A Difference in the Knowing

What can we do to see the aggregates -- this mass of suffering and stress -- clearly in a way that we can cut attachment for them out of the mind? Why is it that people studying to be doctors can know everything in the body -- intestines, liver, kidneys, and all -- down to the details, and yet don't develop any dispassion or disenchantment for it -- why? Why is it that undertakers can spend their time with countless corpses and yet not gain any insight at all? This shows that this sort of insight is hard to attain. If there's no mindfulness and discernment to see things clearly for what they are, knowledge is simply a passing fancy. It doesn't sink in. The mind keeps latching onto its attachments.

But if the mind can gain true insight to the point where it can relinquish its attachments, it can gain the paths and fruitions leading to nibbana. This shows that there's a difference in the knowing. It's not that we have to know all the details like modern-day surgeons. All we have to know is that the body is composed of the four physical elements plus the elements of space and consciousness. If we really know just this much, we've reached the paths and their fruitions, while those who know all the details to the point where they can perform surgery don't reach any transcendent attainments at all....

So let's analyze the body into its elements so as to know them thoroughly. If we do, then when there are changes in the body and mind there won't be too much clinging. If we don't, our attachments will be fixed and strong and will lead to further states of being and birth in the future.

Now that we have the opportunity, we should contemplate the body and take it apart for a good look so as to get down to the details. Take the five basic meditation objects -- hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin -- and look at them carefully, one at a time. You don't have to take on all five, you know. Focus on the hair of the head to see that it belongs to the earth element, to see that its roots are soaked in blood and lymph under the skin. It's unattractive in terms of its color, its smell, and where it dwells. If you analyze and contemplate these things, you won't be deluded into regarding them as your hair, your nails, your teeth, your skin.

All of these parts are composed of the earth element mixed in with water, wind, and fire. If they were purely earth they wouldn't last, because every part of the body has to be composed of all four elements for it to be a body. And then there's a mental phenomenon, the mind, in charge. These are things that follow in line with nature in every way -- the arising, changing, and disbanding of physical and mental phenomena -- but we latch onto them, seeing the body as ours, the mental phenomena as us: It's all us and ours. If we don't contemplate to see these things for what they are, we'll do nothing but cling to them.

This is what meditation is: seeing things clearly for what they are. It's not a matter of switching from topic to topic, for that would simply ensure that you wouldn't know a thing. But our inner character, under the sway of ignorance and delusion, doesn't like examining itself repeatedly. It keeps finding other issues to get in the way, so that we think constantly about other things. This is why we stay so ignorant and foolish.

Then why is it that we can know other things? Because they fall in line with what craving wants. To see things clearly for what they are would be to abandon craving, so it finds ways of keeping things hidden. It keeps changing, bringing in new things all the time, keeping us fooled all the time, so that we study and think about nothing but matters that add to the mind's suffering and stress. That's all that craving wants. As for the kind of study that would end the stress and suffering in the mind, it's always getting in the way.

This is why the mind is always wanting to shift to new things to know, new things to fall for. And this is why it's always becoming attached. So when it doesn't really know itself, you have to make a real effort to see the truth that the things within it aren't you or yours. Don't let the mind stop short of this knowledge: Make this a law within yourself. If the mind doesn't know the truths of inconstancy, stress, and not-self within itself, it won't gain release from suffering. Its knowledge will simply be worldly knowledge; it will follow a worldly path. It won't reach the paths and fruition leading to nibbana.

So this is where the worldly and the transcendent part ways. If you comprehend inconstancy, stress, and not-self to the ultimate degree, that's the transcendent. If you don't get down to their details, you're still on the worldly level....

The Buddha has many teachings, but this is what they all come down to. The important principles of the practice -- the four foundations of mindfulness, the four Noble Truths -- all come down to these characteristics of inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness. If you try to learn too many principles, you'll end up not getting any clear knowledge of the truth as it is. If you focus on knowing just a little, you'll end up with more true insight than if you try knowing a lot of things. It's through wanting to know a lot of things that we end up deluded. We wander around in our deluded knowledge, thinking and labeling things, but knowledge that's focused and specific, when it really knows, is absolute. It keeps hammering away at one point. There's no need to know a lot of things, for when you really know one thing, everything converges right there....