Lama Zopa Rinpoche stresses this all the time: he says we’re insane not to do purification every day. It puts atomic bombs under our negative tendencies, and is one of our most delicious practices.
What’s purification? There are four steps, the four Rs: regret, reliance, remedy and resolve. It’s such a holistic view, you know – such good psychology.
The first one, regret. Someone once asked His Holiness the question, “What’s the difference between guilt and regret?” And it was so clear how His Holiness said it: “Guilt, you know, you look in the past, and you say, ‘I did this and I did that,’ then you conclude, ‘I’m a bad person, I shouldn’t have done that.’” We go there naturally – to guilt – but that’s just neurotic.
But with regret, His Holiness said, you say, “What can I do about it?” It’s an intelligent view. “I regret this or that from the depths of my heart because I don’t want the future suffering, so what am I going to do about it?” Completely different view, completely different view, you know?
Guilt is just paralyzed and hopeless – there’s no action – whereas regret recognizes that you did harm others or break your vows, or whatever, and then recognizes crucially that that will bring suffering results to you, and you just don’t want that, so therefore, “I regret it from the depths of my heart because I don’t want future suffering.” You’ve got to spell it out to yourself.
With regret you think of some of the things you’ve done today, in this life – “I did this, I did that, I did this, I harmed this person, I kicked the dog, had an abortion, murdered my husband” – whatever you’ve done.
One of the big confusions about this regret, I think – and I’ve heard this a lot, actually – we say, “But what do you mean I regret it? When I was twenty and I did that action, that’s the best I could do at that time. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything else.” But that’s not a contradiction.
If you knew that five years ago you sowed poisonous seeds in your garden, and you didn’t know they were poison, and then five years later you discover that, you don’t say, “Oh well, I didn’t know any better at the time so I’ll let them all grow.” No! That’s absurd!
It’s not criticizing yourself. It’s just recognizing you did that action out of ignorance, and now you’ve learned, and you take this view that the poison is multiplying in your mind, will bring future suffering fruits, and you don’t want them. So pull the damn things out as quickly as possible please! – that’s the logic of it. You’re not being mean to yourself. It’s so sensible!
That’s regret. Then, of course, if you have confidence in past lives you would say, “Whatever I’ve done since beginningless time with my body and speech to harm others.” I mean, you know, you’ve been at this countless lifetimes, Buddha says: animals countless lifetimes, humans countless lifetimes, other realms countless lifetimes.
Especially as animals, that’s where we do the most harm: living in intense fear and paranoia, being murdered and eaten alive – you live in fear, of course, and total ignorance! We think about how we do so many things in this human birth – and it’s true, we do – but, you know, a whale, one mouthful of one breakfast in its forty, fifty-year life, they’ll kill probably 100,000 little sentient beings – one mouthful of breakfast! They don’t know that they’re sowing all these millions of seeds for their own future suffering!
You regret those things, regret anything you’ve ever done to harm sentient beings, and then you say, “Because I don’t want the future suffering.” That grounds it, that counteracts the guilt feeling, which is meaningless. “Because I don’t want the future suffering because I’m sick of suffering.”
Lama Zopa says regret’s the most important step because if you don’t acknowledge what you’ve done you won’t go any steps further: if you say, “Oh, it’s not fair, it’s not my fault, he did it, she did it, I’m innocent,” you won’t go further. But if you own it, you can move through the steps, you know?
Then, second step, you think, “Well, whom can I turn to? Where’s the doctor? I need a decent doctor, please.” And that’s the relationship we have with the Buddha, like that with a doctor – so with your guru, whatever.
You delight. It says “take refuge,” but for me, I feel like it’s delighting: “Wow, amazing that I’ve got such a good doctor! How incredible I’ve met the Buddha and now I’ve got his medicine!” The doctor gives you the medicine, but you’re the one who takes it, you choose to do it. You rely upon the Buddha, yes, but you do the purifying.
Refuge: you delight you have the doctor and you visualize him above your crown.
The second part of the reliance step is you have compassion now for those you’ve harmed. Why “reliance”? Because we rely upon the presence of suffering sentient beings: without that how can we have compassion?
Regret, the beginning step, is like compassion for yourself; now you have compassion for others, and you want to purify for their sake as well. And if you can, have compassion for those who’ve harmed you – even more powerful! Why? Because they will suffer in the future.
Third step, now you take the remedy. Here we know this tasty practice all the lamas give us of visualizing Vajrasattva, and, using your creative imagination, visualizing the nectar coming from the Buddha while you recite the mantra, totally purifying you.
We are visualizing the Buddha, and we are imagining nectar, and we are imagining that the nectar purifies – but it’s your mind that’s doing it: it is your mind that purifies, not the Buddha.
You rely upon the Buddha, you rely upon the Buddha. It’s not the Buddha purifying: you’re visualizing the Buddha purifying, but it’s your mind that purifies. That’s why Lama Zopa says your confidence that you are purifying is what actually purifies.
You visualize the nectar coming as you say the mantra. The Sanskrit is said to be the most powerful sound, you know? They say in tantra that of the four elements, the air energy within us, that is sound, and Sanskrit is the purest manifestation – they say that – of sound.
Saying the mantra is super powerful for your mind, but also it purifies the body because the air element, the wind energy is your subtle body. So by saying mantra you purify your own mind and the body. It’s so delicious!
Then, fourth step: resolve to change. Pabongka Rinpoche says this is the most important step. You reiterate your vows: “I will never kill, I will never steal, I will never lie.” And you make some decisions about your old rubbish habits. You don’t lie to yourself and say “I will never bad-mouth my husband again!” You can say, “I won’t badmouth him for 24 hours.” Give yourself a timeline.
We all know that when we make firm decisions, that’s when we’ll act. It’s like you’re doing push-ups every day, you keep getting better at it. So mentally you’re getting stronger: you’re sincerely making these decisions, and just naturally they become your habit.
But we have this self-existent view of, “Oh I’m bad, I’m still the same bad person.” No! This is what purifies you, these four steps. As Lama Yeshe says, “We created negativity with our mind, so we purify it by creating positivity with our mind.”
That’s why this practice, you do it very simply – not with a book and the Sanskrit and ringing your bells and everything – just do it. You’re talking to yourself, you’re being your own friend: that’s the way to think about it.
As Lama Yeshe said, “Purification is the power of the regret, the power of the reliance, the power of the remedy, the power of the resolve to not do it again.” It’s your mind! It’s the most delicious practice, and you should feel sad not to do it at the end of the day. It’s you putting yourself together, you fixing yourself up, you having compassion for yourself. Your mind is doing it. It’s so delicious!