One day, while washing her feet, she watched the streams of water disappear back into the earth, and she had sudden insight into the nature of impermanence. She held that image in her mind during her meditation for several days and nights, and one dawn, she broke through the problem of birth and death.

In the contemplation of feelings, the practitioner contemplates feelings as they arise, develop, and fade, feelings which are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Feelings can have as their source either the body or the mind. When he feels pain from a toothache, the practitioner is aware that he feels pain from a toothache; when he is happy because he

“Thanks to understanding, a practitioner can prevent the pain in himself and others from being intensified. When an unpleasant feeling, physical or mental, arises in him, the wise man does not worry, complain, weep, pound his chest, pull his hair, torture his body and mind, or faint. He calmly observes his feeling and is aware that it is only a fee

A bhikkhu observes the six sense organs and overcomes the five obstacles of the mind which are greed, hatred, ignorance, torpor, and doubt.

To be caught in a whirlpool means to be bound by the five categories of desire—being caught by good food, sex, money, fame, or sleep. To rot from the inside out means to live a life of false virtue, deceiving the sangha while using the Dharma to serve your own desires.

“My friends, you are already qualified to discern which things to accept and which things to discard. Believe and accept only those things which accord with your own reason, those things which are supported by the wise and virtuous, and those things which in practice bring benefit and happiness to yourselves and others. Discard things which oppose

No person, not even a great Master, can ever be a more stable refuge than your own island of mindfulness, the Three Gems within you.”

One is aware of what is taking place within one’s self and in one’s surroundings. One is in direct contact with life. If one continues to live in such a way, one will be able to deeply understand one’s self and one’s surroundings.

“Meghiya, practice the contemplations on death, compassion, impermanence, and the full awareness of breathing: “To overcome desire, practice the contemplation on a corpse, looking deeply at the nine stages of the body’s decay from the time the breathing ceases to the time the bones turn to dust. “To overcome anger and hatred, practice the contempla