January 19, 2021

Peace Is Purity (from Cultivating Inner Peace)

Chapter 24 - Peace Is Purity

from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

The nucleus of inner peace is purity of heart and

mind. When you say, “I want inner peace,” you mean that you want to be able to live with what’s inside you, to be at ease in the depths of yourself; and that integrated positivity, without cracks or seams, is called “purity.”

We have no difficulty in becoming aware of our mind. It floods us: it spawns epics and anecdotes and vacation plans. We all dwell in the captivity of our own melodrama. No one who has not spent whole days sealed alone inside her own head can know the fantasia of multiscreen ideation that will not stop for a moment. How can this self-entranced mind gain a more embracing and enduring perspective?

Purity, transcendence of imaginary and divisive selfhood, is the outcome of the experience of ineluctable change throughout the dream of the self. When the bodily basis of the self dissolves into the impersonal flows of universal matter, one drop of purity glistens in the mind. Purity is a direct product of experiencing ultimate reality of change in every particle of one’s own body-mind. In a moment of sweeping, penetrating meditation, the students may experience themselves as they might if they observed themselves from a helicopter for a hundred years: as a passing cloud.

Dr. Paul Fleischman

Massachusetts, USA

2020

53 minutes

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There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

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