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Purification of Mind
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Bhikkhu Bodhi
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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.
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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.
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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outdated moralism, valid perhaps in an era when prudery and taboo were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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Source:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/news/essay4.html
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