Use Your Defilements
October 27, 2023

When the Buddha set out the path that he discovered, it wasn’t—and isn’t—a path for people already pure. It’s a path for people who have defilements. It takes advantage of your desires and aversions, and directs them in a good direction. It’s okay to want the mind to settle down, to be in concentration. It’s okay to want to gain total release. Those desires fuel the path.

And it’s okay to be averse to suffering. You make use of these defilements in the same way that you build that raft in the image of going across the river. You don’t wait for the nibbana yacht to come over, pick you up, and take you back to the deathless. You work with the trees and twigs and branches on this side of the river—the things you identify with, the aggregates—and you make them into a raft that helps you as you swim across.

So as you’re meditating, don’t be in too great or hurry to try to get rid of your defilements. Use them well first. Learn how to use them skillfully. This is a skill that we’re working on, and it’s in the process of developing these skills and the path that we refine the mind. We get to recognize which defilements are useful, which ones are not. Like that desire to get the mind to settle down: If you focus on the results you want, you’re not going to get them. But if you take the approach of anyone who masters a skill, you realize you have to focus on the causes.

So what are the causes here? First you work on your virtue. It’s not the case that you can’t get the mind into concentration without virtue, but it is the case that if your concentration is not based on virtue, you can’t really trust it. That’s because virtue teaches you that you have to be clear about your intentions. So you get practice in noticing, when you do something, why you’re doing it.

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of Dhamma textbooks was published in Thailand for all the monks to study. The first textbook defined virtue as control over your words and deeds. No mention of the mind. This was brought to Ajaan Mun’s attention. He commented that what’s missing is the most important aspect of virtue, which is your intention, the mind. Without that, virtue just becomes a ceremony, a ritual.

But if you take on the precepts, you’re forced to look at your intentions, because a precept can be broken only if you break it intentionally. So you have to notice: Why do you do things? You want to be honest about that. And you have to develop good qualities in the mind if you take on the precepts. You have to be mindful to keep the precepts in mind, alert to what you’re doing, and ardent in trying to overcome any intentions that would make you break the precepts. Ardent also in developing the goodwill that nurtures your virtue.

As you get more and more honest with yourself, then it’s a lot easier for your concentration to be reliable, because you’re not putting up walls in the mind. If you act in a harmful way, you tend either to deny that you actually did it, or to deny that there was any harm. Or to deny that the person or people you harmed really matter. That’s putting up walls all over the place inside you. When you have walls like that in your mind, it’s going to be very hard to gain any genuine discernment from your concentration.

So don’t feel that you’re above the work that has to be done to keep the precepts. They develop important mental skills. Think about that: Virtue is a skill. It’s not just a matter of being obedient. It requires some ingenuity, too, because there are times when holding to the precepts can put you at a disadvantage. How can you stick with the precepts and, say, not divulge information that you know someone is going to abuse? You’ve got to use your discernment.

You’re developing all kinds of good qualities in the mind by focusing on this skill, so the desire to be virtuous is a good desire. Your aversion to stooping to something below the standards of the precepts is a good form of aversion to take on, to develop.

The same with your concentration: It’s okay to desire for the mind to be still, as long as you focus on the causes, which again are mindfulness, alertness, and ardency, as you bring them more and more to bear right here, right now, on subtler things going on in the mind. And you’re averse to the hindrances. That’s an attitude that has to be developed, because all too often we like our hindrances.

We’re going to run into the same problem when we start focusing directly on clinging and craving. We like our cravings; we like our clingings. That’s why we cling; that’s why we crave. So we first get practice with our hindrances. Sensual desire comes up and we tend to think it’s pretty cool. There’s a part of the mind that thinks it really is clever because it can think of sensual fantasies, and can think of different ways that you can play a role to get other people to give you what you want. But you have to realize, this is really not in your best interest. The same with ill will, the same with sleepiness, even restlessness and anxiety: There’s a part of the mind that feels that “If I don’t get anxious about the future, I’m not being responsible.” The same with doubt: “If I’m too trusting, I can get fooled.” Those are attitudes that side with the hindrances.

So you’ve got to learn how to argue with them, and see that the hindrances really are getting in your way. And again, you’re making use of your defilements. You’re converting them to be your helpers on the path. When the concentration becomes more reliable like this because it’s based on virtue, then your discernment is going to be more reliable as well. And where does the discernment come from? It comes from the skills you’ve developed. It doesn’t come from taking the texts and trying to interpret them in such a way that you can say, “Well, I’ve seen that state. And I’ve already seen this state. Now I understand that.” It’s more, “How do I understand my aggregates through the concentration?”

After all, the concentration involves them directly. There’s the form of the body, which is the breath. The feelings of pleasure that you’re trying to create and then, as you create them, you maintain them, spread them around: You learn a lot about feeling in the concentration. It doesn’t just come and go on its own. You become more and more conscious of the fact that you play a role in giving rise to feelings. There are potentials in the present moment for pleasure; there are potentials for pain. This is probably the big lesson of karma in the meditation.

There are potentials coming from the past. The Buddha’s image is that we have a field full of seeds and we have our choice as to which seeds we’re going to water. So right now you can sit here, focus on the pains, and make yourself really miserable about the pains. Or you can focus on the pains in a more intelligent way. Or you can focus, even better, on which parts of the body you can make comfortable. That’s your first line of attack. And if part of the mind says, “Oh, that’s giving in to my likings for comfort, my attachment to comfort,” you’re using your attachments, remember. You’re using defilements. “Hey, you like pleasure, well here it is. Here’s the potential.”

You learn a lot about making use of that potential. You begin to realize that things don’t just arise and pass away on their own. Potentials come up from the past, but what you do with them right now is going to determine what you experience right now. It’s one of the most important lessons you’re going to learn about karma and the whole process of fabrication anyhow.

So that’s two of the aggregates. Then you’ve got perception, the images you hold in mind, both of how the breath comes in, how it goes out, and of how you can play with those perceptions. You realize that the way you perceive things is going to have a huge influence on how you actually experience them.

The same with sankhara, fabrication: You direct your thoughts and you evaluate the breath. You take those potentials that are here in the in-breath, in the out-breath, and in the breath energy throughout the body, and you learn how to maximize the good things, minimize the bad ones. Once you’ve got something good, then you maintain it. Remember that the duty of mindfulness as a governing principle is that you learn how to give rise to things that are skillful. And then when they’re there, you do your best not to let them pass away.

Then there’s the consciousness that’s aware of all these things. You use it to pay attention right here, pay attention to the right places.

So this is where you’re going to learn about the aggregates, and also the extent to which you are shaping them in the present moment. This way, you don’t fall for that “insight,” quote-unquote, that says, “Well, I’ll just see things arising and passing away, and say, yeah, that’s the nature of things that arise and pass away.” Remember that Buddha uses the word “origination” for the cause of suffering. And when he uses the word “origination,” it usually means causes coming from within the mind itself.

Here the best way to learn about the mind in itself is by working on the skills of concentration and virtue, working on your questions as to where the concentration can help you, where its drawbacks are. In other words, what’s its allure, what are its drawbacks? Looking at the drawbacks of the concentration will take you into deeper and deeper levels concentration as you realize that your first level of concentration still has some disturbance in it. But if you drop the disturbance, you can go into a deeper level, a level that has fewer drawbacks.

You’re learning how to develop your powers of judgment, because that’s a lot of what discernment is. It’s meant to lead you to a sense of disenchantment and dispassion. And what are disenchantment and dispassion? They’re value judgments. So you’re sharpening your powers of judgment as you develop these skills. That’s the kind of discernment you want, not the discernment that comes from knowing all the names of things and getting down on yourself when you realize, “Gee, I still have some craving and clinging here.” If you’re really intelligent, you realize, “Okay, I’ve got to work with my cravings and clingings, because there’s nothing else that’s going to get me on the path.”

So focus on these skills, and the skills will teach you an awful lot as you master them. That’s why it’s called the discernment that comes from developing, when you’re doing the work right here, right now, to bring the mind to a state of concentration where things are clear.

As Ajaan Lee would say, don’t look down on your defilements. Realize that some of them have their uses, and don’t wait until you’re pure until you’re going to practice the path. This is a path of twigs and branches bound together to make a raft, and you hold on until the raft delivers you to the other shore. That’s when you can let your defilements go, all of them.

But in the meantime, you have to sort them out, because there are some twigs and branches that will cause trouble in your raft. They’ll be weak. They won’t help. If you have weak vines holding the raft together, the vines will break and the raft will fall apart. You have to learn to recognize which of your defilements are helpful and which ones are not.

But don’t be above using the defilements that are helpful in mastering these skills. As Ajaan Lee used to say, the sign of a person of discernment is that you can take anything and get good use out of it. This is a case in point.