Buddha: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Carrithers

Author:Michael Carrithers [Carrithers, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192854537
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1996-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

But this is not to say that impulses to respond to such calls disappear, for they do not, or at least not permanently. In the meditator such impulses simply do not issue in a reaction. He is tranquil, his mind is malleable (kammañña). He can temporarily ignore such impulses completely if he chooses, as in an Absorption, but his long-term relationship to such impulses is also changed, for he can now respond to such impulses in a reasoned rather than an automatic way.

Moreover, just because such sensations and impulses do not disappear, he can choose to exercise mindfulness, securely founded in his now habitual equanimity, to observe and analyse them. Whereas the ordinary unskilled person can with clarity contemplate painful or pleasurable sensations, and the accompanying impulses and emotions, only in the tranquillity of memory, safely removed from their effects by time, the meditator learns to do so immediately, as they actually occur. It must be the case that, because of his long training, the meditating ascetic perceives his pains, pleasures, and urges as being less poignant and pressing, but this does not change their fundamental nature. And in any case the meditator may still use memory, and the observation of other people, to confirm that what he observes of his relatively controlled emotions must also be true of less controlled emotions.

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