fire or any part of the 
  body.  All that remained was a solitary awareness, an awareness not 
  involved with anything at all--an amazing awareness, coming from 
  having investigated things with circumspection and then having 
  withdrawn from them.  Clear.  Outstanding.  Astounding.  
  
  
       Once the mind can be settled down like this--for no matter how 
  many days or nights it may last--it has no sense of pain, that the 
  body will fall apart, that it hurts here or aches there:  no sense of 
  any of this at all.  And what would give it any sense of this?  Time 
  and place don't exist in that mental state.  This called to mind how 
  the Buddhas, Pacceka Buddhas and arahant disciples could enter the 
  cessation of feeling and perception for seven days at a time.  They 
  could enter for as many days as they liked.  If their minds settled 
  down like this to the extent of not being involved with anything at 
  all, leaving just plain awareness without any involvement with time or 
  place, then they could sit for aeons if they liked.  Even if the body 
  couldn't endure, if it were to break apart, it would simply do so, 
  without having any impact on this nature at all.
  
       This was when my mind accepted--really believed in--the ability 
  of those extraordinary people who enter the cessation of feeling and 
  perception for so-and-so many days.  If their minds reached this level 
  without withdrawing back out to anything outside, then for days or 
  months they wouldn't have any perception of anything at all.  Where 
  would there be pain and pleasure in their bodies?  There wouldn't be 
  any at all.  They wouldn't have any sense of the body.  They wouldn't 
  have any awareness of feelings.  All that would remain would be plain 
  awareness.  They could sit for aeons, if they liked, as long as the 
  mind was like this.  
  
       This made me believe in the stories of the Pacceka Buddhas who 
  entered the cessation of feeling and percep-tion.  So I took this as a 
  confirmation in my mind.  Whoever says I'm crazy can go ahead and say 
  so.  They have mouths; we have ears.  If we want to listen, we can.  
  If we don't, we can keep still.  We are all free to have our opinions 
  on this matter and that.  No one has a monopoly on knowing and seeing!
  
       Even though I didn't sit for a long time, the state of mind which 
  had grown still to that extent for a spell of time  was enough to 
  serve as confirmation of those who entered the cessation of feeling 
  and perception for long periods of time, because it had the same 
  characteristics: not involved with anything at all.  The body would 
  simply  be a body.  If it were to fall apart, if it couldn't 
  last--after all, the body is inconstant, stressful and not-self--then 
  it would simply fall apart without the mind's being aware. 
  
       This is a level attained through mindfulness and dis-cernment.  
  It's level where discernment fosters concentration.  The mind reaches 
  the full extent of concentration like this because discernment has 
  fully investigated down to causes and effects.  It then gathers with 
  courage and great refine-ment.  Ordinarily, when the mind which is 
  filled with just the power of concentration focuses and settles down, 
  it is simply unmoving and nothing else.  It isn't as profound and 
  refined as this.  But the mind which is stilled through the power of 
  discernment is refined each time.  Once we have gone through 
  hand-to-hand combat in this way to the point where we get results, the 
  mind has to be absolutely quiet, just like this.
  
       This was the basis, or the starting capital, for my courage; the 
  primary seed for my firm conviction in the affairs of the mind.  No 
  matter how much anything else might be annihilated, this knowing 
  nature would not be annihilated.  I could see this clearly.  I saw it 
  clearly at the point when nothing else was involved in my sense of 
  aware-ness.  There was simply that single awareness, and so it was 
  very pronounced.  I couldn't really say whether this was on the level 
  of concentration or of discernment.  When the mind actually was that 
  way, that's how it was.
  
       From that point on I kept at it.  I kept investigating out in the 
  area of discernment, ranging out widely, then circling back in again.  
  As soon as I would understand, step by step, the mind would let go and 
  circle inward in an ever-narrowing sphere,  investigating the khandhas 
  and elements, separating the khandhas and elements.
  
       This is where it began to be 'samuccheda-pahana'--absolute 
  relinquishment, arising from the investigation in the period which 
  followed.  As long as the investigation hadn't been absolute, it would 
  win out for only a period of time, just enough to serve as evidence 
  and proof.  It still wasn't absolute relinquishment.  But when 
  discernment came to a really clear understanding while investigating, 
  then it pulled out and severed all ties, step-by-step--severed things 
  so that there were no connections left; severed them step by step, 
  leaving just plain awareness.
  
       The body (rupa) was severed from attachment.  Vedana,  sanna, 
  sankhara, and vinnana  were severed from attachment.  Or you could say 
  that the 'heart' was severed from 'them'.  Things kept being severed 
  until only awareness was left--in other words, the mind with 
  unawareness buried inside it.  So I probed on in, smashed things to 
  bits, slashed them to smithereens with up-to-the-minute mindfulness 
  and dis-cernment.  The mind of unawareness broke apart, and when the 
  mind of unawareness broke apart, that was all!
  
       That was when I came to know that all of the marvels I have 
  mentioned here were simply an affair of unawareness.  They had simply 
  been a support, a way-station, a seed which had produced conviction 
  step by step, but after that--if you were to say they were good, they 
  were good; but if you're aiming at the subtle Dhamma, this goodness is 
  the goodness of unawareness.  It's not genuine goodness, not pure 
  good-ness.  It's goodness mixed with evil, with suffering and stress, 
  because stress still has a chance to arise.  We have to keep slashing 
  in, slashing in until everything is smithereens in the heart.  
  Whatever is a seed of anything counterfeit in the heart, wash it away, 
  scrub it away, until nothing is left, and that's all.  The entire mind 
  which is assumed to be 'this' or 'that' is all gone.
  
       This is where the mind reaches absolute purity, where it reaches 
  complete freedom from all conventional realities.  That's really 
  'all'!  It's astounding.  If it weren't astounding, it wouldn't be 
  release from stress. This is a Dhamma apart--a Dhamma beyond 
  conventions. 
  
       Whether what I've described here is difficult or not, consider it 
  for yourselves.  Sometimes I'd feel ready to pass out.  Sometimes I'd 
  feel as if the entire body were on fire.  When the pain was really 
  fierce, it seemed to fill the entire body.  But ultimately, I was able 
  to pass through these things, to resolve them using mindfulness and 
  discernment.  
  
       Thus, if we put them to use, mindfulness and discern-ment are 
  never at the end of their rope.  We human beings aren't fated always 
  to be stupid, you know.  When we come to the end of our rope, we're 
  sure to be able to save ourselves.  Who should be willing to go under 
  when we have the mindfulness and discernment to remedy things, or when 
  there's an opening through which we can escape, through which we can 
  force our way out?  Who would willingly be buried to death?  We can't 
  help but manage to find a way out.
  
       When the pain is so piled on that we can't see any way to cure it 
  other than using mindfulness and discernment to explore and find a way 
  out, discernment doesn't depend on this person or that.  When the time 
  comes for the mind to inves-tigate when it's cornered, it gathers its 
  forces and manages to save itself.
  
       The Buddha thus taught us to live in 'crucial' places--places 
  where we're cornered, at the end of our rope--where we live simply, so 
  that mindfulness and discernment can work full steam ahead and see 
  their own capabilities, rather than simply waiting for help from 
  others.  Time and place can help give rise to mindfulness and 
  discernment.  If we live in a scary place, mindfulness is strong.  
  Discernment is sharp.  Whatever we investigate, they are adroit and 
  auda-cious.  If we live in a comfortable place, we get lazy.  We eat a 
  lot and sleep a lot.  This is the way it is with the mind.  If we live 
  in ordinary circumstances, we're very lazy, very inert, very apathetic 
  and listless.  If we live in places which aren't scary, we become 
  heedless and revert to being complacent, to sleeping like pigs.
  
       If we live in a scary place, we're always alert.  When we're 
  alert, we're always self-aware, because alertness is what it means to 
  be mindful. Mindfulness appears within us, always self-aware, always 
  engaged in persistent effort.  Whatever makes contact, we understand 
  because we're not compla-cent, because we're always alert.  This is 
  why we're taught to live in whatever places are appropriate, because 
  they can give good encouragement or support to our persistent effort.
  
       If we have comfortable huts in which to live--as we have 
  here--everything cares for our every need.  Food overflows our bowls.  
  We're flooded day and night with fruit  juice, soft drinks, cocoa and 
  coffee.  Main course dishes and desserts come pouring in from every 
  direction.  If we lack mindfulness and discernment, we lie clutching 
  our food, like a pig lying next to its hay and then climbing up to lie 
  on the chopping block.  As for the Dhamma, we have no hope of winning 
  it.  Any meditation monk who is 'clever' in this way is bound to go 
  under in this way without a doubt.
  
       To have mindfulness and discernment, we have to think.  However 
  much of the necessities of life we may have, we must find tactics for 
  keeping the mind in shape, to keep wary  and uncomplacent like a deer 
  wary of danger.
  
       In places where you don't have to be wary of food like this, the 
  mind goes about thinking in another way to reform itself.  There, 
  where will you get an excess of anything? Everything is lacking.  
  Insufficient.  Somedays you get enough alms to eat, somedays you 
  don't. 'This way there's nothing to be concerned about, because you've 
  been full and been hungry before.  Even if you go without food for one 
  or two days, you won't die.'  
  
       This is how the heart deals with the problem, and so it isn't 
  concerned about food or anything else.  If there's nothing but rice, 
  you eat rice--and you don't see that you're concerned about it.  
  'After all, you've come to a place like this, so what's wrong with 
  eating whatever's available?  Where are you going to find anything to 
  go with the rice? You've been fed rice ever since the day you were 
  born, so what's wrong with eating just rice?  Can you eat other things 
  without rice?  If eating other things is really special, you've 
  already eaten a lot of them, so why aren't you ever full?  You've come 
  looking for the Dhamma, not for food. Why are you so worked up about 
  your stomach?  You've already eaten a lot, and yet nothing special has 
  ever come of it.  You're looking for the extraordinary Dhamma, so what 
  business do you have getting worked up about food?   An expert in 
  Dhamma isn't an expert in eating.'  The mind deals with the situation 
  in the flash of an eye, and the end result is that it isn't concerned.  
  This is how a meditation monk subdues himself--or in other words, 
  subdues his greed for the necessities of life.
  
       And as a result of correcting itself in the matter of eating or 
  not eating, the mind keeps spinning.  You sit in meditation without 
  getting tired.  With no food in your stomach, what is there to get 
  drowsy about?  If you don't eat at all, you're not drowsy at all, and 
  can meditate with ease.
  
       This is a tactic in teaching monks to practice the Dhamma 
  'rukkhamula-senasanam'--under the shade of trees, in the mountains, in 
  the forest, in lonely places where it's scary--ahara-sappaya, where 
  the food is amenable.  'Amenable' here means that it doesn't disrupt 
  the body, that it isn't harmful or toxic to the body; and that it 
  doesn't disrupt the mind as well.  'Amenable food' means nothing but 
  rice sometimes, or just a little food, so that our meditation goes 
  well.  It's amenable for those intent on the Dhamma.
  
       But those of us who are intent on nourishing the stomach for the 
  sake of the body can't do this at all.  Other-wise we'll die--don't 
  say I didn't warn you.  Normally if we eat a lot, with nothing but 
  good dishes to eat, then we sleep like pigs.  How can this be 
  amenable?  It's amenable for the defilements, not for winning the 
  Dhamma.  It's amenable for the affairs of defilements and the affairs 
  of pigs.
  
       The term 'amenable food' has to refer to eating in a way which 
  serves a purpose.  To eat just a little serves a purpose:  Wherever we 
  sit in meditation, the mind is really solid.  If we're involved with 
  concentration, the mind is solid.  If we're involved with discernment, 
  it keeps spinning with much more agility than normal.
  
       The Dhamma tends to arise in places where things are lacking, in 
  difficult places where we're cornered, at the end of our rope.  It 
  doesn't arise where things are overflowing, where our needs are met.  
  It doesn't arise in comfortable places because we just get complacent.  
  This is the way we tend to be.
  
       The Lord Buddha lived in a royal palace--for how long?--and then 
  left it to take up the homeless life.  Who ever suffered more than he? 
  'Buddha'--Awakenmennt--tends to arise in situations like that.  His 
  disciples came from all sorts of families--the families of kings, 
  financiers, land-owners--listen to this-- wealthy people.  When they 
  went out to become 'sons of the Sakyan, sons of the victorious 
  Buddha', how did they live?  'If we're going to die, then we die.  
  We're not going to worry or be bothered with anything at all except 
  for the Dhamma.'  There! They gained the Dhamma in difficult places, 
  just like the Buddha.
  
       So which way are we going to take? The Buddha has already shown 
  us the way.  The Dhamma arises in that sort of place--in tight spots 
  where things are difficult.  The Dhamma arises from a heap of 
  suffering.  If there's no heap of suffering, then mindfulness and 
  discernment don't arise.  If we don't think, we don't gain mindfulness 
  and discern-ment.  The Dhamma doesn't appear.  If there's a lot of 
  stress, it's a whetstone for discernment, which probes for clear 
  insight into the affairs of stress.  This way we can live through it 
  and come out superlative people.
  
            So then.  Evam.
  
       
  
  
  
  
  The Radiant Mind Is Unawareness                                   
  
  Normally the mind is radiant and always ready to make contact with 
  everything of every sort. Although all phenomena without exception 
  fall under the laws of the three characteristics--stress, incon-stancy 
  and not-self--the true nature of the mind doesn't fall under these 
  laws.  
  
       The extent to which the mind does follow these laws is because 
  the things which fall under these three characteris-tics come spinning 
  in and become involved with it, so that it goes spinning along with 
  them.  Even then though, it spins in a way which doesn't disintegrate 
  or fall apart.  It spins with the things which have the power to make 
  it spin, but the natural power of the mind itself is that it knows and 
  does not die.  This deathlessness is something which lies beyond 
  disintegration.  This non-disintegration is something which lies 
  beyond the three characteristics and the common laws of nature, but 
  we're not aware of it because conventional realities become involved 
  with the mind and surround it, so that the mind's behavior conforms 
  thoroughly to theirs.
  
       The fact that we're unaware that birth and death are things which 
  have always been with the mind infected by defilement, is because 
  ignorance itself is an affair of defilement. Birth and death are an 
  affair of defilement.  Our own true affair, the affair which is ours 
  pure and simple--the affair of the mind pure and simple--is that we 
  don't have the power to be our own true self.  We have been taking all 
  sorts of counterfeit things as our self all along, and thus the mind's 
  behavior is not in keeping with its true nature.  Its behavior falls 
  under the sway of the deceits of defilement, which make it worry and 
  fear, dreading death, dreading everything.  Whatever happens--a little 
  pain, a lot of pain--it's afraid.  If even the least little thing 
  disturbs it, it's afraid.  As a result, the mind is filled with 
  worries and fears.  Even though fear and worry aren't directly an 
  affair of the mind, they still manage to make it tremble.
  
       We'll see, when the mind is cleansed so that it is fully pure and 
  nothing can become involved with it, that no fear appears in the mind 
  at all.  Fear doesn't appear.  Courage doesn't appear.  All that 
  appears is its own nature by itself, just its own timeless nature.  
  That's all.  This is the genuine mind. 'Genuine mind' here refers only 
  to the purity or the 'sa-upadisesa-nibbana' of the arahants.  Nothing 
  else can be called the 'genuine mind' without reservations or 
  hesita-tions.  I, for one, would feel embarrassed to use the term for 
  anything else at all.
  
       The 'original mind' means the original mind of the round in which 
  the mind finds itself spinning around and about, as in the Buddha's 
  saying, 'Monks, the original mind is radiant'-- notice that--'but 
  because of the admixture of defilements' or 'because of the 
  defilements which come passing through, it becomes darkened.'  
  
       The original mind here refers to the origin of conven-tional 
  realities, not to the origin of purity.  The Buddha uses the term 
  'pabhassaram'--'pabhassaramidam cittam bhikkhave'--which means 
  radiant.  It doesn't mean pure.  The way he puts it is absolutely 
  right.  There is no way you can fault it.  Had he said that the 
  original mind is pure, you could imme-diately take issue: 'If the mind 
  is pure, why is it born?  Those who have purified their minds are 
  never reborn  If the mind is already pure, why purify it?'  Right here 
  is where you could take issue.  What reason would there be to purify 
  it?  If the mind is radiant, you can purify it because its radiance is 
  unawareness incarnate, and nothing else.  Meditators will see clearly 
  for themselves the moment the mind passes from radiance to mental 
  release:  Radiance will no longer appear.  Right here is the point 
  where meditators clearly know this, and it's the point which lets them 
  argue--because the truth has to be found true in the individual heart.  
  Once a person knows, he or she can't help but speak with full 
  assurance.
  
       Thus the fact that our mind is surrounded, made to fear, to 
  worry, to love, to hate or whatever, is caused entirely by the 
  symptoms of conventional reality, the symptoms of defilement.  We have 
  no mental power of our own.  We have only the power of defilement, 
  craving and mental effluents pushing and pressuring us day and night 
  while we sit, stand, walk and lie down.  Where are we going to find 
  any happiness and ease as long as these things, which are con-stantly 
  changing, keep provoking the mind to change along with them without 
  our being aware of the fact?
  
       There can be no ease in this world--none at all--until these 
  things can be completely eradicated from the heart.  Until then, we 
  can have no secure ease and relief in any way.  We can only shift and 
  change about, or lean this way and that, depending on how much we're 
  provoked by the things which come and involve us.  This is why the 
  Buddha teaches us to cleanse the mind, which is the same thing as 
  cleansing ourselves of suffering.
  
       There is no one who has genuinely penetrated the principles of 
  the truth like the Lord Buddha.  Only he can be called 'sayambhu'--one 
  who needs no teaching or training from anyone else.  In curing his 
  heart of defilement, he performed the duties of both student and 
  teacher, all by himself, until he awakened to the level of the 
  superlative Dhamma, becoming the superlative person, the superlative 
  Master.
  
       This is not to deny that on the level of concentration--the 
  development of mental stillness--he received training from the two 
  hermits; but that in itself wasn't the way of extrication leading to 
  the level of omniscience (sabbannu). By the time he was to attain 
  omniscience, he had left the two hermits and was striving on his own.  
  He came to know the Dhamma on his own and to see on his own, without 
  anyone else's teaching him.  He then brought that Dhamma to teach the 
  world so that it has known good and evil, heaven, hell and nibbana 
  ever since.  Had there been no one to teach us, we of the world would 
  be completely burdened with the mass of fire filling our hearts, and 
  would never see the day when  we could put our burdens down.  
  
       This being the case, we should appreciate the worth of the Dhamma 
  which the Buddha brought to the world after having endured hardships 
  in a way no one else in the would could have managed.
  
       So now, at present, what is it that covers the heart so that we 
  can't find its radiance and purity, even though each of us wants to 
  find purity.  What conceals it? To answer in terms of natural 
  principles, we should start with the five khandhas.  As for the 'mind 
  of unawareness', we can save that for later.  Let's just start out 
  with what's really obvious--the five khandhas and their companions: 
  sight, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations.  
  
       These make contact with the eye, ear, nose, tongue and body, and 
  then link up with the mind, forming the basis for this assumption and 
  that.  The mind then takes the objects which have come passing by and 
  uses them to bind itself, entangle itself or encircle itself so that 
  it is completely darkened with love, hate, anger and all sort of other 
  states, all of which come from the things I have mentioned.
  
       But what lies buried deep is our belief that the khandhas form 
  our self.  From time immemorial, whatever our language, whatever our 
  race--even when we are common animals--we have to believe that these 
  things are us, are ours; that they are a being, the self of a being, 
  our own self.  If we become deities, we believe that our divine bodies 
  are ours.  If we become hungry ghosts or whatever, the things we dwell 
  in--gross bodies or refined--we take to be us or ours.  Even when we 
  become human beings and begin to have some sense of good and evil, we 
  still have to believe that, 'This is us,' or 'This is ours.'  Of the 
  five khandhas, the body (rupa) is 'us'.  Vedana, sanna, sankhara and 
  vinnana  are 'us', are 'ours'.  These assumptions lie buried deep 
  within us.
  
       The Buddha thus teaches us to investigate.  We inves-tigate these 
  things so as to see their truth clearly, and then to uproot our 
  mistaken assumptions and attachments that they are the self.  We do 
  this for the sake if freedom, and for nothing else. 
  
       If we look at these things in their normal state, we might wonder 
  why we should investigate them.  Sights are simply sights; sounds are 
  sounds; smells, smells; tastes, tastes; tactile sensations are simply 
  natural phenomena as they've always been.  They've never announced 
  that they are our enemies.  So why investigate them?
  
       We investigate them to know the truth of each one of them as it 
  actually is, to realize our own delusions by means of this 
  investigation and to extricate ourselves from them through 
  knowledge--for the fact that the mind lays claim to the khandhas as 
  its self, as belonging to itself, is because of delusion and nothing 
  else.  
  
       Once we have investigated and clearly understood what these 
  things are, the mind withdraws inwardly through knowledge, 
  understanding and discernment, with no more concern for these things.  
  We investigate whichever khandha is most prominent.  We needn't 
  conjecture or speculate about the fact that we haven't contemplated 
  the five khandhas  in their entirety, or each khandha in turn.  We 
  needn't conjecture at all.  All  we need to do is to see which khandha 
  is prominent and merits investigation at the moment --which khandha we 
  feel best suited to handle--and then investigate and explore it so 
  that it becomes clear.
  
       Take, for instance, the body, whichever aspect of the body is 
  most prominent in your awareness--the aspect which has you most 
  interested, which you want most to investigate.  Latch onto that spot 
  and focus on examining it so as to see its truth in terms of the 
  question, 'What is stress?'
  
       In the texts we are told that stress (dukkha) means 
  'unendurability', but this doesn't sit well with my own crass tastes, 
  which is why--one man's meat being another man's poison--I prefer to 
  translate stress as 'a constant squeeze'.  This is more in keeping 
  with my tastes, which are very crude.  For example, the phrase, 
  'yampiccham na labhati tampi dukkham,' is right in line with my 
  translation.  In other words, 'Not attaining what is desired is 
  stress.'  How is it stress?  In that it puts a squeeze on us, or makes 
  us uncomfortable.  
  
       If we don't get what we want, we're uncomfortable.  Even if we 
  get what we want, but then lose it, we suffer stress.  Stress in this 
  sense fits the translation, 'a squeeze'. This squeeze is what's meant 
  by stress or unendurability.  If it can't endure, let it go its own 
  way.  Why mess with it? Actually, no matter which khandha, no matter 
  which of the three characteristics, the mind is the one at fault for 
  getting attached, which is why we have to examine the khandhas until 
  we have them clear.
  
       Whatever aspect  of the body, look so as to see it clearly.  If 
  we're not yet clear about the filthiness in our 'physical heap', we 
  can look at the charnel ground within us so as to see it clearly.  
  When we're told to visit the charnel ground, this is where we make our 
  visit.  Even if we visit a charnel ground outside, the purpose is to 
  reflect inwardly on the inner charnel ground--our own body.  
  
       As for the external charnel ground, in the days  of the Buddha it 
  was a place where corpses were scattered all over the place.  The dead 
  were hardly ever buried or cremated as they are today.  So the Buddha 
  taught monks to visit the charnel ground, where old corpses and new 
  were scattered everywhere.  He also gave detailed instructions as to 
  the direction from which to enter, in keeping with his sharp 
  intelligence as a self-dependent Buddha, the Teacher of the world.  He 
  said to approach from the upwind side, and not from the downwind side.  
  Otherwise the stench of the various corpses would be bad for your 
  health.
  
       'When you encounter corpses in this way, how do you feel?  Look 
  at the different types of corpses.  How do you feel? Now refer 
  inwardly, to your own body, which is another corpse.'  This is how he 
  taught the monks to inves-tigate.  Once we have an 
  eye-witness--ourself--as to what the corpses in the external charnel 
  ground are like, we can refer inwardly to the internal charnel ground:  
  ourself again.  Once we have grasped the basic principle, the external 
  charnel ground gradually fades out of the picture.  Instead, we 
  investigate our internal charnel ground so that it becomes gradually 
  more and more clear.  In other words, we see how this body is a well 
  of filth.  Repulsive.  Something that constantly has to be washed, 
  bathed and cleaned.
  
       Is there anything which, once it has become involved with any  
  part of the body, remains clean?  Even the food we eat, once we 
  consume it, becomes filthy from the moment it enters the mouth and 
  passes on down.  Our clothing is also dirty.  It has to be washed and 
  laundered--a lot of fuss and bother.  The same holds true for our 
  homes.  They constantly have to be cleaned,  scrubbed, dusted and 
  swept.  Otherwise they turn into another charnel ground, because of 
  the filth and the smell.  Everywhere, wherever human beings live, has 
  to be cleaned--because human beings are dirty.  And since our bodies 
  are already dirty, everything that comes into contact with them 
  becomes dirty.  Even food--delicious, inviting, appealing food--once 
  it becomes mixed with the filth in the body, such as saliva, becomes 
  filthy as well.  If you took food of various kinds into your mouth and 
  then spit it out, there'd be no way you could take it back in again.  
  It'd be too disgusting.  Revolting.  Why?  Because the body is filthy 
  by its very nature, and so whatever becomes involved with the body 
  becomes filthy as well.
  
       To contemplate in this way is called investigating the charnel 
  ground, or investigating the theme of loathsomeness.
  
       So.  Focus in on seeing its inherent nature.  Look at every 
  facet, in whichever way comes most naturally to you.  When you've 
  examined one spot, your knowledge gradually seeps into the next spot 
  and the next.  If mindfulness and awareness keep in close connection, 
  discernment can't help but go to work and advance unceasingly.  You'll 
  feel pro-foundly moved as you come to see and know truly, step by 
  step.  This is discernment on the first level of investigation. 
  
       Once you have investigated filthiness you then investi-gate the 
  process of change in the body.  In other words, filth is in this body.  
  Dry corpses, fresh corpses, raw corpses, cooked corpses, all kinds of 
  corpses are gathered together in this body, but I've never heard the 
  place where they are barbequed, roasted and stewed called a 
  crematorium.  Instead, it's called kitchen. But actually, that's what 
  it is, a crematorium for animals.  And then they're all buried here in 
  this stomach, this grave.  We're a burial ground for all kinds of 
  animals--yes, us!--if we look at ourselves in all fairness, with 
  impartiality, because we're filled with old corpses and new.  Once we 
  have contemplated in this way, then if we don't feel disenchantment, 
  if we don't feel disen-gagement, what will we feel?--for that's the 
  way the truth actually is.
  
       The Buddha taught us to get to the truth, because this is what 
  the truth is.  If we don't resist the truth, we will all be able to 
  unshackle ourselves from our attachments and false assumptions--from 
  our stupidity and foolishness-- step by step.  The mind will become 
  bright and clear, radiat-ing its brightness with dignity, bravery and 
  courage in the face of the truth which comes into contact with it at 
  all times.  It will be content to accept every facet of the truth with 
  fairness and impartiality.  Even though we may not have yet abandoned 
  our attachments absolutely, we can still find relief in having put 
  them down to at least some extent.  We no longer have to be constantly 
  weighed down with our attachments to the khandhas to the point where 
  we are always miserable.  This is in keeping with the saying, 'Fools, 
  the heavier their burdens, the more they keep piling on.  Sages, the 
  lighter their burdens, the more they let go--until nothing is left.'
  
       When we investigate in this way, we should examine the process of 
  change in the khandhas. Every piece, every bit, every part of the body 
  undergoes change.  There is no excep-tion, not even for a single hair.  
  Everything undergoes change in the same way.  So which part is us, 
  which part is ours, to which we should be attached?
  
       The same holds true with the word 'anatta', not-self.  It drives 
  home even more firmly the fact that these things don't deserve our 
  attachment. 'Anatta'  lies in the same parts as change--the very same 
  parts.  They are anatta, not ours or anyone else's. Each one, each one 
  is simply a natural pheno-menon mingled with the others in line with 
  its own nature,  without any concern for who will like it or hate it, 
  latch onto it or let it go.
  
       But we human beings are light-fingered and quick.  Whatever comes 
  our way, we snatch hold of it, snatch hold of it, without any concern 
  for right or wrong.  We're more light-fingered and quick than a 
  hundred monkeys, and yet all of us, all over the world, like to 
  criticize monkeys for not being able to sit contented and still.  
  Actually we ourselves can't stay contented and still in any position.  
  We're full of restlessness--unruly, reckless, overflowing our 
  boundaries --and yet we never think of criticizing ourselves.  The 
  Dhamma taught by the Buddha is thus like a stick for slapping the 
  hands of this light-fingered, unruly monkey.
  
       With the three characteristics, anatta among them, he warns us, 
  strikes our wrists: 'Don't reach!'  He slaps us, strikes us: 'Don't 
  reach for it as "me"or "mine".'  The phrase, 'The body is not the 
  self,' is just like that.  'Don't reach for it.  Don't latch onto it.'  
  This is simply so that we will see that it's already not-self.  By its 
  nature it's not-self.  It doesn't belong to anyone at all.  He's 
  already told us:  'Anatta:  It's not the self.'  This is how we 
  investigate the body.
  
       So, now then: Focus on visualizing it as it disintegrates, in 
  whichever way seems most natural to you.  This part decomposes.  That 
  part decomposes.  This part falls off.  That part falls off.  Let 
  yourself become engrossed in watching it, using your own ingenuity.  
  This falls off, that falls off, until everything has fallen apart--all 
  the bones, from the skull on down.  Once the skin which enwraps them 
  has decomposed, the flesh has decomposed, the tendons which hold them 
  together have decomposed, the bones can't help but fall apart, piece 
  by piece,  because they are held together only by tendons.  Once the 
  tendons decompose, the different parts have to fall off piece by piece 
  in a pile on the ground, scattered all over the place.  You can even 
  visualize having vultures, crows and dogs come to eat and scatter the 
  parts everywhere.  How does the mind feel about this?
  
       Well then, look at it.  Visualize the liquid parts seeping into 
  the earth and evaporating into the air, then drying away, drying away 
  until they no longer appear.  The solid parts, once they have dried, 
  return to the earth from which they came.  Earth returns to earth, 
  water to water, wind to wind.  Penetrate down into any of four 
  elements--earth, water, wind or fire--because each gives clear 
  evidence of the Noble Truths.  
  
       We don't have to think that we've examined earth clearly, but 
  this element or that element isn't clear.  We needn't think that way 
  at all.  If we examine any one of them until it's clear, we will 
  penetrate them all, because earth, water, wind, and fire are all 
  already open and aboveboard.  They appear to our sight.  In our body, 
  we already have water.  Wind--for example, the in-and-out breath--is 
  already clearly there, already clear to see.  Fire--the warmth in the 
  body--is something we all have here in our bodies.  So why don't we 
  accept its truth with right discernment?  Once we've investigated it 
  over and over again, we have to accept it.  We can't resist the truth, 
  because that's why we're here: We want the truth.
  
       So keep investigating.  Look for the part which is 'you' or 
  'yours'.  Look for it! There isn't any--not a one!  The whole thing 
  originally belongs to them:  to earth, water, wind, and fire.  It 
  originally belongs to the different elements.  
  
       Now, when you look in this manner, the mind can settle down and 
  become still.  At the same time, these aren't preoccupations which 
  will make the mind proud, conceited or unruly.  Rather, they are 
  themes which calm the heart, which is why the Buddha taught us to 
  investigate them repeatedly, until we understand and become adept at 
  them.
  
       When the mind sees clearly with its own discernment, it can't 
  help but withdraw into stillness, firmly centered within, letting go 
  of all its cares.  This is one level in the investigation of the 
  khandhas.
  
       Now for the next step:  Investigate feelings of pain, especially 
  when you are ill or have been sitting in medita-tion for a long time, 
  and severe pain arises.  Take it on, right there.  A warrior has to 
  fight when the enemy appears.  If there's no enemy, how can you call 
  him a warrior?  And what's the enemy?  Feelings of pain, the enemy of 
  the heart.  When you're ill, where does it hurt?  There:  You have 
  your enemy.  If you're a warrior, how can you run away and hide?  You 
  have to fight until you gain knowledge and then use that knowledge to 
  come out victorious.
  
       So. What does the pain come from?  From the time we were born 
  until we first sat in meditation, it wasn't there.  Before we first 
  became ill, it didn't appear.  It appears only now that we are ill.  
  Before that, where was it hiding?  If it's really 'us', our mind 
  should have been aware of it at all times, so why hasn't this kind of 
  pain appeared at all times? Why is it appearing now? If the pain is 
  'us', then when it vanishes, why doesn't the mind vanish with it?  If 
  they're really one and the same thing, they have to be vanish 
  together. The pain should appear as long as the mind is aware.  If 
  they're one and the same thing, the pain shouldn't vanish.  You have 
  to look and investigate until this is clear. At the same time, analyze 
  the body when the pain arises--when, for example, your legs ache or 
  when this or that bone hurts.  Fix your attention on the bone if the 
  bone is really hurting.
  
       Is the bone the pain? Ask yourself! And whatever you're asking 
  about, focus your attention right there.  Don't ask in the abstract, 
  or absent-mindedly.  Ask in a way that focuses the mind right down so 
  as to see the truth.  Focus steadily right on the pain.  Stare the 
  mind right down on whichever  bone you identify with the pain.  Look 
  carefully to see, 'Is this bone the pain?' Fix your attention there.  
  Really observe with your own discernment.  If this bone is really the 
  pain, then when the pain vanishes, why doesn't the bone vanish with 
  it?  If they really are one and the same thing, then when the pain 
  vanishes, the bone should vanish too.  It shouldn't remain.  
  
       But look: When the disease goes away, or when we get up from 
  sitting in meditation, the really severe pain vanishes, the stress 
  vanishes.  So if they are one and the same thing, why doesn't the bone 
  vanish as well?  This shows that they aren't one and the same.  The 
  feeling isn't the same as the body.  The body isn't the same as the 
  feeling.  Similarly, the body and the mind aren't one and the same.  
  Each has its own separate reality. Distinguish them so as to see them  
  clearly in line with this truth, and you will understand their true 
  nature through discernment, with no doubts at all.  Feeling will 
  appear in its true nature.  
  
       Ultimately, the investigation will come circling in, circling in, 
  circling in to the mind.  The pain will gradually shrink into itself, 
  away from the mind's assumptions.  In other words, you will see that 
  the mind is the culprit.  The mind is the instigator.  The physical 
  pain will gradually subside and fade away.  The body will simply be 
  there as the body, with the same reality it had before the pain 
  appeared.  And now that the pain has vanished, the flesh, skin, 
  tendon, bone or whatever part you had identified as the pain will 
  maintain its reality in the same way.  It isn't the pain.  The body is 
  the body. The feeling is the feeling.  The mind is the mind.  Fix your 
  attention on seeing them clearly.  Once the mind has penetrated to the 
  truth, the pain will disappear. This is one result.  
  
       Another result is that even if the pain doesn't vanish--here I'm 
  referring to the physical pain--still it can't have any impact on the 
  heart and mind.  Ultimately, the mind is serene, secure, and majestic, 
  there in the midst of the physical pain.  No matter which part of the 
  body you say is pained--even if it's the whole body at once--the mind 
  isn't disturbed or agitated in any way.  It's relaxed and at ease, 
  because it has seen with discernment right through the pain appearing 
  at the moment.  This is another sort of result which comes from 
  investigating pain.
  
       When investigating pain, then the greater the pain, the more 
  important  it is that your mindfulness and discernment not retreat.  
  They have to keep advancing so as to know the truth.  You needn't aim 
  at making the pain vanish, because such a desire would simply enhance 
  the pain and make it more and more severe.  Actually,  you're making 
  an investiga-tion simply to see the truth. Whether or not the pain 
  vanishes, know the truth which is the pain or which give rise to the 
  pain by seeing through it with your own discernment:  That's enough.  
  Fix your attention there, and these things will keep appearing and 
  disappearing there in the khandhas.
  
       The body appears for a certain period, and then dis-integrates in 
  what we call death.  As for feelings of pain, they appear a hundred 
  times in a single day, and then disap-pear a hundred times, a thousand 
  times as well.  What's lasting about them?  This is the kind of truth 
  they are.  Get so you clearly know with discernment the truth of 
  painful feelings as they appear.  Don't retreat or let the mind wander 
  adrift.
  
       What is sanna labeling at the moment? Sanna is the important 
  instigator.  As soon as sankhara fashions anything --blip!--sanna 
  latches right onto it and labels it this, labels it that--stirring 
  things all up.  When we talk about the things that create havoc, 
  provoking this issue and  that, we're referring to these characters: 
  sankhara and sanna which label things and stamp meanings on them.  
  'This is us.  This is ours.  This is pain.  It hurts right here.  It 
  hurts right there.  I'm afraid of the pain.  I'm afraid to 
  die'--afraid of every-thing of every sort.  These are the characters 
  which fool us into fear, making the mind apprehensive, making it give 
  up its efforts and lose.  Is it good to lose?  Even children playing 
  games have a sense of shame when they lose, and try to make up their 
  losses.  As for meditators who lose out to defilement, who lose out to 
  pain:  If they don't feel embar-rassed in the presence of the 
  defilements, the pains and themselves, then they're simply too 
  shameless.
  
       Know that vedana, sanna, sankhara and vinnana are simply 
  individual conditions displayed by the mind.  They appear and vanish. 
  'Sanna anatta'--see? They too are not-self, so how can you hold to 
  them?  How can you believe them to be you, to be yours, to be true?  
  Keep track of them so that you can know them clearly with mindfulness 
  and discern-ment: audacious, undaunted, diamond-hearted, decisive in 
  the face of defilement and pain of every sort.
  
       Sankhara, mental formations:  They form--blip, blip, blip--in the 
  heart.  The heart ripples for a moment:  blip, blip, blip.  The moment 
  they arise, they vanish.  So what substance or truth can you find in 
  these  sanna and sankhara ?
  
       Vinnana, cognizance: As soon as anything comes into contact, this 
  takes note and vanishes, takes note and van-ishes.  So ultimately, the 
  khandhas are full  of nothing but appearing and vanishing.  There's 
  nothing lasting about them that can give us any real sustenance or 
  nourishment.  There's not even the least bit of substance to them.  So 
  use your discernment to investigate until you see clearly in this way, 
  and you will come to see the real Dhamma taught by the Buddha, which 
  has not been otherwise from time immemorial, and which by the same 
  token will never be otherwise at all.
  
       Once we have investigated to this extent, how can the mind not 
  withdraw into stillness until it is plainly apparent?  It has to be 
  still.  It has to stand out.  The mind's awareness of itself has to be 
  prominent because it has withdrawn inwardly from having seen the truth 
  of these things.  The mind has to be prominent.  Pain, no matter how 
  horribly severe, will dissolve away through investigation, through the 
  mind's having clearly seen its truth.  Or if it doesn't go away, then 
  the pain and the mind will each have their own separate reality.  The 
  heart will be inwardly majestic.  Undaunted.  Unfearing.  
  
       When the time comes for death, let it happen.  There is no more 
  fear, because death is entirely a matter of rupa, vedana, sanna, 
  sankhara and vinnana.  It's not a matter of the 'knower'--the 
  heart--breaking apart.  It's not the knower--the heart--which dies.  
  Only those other things die.  The mind's labels and assumptions have 
  simply fooled it into fear.  If we can catch sight of the fact that 
  these labels and assumptions are illusions, and not worthy of 
  credence, the mind will withdraw inwardly, no longer believing them, 
  but believing the truth instead, believing the discernment which has 
  investigated things thoroughly.
  
       Now, when the mind has investigated time and again, ceaselessly, 
  relentlessly, it will develop expertise in the affairs of the 
  khandhas. The physical khandha  will be the first to be relinquished 
  through discernment.  In the beginning stage of the investigation, 
  discernment will see through the physical khandha before seeing 
  through the others, and will be able to let it go.  From there, the 
  mind will gradually be able to let go of vedana, sanna, sankhara and 
  vinnana at the same time.  
  
       To put the matter simply, once discernment sees through them, it 
  lets go.  If it has yet to see through them, it holds on.  Once we see 
  through them with discernment, we let them go--let them go 
  completely--because we see they are simply ripplings in the 
  mind--blip,blip,blip--without any substance at all.  A good thought 
  appears and vanishes.  A bad thought appears and vanishes.  Whatever 
  kind of thought appears, it's simply a formation, and as such it 
  vanishes.  If a hundred formations appear, all hundred of them vanish.  
  There is no permanence to them substantial enough for us to trust.
  
       So then.  What is it that keeps supplying us with these things, 
  or keeps forcing them out on us?  What is it that keeps forcing this 
  thing and that out to fool us?  This is where we come to what the 
  Buddha calls the pabhassara-citta:  the original, radiant mind.  'But 
  monks, because of the admix-ture of defilement,' or 'because of the 
  defilements which come passing through'--from sights, sound, smells, 
  tastes, tactile sensations; from rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara and 
  vinnana, which our labels and assumptions haul in to burn us--'the 
  mind becomes defiled.'  It's defiled with just these very things.
  
       Thus investigation is for the sake of removing these things so as 
  to reveal the mind through clear discernment.  We can then see that as 
  long as the mind is at the stage where it hasn't ventured out to 
  become engaged in any object--in as much as its instruments, the 
  senses, are still weak and undeveloped--it is quiet and radiant, as in 
  the saying, 'The original mind is the radiant mind.'  But this is the 
  original mind of the round of rebirth--for example, the mind of a 
  new-born child whose activities are still too undeveloped to take any 
  objects on fully.  It's not the original mind which is freed from the 
  cycle and fully pure. 
  
       So while we investigate around us stage by stage, the symptoms of 
  defilement which used to run all over the place will be gathered into 
  this single point, becoming a radiance within the mind.  And this 
  radiance:  Even the tools of super-mindfulness and super-discernment 
  will have to fall for it when they first meet with it, because it's 
  something we have never seen before, never met before, from the 
  beginning of our practice or from the day of our birth.  We thus 
  become awed and amazed.  It seems for the moment that nothing can 
  compare to it in magnificence.  
  
       And why shouldn't it be magnificent?  It has been the king of the 
  round of  rebirth in all three worlds-- the world of sensuality, the 
  world of form and the world of formless-ness--since way back when, for 
  countless aeons.  It's the one who has wielded power over the mind and 
  ruled the mind all along.  As long as the mind doesn't possess the 
  mindful-ness and discernment to pull itself out from under this power, 
  how can it not be magnificent?  This is why it has been able to drive 
  the mind into experiencing birth on various levels without limit, in 
  dependence on the fruits of the different actions it has performed 
  under the orders of the ephemeral defilements.  The fact that living 
  beings wander and stray, taking birth and dying unceasingly, is 
  because this nature leads them to do so.
  
       This being the case, we have to investigate it so as to see it 
  plainly.  Actually, radiance and defilement are two sides of the same 
  coin, because they are both conventional realities.  The radiance 
  which comes from the convergence of the various defilements will form 
  a point, a center, so that we can clearly perceive that, 'This is the 
  center of the radiance.'  When any defilement appears, in 
  correspondence with that state or level of the mind, a very refined 
  stress will arise in the center we call radiant. Thus radiance, 
  defilement and stress--all three--are companions.  They go together. 
  
       For this reason, the mind possessing this radiance must worry 
  over it, guard it, protect it, maintain it, for fear that something 
  may come to disturb it, jar it, obscure its radiance.  Even the most 
  refined adulteration is still an affair of defilement, about which we 
  as meditators should not be complacent.  We must investigate it with 
  unflagging discernment.
  
       In order to cut through the burden of your concerns once and for 
  all, you should ask yourself, 'What is this radiance?' Fix your 
  attention on it until you know.  There's no need to fear that once 
  this radiance is destroyed, the 'real you' will be destroyed with it.  
  Focus your investigation right at that center so as to see clearly 
  that this radiance has the characteristics of inconstancy, stress and 
  not-self just like all the other phenomena you have already examined.  
  It's not different in any way, aside from the difference in its 
  subtlety.  
  
       Thus nothing should be taken for granted.  If anything has the 
  nature of conventional reality, let discernment slash away at it.  
  Focus right down on the mind itself.  All the really counterfeit 
  things lie in the mind.  This radiance is the ultimate counterfeit, 
  and at that moment it's the most conspi-cuous point.  You hardly want 
  to touch it at all, because you love it and cherish it more than 
  anything else.  In the entire body there is nothing more outstanding 
  than this radiance, which is why you are amazed at it, love it, 
  cherish it, dawdle over it, want nothing to touch it. But it's the 
  enemy king: unawareness.
  
       Have you ever seen it?  If you haven't, then when you reach this 
  stage in your practice, you'll fall for it of your own accord.  And 
  then you'll know it of your own accord--no one will have to tell 
  you--when mindfulness and discern-ment are ready.  It's called avijja 
  --unawareness.  Right here is the true unawareness.  Nothing else is 
  true unawareness.  Don't go imagining  avijja  as a tiger, a leopard, 
  a demon or a beast.  Actually, it's the most beautiful, most alluring 
  Miss Universe the world has ever seen.  Genuine unawareness is very 
  different from what we expect it to be.  
  
       When we reach genuine unawareness, we don't know what unawareness 
  is, and so we get stuck right there.  If there is no one to advise us, 
  no one to suggest an approach, we are sure to be stuck there a long 
  time before we can understand and work ourselves free.  But if there 
  is someone to suggest an approach, we can begin to understand it and 
  strike right at that center, without trusting it, by investigating it 
  in the same way we have dealt with all other phenomena.
  
       Once we have investigated it with sharp discernment until we know 
  it clearly, this phenomenon will dissolve away in a completely 
  unexpected way.  At the same time, you could call it Awakening, or 
  closing down the cemeteries of the round of rebirth, the round of the 
  mind, under the shade of the Bodhi tree.  Once this phenomenon has 
  dissolved away, something even more amazing which has been concealed 
  by unawareness will be revealed in all its fullness. 
  
       This is what is said to be like the quaking of the cosmos within 
  the heart.  This is a very crucial mental moment:  when the heart 
  breaks away from  conventions. This moment, when release and 
  conventional reality break away from each other, is more awesome than 
  can be expressed.  The phrase, 'the path of arahantship giving way to 
  the fruition of arahant-ship' refers to precisely this mental moment, 
  the moment in which unawareness vanishes.  As we are taught, when the 
  path is fully developed, it steps onward to the fruition of 
  arahantship, which is the Dhamma--the mind--at its most complete.  
  From that moment on, there are no more problems.
  
       The phrase, 'the one nibbana',* is fully realized in this  heart 
  in the moment unawareness is dissolving.  We are taught that this is 
  the moment when the path and the           
  ________________________________
  
  * This is an indirect reference to a passage in a Thai Dhamma textbook 
  which reads, 'The transcendent Dhammas are nine: the four paths, the 
  four fruitions and the one nibbana.'
  
  fruition--which are a pair--come together and meet.  If we were to 
  make a comparison with climbing the stairs to a house, one foot is on 
  the last step, the other foot is on the floor of the house.  We 
  haven't yet reached the house with both feet.  When both feet are on 
  the floor of the house, we've 'reached the house'.  As for the mind, 
  it is said to reach the Dhamma or to attain the ultimate Dhamma, and 
  from the moment of attainment, it's called 'the one nibbana'.  
  
       In other words, the mind is completely free.  It displays no 
  further activity for the removal of defilement.  This is called the 
  one nibbana.  If you want, you can call it the fruition of 
  arahantship, for at this stage there are no more defilements to 
  quibble.  Or you can call it the one nibbana.  But if you want to give 
  it the conventional label most appro-priate to the actual principle, 
  so that nothing is deficient in conventional terms, you have to say 
  'the one nibbana' so as to be completely fitting with conventional 
  reality and release in the final phase of wiping out the cemeteries of 
  the mind of unawareness.
  
       The Buddha taught,
  
  n'atthi santi param sukham:
  
  There is no ease other than peace.
  
       This refers to the stage of those who have no more defilements, 
  who have attained sa-upadisesa-nibbana alive, such as the arahants.
  
       To practice the religion means to attend to your own heart and 
  mind.  Who is it that suffers pain and difficulty?  Who is the 
  suspect, forever imprisoned?  Who else, if not the mind?  And who has 
  it imprisoned, if not all the defilements and mental effluents?  To 
  deal with the situation, you have to deal directly with the enemies of 
  the heart, using your discernment, for only sharp discernment is 
  capable of dealing with the defilements until they dissolve away of 
  their own accord, as  I have already  mentioned.  From that point on, 
  there are no more problems.
  
       As for rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara and vinnana, they are simply 
  conditions--just conditions--no longer capable of affecting or 
  provoking the mind. The same with sights, sounds, smells, tastes and 
  tactile sensations:  Each has its separate reality.  To each one we 
  say, 'If it exists, it exists.  If not, no matter.'  The only problem 
  has been the mind which makes labels and assumptions through its own 
  stupidity.  Once it gains enough intelligence, it becomes real.  All 
  phenomena within and without are real.  Each has its own separate 
  reality, with no more of the conflicts or issues which used to occur.
  
       When we reach the stage where 'each has its own separate 
  reality,' we can say that the war between the mind and defilement is 
  over.  When the time comes to part, we part.  If not, we live 
  together, like everyone else in the world, but we don't take issue 
  with each other like everyone else in the world, because we have made 
  our investigation.  
  
       If the words 'inconstancy, stress and not-self' don't refer to 
  the khandhas  for which we are responsible, what do they refer to?  So 
  now we have completed our studies--our study of the three 
  characteristics (ti-lakkhana), rather than of the three divisions 
  (ti-pitaka) of the Pali Canon, although actually the three divisions 
  are nothing other than the three charac-teristics, in that the three 
  divisions are a description of the three characteristics throughout.
  
       Inconstancy: the process of change.  Stress.  Not-self: The 
  khandhas are not us--not us while we are living, so when we die, what 
  is there to latch onto?  When you see the truth in this way, you don't 
  worry or feel apprehensive over the life or the death of the khandhas. 
  The mind simply perceives the modes in which the khandhas behave and 
  break apart, but it by its nature doesn't disband along with the 
  khandhas, so there is nothing to fear.  If death comes, you don't try 
  to prevent it.  It life continues, you don't try to prevent it, for 
  each is a truth.
  
       In completing your study of death, you become the ultimate 
  person--the ultimate you.  When you have com-pleted your study of 
  death--'If life continues, let it continue; if death comes, let it 
  die'--for you have spread a net around yourself with your discernment.  
  You don't tremble over the truths of which the heart is fully aware at 
  all times.
  
            So. That's enough for now.  As it happens, we're at the end 
  of the tape.