Purity (2nd)

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

For a mendicant, a pure mind is not one with the right contents but one that knows what its contents are doing.

The two small changes

Purity of body: doesn’t kill living creatures, steal, or have sex. AN 3.120 said sexual misconduct; this says sex. That is the difference between the third precept and the celibacy of a monastic, and the discourse marks it with one word.

Purity of speech is identical in both versions — the same four kinds of speech avoided. Speech is the one door where the standard does not change between a layperson and a monastic, which is worth noticing and is easy to miss.

Everything else in the pair turns on the third definition.

The formula, and what kind of instruction it is

For each of the five hindrances the same four things are known: whether it is present; whether it is absent; how it arises; how, once arisen, it is given up; and how, once given up, it does not arise again.

This is the formula of the fourth establishment of mindfulness, and it appears in the long mindfulness discourses in exactly this shape. A reader who knows those texts will recognize it immediately; a reader who does not should be told that this two-line passage is a complete meditation instruction in compressed form.

The five are sensual desire, ill will, dullness and drowsiness, restlessness and remorse, and doubt — the same five the Udaya verse walked through at AN 3.33 and the same five AN 3.57 named as given up by somebody worth giving to.

What the formula asks for is not their absence. The first clause is when they have sensual desire in them they understand ‘I have sensual desire in me’, which describes a mendicant with a hindrance present and counts it as purity of mind so long as they know it.

Why that counts as purity

This is the substantive claim and it deserves to be stated plainly, because it is surprising. AN 3.120 defined purity of mind by contents: contentment, kindness, right view. This one defines it by knowledge of contents, including bad ones.

The two definitions are not in conflict and they are not the same. The lay version describes a mind that is in a good state; the monastic version describes a mind that is accurately observed. A mendicant with sensual desire present who knows it is present, knows how it arose, knows how it is given up, and knows how it stays given up satisfies this definition.

That is a considerable relief to anybody practicing, and it should be given as one. The standard is not an empty mind. It is a mind whose weather is being watched with enough precision to answer four questions about it.

It is also consistent with AN 3.86, where somebody at every stage of attainment still breaks lesser and minor rules, and with AN 3.102, where the instruction is to notice what the mind is doing and respond rather than to hold it in a state.

The verse

Purity of body, purity of speech, and undefiled purity of heart. A pure one, blessed with purity, has washed off all bad things, they say.

Ninhātapāpaka — one who has washed off what is bad. The verse ends the discourse by returning to the bathing metaphor that the word soceyya came from, after the prose has spent its length replacing the metaphor with conduct and attention.

That is a characteristic ending. The image is kept and used, having been given a different content; the reader who has followed the prose knows that the washing in question is not done with water.

Using it

Teach the pair AN 3.120 and AN 3.121 together and let the third definition carry the lesson. For a lay audience the first version applies; for anyone practicing meditation, the second is the more useful, and its four questions can be run on a hindrance in a sitting.

The relief in the definition is the part worth spelling out. Many people practicing conclude that a session in which a hindrance was present was a failure. This discourse calls a mind with a hindrance in it pure, provided the four things are known about it.

Key terms