Inner Strength - Access to Insight

we can use to develop goodness within ourselves. We keep putting it off.In what way? When we’re children, we tell ourselves that we can wait untilwe’re older. We’re not going to die anytime soon, so we should take the time tostudy instead. When we become young adults, we tell ourselves that we can waituntil we get married. Once we get married and get ourselves established in ourcareer, we tell ourselves to wait until our children are grown and they getmarried. Going to the monastery can wait until we’ve aged a bit. We keep onputting it off and turn ourselves into nice sweet pigs for M›ra to swallow downeasily without our even realizing it.Finally, if we really do survive until old age, our children get worried and tryto dissuade us from going. “Mom, don’t go to the monastery. You’re old. You’llsuffer all sorts of hardships.” And we believe them. “If you feel faint or get sick,it’s going to be hard for you.” Your eyes get so that you can’t see, your ears getso that you can’t hear. You can’t hear the sermons, can’t hear when they’regiving the precepts. Your eyes, your ears, every path for doing good gets closedoff and sealed up tight.This is what happens to people who get all wrapped up in their work—worried about how they’re going to eat, sleep, and live; worried about wealthand poverty to the point where they can’t develop any skillfulness and see itthrough. These ways of thinking are a type of mental fabrication that fools us,trips us up, pulls us back, ties us down. That’s why they count as a type of M›ra,as demons of defilement.The demon of defilement on the fourth level is ignorance, not beingacquainted with things. We aren’t acquainted with suffering and stress; aren’tacquainted with the cause of stress; aren’t acquainted with the cessation of stressor with the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress. Our not beingacquainted with these four noble truths is one aspect of ignorance. Anotheraspect is not knowing which affairs are past, which ones are future, and whichones are present. These three, plus the four noble truths, add up to seven. Andthen there’s not knowing ignorance itself, which makes eight. These forms ofunawareness are called avijj›, or ignorance.What this all boils down to is not knowing the path. For instance, when wepractice the four frames of reference: k›y›nupassan›—we focus on the body inand of itself, but we don’t understand the body. We think that the body is themind or the mind is the body. This is ignorance. It’s dark. It closes off the bodyand closes off the mind, so that we think that they’re one and the same thing. Wecan’t separate the body from the mind or the mind from the body. This is callednot knowing our path.Vedan›nupassan›: We focus on feelings in and of themselves, but we aren’treally acquainted with feelings. “Feelings” here means the act of savoringsensations, which sometimes are pleasant, sometimes painful, sometimes neitherpleasant nor painful. We think that the pleasure is the same thing as our ownmind, or that our self is what has pleasure. Or we think that the pain is the samething as our self, or that our self is what has pain. We can’t separate the pleasureand pain from the mind, so they get tightly tangled up together. We can’tseparate them, can’t tell what’s what. This is called ignorance, not being72