Question: It is difficult to have right understanding of realities when one is a beginner.

Answer: There must be the intellectual understanding of the mental phenomena and physical phenomena which are the object of understanding and one should know how to develop understanding. One has to know that it should be developed naturally in one’s daily life. Many people just want to sit and concentrate on breathing, but they have to consider themselves whether this is the way to know the realities of one’s daily life. Is this the way to know seeing, hearing and all the other realities, and to know the clinging which arises on account of the experience of the sense objects? Defilements cannot be eradicated if one does not realize them as they arise in one’s daily life. Right understanding of realities can be accumulated little by little if one develops it naturally, without trying to make particular realities arise, without trying to control realities. They arise already because of their own conditions. Also understanding can only arise when there are the right conditions, one cannot control it.