Inner Strength - Access to Insight

26warm the fires of digestion, just as if we were steaming fish or other foods tokeep them from spoiling. When our food is cooked, it can be of use—like thesteam condensing on the lid of a pot—to enrich the blood that nourishes thevarious parts of the body. Whichever kind of nourishment should become hair,nails, teeth, skin, etc., the blood sends to those parts.These breath sensations are always flowing in waves through the intestines todisperse the heat of digestion. When we eat, it’s like putting food in a pot on thestove and then closing the lid. If there’s no ventilation in the pot at all, and wesimply add fire, it won’t be long before our stomach is wrecked and ourintestines ruined, because we’ve closed the lid so tightly that no air can pass in orout, until the heat becomes too strong and burns our food to a crisp. Our bodywon’t get any benefit from it. On the other hand, if the heat is too low, our foodwon’t cook through. It’ll spoil, we’ll get an upset stomach, and again our bodywon’t get any benefit. These sorts of breath sensations help keep our digestivefires just right for the body.If we look at these five sorts of breath sensations in the correct way, we’resure to reap two sorts of results: (1) In terms of the body, those of us with manydiseases will have fewer diseases; those of us with few diseases may recovercompletely. Diseases that haven’t yet arisen will have a hard time arising. (2) Interms of the mind, we’ll become contented, happy, and refreshed. At the sametime, meditation can help free us from bad kamma because unskillful mentalstates won’t have a chance to infiltrate the mind. Our life will be long, our bodyhealthy. If we keep developing our meditation to higher and higher levels, thefour properties (dh›tu) of the body will become clear and pure.* * *If we practice meditation by keeping the breath in mind until the breath isrefined and the mind is refined, the breath settles down to a stop and the mindsettles down to be still, then we’ll be able to see our body and mind clearly. Thebody and mind will separate from each other, each existing independently—justas when outsiders don’t come entering in and insiders don’t go out. Awarenesswill arise within us as to how the body is functioning, how the mind isfunctioning. How has our body come into being? We’ll know. And where will itgo from here? We’ll know where it came from, where it’s going—we’ll know itcompletely. What actions we did in our past lives that caused us to be born in thisstate, we’ll know. This is called knowledge of past lives.2. The people and other living beings who’ve been our parents, brothers,sisters, relatives, and friends: Where have they come from? When they die, whatsorts of pleasures and pains will they meet with? And where? We might be ableto make contact with them and send streams of mental energy to help them.This is called knowledge of death and rebirth.3. We’ll see that the body and mind are inconstant, stressful, and not-self, tothe point where we become disenchanted with them. This will cause us to let goof the body and will free us from the fetters of attachment. These fetters includesuch things as attachment to worldly phenomena (loka-dhamma): When we letourselves get pleased with gain, status, pleasure, and praise, it’s no different