WOOLLY POMPOSITIES 
107 
acquisition of new ideas. It is the difference between a man 
trying to pick a smut out of his wife's eye with clumsy greasy 
fingers coarsened by digging drains, and an oculist furnished 
with a speculum and all the instruments exactly suited to the 
task. 
Yet another point. Besides getting rid of the emotions and 
sensations which cloud the thought, the fact that you are 
constantly asking yourself "Now, in which drawer of which 
cabinet does this thought go?" automatically induces you to 
regard the system as the important factor in the operation, if 
only because it is common to every one of them. 
So not only have you freed Sanna (perception) from the 
taint of Vedana (sensation) but raised it (or demolished it, if 
you prefer to look at it in that light!) to be merely a member 
of the Sankhara (tendency) 
class, thus boosting you 
vigorously to the fourth stage, the last before the last! of the 
practice of Mahasatipathana . 
Just one more word about the element of Vedana. The 
Intellect is a purely mechanical contrivance, as accurate and 
as careless of what it turns out as a Cash Register. It receives 
impressions, calculates, states the result: that is A double L, 
ALL! 
Try never to qualify a thought in any way, to see it as it is 
in itself in relation to those other elements which are 
necessary to make it what it is. 
Above all, do not "mix the planes." A dagger may be sharp 
or blunt, straight or crooked; it is not "wicked-looking," or 
even "trusty," except in so far as the quality of its steel 
makes it so. A cliff is not "frowning" or "menacing." A 
snow-covered glacier is not "treacherous": to say so means 
only that Alpine Clubmen and other persons ignorant of 
mountain craft are unable to detect the position of covered 
crevasses. 
All such points you must decide for yourself; the 
important thing is that you should challenge any such ideas. 
Above all, do not avoid, or slur, unwelcome trains of