The Teachings of Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta

Purifying the Mind

sacitta-pariyodapanam

etam buddhana-sasanam:

To purify one's own mind

is to follow the Buddhas' teachings.

The Buddha, our foremost teacher, taught about body, speech, and mind. He didn't teach anything else. He taught us to practice, to train our minds, to use our minds to investigate the body: This is called the contemplation of the body as a frame of reference. We are taught to train our mindfulness thoroughly in the practice of investigating — this is called the analysis of phenomena (dhamma-vicaya, one of the factors for Awakening) — until it reaches a point of sufficiency. When we have investigated enough to make mindfulness itself a factor of Awakening, the mind settles down into concentration of its own accord.

There are three levels of concentration. In momentary concentration, the mind gathers and settles down to a firm stance and rests there for a moment before withdrawing. In threshold concentration, the mind gathers and settles down to its underlying level and stays there a fair while before withdrawing to be aware of a nimitta of one sort or another. In fixed penetration, the mind settles down to a firm stance on its underlying level and stops there in singleness, perfectly still — aware that it is staying there — endowed with the five factors of jhana, which then become gradually more and more refined.

When we train the mind in this way, we are said to be heightening the mind, as in the Pali phrase,

adhicitte ca ayogo

etam buddhana-sasanam:

To heighten the mind

is to follow the Buddhas' teachings.

The contemplation of the body is a practice that sages — including the Lord Buddha — have described in many ways. For example, in the Maha-satipatthana Sutta (Great Frames of Reference Discourse), he calls it the contemplation of the body as a frame of reference. In the root themes of meditation, which a preceptor must teach at the beginning of the ordination ceremony, he describes the contemplation of hairs of the head, hairs of the body, nails, teeth, and skin. In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of Dhamma), he teaches that birth, aging, and death are stressful.

We have all taken birth now, haven't we? When we practice so as to opanayiko — take these teachings inward and contemplate them by applying them to ourselves — we are not going wrong in the practice, because the Dhamma is akaliko, ever-present; and aloko, blatantly clear both by day and by night, with nothing to obscure it.