same. Otherwise the mind and its thought-formations will become entangled and this will complicate the investigation as I have already explained. The point to focus on is the arising and involvement of thought-formations -- what preoccupations they touch on -- as well as their disbanding together with the disbanding of their preoccupations. Try to observe and keep track of the movements of these thought-formations that come out from the mind to focus on preoccupations of the past or future, both blatant and subtle. Always be aware that thought-formations and preoccupations of every sort that are interrelated must arise and disband together. They can't be made to behave otherwise. Thus the notions of 'being,' 'person,' 'self,' or 'other' shouldn't be brought in to refer to the mind, because they will immediately turn into a cause of stress. Try to observe until you see this in the course of the investigation, and you will see, as the Buddha taught, that the mind is simply a mind and nothing else -- not a being, a person, self, other, or whatever. When we contemplate the mind in this way, the heart will not be upset or infatuated with the fashionings and conditions, the pleasures and pains of the mind. This is what it means to have the mind as a frame of reference. 'Phenomena' (dhamma) as a frame of reference covers anything that serves as a focal point of the heart. On the refined level, it refers to the heart itself. External phenomena are