The Power of Perfuming

Just after listening to a song, the melody keeps echoing and replaying in the mind — this is the manas holding onto it while the mind consciousness recalls the song. If only studying Buddhism could be this fast and this easy! The habituation to worldly dharmas is quick, while the habituation to the Buddha-dharma is far too slow, because we have been habituated to worldly dharmas for so very long. How long have worldly dharmas been permeating and staining us? It is impossible to calculate, whereas the time we have been habituated to the Buddha-dharma is far too short by comparison. Is contemplating the sun really so difficult and so intricate? Clearly not, yet no matter what, one cannot accomplish the contemplation — it is simply because one has never contemplated it before, and the mind takes no interest in it. How fascinating and familiar worldly dharmas are — even if you do not want them to appear, you cannot suppress them. Cultivation is about turning the unfamiliar into the familiar, and the familiar into the unfamiliar: the unfamiliar is the Buddha-dharma, and the familiar is worldly dharma. The key is knowing how to make this turn, and having the resolve to make it.