How do I know that I have purified?

There is one monastery in mainland China where they have little robot monks. The monastics ask questions and then push the button, and then the little robot monk gives the answer. So, that’s what I’m doing now. You wrote me questions and pushed a button, and I’ll give an answer. We’ll see how far we get. 

Questions & Answers

Audience: When we purify our afflictions, does it reduce self-grasping also? When I purify a feeling like anger it goes smoothly. Since I created it, I know it well. When I purify the story under the anger, it is slower but successful. But when I try to purify the self-grasping ignorance directly, it is hard to grasp and picture it clearly. Partly this is because an onslaught of thoughts rush in the way and are hard to subdue. I’d like to cut off my afflictions early by reducing the self-grasping ignorance that causes them. Can Vajrasattva practice be effective with self-grasping ignorance?

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): Yes, definitely. When we are opposing the other afflictions, when we are purifying the negative karma created by the afflictions in terms of the negative karma, we are reducing the result that those karmic actions can have either by minimizing the strength of the result, shortening the result or pushing it away further in the future—something like that. When we’re working on the afflictions, it’s a different process because afflictions and karma are different. With the afflictions, we are really trying to understand their disadvantages, and we’re also trying to change our thought process around a situation so that the afflictions don’t arise to start with. 

As this person observed, noticing anger and probably some of the other more painful afflictions is relatively easy. Looking at the story underneath them, we probably haven’t done as much, but even though that story is quite prominent and buzzing around in our minds steadily, we haven’t always stopped to question it. We have to do that to see the fallacy of the story that lies underneath the affliction. And the story is based on ignorance, this self-grasping ignorance that holds ourselves to be an inherently existent, self-enclosed, solid person who has a real identity. 

We’ve been living with that ignorance since beginningless time, and it’s very difficult to notice it because we’re so familiar with it. With anger, we’re not always angry. Anger comes up once in a while, and we can see the effects immediately. Self-grasping ignorance comes up all the time—not every single moment but very, very frequently—so we don’t even notice it because it’s so common. We’re so used to it. We believe that self-grasping ignorance, so it’s going to take a lot more work to diminish it. 

That’s why we study emptiness. We learn about emptiness, and then, of course, in studying about emptiness we encounter the term the object of negation.  That’s the “I.” When we’re meditating on ourselves, the “I” that appears seems to be some independent, self-enclosed entity. And we try to identify that in our experience and then we see why the idea that we exist in that way is a totally wrong consciousness, even though we feel it. And this is what’s so tricky about the self-grasping ignorance; we say the word “I” and we feel “I.” Don’t we? And the more you say “I,” the stronger that feeling of “I” becomes: “I am sitting here. I like that food or maybe I don’t.” Whatever it is, it’s always this strong “I,” and we don’t question that. We don’t even notice it. It’s just that we assume that such a thing exists because we feel it. But the thing is just because we feel something, it doesn’t mean it exists. There’s another wrong consciousness that we have.

So, it’s helpful just starting to question that—first noticing, then questioning. Can such an “I” exist? If this “I” exists, it should be findable within the body and mind or separate from the body and mind. Is it findable in the body and mind? Is it found separate from the body and mind? And you investigate and that’s the deeper way the purification of the self-grasping goes. The more we can subdue and lessen the strength of the self-grasping before we’ve realized emptiness, then the more our mind won’t fall prey to attachment, and jealousy, and anger, and so forth as strongly as before. But the realization of directly perceiving the emptiness is what actually purifies the self-grasping. Okay?

Audience: I was wondering, does it go that the afflictions are like the largest of the large, the biggest of the big, and they get to be the smallest of the small. So, anger would be more on the larger side and ignorance on the smaller side? 

VTC: Well, anger is more prominent. Attachment is more prominent. It’s better to say it that way. 

Audience: Does it take more and more effort the more subtle these things are? 

VTC: Well, there are two kinds of antidotes. There is the antidote that is for that specific affliction, that reduces that affliction more quickly, like in the case of anger, meditating on love or meditating that whatever this other person did is a result of our own karma. But to actually cut the anger at the root, we have to cut the self-grasping at the root. So, it isn’t that you get rid of all your anger first and then you get around to eliminating the self-grasping. No. There are subtle and gross forms of all of them. But none of the innate afflictions are completely removed until the self-grasping is eliminated. 

Audience: I’ve done a Vajrasattva practice with my local teacher from the Gelug tradition. He suggested that we prepare by focusing on one action at a time so that we could truly feel that it was done when we completed the sadhana. I see in these instructions that we should recall all past harmful actions. I understand that there are many we can’t remember, consciously, but which still leave karmic traces, and I understand the need to work on those, but on the other hand, it’s hard to feel that we have truly purified ourselves when we return the very next day to recall or imagine the same things. So, please clarify this. 

VTC: The way I recommend doing it is you can choose specific actions that you’ve done that you feel are really weighing you down and that you have a great regret for. Focus on those, but don’t forget about all the other ones. It’s more like you focus on something that’s really strong and you say I’m purifying this and all the other things. Because if you only say this in your mind then you’re not going to be purifying the others, because you’re going have no intention to purify the rest. Whereas, if you say I’m focusing on this one and, of course, I’m including all the other ones, then you are going to be chipping away at all of them. Is that making some sense to people? So, you could focus on one at a time or you can focus on a couple each session, as you want to do. But always include all the rest of them, too.

It’s like when you’re meditating on love or compassion: you start with one individual that you extend that emotion towards, but you include everybody else in it. So, that always keeps the mind very big, very broad. At the end of the sadhana Vajrasattva says, “You’ve purified it. It’s done with.” It’s very interesting. You’re supposed to really believe Vajrasattva: “Vajrasattva said it’s done with. It’s done with. I’m putting it down. I’m not going to let this thing hang over my head and gnaw at me anymore.”

So, you really feel like you’re putting it down. On the other hand, it’s probably not totally purified because it takes a long time to purify some of these things that we did with a strong intention and then rejoiced at, or the kinds of actions that we did many, many times. So, you say to yourself, “It’s done.” You put it down, and you give yourself a break and a chance to feel what it’s like to actually put this down. And you stop ruminating about it and feeling guilty about it and worrying about it and all that. You really do that at the end of the sadhana and you keep purifying it in future times, too, when you do the practice. 

It sounds contradictory, but you can make it all happen in your mind, can’t you? What would be a good analogy? It’s like when you eat a lot and you say, “Oh, I’m so full I don’t want to eat again.” And then, you know, you wait a few hours and then think, “Where’s the food?” You make a conclusion based on that time, but then, of course, you have to eat again.

Audience: For us dropping the story—really, really dropping the story—forgiving ourselves and feeling it’s over. Does that have the power to purify? 

VTC: It definitely purifies. For sure. Because part of how you can tell the purification is happening is that you begin to feel different about yourself.

Audience: The story doesn’t have any more power over you because you said, “That’s it. Bye.”

VTC:  And especially when you have regret. But you also have the determination not to do it again, and, when that determination is strong, there still may be some residual karma left because not all the karma is gone and a karmic seed hasn’t gone until we realize emptiness. Having the confidence that believes “I am done with that, basta, finito, that’s it” gives you a lot of internal strength, and it cuts. You can see how that helps purify the karma, because when you have that strong determination—which arises from having strong regret which is part of the result of having the strong determination not to do it again—you stop the karmic result, which is the habitual tendency to do the same action again. So, you can see right there, when your intention to abandon it and say “That’s it” is strong, then that karmic result that took the habitual action is going to have much more difficulty ripening.

Audience:  That “poor me”—that’s the part that grabs at it and doesn’t want to drop it. Whatever. But when you really let that go, that “poor me” is gone, and I forgive myself. It’s gone over.

VTC: What do you mean, “gone over”? You keep purifying it and then it reinforces what you’ve already done. But that “poor me” is very important to get rid of because as long as we hold on to “poor me” we can’t let go of anything. 

I’ve told you the story of my little brother who, when he was three or four years old, rode his tricycle into the deep end of the swimming pool. It sank to the bottom, and he held on to that tricycle. At ten feet under the water, he held onto that tricycle for dear life. That’s what the victim mentality does. You’re holding on to something that you should be letting go of. Thank goodness in my brother’s case, there was somebody there who dove into the pool and pulled him out. I don’t know how he got his little hands off that tricycle because he was gripping it so strongly. [laughter]

So, don’t hold on to the things that hurt you. When we were discussing this yesterday, it was Venerable Nyima who said, “I’m the one who makes me into the victim. Nobody else can make me into a victim.” And it’s very true.