Cleaning or Purification

By Dhammacaro

“Mind is over body” is a generally held belief, so many faiths follow this saying by putting it into practice through cleaning or purification of the mind. But some have misunderstanding about what cleaning or purification means.  What is meant here is not physical cleaning or purification but only a mental cleansing. There is a story, which helps remind us about the true meaning of cleaning or purification. Here is the story:

There once was a novice who wanted to study and practice methods of cleaning or purification. His aim was to clean or purify his mind, but he had the misunderstanding that he had to clean or purify everything. He cleaned his body, his robes, the places where he spent time and many other things. He spent his whole day cleaning and every day felt he had to clean something.

One day his teacher asked him, “What are you doing?” he replied, “Sir I am trying to clean things. I like everything to be clean.” The teacher said to him, “You see! You are wasting your time cleaning things! You concentrate on cleaning things so much that you forget to clean or purify your mind, which is the most important exercise of all. If you only concentrate on the outside things, you will always blame them: the earth is not clean, the sky is not clean, people are not clean! Do you see, though, it is your mind that is not clean? No! So you see everything as dirty! First of all, you need to clean your mind! Only then will you be able to see everything as clean.” The novice thought it over and understood this. Since then he has cleaned and purified his mind instead of cleaning external objects.

From the story, we can see that the novice misunderstood what cleaning or purification meant. He concentrated on external objects outside of himself.  In fact the uncleanliness was within himself.  He was neither clean, nor purified internally. How about you and I? Do we clean or purify our minds? If we do not, we will always see everything as neither clean nor pure. Turn your attention inwards and clean and purify your mind! The more purified the mind is, the clearer we will see!