About This Teaching
Everything that arises in the mind also ceases, Ajahn Dtun says, and the practice is to keep seeing this impermanence. Living beings, trees, buildings and objects all change and decay; a human life passes from childhood through youth to old age. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches, the senses themselves and the moods of the mind are all impermanent. Seeing this again and again, the mind lets go of both outer things and inner moods.
This sounds easy, he notes, but to truly see the impermanence and not-self of all things one needs sīla as the foundation and samādhi in the middle. When teachers speak of seeing the world as empty, they mean a mind that no longer holds on to anything.
So one must be patient and persevering, removing what is unwholesome and developing what is good. However far the destination, if we keep walking, resting when tired and then going on, we will arrive one day; practising the Buddha's teaching each day leads to Nibbāna.