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Walking through an art gallery, we sometimes get lost in the appreciation of a painting done on a huge canvas. The setting is so natural and the figures so realistic that for a while we project ourselves into the picture. But as soon as we become aware of its framework, we realize that after all it is something unreal.
Throughout our lives, we are walking through an art gallery. On the vast canvas of the world around us, there are the objects and beings so realistic and life-like that we live fully immersed and involved in them. The mysterious four elements - earth, water, fire, air - with colour and form to deceive us, keep the panorama on the move, so we are spell-bound. Insight into Name and Form helps us to throw off the spell produced by sight. Contemplation of the four elements within and without us forming the warp and woof of the world-canvas, gives flashes of insight into the unreality of the 3-dimensional world we live in. This is the ’form’ aspect of the picture - feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention with which we are enthralled by the panorama, constitute the "name" aspect of the picture. Practising full awareness with regard to them we become detached observers of our framed-up world. Being aware of this framework of name-and-form, we can watch the scenes on the eye-screen as they come, stay, and go away as if we are watching a movie unmoved.
’Just see a world with all its gods - Dvayatanupassana Sutta, Sutta Nipata. |