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time for meditation each day. Divide your time into two parts, one part for your worldly business and one part for meditation," Sayadaw would say.
Once when Sayadaw was eating lunch outside the monastery, a professor of chemistry was present. I remember Sayadaw speaking about the Dhamma using words suited to the professor. He said, "When you make a chemical analysis, you have instruments for performing the analysis, don't you? Without these instruments, one can't perform the analysis. It won't be possible. But there is a method for analysis without the use of instruments. Do you know this method? Have you used it before? Our very bodies are the laboratory. Which method of analysis will you use?"
Sayadaw posed these riddle-like questions as a way of urging the listener to practice Satipatthana. I think that Sayadaw referred to Satipatthana indirectly in this way because the listener, being a professor, was an intellectual.
When I accompanied Sayadaw once on a trip abroad, we stayed for a night at the home of the King of Thailand's cousin. The King's cousin told Sayadaw about her meditation experience. Her face was bright and full of grace. Sayadaw said, "Of all the kinds of make-up for making one's body beautiful and graceful, the best of all is Satipatthana." The royal lady was greatly pleased with Sayadaw's remark.
According to one American yogi, it is as if Americans live in air-conditioned rooms yet their hearts are ablaze. In their lives they are always hungering and thirsting, like the hungry and thirsty ghosts of the Peta realm, she said. This probably isn't true only of her country-people. Most people in this world are probably like that.
Sayadaw told her, "If you are living in an air-conditioned room and don't want to suffer from a burning heart, enshrine the Satipatthana practice in your heart. If you hunger, eat the food of Satipatthana. Your hunger will undoubtedly be appeased. If you thirst, drink the water of Satipatthana. Your thirst will no doubt be quenched."
Sayadaw has tasted the Dhamma, the best of all tastes. Wherever he goes, he urges the people he meets, using words that suit them, to enter the realm of Satipaþþhana, because he wants others to experience the best of all tastes as he has. He says there is nothing like it in this world. It is very good. If you haven't tasted it yet, try it and see. Anyone who is up-to-date in the Sâsana must taste it. There are those who have already tasted this taste, he says. Don't be behind the times.
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