Wisdom becomes especially important in your internal activities, when you’re investigating the various kinds of mental defilements. Wisdom and mindfulness should not be separated. They have to perform their duties together. Mindfulness keeps watch over the work that wisdom is performing. When mindfulness lapses, their work won’t accomplish its full aims. For this reason, mindfulness is a necessary quality that must always be kept fastened to your work. These three duties constitute our work as contemplatives. Remember them and always take them to heart. Don’t be apathetic, or you’ll become a shameless monk who is callous to the fact that the world is always bowing down to you. The word “wisdom” means our ability to investigate and unravel the various factors that become involved with us, both within and without. (And here, I have to ask forgiveness of the men and women interested in the Dhamma who fall under the condition I’m about to discuss. Please reflect on my words in all fairness.) The physical body: Usually it’s the body of the opposite sex that causes meditators the most problems. As the Dhamma says, there is no sight that’s a greater enemy to the mental state of a contemplative than the sight of the opposite sex. The same holds true for the voice, the smell, the taste and the touch of the opposite sex. These are the foremost dangers that contemplatives face, so we have to show greater care and restraint toward these sense objects than toward any others. Mindfulness and wisdom must come to terms with these important factors because they can cause more problems than any other aspect of practice.
The Work of a Contemplative
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