What qualities does it have except not changing?
I think qualities like: peace, a stillness, openess, calm, emptiness, unchangeableness, a spacious quality.
I cannot really see/say it has an inherent quality of knowing. I do not think so. I think it is better to say that knowing is a quality which is a potential and becomes active when something arises.
I realise that from Abhidhamma perspective i might just describe the two sides of mind, the active phase of mind in which a sense object is processed, and the passive phase of mind in which mind rests as it were in a state called bhavanga. It is not yet triggered by a sense object.
I am not sure about this but i have still a feeling of what uncontrived mind means. It has no mentallity or attitude yet. There is not even a self-awareness.
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The essence of water does not really mix up with pollution otherwise pollution could not be removed from water. Pollution is always something adventitious. In a certain sense the essence of that water does not change at all while purified. Water becomes more and more itself.
With purification it is not really oke to say that pure water is gone or destroyed or absent while there is, for example oil in it. It is not that the purity of the water is destroyed. It is still there but one has to remove the oil than the water is naturally pure. This is not trivial.
I belief in the matters of the heart it is the same. The pure heart is never ever really absent. That can be the aspect of no change. And incoming and adventitious defilements such as greed and hate do not really affect this purity of the heart. Impossible. It cannot mix up with the purity of heart.
I think the purification effects of Dhamma are quite the same as purifying water. The Dhamma does not create the pure heart but only removes the adventitious defilement so the always present pure heart reveals itself naturally. The pure heart is not a creation, it is not like it is the result of Dhamma, it is not produced, like the pure water is also not produced by the purification proces. It is unmade.
You did not make it. The only thing we can do is to remove defilements and the natural result of this is a purified heart which was always present in the first place. I belief this is meant by the unmade, unbecome etc. We can do a lot but we do not create a pure heart.
Haha, ik sense i like this stuff, oh jee 
Suppose you have a craving for candy at a certain moment. And that disappears some time later. Have you internally the idea you are someone else while craving was present and when it is absent?
neither is you - both are impermanent. why identify with either as your own? they are both dependent on other things outside of yourself, so they canât truly be âyoursâ or and permanent part of âyouâ anyway.
seeing things in this way is not just possible but works practically in my experience. it stops you picking things up and making them âiâ or âmeâ.
hope this helps - best wishes.
So I have two thoughts on this.
The first is - what stops the pure water from being defiled again? Or is it a continuous everlasting process of cleaning?
The second is - Thatâs great as far as it goes, but I canât help feeling Iâm still left with H2 defiling O, HO defiling H, H defiling both O and H ⌠and we havenât even got to particles yet 
Defilements seem to go so deep, maybe they really go all the way down? Itâs seriously beginning to look like once weâve removed all the defilements, thereâll be nothing left. 
Hi @IndyJ , i feel your answer is avoiding my question. I do not want to push a certain answer but isnât it true that there is a sense of sameness, a inner sense you do not change, independend of self-views?
thanks @Green - iâm not intending to avoid your question. itâs just hard for me to get a sense of what it is you think is permanent.
my understanding of what youâre talking about seems to be a permanent sense of knowing.
i think this would be your mind-consciousness - i sense that you are identifying with this.
however, if you look inside yourself, you will see that that sense of âselfâ is not constant. it comes and goes as your mind flits between objects of the various senses. for example, when youâre aware of say, the smell of urine in a public toilet, or the pain of breaking a toe after stubbing it on a wall, would that sense of sameness be present? even if youâre aware of what you think is the same object, the object itself is actually impermanent, so that sameness couldnât truly be the same.
for it to be permanent and self, it would need to be always there, and always of the same thing. is this the case for you?
Hi @stu,
If one in a personal way starts experiencing the qualities of the un-oppressed purified heart, i belief, one feels less and less needy, incomplete. As a result seeking refuge in the world, in external things, in temporary things and states, decreases and ends at a certain moment. Defiling oneself stops gradually because neediness (mental) decreases gradually. One breaks with the patterns to seek an escape or answer from the suffering externally. Not in a forced manner but because the heart which gets decreasingly unoppressed is not so needy anymore, not so longing.
When the heart is unoppressed, i.e. freed from anusaya, the bonds, then we are ourselves in a way we were never before. We cannot really change. . Maybe you think this is a heretic view, and it does not mean habits cannot change, but it refers to the fact we do not create the pure heart. It is not our creation. The pure heart is just the natural result of removing defilements.
Finally we our ourselves in a way we do not feel incomplete/broken/lonely anymore. We arrived at home.
No. Not at all. I think that there have been many Buddhist sects across the ages that would agree with your view. I just think itâs a view that isnât supported by the EBTs, and for me personally it is a view that doesnât see the immensity and deepness of suffering in all forms of existence. It reminds me of the sort of things that my Christian meditator friends say, and thatâs OK, they are a terrific bunch of people headed in the right direction.
But it has been known for me to be wrong; very wrong 
And to be honest, I donât think it matters that much while we are still heading towards greater peace and losing any residual anger that is left in our hearts. 
I am investigating this. I cannot denie there is in me a sense of sameness. A sense i do not really change. I do not want jump to any conclusion, likeâŚâthis is a delusionâ. That is not investigation, i find.
Even when my body changes, feelings change during a day, thoughts come and go, emotions change, ideas change, i cannot denie i have a sense I do not change.
At this moment i belief the Budddha used words like unmade, unconditioned, unbecome to refer to this aspect of no change. But probably he did not meant permanence. I now think he meant that the only thing a practicer can do is removing defilements but he cannot create Nibbana, the pure mind. This is unmade, unbecome, unconditioned. It is just the natural result of removing defilements but one does not create it. If one removes defilments from water one has not created that water.
Yes, i think you are right. Maybe i am more like a christian who feels like the teachings have to free the heart from oppressing forces, to live this life fully. To embrace or rather accept life fully, as it is, with impermance and suffering and pain and misery etc.
It is my own experience that my suffering started when i lost faith in boyd and mind and life when my father died of cancer and i was in crises. That was my fall. I died too. When one becomes angry with life, disappointed, sarcastic, cold, uninspired, negative, anxious, cagy, fearing life, than one starts really suffering. But is also normal, it is als humane to become disappointed, cold etc when life shows itâs real face.
I feel deeply this heartache one must overcome otherwise it will overcome you and will drag you down. The downward path is the Path of heartache. Things like hate, greed, anger, bitterness are all kinds of heartache.
It is very very hard to overcome. Because one cannot go back to a naive understanding of life. One has seen the reality of loss, of dying, of sickness, cruelty etc. So one has to find a cure for the heartache while not escaping the facts of life as it is. That is the challenge. I feel one cannot find a cure without starting, in someway or the other, re-valueing life again, but maybe now from a more ripened perspective.
I belief Buddha was also heart-broken because he was very aware of the reality of violence, sickness, death, the cruelty, the darkness, old age and all his troubles etc. He found a way to heal his broken heart. I think the most radical way their is.
Does one really suffer from how life is?
Are you willing to share something about this?
Hi @stu
Some thoughts on this:
It is useless to start purifying water when one has 1. no vision that the defilements in the water are adventitious to the water, 2. as a consequence defilements can be removed, and 3. that pure water is already there and will be the natural result of purifcation.
A purification proces relies also on a vision that the pureness is allready there and one has only to remove the defilements.
I belief in the case of Dhamma-practice this is true also. We must have 1. a vision that any defilement is not really intrinsic to the mind, but adventitious , 2. as a consequence can be removed, and 3. that pure mind is already there, and is rich, complete, not hurt and needy, and will be the natural result of purification.
If the pure mind would really be a result of conditioning, that result is also conditioned. So that makes no sense. The only thing we can do is to remove the defilements and the natural result of that is pure mind. It was there all the time.
I think it does not conflict with EBT. But if you think so, please explain.
What does conflict with EBT is that we create Nibbana or that Nibbana is the creation of our efforts, like a house, a car or jhana or any kind of development of mind. That we make Nibbana. Or that it is a reality we construct with effort, or have constructed and is liable of deconstruction like any constructed reality.
I donât see the idea of âpure mindâ, or âsoulâ, or âground of all beingâ or whatever people want to call it in the EBTs at all. What I see is the cycle of rebirth (which is painful and unhappy) described in dependent origination and the end of that cycle of rebirth (which is painless and happy).
âReverend SÄriputta, what is happiness and what is suffering?â
âRebirth is suffering, reverend, no rebirth is happiness.
When there is rebirth, you can expect this kind of suffering.
Cold, heat, hunger, thirst, defecation, and urination.
Contact with fire, clubs, and knives.
And relatives and friends get together and annoy you.
When there is rebirth, this is the kind of suffering you can expect.
When there is no rebirth, you can expect this kind of happiness.
No cold, heat, hunger, thirst, defecation, or urination. No contact with fire, clubs, or knives.
And relatives and friends donât get together and annoy you.
When there is no rebirth, this is the kind of happiness you can expect.â
â AN10.65
Agreed. I like Snp 5.7
âAs a flame tossed by a gust of wind,â
replied the Buddha,
âcomes to an end and no longer counts;
so too, a sage freed from mental phenomena comes to an end and no longer counts.â
Where would I start!?
@stu ,
About pure mind, Buddha speaks about purification for example in AN3.101. He compares in a very nice way the purification of gold with the purification of the mind. A similarity is that defilements make the gold hard to handle because they make it brittle. The same with a defiled mind. It is hard to handle.
A way to talk about Nibbana is as pure mind or heart and this mind is very easy to handle, pliant, because it is without defilements. This is also in 4th jhana, but that, ofcourse, is not real purification.
I also have sometimes a longing not to experience and feel anything. For example, delighting in deep sleep in which there is no suffering, no experiencing, no burden. But i do think this is some kind of escapism not a real spiritual drive. It is not holy. The same i experience in longing not to exist anymore after death because then one does not feel, experience, anything anymore.
Yes. Thatâs a perfect example, a purified mind is very useful for realising the goal, but it isnât the goal. âIf they wish âŚâ
If they wish: âMay I realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life, and live having realized it with my own insight due to the ending of defilements.â They are capable of realizing it, in each and every case.â
Purification of mind is definitely part of the (conditioned) path and in doing that practice of purification one can potentially realise the limits of a âpurifiedâ mind. Thatâs why I suggest that it is not too much of a problem taking up this view at certain stages of the path because at those stages it heads in the right direction. I cheekily tell my Christian (meditator) friends that what theyâre doing is fine, because when they get to heaven God will teach them Buddha Dhamma. (now that a Buddha has been born in the world; a teacher of gods and men)
Agreed. Did you take a look at Snp5.7 which I shared above? It has something to say about this
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Hi @stu,
According my understanding a purified heart is the same as the heart freed from the oppressing forces of 4 asava, 3 tanha and 7 anusaya. The heart has lost the burden. It is now totally open and empty and very sensitive to reality now. It has a very direct penetrating deep understanding. It is the state of the living arahant and Buddha, the socalled sa-upadisesa Nibbana.
Purifying mind refers in EBT to the weakening and abandoning of tanha. It teaches that this mostly goes in a progressive way. Certain levels of purifcation are given names like sotapanna, sakadagami, anagami, arahat. You know.
The limit of purification is Nibbana. This is also called ultimate emptiness (in patisambhidamagga, treatise on emptiness). Beings in samsara, even in the highest realms, do not have a totally purified heart but still have traces of defilements. Particularly the mana-anusaya is strong. It is related to asmi mana, ego-sanna, and the mana-anusaya is very deeply ingrained in the heart. It is so deeply ingrained that everybody lives with the impression on the heart that is an ego, or I, a mental entity, that experiences, lives and dies.
Nibbana, the purified heart is not created. I understand this nowadays like this: the pure heart is not created by our efforts. Effort has a limit and a field of activity, and that can only be the conditioned.
The limit of our efforts is that we can totally eridicate tanha by wisdom etc. but we cannot create the pure heart. The pure heart is just the natural result of the ongoing purification. It is the part we do not create, make, develop, fabricate. As such it is the aspect of no-change.
Snp.5.7 i find a deep and difficult sutta. Buddhist tell me we are only 5 khandhaâs. They say that all this ceases after death and never arises again when one reaches Nibbana. So there no question in my mind that after death there is just nothing to measure (according this view). So, why does the sutta say: âOne whoâs come to an end cannot be measured,â Thatâs silly if we are only 5 khandhaâs which have stopped to exist. So, what is not correct?
OK. I see. Weâre speaking at cross purposes.
That small portion between Nibbana and Parinibbana is not so important in my opinion. Everything that needs to be done has been done at that point, and itâs just a matter of time before whatever suffering (e.g. âpure mindâ or whatever you want to call it, if you need to give it a name - I usually just say Arahant), which was brought to be by previous kamma ceases without remainder.
The effort is the effort to let go. Itâs not a constructing effort.
Is that true? Or is âexistenceâ built on a foundation of âdelusionâ in a Dependent Origin sort of way?
Exactly. I once heard a nice simile. The defiled heart is like a fist. It is consulvive. But we are so very used to this state, that we cannot immediately open the hand. All our muscles and nerves are year over year making that fist. So, we need a method, a Path, to open the fist gradually.
We came at this point before. I would say it is delusion to think or belief of live in a way that you do not exist.
And if course thatâs not what the Buddha of the EBTs says. Rather it is the whole notion of existence and non-existence that is called into question.
But when you truly see the origin of the world with right understanding, you wonât have the notion of non-existence regarding the world. And when you truly see the cessation of the world with right understanding, you wonât have the notion of existence regarding the world. SN12.15
Hi @stu , I belief in a very positive Dhamma. At least that is what I feel it is.
I think that this deep sutta you refer to, describes that a Buddha, or some enlightend being, can enter into a state in which he has a direct taste of the unborn, undying dimension, the deathless. In that state all is ceased which normally gives us a sense of âI existâ (the five khandhaâs). Still, while those khandhaâs have ceased, the knowing of the unborn is still there and one sees at that moment there is no difference between you and that knowing.
From this direct knowing arises the unshakeble certainty that one is not the five khandhaâs. It is really seen. From this seeing one knows that the only thing that can really cease for an enlightend mind is suffering.
So, Buddha has no fear at all. Because he knows that for an enlightend mind, which has seen the deathless, there is not something anymore like death, destruction, or going out like a flame, or the total cessation of Me. Ofcourse, the body and mind will cease but that can and may not be seen as the Tathagata or as Me like the Buddha all the time insist.
So, for a Buddha to exist or not to exist is no issue. We cannot see this yet while our heart is still obsessed and trapped in Me and mine making. All our sense of our existence is only based on the 5 aggregates. An enlightmend mind knows better. Because it knows cessation it also knows depend origination. It knows that any moment the experience of oneself, others, the world is a constructed reality.
Is this an eternalist view? do not think soâŚbecause it does not declare an eternal soul nor an eternal personal self. Also in this view there is not something like an eternal personal existence. The unborn and deathless can only be seen when the personal perspective disappears. It cannot be seen from vinnana.