Purification
of Mind
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to an outdated moralism, valid perhaps in an era when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
Source: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/news/essay4.html