CUTTING OFF THE STREAM *
DEFILEMENT AND CRAVING LURE THE MIND
The mind has been controlled by defilement, craving and ignorance for so long that it does not know how to get away from them. They have lead the mind towards lower thoughts. Their ways revolve around the stream of the world and the mind travels with it. The true nature of the mind is wisdom, but it has been covered up and so left the mind in darkness, unable to find its way out of suffering. The mind is under the control of defilement and craving all the time. Defilements prevent the mind from studying about and searching for the way to get out of the cycle of rebirth by talcing the mind away from doing good deeds, especially Dharma practice. Defilements have very subtle tricks to keep the mind from Dharma practice. For example, we think that there is plenty of time left since we are not old and will not die young. Or we have accumulated too little merit in the past lives to reach Nibbana, so it is good enough for us to practise at our own speed. As the mind is flooded by these excuses over and over again, it inclines toward such belief and ends up practising Dharma in fits and starts.
WISDOM PAVES THE WAY FOR THE MIND
When a follower of Dharma realizes that he has been fooled by defilement and craving, and that this is how they work, he must use wisdom to pave a new way for the mind. All past knowledge and mental activities influenced by defilements are ways toward suffering, and they repeat themselves in cycles. The view of happiness when being born on this earth, from clinging to posessions and never to relinquishing them are against the Truth. We must contemplate with wisdom and try to build up new concepts in the mind to learn things according to the Truth and to know and see things correctly. In short, the mind must be taught Right View. This is basic wisdom, and its development requires rationalization according to the Truth. Everything is contemplated until its Three Characteristics, suffering, impermanence and no-self, are revealed.
WISDOM TEACHES THE MIND TO BE WELL-ROUNDED
To contemplate with wisdom in order to understand all compounded states which arise, exist and perish, one must analyze things all around us. For example, when one sees an old man, a sick person or a dead body, one must put oneself in that situation and contemplate it. You are subject to old age, sickness and death just like those you have seen. You will experience the same suffering, impermanence and no-self just like others. When you see a dead body, look at yourself and see your body as a corpse also. Comtemplate the past using memories as the subject of your contemplation. Contemplate the future as well through imagination. Memories and imagination are the seat of wisdom. So one must choose to remember things that will deter the mind from attachment to worldly things. Anyone born on this earth must have experienced some degree of pain from such attachment. Remembering those painful things prevents the mind from indulging in pleasure. Without wisdom one tends to be drawn to things that induce sensual desire and cravings brought into the mind through the body, hearing, smell, taste and touch. On the other hand, wisdom arising from memories of harmful thing! is always ready to teach the mind about how harmful your own or others' bodily senses are. The body is subject to diseases and death in this life, just as it has been in your past lives.
Phra Acariya Thoon Khippapanno
