Monster Media 1994 #2/Monster Media No. 2 (Monster Media)(1994).ISO/text/bbessays.zip/ESSAY_04.TXT

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           BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #4 (Summer 1986)


                      PURIFICATION OF MIND

                        by Bhikkhu Bodhi




   An ancient maxim found in the //Dhammapada// sums up the practice of
   the Buddha's teaching in three simple guidelines to training: to
   abstain from all evil, to cultivate good, and to purify one's mind.
   These three principles form a graded sequence of steps progressing
   from the outward and preparatory to the inward and essential . Each
   step leads naturally into the one that follows it, and the
   culmination of the three in purification of mind makes it plain that
   the heart of Buddhist practice is to be found here.

   Purification of mind as understood in the Buddha's teaching is the
   sustained endeavor to cleanse the mind of defilements, those dark
   unwholesome mental forces which run beneath the surface stream of
   consciousness vitiating our thinking, values, attitudes, and actions.
   The chief among the defilements are the three that the Buddha has
   termed the "roots of evil" -- greed, hatred, and delusion -- from
   which emerge their numerous offshoots and variants: anger and
   cruelty, avarice and envy, conceit and arrogance, hypocrisy and
   vanity, the multitude of erroneous views.

   Contemporary attitudes do not look favorably upon such notions as
   defilement and purity, and on first encounter they may strike us as
   throwbacks to an outdated moralism, valid perhaps in an era when
   prudery and taboo were dominant, but having no claims upon us
   emancipated torchbearers of modernity. Admittedly, we do not all
   wallow in the mire of gross materialism and many among us seek our
   enlightenments and spiritual highs, but we want them on our own
   terms, and as heirs of the new freedom we believe they are to be won
   through an unbridled quest for experience without any special need
   for introspection, personal change, or self-control.

   However, in the Buddha's teaching the criterion of genuine
   enlightenment lies precisely in purity of mind. The purpose of all
   insight and enlightened understanding is to liberate the mind from
   the defilements, and Nibbana itself, the goal of the teaching, is
   defined quite clearly as freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion.
   From the perspective of the Dhamma defilement and purity are not mere
   postulates of a rigid authoritarian moralism but real and solid facts
   essential to a correct understanding of the human situation in the
   world.

   As facts of lived experience, defilement and purity pose a vital
   distinction having a crucial significance for those who seek
   deliverance from suffering. They represent the two points between
   which the path to liberation unfolds -- the former its problematic
   and starting point, the latter its resolution and end. The
   defilements, the Buddha declares, lie at the bottom of all human
   suffering. Burning within as lust and craving, as rage and
   resentment, they lay to waste hearts, lives, hopes, and
   civilizations, and drive us blind and thirsty through the round of
   birth and death. The Buddha describes the defilements as bonds,
   fetters, hindrances, and knots; thence the path to unbonding,
   release, and liberation, to untying the knots, is at the same time a
   discipline aimed at inward cleansing.

   The work of purification must be undertaken in the same place where
   the defilements arise, in the mind itself, and the main method the
   Dhamma offers for purifying the mind is meditation. Meditation, in
   the Buddhist training, is neither a quest for self-effusive ecstasies
   nor a technique of home-applied psychotherapy, but a carefully
   devised method of mental development -- theoretically precise and
   practically efficient -- for attaining inner purity and spiritual
   freedom. The principal tools of Buddhist meditation are the core
   wholesome mental factors of energy, mindfulness, concentration, and
   understanding. But in the systematic practice of meditation, these
   are strengthened and yoked together in a program of self-purification
   which aims at extirpating the defilements root and branch so that not
   even the subtlest unwholesome stirrings remain.

   Since all defiled states of consciousness are born from ignorance the
   most deeply embedded defilement, the final and ultimate purification
   of mind is to be accomplished through the instrumentality of wisdom,
   the knowledge and vision of things as they really are. Wisdom,
   however, does not arise through chance or random good intentions, but
   only in a purified mind. Thus in order for wisdom to come forth and
   accomplish the ultimate purification through the eradication of
   defilements, we first have to create a space for it by developing a
   provisional purification of mind -- a purification which, though
   temporary and vulnerable, is still indispensable as a foundation for
   the emergence of all liberative insight.

   The achievement of this preparatory purification of mind begins with
   the challenge of self-understanding. To eliminate defilements we must
   first learn to know them, to detect them at work infiltrating and
   dominating our everyday thoughts and lives. For countless eons we
   have acted on the spur of greed, hatred, and delusion, and thus the
   work of self-purification cannot be executed hastily, in obedience to
   our demand for quick results. The task requires patience, care, and
   persistence -- and the Buddha's crystal clear instructions. For every
   defilement the Buddha in his compassion has given us the antidote,
   the method to emerge from it and vanquish it. By learning these
   principles and applying them properly, we can gradually wear away the
   most stubborn inner stains and reach the end of suffering, the
   "taintless liberation of the mind."

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