Foreword

In his 45 years of teaching, the World-Honoured One wandered tirelessly from place to place so that the stream of the Dharma might help beings practise and awaken. Ignorance and clinging to the self are the source of greed, anger, delusion, pride, doubt, afflictions and more; from them beings create karma, sink into the cycle and are reborn again and again in the six realms of rebirth. How can we be freed from this cycle of birth and death, so full of suffering? That is the question that haunts everyone who has wisdom and good roots, every child of the Buddha.

To be born human is already hard; to meet the Buddha's teaching is harder still, and not everyone has the good fortune to be nourished by the teachings of a liberated sage. Even after meeting the teachings, it is not easy to enter the path of practice, and it is not at all easy to attain spiritual realisation. Some people drift around without ever taking a step; some lose their way in the mist; some stop halfway, leaving the journey unfinished.

To put an end to ignorance, to reach the summit of Non-self, we must train in Precepts, Concentration and Wisdom, and follow exactly the course of the Noble Eightfold Path that the Buddha laid out. And the starting point of practice, which is also the method for the whole journey, is to turn the light back onto our own inner mind.

We look back at ourselves to see the thorns and swamps of wrong views and evil views, and to see the mist of afflictions spread thick over the mind. We look back at ourselves to see that "the greatest enemy of our life, we never guessed, is ourselves". That is what practice is. Practice is an extremely hard-fought battle, no less fierce than war and many times harder, because we cannot see the enemy's face! We must shine the light of the Buddha's teaching, and wield the sharp sword of wisdom, to cut through the roots of every thorn in the dense jungle of ignorance and destroy clinging to the self.

Practice is hard, but beyond the dark night lies the sun. And where shall we begin this journey?