The snow has melted, but the ground is frozen, so the outflow of my little fishpond has been caught in action--a scale of ice frozen on top of the lawn. I can follow the drainage course of the water all the way down the slight incline of the yard.
The outflows (asavas) are our predispositions, our mental defilements, which surreptiously keep the wheel of samsara, the wheel of suffering, spinning. The 3 outflows are sense desire, craving for existence, and ignorance. Huh?
It's hard to catch these rascals in action unless you're looking for them. This is what meditation can do: freeze those rascals in their tracks so that you can see tiny shreds of sense desire. You can see the particular ways in which you crave being. (Well, obviously, i don't want to die, for instance.) You can see how ignorance worms its way into ordinary, daily thoughts, words, and deeds.
And the wheel of samsara keeps spinning.
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