Day Four: 25 November 2005

Good is the mastery of speech, good is the physical mastery, but one who is a master of his mind is a warrior of real courage.

11.10
Raging mind like bushfire. Unable to concentrate this morning. Will start practice Vipassana later this afternoon. Surgical removal of pains and suffering. Sounds terrifying...and frightened of what I may uncover, and confront.

19.03
Entered the scanning part of the course, heard to toe, every bit and piece of the body, observed with utmost attention and vigilence for the most subtle sensations. Easier to concentrate mind now. Last sat through an hour trying not to move to test determination...almost succeeded. Feel equanimity, experience impermenance and change, realise Dhamma.

--
The Discourse Summaries--talks from a ten-day course in Vipassana Meditation, S.N. Goenka

"When one is ignorant, sensations are a means to multiply one's misery, because one reacts to them with craving or aversion. The problem actually arises, the tension originates, at the level of bodily sensations; therefore this is the level at which one must work to solve the problem, to change the habit pattern of the mind. One must learn to be aware of all the different sensations without reacting to them, accepting their changing, impersonal nature. By doing so, one comes out of the habit of blind reaction, one liberates oneself from misery. "

"On the same soil one sows two seeds, one of sugarcane, the other of neem--a very bitter tropical tree. From the seed of sugarcane develops a plant that is sweet in every fibre, from the seed of neem, a plant that is bitter in every fibre. One may ask why nature is kind to one plant and cruel to the other. In fact nature is neither kind nor cruel; it works according to set rules. Nature merely helps the quality of each seed to manifest. If one sows seeds of sweetness, the harvest will be sweetness. If one sows seeds of bitterness, the harvest will be bitterness. As the seed is, so the fruit will be; as the action is, so the result win be."