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will happen in the beginning. Slowly slowly they become more and more solid, they abide more and more. Slowly slowly, slowly slowly, very slowly, they settle forever. Before that you cannot be allowed to take it for granted; that will be a mistake. Hence he says: Between sessions....
When you are sitting in meditation, a session of meditation, this will happen -- but it will go. So what are you supposed to do between sessions?
BETWEEN SESSIONS, CONSIDER PHENOMENA AS PHANTOMS.
Between sessions, continue to use the method. Drop the method when you are deep in meditation. The moment comes, as awareness is getting purer and purer, when suddenly it is utterly pure: drop the method, abandon the method, forget all about the remedy, just settle and be.
But this will happen only for moments in the beginning. Sometimes it happens here listening to me. Just for a moment, like a breeze, you are transported into another world, the world of no-mind. Just for a moment, you know that you know -- but only for a moment. And again the darkness gathers and the mind is back with all its dreams, with all its desires and all its stupidities.
For a moment the clouds had separated and you had seen the sun. Now the clouds are there again; it is all dark and the sun has disappeared. Now even to believe that the sun exists will be difficult. Now to believe that what you had experienced a moment before was true will be difficult. It may have been a fantasy; the mind may say it may have just been imagination.
It is so incredible, it looks so impossible, that it could have happened to YOU. With all this stupidity in the mind, with all these clouds and darknesses, it had happened to you: you saw the sun for a moment. It doesn't look probable -- you must have imagined it; maybe you had fallen into a dream and seen it.
Between sessions start again, be in the boat, use the boat again.
... CONSIDER PHENOMENA AS PHANTOMS.
Atisha is very considerate to the disciples. Otherwise the fourth sutra would have been the last -- or, at the most, the fifth:
SETTLE IN THE NATURE OF BASIC COGNITION, THE ESSENCE.
If Atisha had been a man
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