Nevertheless, the training is difficult. Why is it difficult?
It's difficult because of wanting, tanhā.
If you don't ''want'' then you don't practice.
But if you practice out of desire you won't see the Dhamma.
Think about it, all of you. If you don't want to practice you can't practice.
You must first want to practice in order to actually do the practice.
Whether stepping forward or stepping back you meet desire.
This is why the cultivators of the past have said that this practice is something that's extremely difficult to do.
You don't see Dhamma because of desire.
Sometimes desire is very strong, you want to see the Dhamma immediately,
but the Dhamma is not your mind - your mind is not yet Dhamma.
The Dhamma is one thing and the mind is another.
It's not that whatever you like is Dhamma and whatever you don't like isn't. That's not the way it goes.
Actually this mind of ours is simply a condition of nature, like a tree in the forest.
If you want a plank or a beam it must come from the tree, but the tree is still only a tree.
It's not yet a beam or a plank. Before it can really be of use to us we must take that tree and saw it into beams or planks.
It's the same tree but it becomes transformed into something else.
Intrinsically it's just a tree, a condition of nature.
But in its raw state it isn't yet of much use to those who need timber. Our mind is like this.
It is a condition of nature. As such it perceives thoughts, it discriminates into beautiful and ugly and so on.
This mind of ours must be further trained.
We can't just let it be. It's a condition of nature... train it to realize that it's a condition of nature.
Improve on nature so that it's appropriate to our needs, which is Dhamma.
Dhamma is something which must be practiced and brought within.