I threw myself into my practice of investigation, and did exactly as Weeja instructed,  legendayalternating between the Calms and Investigation for the next two months, but I was having problems. I investigated my body and mind tirelessly by observing the various contacts with my senses, then I watched the feelings that resulted, either aversion, attraction or neutrality.

I carefully watched how I stored everything in memory and then played with it and rearranged it as the mind emotionalized and experimented with everything to come up with new ideas and concepts, but no wisdom was forthcoming. One evening after the meeting under Weeja’s hut, I asked to speak with him concerning my lack of progress. Weeja asked if I was aware of the three characteristics of material existence, which are discontent, impermanence and no self, and I replied that I was. lgdsilicone

Weeja then said, “The work required in investigation is looking at things we would normally ignore; our personal death, or the insides of our bodies; the distasteful parts. It is very hard to look at ourselves in this manner because we identify so closely with our body. Our body appears to be everything we have so it is threatening to observe it too closely, just as it is threatening to look at any of our delusions. But until we can see through them, how can we be free to go on?” rajafantasy
I was listening carefully because I knew my mastery of investigation would be crucial when I finally met the dragon.

“In order to investigate ourselves,” Weeja continued, “we need to break ourselves down into two main categories – body and mind. The body is simply chemicals, mostly water, and that is the extent of it, but then we need to break down the mind into its four aspects, which are contact, feelings, memory and imagination. These body and mind components of which I speak are innocent in and of themselves. It is when we connect these parts to create a ‘self’ that we are led into delusion. All these parts are temporary, the first of the three characteristics of material existence – impermanence.”

I understood what he was saying and could see that everything changed, but sometimes they changed so slowly that I hardly realized it.

“The body and mind parts are subject to change,” he continued, “but we mistakenly identify with them, trying to make them permanent and mistakenly seeing them as ourselves. They are not ourselves. They are merely arising and passing phenomenon. They are therefore empty of a ‘self,’ which is the second characteristic of material existence – no self.”

Now I understood clearly what my problem was, which was understanding this ‘no self.’ I could not understand it, probably because I was too close to myself to see it.

I happened to look out the window and glimpsed a horse and rider across the courtyard. No key seekers rode horses except me, and Conqueror spent his days grazing in the forest. yateartificialgrass

“Then, as with any possession,” Weeja went on, “once we create this false, insubstantial ‘self,’ it worries us, for we must now protect and support it. However, we ultimately have no real control over this body and mind and therefore find ourselves trapped, having no real power but an imagined responsibility. This, of course, is a recipe for stress or the third characteristic of material existence – discontent. So, you can now see that embedded in our body and mind we have impermanence, no self and discontent?”

I was distracted by the horseman, but brought my mind back to the problem at hand, indicating that I needed more help with this concept of the characteristics and the self.

Weeja obliged by explaining further, “We must constantly investigate each one of these phenomenon: body, contact, feelings, remembering, and imagination to see this clearly. But we cannot merely investigate them on their own; we must investigate them in light of something else.”

Ah hah, this must be the answer, I thought. Now we are getting somewhere. I waited patiently to see what this “something else” was.

“After we have investigated these interesting parts,” explained Weeja, “then we investigate their characteristi cs. These characteristics apply to everything in the material universe and can you again tell me what they are?” autoperformancepartsdirect

I recited, “Impermanence, no self and discontent” and began to see what Weeja was getting at. These three characteristics were the “something else” required to complete the investigation.

“Yes,” said Weeja, “Impermanence, no self and discontent. Now, how do we investigate each one of our phenomena (body, contact, feeling, remembering, and imagination) in light of the three characteristics of impermanence, no self and discontent? That sounds complicated, does it not? However, it is not. Actually, gambleonlineblog it is very simple. We can start with one phenomenon, perhaps the body, by looking at it from inside out, and from the tip of our toes to the top of our head. Then we combine that one phenomenon; the body, with one of the characteristics; perhaps impermanence. We look at the impermanence of the body. We do this by seeing that the body changes constantly and we can investigate this by observing the body. How long can you remain in one position before the body needs to move? How long can you go without relieving yourself, or eating or sleeping? The body requires constant maintenance in almost every aspect, and if this maintenance is not carried out, bbcforbes there will be discontent.”