Purifying the mind is not a mystical process. It is nothing more than letting go of the false view of self. That is the cause of suffering: looking at this name and form (nama-rupa, mind and body) and taking it for the self. When ‘I’ accept this false identity, when ‘I’ adopt its perspective, everything necessarily revolves around this false self.
One moment of self conceit becomes the basis and support for a continuous stream of suffering. ‘Me’ and ‘mine’ are the source of all worldly concerns. I must train to see the body and the mind as what they are: collections of form, sensation, perception, formations, and consciousness —impermanent, dependent, and insubstantial. These five aggregates are not ‘me’. In releasing this wrong view, ‘I’ spontaneously release the emotions with which it is associated.
Among the Mind Training proverbs, there is one that says: “Drive all blame into one.” This is not an injunction to blame myself, but rather a clear statement that all suffering arises from this false ‘me’, this persona, this dramatic character that ‘I’ have created, and with which ‘I’ identify so completely.
Enlightenment is seeing the drama for what it is, appreciating the well-defined characters, admiring the scenery, but knowing that the action is just a scripted plot of causes and conditions that I have written with my thoughts, words, and deeds.
At any moment, ‘I’ can turn on the light and go home. It is just a performance.
