Inner Strength - Access to Insight

persons running: They’ll have a hard time seeing each other’s faces. If one stopsbut the other is running, they can see each other somewhat, but not clearly. Ifthey’re both running, they’ll see each other even less clearly. For example, ifwe’re sitting or standing still and someone sneaks up, hits us over the head, andthen runs off, we’ll have a hard time catching him. In the same way, if we spinaround or get involved in the spinning of the world, we’ll have even less chanceof knowing or seeing anything. The Dhamma thus teaches us to stop spinningthe wheel of rebirth so that we can know the world clearly.When an airplane propeller or any bladed wheel is spinning, we can’t see howmany blades it has, what shape they are, or how fine they are. The faster it spins,the less we can see its shape. Only when it slows down or stops spinning can wesee clearly what shape it has. This is an analogy for the spinning of the currentsof the world—the outer world—and for our own spinning, we who live in theworld.The outer world means the earth in which we live. The world of fabricationsmeans ourself: our body and mind, which are separate things but have todepend on each other, just as the world and people, which are separate things,have to depend on each other. If we had a body but not a mind, we wouldn’t beable to accomplish anything. The same would be true if we had a mind without abody. So the mind is like a person dwelling in the world. The mind is thecraftsman; the body, its work of art. The mind is what creates the body. It’s whatcreates the world.The world is something broad and always spinning, something hard to seeclearly. This is why the Buddha teaches us to stop spinning after the world and tolook only at ourself. That’s when we’ll be able to see the world. We ourself aresomething small—a fathom long, a span thick, a cubit wide—except that ourbelly is big. No matter how much we eat, we’re never full. We never haveenough. This stands for the greed of the mind, which causes us to suffer fromour lack of enough, our desires, our hunger.To see ourself or to see the world, the Buddha teaches us to survey ourselffrom the head to the feet, from the feet to the head, just as if we’re going to planta tree: We have to survey things from the ground on up to the tips of thebranches. The ground stands for the purity of our livelihood. We have toexamine the ground to see if it has any termites or other pests that will destroythe roots of our tree. Then we have to add the right amount of fertilizer—nottoo little, not too much. We have to care for it correctly in line with its size. Forexample, how do we observe the five precepts so that they’re pure? How do weobserve the eight, the ten, and the 227 precepts so that they’re pure? What thingsshould we abstain from doing? What things should we do? This is called rightlivelihood.If we attend too much to our physical pleasure, we tend not to give rise tovirtue, like certain kinds of trees that are very healthy, with large branches andlush foliage, but tend not to bear fruit. If a person eats a lot and sleeps a lot, ifhe’s concerned only with matters of eating and sleeping, his body will be largeand hefty, like a tree with a large trunk, large branches, large leaves, but hardlyany fruit. We human beings—once our bodies are well-nourished with food—if23