Abandoning the Five Hindrances

Whoever has gained release from the world, is gaining release, or will gain release, all of them have done so by abandoning the five hindrances, the mental impurities that weaken wisdom, and by firmly establishing their minds in the four abidings of mindfulness, and by developing the seven factors of enlightenment as they really are. This is how they have gained release from the world, are gaining release, or will gain release.

AN10.95

Abandoning The Five Hindrances: Overview

The practice of abandoning the Five Hindrances is purifying the mind of mental impurities that hinder wisdom. The habitual tendencies and defilements that prevent us from sustaining Right Mindfulness, abiding in the Four Dwellings of Mindfulness, and maintaining a concentrated and collected mind.

The hindrances prevent us from discerning more subtle states of mind, abiding in Jhana, and therefore block our progress on the path to liberation.

At this stage of the Gradual Training, we abandon the hindrances by cultivating the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. These factors balance and purify the mind, enabling it to perceive and penetrate all phenomena with wisdom and equanimity.

When fully developed, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment lead to nibbāna, where suffering is completely known and eradicated.

The Five Hindrances: What Are They?

Let's take a closer look at each of these hindrances:

1. Sensual Desire: This is craving for sensual satisfaction and clinging to sensory experiences. We become attached to pleasant sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations.

2. Ill-will: This refers to feelings of hostility, anger, resentment, or aversion towards ourselves, others, situations, or states of being.

3. Sloth and Torpor: Sloth is mental lethargy, while torpor is physical and mental inertia or drowsiness.

4. Restlessness and Worry: This is an agitated mind characterized by worry, anxiety, or mental agitation. We become excessively concerned about past or future events, leading to a scattered and distracted mind.

5. Doubt: Skepticism, indecision, or lack of conviction in the teachings, practice, or our own abilities.

These five hindrances have one thing in common: they arise from desire, aversion, or delusion. We feel pressure to react to the current situation by seeking pleasure, avoiding discomfort, or distracting ourselves from the present moment. This reactivity disrupts mindfulness and undermines concentration.

The Five Hindrances: The Gradual Training

As we progress through the stages of the Gradual Training, we address these hindrances in a gradual manner. At each stage, we cultivate new skills and practices to overcome the remaining hindrances.

The Practice of Sila: We let go of desire, aversion, and attachment in interactions by practicing Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood. We renounce expectations, assumptions, and taking others for granted. We avoid harmful interactions that disturb the mind and cultivate goodwill toward everyone.

Guarding the Sense Doors: We learn to avoid entanglement by not grasping at sensory signs that provoke greed, aversion, or delusion.

Moderation in Eating: We practice moderation in eating and resist delighting in or craving flavors and food.

The Practice of Wakefulness: We maintain a clear mind by not getting lost in unwholesome thoughts.

Right Mindfulness: We abide in one of the Four Dwellings of Mindfulness, subduing greed and aversion for the "world."

At this stage of the Gradual Training, the Five Hindrances should no longer manifest as overt actions or speech. Instead, they may arise as residual forces, subtle karmic momentum, or background tendencies.

As we continue in our practice, our minds become more sensitive to the underlying causes of suffering. We can start to detect these roots within ourselves, rather than just reacting to symptoms.

For example, sensual desire might not be as overtly seeking physical gratification anymore, but it could still be manifesting in subtle ways. Maybe we find ourselves clinging to certain perceptions or expectations - like attachment to our bodies or a need for everything to go smoothly.

Ill-will can also show up in more nuanced forms. Instead of anger, it might appear as aversion towards discomfort that's still present within us. We might feel a quiet urge to eliminate these residual feelings, rather than facing them directly.

Doubt can manifest in a similar way - not as a clear-cut uncertainty, but as a subtle questioning about our progress or the unfolding of events.

What all these manifestations share is a common thread: reactivity. When we're driven by desire, aversion, or delusion, our minds tend to lean towards seeking pleasure, avoiding discomfort, or distracting ourselves from the present moment. This reactivity can disrupt our mindfulness and undermine our concentration.

The Five Hindrances: The Stages Of Liberation

As we continue on the path to liberation, it's worth noting that the Five Hindrances can't be completely eliminated until we reach a stage of liberation. But with each step forward, we can weaken and overcome them enough to abide in jhāna.

As we progress through levels of liberation, some of the hindrances are permanently eliminated:

• At the initial stage of liberation, Stream-entry, doubt is finally eliminated. We've got a clearer understanding of the path and our own abilities.

• By the third stage, Non-returner, sensual desire, ill-will, and remorse are gone for good. These negative tendencies no longer hold us back.

• And at Arahatship, the highest level of liberation, sloth and torpor, as well as restlessness, are completely eradicated.

Therefore, every step taken in weakening these hindrances brings us closer to liberation, where freedom from them becomes unshakable.

A person who has completely destroyed the taints, or mental intoxicants (āsava), sensual desire, existence, views, and ignorance, has developed and well-developed the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. This person is called an arahant, a fully enlightened being.

Purifying The Mind: The Cessation Of Craving

It is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it.

SN 56.11

It’s crucial to remember that the entire Gradual Training aims to establish the causes and conditions that lead to the cessation of craving: craving sense satisfaction, craving becoming, and craving non-becoming. This requires a purified mind capable of penetrating the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and non-self nature of experience. Only then can dispassion emerge, which, when cultivated, leads to seeing the gradual fading away, cessation, and ultimately the release of all craving.

The mind must be purified so that it is clear, concentrated, unshakable, free from entanglement, imbued with the single-minded intention of destroying the taints. To create the causes and conditions for such a mind requires developing the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

The Tathāgata compares the abandoning of the Five Hindrances to the process of purifying gold. Just as a goldsmith removes impurities, like iron, copper, tin, and lead, from raw gold through repeated smelting and refining, so too does a disciple remove sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt through diligent practice.

As the impurities vanish, the mind becomes bright, malleable, and ready for work, just as purified gold is fit for crafting exquisite ornaments. In this purified state, the mind can penetrate higher wisdom for the destruction of the taints.

Disciples, these five impurities of gold, which when present in gold, make it neither pliable, workable, nor radiant, and it does not properly come to fulfillment in any craftsmanship. What are the five?

Iron, copper, tin, lead, and silver: these are the five impurities of gold, which when present in gold, make it neither pliable, workable, nor radiant, and it does not properly come to fulfillment in any craftsmanship.

But when gold is freed from these five impurities, it becomes pliable, workable, and radiant; it is not brittle and properly comes to fulfillment in any craftsmanship. Whatever ornament one wishes to make from it: whether a ring, earrings, a necklace, or a golden chain: it serves that purpose.

Similarly these are the five impurities of the mind, which when present in the mind, make it neither pliable, workable, nor radiant, and it does not properly attain concentration for the destruction of the taints. What are the five?

Sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt: these are the five impurities of the mind, which when present in the mind, make it neither pliable, workable, nor radiant, and it does not properly attain concentration for the destruction of the taints.

But when the mind is freed from these five impurities, it becomes pliable, workable, and radiant; it is not brittle and properly attains concentration for the destruction of the taints.

AN5.23

Before we dive into the Seven Factors of Enlightenment and how we can use them to overcome the Five Hindrances, it's important to first understand what we’re trying to purify. This requires learning some basic concepts about the mind stream and what the Tathāgata calls “mental formations.”

Purifying The Mind: Karmic Energy

To understand the practice of Abandoning the Five Hindrances, it's useful to see the hindrances as manifestations of our past karmic energy.

Karma, is essentially a form of mental energy. It possesses both momentum and volition, and it's deeply rooted in our past desires. These desires then manifest as intentions, intentions to fulfill those very desires.

This mental energy, which carries power behind it, is what drives our fundamental desire for existence itself. It's what creates that profound sense of "being," and importantly, the desire to take birth in a physical body, all in order to seek satisfaction out in the world. And this desire, in turn, manifests through our bodily, mental, and verbal actions, what the Tathāgata refers to as bodily, mental, and verbal formations.

Since karma is rooted in greed, aversion, and delusion, it shows up in the present moment as a restless, scattered mental energy. It's constantly seeking satisfaction, always seeking to "feed" on the objects of the world, which is what we call craving for sense satisfaction. This continual seeking and the underlying restlessness it causes, result in a mind that's tainted and disturbed, clouded by ignorance, and ultimately, incapable of achieving liberation.

As we progress on the Gradual Training and develop the Eightfold Path, that scattered mental energy begins to diminish. This leads to a mind that's more collected and settled, now singularly focused on liberation.

However, even at this stage of the Gradual Training, restlessness still remains. It's like a constant stream of ingrained karmic mental energy, still seeking an outlet through the desire for existence, by clinging to the Five Aggregates.

This unsettled mental energy is what the Tathāgata refers to as the "five impurities of the mind." When these are present, the mind becomes neither pliable, workable, nor radiant. Consequently, it can't properly attain the concentration needed for the destruction of the taints.

Therefore, to truly progress on the path to liberation, we must transform this impure, scattered mental energy. We do this by developing the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, to purify the mind into a pure stream of pliable, collected mental energy, single-mindedly intent on the destruction of the taints.

But, disciples, when the mind is freed from these five impurities, it becomes pliable, workable, and radiant; it is not brittle and properly attains concentration for the destruction of the taints.

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Purifying The Mind: Purifying New Karma

To truly understand what it means to purify the mind, we need to reflect on a core teaching of the Tathāgata: The mind is the forerunner of all experience.

It is not that things simply exist, and the mind perceives them exactly as they are. Rather, the ordinary mind, driven by tainted karmic intentions, is constantly seeking, constantly selecting what to pay attention. And in doing so, it distorts. Perception becomes stained, colored by craving, craving to hold on to what feels good, and escape what feels unpleasant.

So what does this really mean? It means that experience doesn’t just happen to us. The mind creates it, through what it intends, what it focuses on, and how it interprets what it sees.

Yes, things exist physically, just as they are. But whether we see them as good or bad is shaped by our inner tendencies, our desires, our intentions. These reactions produce formations, mental, bodily, and verbal, that shape our entire experience, all under the influence of greed, aversion, and delusion.

To appreciate this important point, consider this: intention is the builder of karma. The moment the mind leans, even subtly, toward a particular act, karma is already beginning to form. The stronger the volition, the more significant its impact, shaping future actions when the right conditions come together.

But karma doesn’t just show itself in what we do. It’s also embedded in the most subtle shifts in perception, in the energy behind how we choose, what we believe, how we see ourselves. Even the tiniest moment of craving, aversion, or delusion carries karmic weight.

At this stage of the Gradual Training, the focus is on purifying the mind. We do this by letting go of unwholesome mental states, the Five Hindrances, and instead cultivating wholesome ones, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

This means purifying our views. Purifying our intentions. Our inner speech. Our actions. How we practice, how we strive, how we pay attention, and ultimately, how we perceive the “world.” into a single collected stream of mind energy intent on destruction of the taints.

Purifying The Mind: The Eight Fold Path

At this stage of the Gradual Training, we need to shift how we see the Eightfold Path. No longer do we see the Eightfold Path as separate components of the Tathāgata's teaching. Instead, we recognize it as a single, unified force, for purification, steadily leading the mind toward liberation.

We engage with all eight factors of the path as one integrated whole. Every practice we undertake, every moment of contemplation, must now be infused with the essence of the Eightfold Path.

Right View

This is where everything begins, clear seeing. It’s the foundation beneath our practice. Right View is the capacity to perceive impermanence in all things, stress in clinging, and the truth of not-self in each experience. Every mental state becomes a doorway, an invitation to see with clarity, free from distortion. Our aim now is to purify how we see the world, how we construct meaning, and ultimately, to glimpse the path of liberation.

Right Intention

Alongside clear seeing, we turn the mind toward renunciation, Right Intention. But here, we deepen our sensitivity, not just to our outward choices, but to the subtle energies driving those choices. Every mental impulse becomes a question: “Is this arising from craving, aversion, or delusion? Or from letting go, goodwill, and wisdom?”

Because intention is the fuel behind karma and mental formations, Right View and Right Intention together form the wisdom wing of the path, steering the mind toward freedom.

Whatever one frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of the mind.

MN19

Right Speech

In the same way, we need to learn how to detect the earliest stirrings of speech: our initial thoughts, silent formulations, and inner dialogues. At this stage, "speech" isn't just what leaves our mouth, but what begins in the mind. These seeds, such as "this is good," "this is bad," or "I want", are the ground for either delusion or wisdom. Instead of using inner speech to label or judge, we use it skillfully, as directed thought and evaluation, to support the path of letting go.

Right Action

No longer just a matter of behavior, action now refers to the internal movements of the mind. How does the mind respond to feelings, perceptions, and thoughts? Do we tighten or soften? Cling or release? Resist or open? Moment by moment, action becomes the art of renunciation, the practice of releasing, again and again.

Right Livelihood

Livelihood, at this stage in the Gradual Training, is not about profession, it is about living the path. Our way of life becomes the Eightfold Path itself. Right Livelihood is now the internal and external orientation to the Dharma, our sole foundation for being in the world.

Right Effort

Effort becomes effortless. With continuous practice, the Four Right Efforts, preventing, abandoning, cultivating, and maintaining, merge into one flowing application of the mind. Eventually, there’s no sense of struggle, no doer. Just the unfolding of karmic energy gently moving toward release.

Right Mindfulness

We are no longer “trying” to be mindful. Instead, mindfulness arises naturally, as abiding in presence, and contemplation, steady and uninterrupted. Not through an act of will, but as a steady presence. We are no longer trying to be mindful; instead, mindfulness becomes the seamless thread that binds all other factors together.

Right Concentration

And finally, when all these factors settle and strengthen, when the hindrances fade and the Seven Factors of Enlightenment begin to shine, Right Concentration naturally emerges. The mind becomes unified, collected, and capable of seeing things as they truly are.

At this point, the Eightfold Path ceases to be a conceptual framework. It becomes the path itself, a single, radiant stream of mental energy, moving toward the complete uprooting of the taints.

Purifying The Mind: Understanding Mental Formations

At this stage of the Gradual Training, we begin to understand something profound: applying the Eightfold Path isn’t just following steps, it’s a process of purification. It’s the cleansing of karma and the transformation of the mind stream itself. What we’re really doing is shifting the inner causes and conditions that shape a tainted mind into the foundations of a purified one.

But to fully appreciate how this works, and how the Eightfold Path operates, we need to look more closely at Mental Formations.

Mental Formations are the hidden architects behind every experience we have. They aren’t just the obvious intentions or deliberate choices we make. They also include the subtle leanings of the mind, its reactions to what arises, the emotional coloring we bring to moments, and even the deep, rooted habits that guide how we respond. These formations are constantly at work, quietly shaping our consciousness, our actions, and our future experiences.

In essence, Mental Formations are how the mind constructs our experience of reality. Yes, our actions are intentional, but they don’t spring from a solid, unchanging self. Instead, they emerge from a vast, interdependent web of causes and conditions. And to truly grasp this, not just intellectually, is to unravel the very core of self-view and open the path to liberation.

So understanding Mental Formations is absolutely crucial. We need to see how they emerge, how they operate just beneath conscious awareness, and how, through insight, they can begin to dissolve.

But this isn’t about abstract concepts. Merely thinking about Mental Formations won’t set us free. We need direct experience. We need to observe them, trace them back to the views that give rise to them, and recognize their true nature: impermanent, not-self, conditioned. And when we begin to see this clearly, again and again, the grip of saṁsāra starts to loosen.

Mental Formations: Shaped By Views

To truly understand the Five Hindrances, and how they can be purified, we must look deeper than their surface manifestations. At their root lies something more subtle and powerful: our views. Not just intellectual beliefs, but deeply ingrained assumptions that shape how we perceive reality.

The mind interprets experience through these lenses: I exist, this is mine, I am this body, this will make me happy. These aren’t harmless abstractions. They’re deeply held views, built on ignorance, that give rise to craving, aversion, restlessness, sloth, and doubt.

Letting go of wrong views begins the process of dismantling the architecture that holds the hindrances together. Take, for example, the view “I am this body.” As long as this view persists, physical discomfort becomes personal suffering. Every ache, illness, or wrinkle feels threatening, because they affect “me.” The body ceases to be seen as a changing, impersonal process, and becomes a fragile possession. And so we cling: to youth, to comfort, to survival.

These feelings, in turn, give rise to Mental Formations. The mind begins to seek, control, preserve, beautify, fear, or resent anything that threatens this core view, all to protect the fragile illusion of self. These reactions seem natural, but they’re fabrications, karmic echoes arising from misperception. It is the view that activates these formations; without the view, the suffering loses its foundation.

The big challenge is that the most powerful views aren’t always obvious. Often, we don’t know we’re holding them. They’re assumptions masquerading as truth, quietly running the show behind the scenes. When we don’t examine them, Mental Formations stay hidden, subtly steering our choices, shaping our karma.

Freedom begins when we shine light into that hidden machinery. When we question the unquestioned. When we no longer mistake views for reality.

Mental Formations: Craving And Intention

From deeply rooted views, craving begins to stir. And with it come fear, identification, and perhaps most quietly, but most powerfully, intention.

Mental formations tend to arrive softly. Think of them as subtle shifts: a gentle leaning toward pleasure, a tightening in the body when an old memory resurfaces, a quiet replay of a past conversation, or that silent longing to be seen a certain way. These aren’t overt actions, not yet. But they carry energy. They are the early ripples that feed the current of suffering.

Then we introduce mindfulness, supported by wisdom, and something begins to change. We start to notice:

• “Ah, this impulse, it’s coming from fear.”
• “This reaction, it's rooted in the view ‘I am this.’”
• “This quiet anger, it’s rising from the sense of having been wronged.”

We don't reject these movements, and we don't chase them. We observe them, gently, clearly, tracing them back to the conditions they arose from. And as our seeing becomes clearer, something profound begins to happen: dispassion emerges. These formations lose their grip. Their energy fades. What once drove us begins to dissolve.

This is where wise attention enters. We pause and reflect:

• A thought has appeared—what was its origin?
• An impulse arose—what set it in motion?
• Anger surfaced—what contact lit the flame?

Instead of saying, “I am angry,” we begin to say, “Anger has arisen—conditioned by contact, shaped by perception, memory, and habit.”

With this clarity, we gently loosen our grip on the identity wrapped around the feeling. And through this kind of insight, something subtle yet transformative is revealed: yes, our actions are intentional, but they’re not owned. They don’t come from a permanent self. They rise from a vast web of conditions—dynamic, interwoven, and ever-changing.

When we see this, not just with the mind, but through direct experience, the whole engine of clinging begins to collapse. This understanding isn’t a theory. It has to be known, felt, seen, with clarity, with depth, and with the quiet courage to let go.

Mental Formations: Intention, Attention, Perception, And Effort

If wanderers of other sects were to ask you, On what are all things rooted, friends? From what do all things arise? Where do all things originate? Where do all things converge? What is the foremost of all things? What is the ruler of all things? What is the highest of all things? What is the essence of all things? What is the immersion of all things? What is the culmination of all things?

Being asked thus you should answer those wanderers of other sects in this way: All things are rooted in desire, friends. All things arise from attention. All things originate from contact. All things converge in feeling. Concentration is the foremost of all things. Mindfulness is the ruler of all things. Wisdom is the highest of all things. Liberation is the essence of all things. The deathless is the immersion of all things. Nibbāna is the culmination of all things.

AN10.58

So, as we’ve just explored, letting go of the Five Hindrances and nurturing the Seven Factors of Enlightenment calls for a deeper, more refined awareness, a way of seeing that recognizes intention, attention, perception, and effort as subtle movements of the mind.

Just as a goldsmith carefully applies intention, attention, and effort to separate impurities from gold, making it pliable and ready to be shaped into something beautiful. In the same way, we must continue cultivating Right View, Right Intention, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Investigation, refining the mind and its perceptions in pursuit of true clarity, and ultimately, the destruction of the taints.

Intention: The Sign Of The Mind

Recognizing our intentions, even in their quietest, most subtle forms, is vital. Why is that? Because intention shapes what we pay attention to, how we perceive reality, and the overall tone and quality of our efforts.

To work skillfully with this, we must become attuned to what the Tathāgata referred to as the sign of the mind. The sign of the mind is the mental impression, the feeling tone, or subtle inclination that the mind picks up and begins to lean toward. This “sign” isn’t always something we can picture, sometimes, it’s a faint flavor, a subtle emotional charge or a barely noticeable tug in a particular direction.

Yet even these gentle cues condition how our perception unfolds, and how karma begins to stir. As stated in DN 22:

A disciple knows a mind with lust as a mind with lust, a mind without lust as a mind without lust; a mind with hatred as a mind with hatred, a mind without hatred as a mind without hatred; a mind with delusion as a mind with delusion, a mind without delusion as a mind without delusion...

DN22

The “sign of the mind” is more than a passing impression. It’s the seed of intention. Even before thought fully forms, if there’s a leaning, a preference, a subtle emotional tone, that sign quietly reveals the mind’s direction.

And if we miss it, if it goes unnoticed, it becomes fertile ground for craving, and gives rise to mental proliferation. So when we refer to “the sign of the mind,” we’re pointing to the object or quality the mind is tuned into.

Sometimes, it’s lust. Sometimes irritation. Sometimes renunciation.

It’s the tone beneath the surface, the leaning that exposes the mind’s tendency. And from that seed, thought arises, habit takes shape, karma begins to move. Recognizing this sign, clearly and early, gives us an extraordinary opportunity: to stop the wheel of becoming before it even begins to turn.

That’s why when the Tathāgata taught the Abandoning of the Five Hindrances and the Cultivation of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, he wasn’t offering two separate instructions. He was pointing to one integrated path, a single process: purifying the sign of the mind, refining the inclination it rests on. And when that sign is clear, wholesome, and settled, the path unfolds on its own.

In the cultivation of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, each Enlightment Factor serves to counteract a specific mental inclination, one born from the hindrances. And it doesn’t do so through resistance or suppression, but by shifting the sign of the mind toward clarity and tranquility.

For example:

• Sensual desire carries a grasping, excited energy. Through Mindfulness and Investigation, we invite clarity and dispassion.

• Ill will has the flavor of resistance, of harshness. We meet it with Joy and Loving-kindness, and the mind begins to soften and open.

• Sloth and torpor weigh the mind down—dull and heavy. By applying Energy and Rapture, vitality returns. The mind brightens.

• Restlessness feels like tension, agitation. With Tranquility and Concentration, we steady the mind, allowing it to settle like still water.

• And when Doubt clouds perception, we bring forward Mindfulness and Equanimity— and the fog begins to clear. Confidence replaces confusion. Presence replaces uncertainty.

This practice isn’t about battling the hindrances. It’s about meeting each one with skillful means: changing the mind’s inclination.

When you notice restlessness, instead of fighting it, simply acknowledge it, “Ah, my mind is leaning towards anxiety and a sense of incompleteness.” Then, gently redirect your attention to a tranquil sign, such as your breath, your body, or a perception that provides stillness. Restlessness gradually loses its footing.

This practice isn’t about eliminating all mental movement. It’s about knowing the texture of each movement, not identifying with it, not feeding it, but releasing it.

Rather than reinforcing the Five Hindrances, we retrain the mind to rest upon the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. And in doing so, the mind is purified, not superficially, but at the root.

Also, this is key, when we notice the mind’s inclination, what we’re seeing is old karma. And when we understand that, something shifts. We stop blaming the world for what appears. We stop blaming ourselves for what arises. Instead, we see clearly: “This is old karma playing out.” And in that seeing, we take full responsibility, not for what arises, but for what we do next. How we respond to the sign of the mind.

Mental Formations: Purifying Attention

The result of intention is attention.

Attention directs the stream of consciousness. Attention is intentional, an act of will directed toward perception. Like turning toward the breath, or resting in a single sensation.

Attention comes before perception. Without it, perception cannot arise. Perception requires contact, but it is attention that points the mind toward contact. It’s the silent cue, the unseen gesture that says: “Look here.” And what the mind looks at, matters.

The mind can be purified by the way it pays attention and the things it pays attention to. By ceasing to nurture unwholesome perceptions and instead choosing to direct our attention towards what is wholesome, the mind begins to clarify, brighten, and unify.

Intention is the energy that gives rise to mental formations. Attention is the channel through which this energy flows into the world, facilitating the meeting of consciousness and experience. The type of attention, the objects it touches, and the activities it engages in all contribute to the unfolding of karmic consequences.

Attention can be wholesome or unwholesome. Wise attention is guided by Right View. It brings disenchantment, dispassion, and release.

Unwise attention clings. It proliferates thought, feeds craving, cements views, builds bondage.

What one pays attention to grows

To purify the mind, we need to cultivate two attentional skills:

• Vitakka, the initial application of attention. It’s the turning of the mind toward the object, the gentle reaching out.
• Vicāra, sustained attention. It holds the object. It investigates, stays with it, steadies in presence.

Vitakka and vicāra are what we call proto-thoughts. Think of proto-thoughts as the foundational stirrings beneath language. Not quite speech yet, but already infused with intention. A kind of motion that hints at meaning before words even form.

The key is to train the mind to recognize them. To notice their subtle leanings. Like that gentle shift of attention toward the breath. The quiet, watchful monitoring of experience. Or the soft, wordless investigation that arises naturally.

We use these proto-thoughts, vitakka and vicāra, to guide our attention, and then to hold it there. By doing so, our awareness settles onto wholesome perceptions, and from there, it begins to grow.

In this simile, the Tathāgata shows us how vitakka and vicāra work subtly as proto-thoughts, not coarsely like inner speech but more like silent inner shaping, shaping a unified experience of joy and pleasure.

When we intentionally direct the mind (vitakka) and sustain it (vicāra) on a particular way of seeing, like "this is impermanent," "this is empty of self," "this is unsatisfactory," we are forming proto-thoughts, a mental habit that turns our attention repeatedly toward the liberating characteristic of the experience.

And it all begins with intention. With what we choose to see, how we choose to look, and the lens we hold up to our experience. It’s not enough just to perceive, we have to become aware of how we’re perceiving.

You see, perception is shaped by where we place our attention. And attention, in turn, is shaped by volition, that quiet, deliberate act of guiding the mind.

This isn’t about scattered focus, or drifting into distraction. This is something much deeper. It’s about cultivating a purified mind-stream. One that flows with clarity and steadiness. A stream that gently carries us toward concentration, and then into insight.

Purifying Attention: Wise Attention

Not understanding what things are fit for attention and what things are unfit for attention, he attends to things unfit for attention and does not attend to things fit for attention.

And what are the things unfit for attention that he attends to?

Whatever things, when attended to, lead to the arising of unarisen sensual desire, or to the increase of arisen sensual desire, to the arising of unarisen desire for existence, or to the increase of arisen desire for existence, to the arising of unarisen ignorance, or to the increase of arisen ignorance: these are the things unfit for attention that he attends to.

And what are the things fit for attention that he does not attend to?

Whatever things, when attended to, do not lead to the arising of unarisen sensual desire, or to the increase of arisen sensual desire, to the arising of unarisen desire for existence, or to the increase of arisen desire for existence, to the arising of unarisen ignorance, or to the increase of arisen ignorance: these are the things fit for attention that he does not attend to.

By attending to things unfit for attention and not attending to things fit for attention, unarisen defilements arise and arisen defilements increase....

He attends wisely to: This is suffering; This is the origin of suffering; This is the cessation of suffering; This is the path leading to the cessation of suffering.

By attending wisely in this way, three fetters are abandoned: identity view, doubt, and attachment to rites and rituals.

MN2

So what is the fire that burns away karmic impurities? It is the fire of insight. And it blazes most clearly in two modes: seeing and developing.

In MN2, the Tathāgata describes seven methods for abandoning the taints: seeing, restraining, using, enduring, avoiding, removing, and developing. But only two lead directly to liberation, to the Supramundane path:

• Abandoning by seeing: Always, mindfulness comes first. Clear knowing is the doorway. And often, simply seeing a hindrance, without judgment, without grasping, is enough to loosen its grip. Through Right View, we see: “This is not-self. This is impermanent. This is dukkha.” And in this seeing, wrong view begins to dissolve. We stop wrestling with shadows. We see things as they are, and the mind begins to let go.

• Abandoning by developing: This is the active process. Here, we cultivate the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. We nourish the wholesome. Each factor: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity, becomes medicine for the mind. Through their development, the hindrances are not just suppressed, they are uprooted.

The other five methods: restraining, using, enduring, avoiding, and removing, they serve as temporary measures. Skillful in moments, but not sufficient for liberation. They calm the waters, but they don’t remove the source of turbulence.

So at this point in the Gradual Training, we shift toward creating the causes and conditions for true liberation. We abide in one of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and from there, generate the wholesome through the Seven Factors.

As every individual is different, one will need to identify which hindrances affect them the most, understand how and when they arise, recognize their inner strengths to counter each hindrance, and actively cultivate relevant practices to overcome them.

And what are the defilements to be developed?

Here a disciple wisely develops the mindfulness enlightenment factor, which is based on seclusion, dispassion, cessation, and leads to relinquishment; he wisely develops the investigation of states enlightenment factor... the energy enlightenment factor... the joy enlightenment factor... the tranquility enlightenment factor... the concentration enlightenment factor... the equanimity enlightenment factor, which is based on seclusion, dispassion, cessation, and leads to relinquishment. If he does not develop them, defilements, distress, and fever arise in him.

MN2

Mental Formations: Perception

Intention directs attention. And with attention, the mind turns toward an object. That turning leads to contact. Contact gives rise to feeling, and from feeling, perception unfolds.

Purifying perception is vital, because perception shapes our experiences. It determines what we react to, and how karma is created. When perception is clouded, by habit, defilement, or unwise attention, we misinterpret reality. We see permanence in what’s passing, beauty in what’s not attractive, self in what’s not-self.

But through mindfulness and wise attention, perception becomes unobstructed. We start seeing things as they truly are, free from distortion. And in that clarity, craving softens and clinging fades. The mind begins to lean toward tranquility.

To understand this purification, we need to look closely at perception itself, how karma shapes it, and how perception can become a vehicle for liberation.

Perception is the function that recognizes and labels: A shape: “tree.” A sound: “music.” It assigns meaning. It tells us what things are. But perception doesn’t stand alone. It works in tandem with feeling. They’re separate aggregates, yet deeply linked. Feelings color perception. Perceptions give rise to new feelings.

Both are shaped by past karma. And like a goldsmith with raw metal, we can work with them, purifying what’s unwholesome, cultivating what’s wise.

There are two kinds of perception to be aware of:

• Passive perception: like seeing a color or hearing a sound. It arises, and passes, on its own.
• Intentional perception: when the mind chooses to investigate, to sustain, or to fabricate a view. This can be wholesome, or unwholesome.

Perception alone doesn’t create karma. Karma only arises when intention clings, when we act on a perception, or spin a story from it.

If we perceive beauty, and lust arises, or perceive threat, and fear grips us, then intention has made the perception karmically potent. Wrong views follow. And suffering begins.

But perception can also be a path to freedom. If we intend to perceive emptiness, to rest in the view of impermanence, not-self, or unattractiveness, then perception becomes medicine. Rooted in Right View, it purifies the mind-stream.

It’s essential to understand that the perception of impermanence, not-self, and others are not abstract. They are experiential. To perceive impermanence is to watch feelings and formations arise and pass. To witness the flow, bodily, mental, and verbal, and see things as they really are: “There is fading away.”

We don’t cling to whether things exist or not. We see: “There is passing.” “There is changing.” And in that seeing, dispassion follows, cessation arises, letting go becomes possible.

Unless we learn to let go, any perception that passes through an untrained mind will be distorted, hijacked by greed, colored by aversion, and clouded by delusion. That’s why concentration matters. That’s why a steady, collected mind, and the deep stillness of abiding in jhāna are essential.

By using these perceptions, our goal is not to uncover some metaphysical or philosophical reality. It’s not about finding ultimate truth in the physical world. It’s more profound than that. It’s about refining perception so it’s no longer shaped by craving.

It’s about abiding without resistance. Responding, not reacting, with wisdom. And understanding, deeply, that there is nothing to cling to. Nothing to possess. Nothing to become. From that seeing, suffering dissolves, not as a denial, but as liberation.

Fabricating Perceptions

Sometimes, it’s skillful to shape the way we perceive things. After all, many perceptions aren’t just passing thoughts; they’re deeply rooted. They’ve been ingrained through years of habit, cultural conditioning, and karmic influence.

Take, for instance, that natural pull of attraction we feel toward the opposite sex. Even when we see clearly, unwholesome thoughts can still sneak in.

That’s where the Tathāgata offers a skillful approach: to intentionally fabricate perceptions to counter their unwholesome allure. For example, fabricating the perception of the unattractive. Not because the object itself is inherently repulsive, but because the mind needs guidance. Because when lust clouds our vision, suffering isn’t far behind.

This is not deception. It is medicine for the wandering mind. A crafted perception, used not to distort truth, but to loosen the grip of craving.

Fabricated perceptions, when used mindfully and purposefully, can become tools for liberation. If they reduce greed, weaken hatred, clarify delusion, and are applied at the right stage of practice, then they are wholesome. They are medicine for the mind.

Whatever is useful for the abandoning of unwholesome states and the development of wholesome ones, that is to be cultivated.

AN2.19

Consider that perception is by nature constructed. Perception is not objective truth; rather, it's a conditioned mode of recognition that can be trained.

So, when we perceive something as beautiful or desirable, that's already a filtered, fabricated way of experiencing it. If we train ourselves to also perceive its unsatisfactory, impermanent, or disagreeable aspects, we are not being untruthful. Instead, we are skillfully balancing our perception in order to avoid clinging and suffering.

Those who perceive permanence in the impermanent, pleasure in suffering, self in the non-self, and purity in the impure are beings with wrong views, with scattered minds, and without understanding.

AN4.49

Perception: Using Antidotes

Just as impurities in gold can be neutralized using chemical treatments that dissolve unwanted substances while preserving the precious metal, we can also purify our own perceptions by using antidotes.

Since the mind fabricates good and bad perceptions of the world and all other dualities, we can retrain or reprogram the mind by neutralizing perceptions that result in greed, aversion, and delusion. It’s a kind of reprogramming, untangling our attachment to these polarities by introducing balancing perceptions.

For example, just as acids are neutralized by alkalis, fire is cooled by water, heat tempered by ice, and darkness dispelled by light, so too, the Five Hindrances can be met with countering perceptions. These include recognizing the unattractive to temper the attractive, evoking energy to counteract dullness, and applying goodwill to dissolve ill-will. There are many such practices, taught by the Tathāgata, designed to balance and clear the mind.

As our mindfulness deepens, we begin to see that certain patterns arise repeatedly. For example, we may notice tightness or tension in the body. At first glance, it appears to be physical. But with sustained awareness, it becomes clear: this tension is not just physical, it is a manifestation of ill will, rooted in unpleasant feeling and aversive perception.

This is where purification begins.

When we recognize aversion in perception, when we see that tension is being shaped and sustained by a mind that resists or rejects, we can counter this with the perception of goodwill.

Instead of verbalizing goodwill, we apply it through intention and directed attention, using proto-thoughts and gently bringing awareness to the area affected by ill will or tension. The perception of goodwill is infused into that space. By holding the tension in awareness with goodwill, the perception is purified. The aversive construct begins to dissolve. In its place, a sense of brightness or joy may naturally arise.

Likewise, when there is dullness or heaviness in the mind, when perception is foggy or flat, it may be the result of sloth or torpor. We do not need to fight it directly. Instead, we can introduce the perception of energy, alertness, attentiveness, presence. Simply by attending to the experience with a slightly more upright, awake quality of perception, dullness can lift.

This is a subtle but powerful form of practice. We are not changing what arises: tension, dullness, irritation, but we are changing how it is held in perception. Each hindrance has a corresponding counter-perception that helps to disentangle the mind from its unwholesome shaping.

This process is moment-to-moment. With mindfulness, we observe the quality of perception, notice when it is influenced by a hindrance, and gently introduce the opposite quality. Over time, perception itself becomes clearer, more balanced, and less reactive. This is purification, not in theory, but in practice.

Perception: Disrupting The Chain Of Suffering At The Root

Purifying the mind is disrupting the chain of suffering at its root.

In the Tathāgata’s teaching on dependent origination, suffering doesn’t arise all at once. It unfolds as an energetic force: from contact, to feeling, to craving, to clinging. But this process is not inevitable. Each link requires something to sustain it. That "something" is often a subtle, unnoticed mental act: perception. Not perception in the sense of bare recognition alone, but perception as it usually functions: layered, personalized, distorted, and reactive.

When perception is purified, it no longer builds upon what is contacted or felt. It no longer drives the mind into craving or aversion. It simply recognizes and lets be. In this way, purified perception becomes a wedge that disrupts propagation at its root, not by blocking experience, but by refusing to propagate it.

The Tathāgata’s description is simple and profound:

In the seen, there will be only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed, only the sensed; in the cognized, only the cognized.

UD1.10

When perception remains at this level, direct, non-conceptual, and free from mental objectification, the mind does not get involved. There is contact, but no fabrication. There is feeling, but no clinging. The link is cut not by resistance but by clarity.

Ordinary perception reacts. It doesn’t just notice; it judges, names, compares, identifies, anticipates. When you see something pleasant, the mind says, "I like this. I want more." When you feel pain, it says, "This is bad. I need this to stop." These reactions aren’t inherent in the contact or the feeling. They are added through perception.

As the Tathāgata said, "Perception conditions thinking. Thinking conditions proliferation. From proliferation arise desire, views, and conflict." In this way, perception doesn’t just inform; it steers the whole mind.

Purified perception doesn’t steer. It lets experience stay simple. When contact occurs, the mind doesn’t rush to interpret. It knows: "This is contact." "This is painful," not "this is unfair," not "this is happening to me." Just "touching has happened." That’s it. Contact is just the intersection of conditions. If the mind can perceive at this level, it doesn’t get entangled.

Feeling, too, is purified through perception. Feeling arises, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and perception often seizes on it: "This is good. This is bad. This shouldn’t be happening." But if the mind is trained to see just feeling, it knows only the tone, not the story. There’s no ownership or judgment. Yet, the key is how we relate to it. If perception is clean, feeling is allowed to arise and pass. No craving grows from it.

This also means seeing perception as just perception. Not as truth. Not as a final label. Training the mind to notice perception as a mental activity, not as the thing itself, reduces clinging. One begins to see: "This is a perception of pleasantness," not "this is a pleasure." The perception becomes transparent, not sticky.

Without this transparency, perception fuels proliferation, complexity, and mental entanglement. The root of mental suffering is not just in the contact or the feeling, but in what the mind does with it afterward. With clean perception, proliferation doesn’t ignite. Thoughts don’t build. Stories don’t form. Suffering doesn’t multiply.

Perception: Training Perceptions

The Tathāgata didn't just tell us to stop reacting impulsively; he provided methods to cleanse our perception. These methods involve specific ways of seeing that help us break free from our usual mental patterns.

The Perception of The Four Elements

One such method is to perceive things as one of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Instead of seeing our body as "mine," appealing, or easily hurt, we view it simply as these elements. This not only cleanses our experience but also removes any sense of personal ownership from it. It helps us understand that physical contact is merely a mechanical process, not something inherently meaningful to be taken personally.

The Perception of the Unattractive

Similarly, the perception of the unattractive counters our mind's tendency to enhance sensual experiences. Instead of the untrained mind seeing beauty, charm, and pleasure, this perception reveals decay, impurity, and fragility. Its purpose isn't to disgust us, but to bring our minds back to reality. When our perception no longer glamorizes physical forms, there's nothing left to chase and cling to.

The Perception of Danger

Another powerful perception is that of danger. Pleasant feelings might seem safe, but the Tathāgata taught that they are profoundly unreliable. Recognizing the inherent danger in feelings helps us naturally let go of our urge to grasp onto them. The perception of risk replaces the illusion of endless pleasure.

The Perception of Dispassion and Cessation

The perceptions of dispassion and cessation go even deeper. Most people believe that continuation is good. However, this perception trains the mind to see the relief in things coming to an end and the tranquility that comes from not acquiring anything new. This prepares the mind to let go, not with a fight, but with ease.

Develop the perception of cessation, it leads to dispassion and peace.

AN10.60

The Perception of Not-Self

Finally, the perception of not-self removes the final hook:

Whatever is felt is not mine, not I, not myself.

SN22.59

This profound knowing completely changes our perspective. There's no personal "self" experiencing these things. Feeling is simply feeling. Perception is merely recognition. No one owns these experiences, and there's no need to do anything about them. When this is seen clearly, the act of clinging simply cannot happen.

These different ways of perceiving aren't adding anything new to our experience; instead, they are removing distortions. They don't create new viewpoints; rather, they dissolve the mistaken ones we already hold. They bring perception back to its original simplicity: just seeing what is, and nothing more.

Purifying perception isn't some mystical ability. It's a practice of quiet, honest recognition. When the mind doesn't add its own interpretations, it doesn't chase after things. When it doesn't chase, it doesn't cling. And when it doesn't cling, suffering doesn't arise.

This is how the mind achieves freedom: not through forceful control, but through perception that sees clearly without distortion, allowing experience to pass without turning it into a "self," a narrative, or a future desire.

Mental Formations: Understanding Clinging

Now that we’ve deepened our understanding of perception in the process of purifying the mind, we turn to a subtler but equally crucial aspect: the clinging to perception.

At this point in the Gradual Training, discernment must become more refined. Sensual desire, for example, isn’t merely the appearance of an image or thought, it’s the mind’s entanglement with it. It’s the craving that reaches toward the object and grasps it.

Clinging often disguises itself within perception, such as ideas like “this exists,” “this doesn’t exist,” or judgments of “good” and “bad.” These mental labels objectify experience and bind the mind to the wheel of suffering. They prevent the mind from settling, unifying, and concentrating, conditions essential for clarity and liberation.

To truly let go, we must learn to distinguish between the karma of the past and the karma we create in the present. As the Tathāgata taught Citta the householder:

The unintentional arising of a sensual thought does not count as a fault. But if one welcomes it, delights in it, and persists in it, that is where the fault lies.

SN 41.3

This distinction is vital: the mere arising of a thought isn’t the problem. A sensual image, such as the memory of a beautiful body, may appear as the natural consequence of past karma. What matters is what follows.

Does the mind welcome it? Delight in it? Sustain it into a narrative?

That sequence: welcoming, delighting, persisting, is the emergence of clinging. That’s how new karma begins. The initial image is simply residual; it becomes active only when craving engages.

To illuminate this dynamic, the Tathāgata spoke of the four types of nutriment that fuel the cycle of becoming. One of these is mental volition:

Mental volition is the fuel for consciousness. Where there is fuel, consciousness establishes itself.

SN 12.64

Craving is fuel. When it’s absent, the fire of becoming fades. If a mental image arises and the mind neither indulges nor resists it, but simply knows it as it is, then no clinging takes hold.

You can gently inquire:

• Is there desire, aversion, or identification here?
• Is there a pull to possess, replay, or reject this image?
• Or is the mind simply aware: “This is a sensual image”?

This is the essence of mindfulness accompanied by clear knowing, not just awareness of content, but understanding the movement of the mind itself. And in the very moment you recognize, “Ah, desire is present,” awareness expands. The entanglement loosens. There is spaciousness. There is choice. And that moment is already the unfolding of freedom.

Latent Tendencies

At this stage, it’s natural to ask:

• Is the path about eliminating all reactions?
• Are we truly responsible for the habitual responses triggered by present conditions?
• Is the distortion in perception, the taint itself, what keeps the mind bound?

For the arahant, these questions are resolved. Even the faintest undercurrents of greed, hatred, and delusion have been fully extinguished. No reaction arises, because the causes are no longer present.

But for those walking the Gradual Training, it is a living process. We begin with restraint, apply mindfulness, and gradually move toward insight. We observe reactions, perhaps tinged with craving or resistance, and rather than suppressing or indulging them, we stop feeding them.

Over time, the roots begin to loosen. Eventually, they dissolve. Even the simple recognition that a perception is biased, emotionally charged, or shaped by personal conditioning, this alone is a sign that insight is awakening. It means wisdom has begun to rise.

The task is not to forcibly eradicate every reaction the moment it appears. Rather, it’s to understand each one deeply, to stop providing the fuel that keeps it alive, and to gently guide the mind toward tranquility, toward non-clinging.

Purifying The Mind: Right Effort

Just like every other stage of the Gradual Training, abandoning the hindrances and purifying the mind depends on one essential element: Right Effort. It’s this effort that gently inclines the mind toward skillful, wholesome perceptions.

Imagine a goldsmith working with a lump of raw, dull, impure gold. He doesn’t rush. Instead, he approaches the task with care and precision, controlling the heat, handling the tongs and crucible, applying the hammer. With patient attention, he removes each impurity, little by little. And in time, the gold glows with radiance, malleable, refined, ready to be shaped into something beautiful.

In the same way, dwelling in Right Mindfulness, we use investigation of dhammas to examine hindrances in our perceptions. Using Right Effort, we apply mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, satisfaction, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity to purify the mind of its unwholesome states.

And this effort doesn’t end when formal practice does. It’s just as vital in daily life, during moments of distraction, stress, temptation, or reactivity. It’s in those small, almost invisible choices that the path is formed. We don’t wait for purity to arrive, we cultivate it, breath by breath, moment by moment.

Right Effort: Balancing Right Effort

Right Effort begins not with strain, but with wisdom, knowing how to establish the causes and conditions that allow effort to become effortless.

Imagine the goldsmith at work. He doesn’t pound indiscriminately. He adjusts the heat, tunes his attention, and uses each tool with care, removing impurities slowly, delicately. In time, the metal softens, glows, becomes malleable. The same goes for the mind. With steady intention and attention, vigilance becomes graceful.

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, equanimity, are gradually nourished, balanced, and refined.

Preventing Unwholesome States

Like guarding the crucible from soot, the mind sets out with Right Intention: to remain completely mindful, pure, untainted. Attention is softly inclined, using proto-thoughts like:

• "Subdue desire and aversion."
• "Open awareness."
• "Stay alert to the early signs of clinging."

Through complete mindfulness and alertness, we notice the seeds of craving before they sprout. And by recognizing them, we prevent them from taking root.

Abandoning Unwholesome States

When hindrances do arise, we don’t suppress them, we examine, investigate them.
Just as the goldsmith skims impurities from molten gold, we apply Right Effort and wise investigation:

• If there’s dullness, we energize.
• If there’s restlessness, we soften.

• If there’s clinging, we question it with care.

• What’s fueling this attachment?

• Is it desire, aversion, or confusion?
• Is it stressful?
• Is it really mine?

Such inquiries reveal not just what is arising, but why. They dissolve the illusion of permanence, self-making, and worthiness of clinging. Through seeing, we release.

Arousing Wholesome States

When the gold is ready to glow, the fire is gently adjusted. Wholesome perceptions already exist in the mind, they simply need nourishing.

• Using Vitakka, we direct attention toward joy, calm, clarity.
• Using Vicāra, we sustain it, without adding ego or analysis.

Let simple recognitions guide you:

• "Let joy grow."
• "Let satisfaction deepen."
• "May stillness spread."

No need for words, just direction, like sunlight shining through a doorway.

Sustaining and Deepening Wholesome States

When joy arises, dwell in it. Let it fill you, body and breath. And yet, don’t hold it too tightly.

• See its impermanence.
• See its selflessness.
• See its fading.

By letting go even of joy, deeper tranquility unfolds.

Effort becomes intuitive, like the goldsmith who knows by feel when to cool, when to shape.

• Too much striving? Ease into equanimity.
• Dullness? Invite brightness.
• Clinging? Observe and release.

Eventually, this balancing act becomes natural. Right Effort flows, unwavering, pliant, luminous. And in that pure stream of awareness, it becomes suitable for the destruction of the taints.

Purifying The Mind: Right Effort And The Middle Way

The Tathāgata did not teach us to perfect the five aggregates, but to see through them, to understand their nature, and ultimately, to abandon attachment to them.

When using Right Effort to purify the mind, it has to be practiced without obsession. The aim is not to control every mental formation or eradicate every hindrance in some final, absolute sense, but to weaken and ultimately let go of our craving and identification with them.

When we speak of removing the hindrances, the task is not to attain a permanent, purified mind where none of these ever arise again. That would be clinging to purity itself. Rather, the Tathāgata encourages a wise abandonment:

There is the case where a disciple has heard, ‘Nothing is worth clinging to.’ When a disciple has heard that nothing is worth clinging to, he directly knows everything

SN35.80

The cessation of clinging, not the perfection of mind-states, is the liberation the Tathāgata pointed to. Similarly, in the calming of bodily formations, the instruction is simple:

He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in calming bodily formations.’

MN10

Not eliminating, not conquering, but calming, softening the force of formations so that they no longer obstruct stillness or insight.

When expanding awareness through mindfulness or abiding in Jhāna, we may become obsessed with achieving vast or infinite awareness. But this, too, can be a subtle form of grasping.

Even in the boundless states, he teaches us to recognize the danger in attachment. Awareness is to be cultivated for the sake of insight and release, not for its own sake or to attain some metaphysical vastness.

And in the bliss and tranquility of Jhāna, the Tathāgata does not point to these as ends in themselves. In MN 111, Sāriputta goes through each jhāna and notes:

Whatever qualities there are in the first jhāna… he discerned those qualities. As he remained thus heedful, ardent, and resolute, those memories and resolves disappeared.

MN111

Even the most refined qualities are seen as conditioned and abandoned.

Thus, the path is one of relinquishment, not refinement. We might fall into the trap of spiritual perfectionism, trying to have the "perfect" breath, the "perfect" posture, or the "purest" mind. But such striving, unless tempered by wisdom, leads only to more clinging.

Letting go does not mean being passive, it means a wise engagement with phenomena, guided by understanding their impermanent and non-self nature. The aggregates, form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, are not obstacles to be purified, but processes to be seen clearly.

Our task is not to make the aggregates shine, but to understand them so thoroughly that we no longer grasp at them.

The Seven Factors Of Enlightenment

So far, we’ve explored intention, attention, and perception. With that groundwork in place, let’s now turn our attention to the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

It’s important to understand that these factors don’t simply appear out of nowhere, nor can they be summoned by sheer willpower. Instead, they arise naturally when the right causes and conditions are in place.

Intention and perception play a key role, and they must be guided by wise attention. As we cover these factors, keep in mind, they don’t emerge all at once. They unfold gradually, each one supporting the next, like steps on a path, gently guiding us forward.

Mindfulness, when developed and cultivated, fulfills investigation of Dhamma.

Investigation, when developed and cultivated, fulfills energy. Energy fulfills rapture.

Rapture fulfills tranquility. Tranquility fulfills concentration. Concentration fulfills equanimity.

SN46.3

The seven factors are not only interdependent, but their balance is also vital. For example, excessive energy leads to restlessness, while excessive calm leads to dullness. The exception is Mindfulness, of which there can never be too much. As the first factor, it oversees this balance.

Each factor serves to release, to loosen our grip on fixed perceptions, and to gently ease the tension that fuels stress and dissatisfaction. In that way, they’re not just qualities to cultivate, they’re the gateway to greater freedom.

It's important to understand that there isn’t just one path to developing these Seven Factors. In fact, there are several approaches, each offering its own doorway into knowing and liberation. For example the perception of the impermanence:

When a disciple is devoted to the development of the perception of impermanence, the seven factors of enlightenment go to fulfillment through development.

MN118

This highlights a profound insight: a single shift in perception, specifically, the perception of impermanence, holds the power to awaken all seven factors. And it's not just limited to that. Practices like Anapanasati, the cultivation of the Brahmaviharas, the development of ethical conduct, or Sila, and many other practices, can lay the groundwork for all seven factors to emerge.

With that understanding in mind, let’s explore each of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment one by one. By seeing how they unfold individually, we begin to appreciate how they work together in harmony, guiding us toward clarity, wisdom, and inner liberation.

when a disciple's mindfulness is established and not confused: the mindfulness enlightenment factor is aroused, he develops the mindfulness enlightenment factor, and the mindfulness enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment.

Dwelling thus mindful, he investigates, examines, and inquires into that state with wisdom. ...the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor is aroused at that time, he develops the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor, and the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment at that time.

As he investigates, examines, and inquires into that state with wisdom, energy that is not slack is aroused in him. At the time, Ānanda, when the disciple's energy that is not slack is aroused: the energy enlightenment factor is aroused at that time, he develops the energy enlightenment factor, and the energy enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment at that time.

When energy is aroused, joy that is free from sensuality arises. At the time, Ānanda, when joy that is free from sensuality arises in the disciple whose energy is aroused: the joy enlightenment factor is aroused at that time, he develops the joy enlightenment factor, and the joy enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment at that time.

When the mind is joyful, the body and mind become tranquil. At the time, Ānanda, when the disciple's body and mind become tranquil: the tranquility enlightenment factor is aroused at that time, he develops the tranquility enlightenment factor, and the tranquility enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment at that time.

When the body is tranquil and happy, the mind becomes concentrated. At the time, Ānanda, when the disciple's mind becomes concentrated: the concentration enlightenment factor is aroused at that time, he develops the concentration enlightenment factor, and the concentration enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment at that time.

Dwelling thus with a concentrated mind, he carefully observes with equanimity. At the time, Ānanda, when a disciple dwelling thus with a concentrated mind carefully observes with equanimity: the equanimity enlightenment factor is aroused at that time, he develops the equanimity enlightenment factor, and the equanimity enlightenment factor reaches fulfillment at that time. ...

Thus developed, Ānanda, the four foundations of mindfulness thus frequently practiced fulfill the seven factors of enlightenment.

SN54.13

Seven Factors: Mindfulness

We begin with Right Mindfulness, the first of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. It has already been extensively covered in the previous stage of the Gradual Training. Now, it takes center stage once again, as the foundation from which the other factors arise.

Without mindfulness, the others simply cannot develop. And unlike the other factors, mindfulness is unique in that there’s no such thing as too much. The more it's established, the clearer and more stable the other factors become.

In regard to developing the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, it fulfills the mental seclusion required before we can practice, as we must subdue desire and aversion for the "world" before the mind can be quiet and subtle enough for the other factors to develop.

But mindfulness is not just quietly observing, it’s being active and attentive. Mindfulness provides the real-time awareness needed to identify hindrances as soon as they start to appear, and provides the continuous attention required to purify them. It anchors the mind in the present, allowing wise attention to take hold.

Seven Factors: Investigation Of Phenomena

Next, we turn to the investigation of mental states. This is the deep and curious exploration of phenomena: the unfolding of thoughts, the shifting of emotions, the subtle textures of experience. It’s about seeing clearly, using contemplation and wise attention to discern and see things as they really are.

At this point in the Gradual Training, we refine how we engage with attention itself, cultivating vitakka and vicāra, the initial and sustained application of attention. Not just attention, but wise attention.

When we investigate our moment-to-moment experience, we come to a startling insight: nothing we experience is "just there" as it seems. Everything we experience is an assumption. This is not merely an abstract idea but a truth that can be discovered through the practice of the investigation of phenomena. This is not a conceptual inquiry but a penetrating interest in the truth of what is really happening, under the surface narratives of the mind.

The Tathāgata emphasized this quality as an indispensable factor for enlightenment. In the Gilāna Sutta, he encouraged:

Disciples, develop the enlightenment factor of investigation of phenomena. Make it your vehicle, your foundation, establish it and properly undertake it. When this is developed and cultivated, it leads to the realization of the fruit of true knowledge and liberation.

SN46.14

However, this factor does not arise on its own. It arises naturally from abiding in mindfulness, the first factor of enlightenment. The Tathāgata makes this sequence explicit:

When mindfulness is established, a disciple investigates phenomena with wisdom, wisely examines them, and gives them close attention.

SN46.3

So, mindfulness is the forerunner, providing the clarity and presence necessary for investigation to unfold. Once the mind is stable and present, it begins to see into experience, not merely rest with it.

Crucially, investigation must not be driven by greed or aversion. To investigate a hindrance or mental state while trying to get rid of it or cling to insight about it is to perpetuate fabrication.

For example, the mind might be tempted to stare at the sensation of dullness, agitation, or craving, hoping to force transformation. But that is not investigation, it is entanglement.

Investigation looks beneath the fabrication, gently uncovering its causes and conditions, and seeing these as impermanent, not-self, and unsatisfactory. It does not fixate on the content of a thought or mood, but turns attention to the causes that give rise to it, revealing its empty, conditioned nature. This opens the door to true detachment, not through pushing away, but through knowing.

The Fabrication of Assumed Worlds

Experience, in the ordinary untrained mind, is layered with assumptions. The five hindrances are not just passing moods, they are entire assumed worlds. When sloth and torpor arise, there is not only a felt dullness; there is the deeper assumption that "nothing is happening," that "this is not worth investigating." But this is already a mental fabrication.

In fact, sloth and torpor are not passive states, they are active concealments. The investigation factor gently lifts the veil by asking: what is this dullness? What conditions it? What is assumed here that may not be true? Is it always there? Is it unchainging?, Is it mine? (We use proto-thoughts. Not full verbal thoughts to quide our enquiry.)

Similarly, sense desire comes with the embedded belief that satisfaction lies in the object. The mind doesn’t just crave; it assumes that the craving is justified, even necessary. This is not just a desire, it is an entire constructed view. The same holds true for ill will, restlessness, and doubt. Each of these is not only a feeling but a narrative, an explanatory frame that asumes all other data under it is true.

This is where investigation enters as the liberating force. It does not judge these states, nor suppress them. It investigates them with precision and patience. It sees their rising, their passing, and, most importantly, their dependence on conditions.

In the Sallatha Sutta, the Tathāgata distinguishes the worldling from the disciple through this very lens:

When touched by a painful feeling, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, and laments... He is touched by two kinds of feeling: bodily and mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow, and then shoot him with a second arrow.

SN36.6

The second arrow is not the pain itself, but the assumption, laden mental proliferation that follows it. We use investigation to recognize and disentangle this second arrow.

Even subtle states like restlessness are not as they seem. Restlessness assumes there is something more important elsewhere, that this moment is insufficient. Doubt assumes there is no clarity to be found. But once seen as assumptions rather than truths, these hindrances lose their grip.

Thus, everything in experience should be seen as an assumption until it is investigated. With investigation, we unearth the hidden views embedded in our moods, our cravings, our aversions, and our doubts.

This investigation is not the end in itself, but the beginning of liberation. When we no longer build a self around the assumed, the mind becomes light, joyful, and still. It begins to see things as they are, not as the mind habitually fabricates them to be.

Seven Factors: Energy

And what is the faculty of energy?

Here a noble disciple lives with energy aroused for the abandoning of unwholesome states, for the attainment of wholesome states, being steadfast, strong in exertion, not shirking the responsibility for wholesome states.

He generates desire, makes an effort, arouses energy, exerts his mind, and strives for the non-arising of unarisen unskillful unwholesome states; for the abandoning of arisen unskillful unwholesome states; for the arising of unarisen wholesome states; for the maintenance, non-confusion, increase, expansion, and fulfillment by development of arisen wholesome states: this is called the faculty of energy.

SN48.10

The third of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment is Energy. This isn’t physical energy, but mental vitality, a force that supports effort and determination on the path. It arises from our mental habits, from past intentions (karma), and it can appear in many forms.

Sometimes it’s restless and scattered, easily exhausting the mind. Other times it’s steady and refined, cultivated through wholesome actions and mindful practice.

While past karma influences how energy appears, what truly matters is how we meet it in the present, how we direct it, how we steady it, and how we refine it into a source of clarity and strength.

With Right Mindfulness and the Investigation of Mental States, clarity begins to emerge. This clarity lifts the burden and stress caused by holding scattered perceptions in awareness or by suppressing them through inattentiveness. As the mind settles, energy is released. It becomes light, bright, purified, a force that uplifts rather than exhausts.

To teach this, the Tathāgata offers many similes to illustrate how to cultivate mindfulness, investigation, and energy. Many of these involve death or imminent danger, and for good reason.

Why? Because heightened awareness is most vivid in moments of crisis. Think about it: when we feel truly threatened, the senses sharpen. Energy surges. We become fully alert. That’s the level of engagement this practice calls for.

One striking example is the Simile of the Beauty Queen. In it, the Tathagata describes a person carrying a bowl full to the brim with oil, while a crowd cheers on a dancing beauty queen. A swordsman follows close behind, ready to strike if even a drop is spilled.

This represents the kind of mindfulness that senses danger not just ahead, but behind, above, below, and all around, throughout the body and mind. Wherever mindfulness is absent, unwholesome mental formations can slip in unnoticed or lie dormant.

When we recognize danger, whether from external threats or internal unwholesome tendencies, the mind must release its attachments. It lets go of clinging to perceptions, views, and thought-patterns. And far from leading to fear or panic, this letting go clears the mind. Awareness becomes unobstructed and steady. Energy, no longer bound or tainted, becomes refined and available for wise and skillful use.

This is the heart of the practice: cultivating a clean, steady, powerful energy that penetrates the roots of defilement.

Ultimately, the real danger isn’t the swordsman outside, it’s the Five Aggregates themselves, and the constant pressure they exert to fill awareness with greed, aversion, delusion, and ignorance. That’s where vigilance is needed.

So our task is clear: to develop the kind of mindfulness and investigation that stays alert in every direction, within the very processes of experience, within the Five Aggregates themselves.

Seven Factors: Investigating Energy

When mindfulness and investigation work hand in hand, fueled by ardency, they generate powerful momentum. It becomes a virtuous cycle: clarity sparks effort, and sustained effort fuels bright, balanced energy.

Part of cultivating this energy involves understanding what obstructs it. We learn to investigate not only the presence of energy but also its absence. What holds it back? What blocks its natural flow?

Take Sloth and Torpor, for example. These aren't merely signs of tiredness or laziness. Often, they stem from deeper tensions in the mind, from clinging to certain experiences, or from resisting aspects of what’s arising in awareness.

That dull, heavy feeling? It may not be physical at all. It might come from holding tightly to a self-image or from suppressing emotions that don't fit our ideal of how the practice should be. If we’re attached to a particular vision of practice: calm, clear, peaceful, and our actual experience feels messy or uncomfortable, internal friction arises. That friction quietly drains our energy.

Here’s where the shift happens: when we bring mindfulness to the Hindrances without resistance, when we become receptive rather than reactive, the energy we once spent holding them down is released. Like easing a coiled spring, we free up tension. The vitality that was bound in suppression becomes available again, renewed and usable.

But this energy needs guidance. Without the balancing qualities of tranquility, concentration, and equanimity, energy can become scattered or agitated. It may turn into restlessness or lead to burnout. Misused, we might even mistake intensity for insight, or effort for attainment.

So we return to balance. Energy isn’t the end goal—it’s a means. When guided by mindfulness and investigation, and tempered by calm, it becomes a powerful ally on the path, helping us see clearly and penetrate deeply into the nature of mind and phenomena.

Seven Factors: Rapture

Just as a slave would later be freed, becoming independent and free to go where he wishes, thinking, I was a slave, now I am free and independent, and he would be joyful and happy.

MN39

It’s important to see clinging to the Five Aggregates as a form of slavery, or bondage. Our attachment to them limits our well-being and keeps us in bondage. Through practice, when we become, even temporarily, free from attachment to the Five Aggregates, the resulting seclusion brings a joy that can feel like being released from captivity, like walking out of a cage we didn’t realize we were in.

Rapture, or pīti, is what emerges when we stop grasping and become fully present. It’s an energetic release, a euphoria similar to moments of thrill: skydiving, racing on a motorcycle, or losing oneself in sport. What makes those experiences so powerful is the mind’s surrender: it isn’t clinging, calculating, or controlling. It’s simply here.

Pīti isn’t worldly pleasure, it’s born from letting go. As insight deepens, and defilements quiet down, joy bubbles up naturally. This is the flavor of freedom, the mind unburdened, the heart untroubled.

But joy must be cultivated. Through Right Effort, we abandon unwholesome perceptions, those that agitate, divide, or darken the heart, and in their absence, wholesome joy begins to arise. As we nourish skillful perceptions, those rooted in goodwill, compassion, clarity, and even joy itself, joy expands. Tension in the body and mind begins to ease. Mental and bodily formations soften. The mind grows more pliant, more receptive. It begins to settle.

Joy is also a step toward the further purification of the mind. When joy fills awareness, the mind is no longer scattered among mental formations. It begins to gather inward, to unify. This unification is the beginning of true concentration.

However, even joy is a coarse or impure energy. Excessive joy can become stressful. That’s why it needs to be balanced with tranquility so that it matures into calm happiness or satisfaction. As the mind continues to settle, it will naturally let go of the more intense aspects of joy, leading to deeper tranquility.

Since joy is born from letting go, it’s essential to approach practice with a sense of lightness, openness, and curiosity, not with rigid, goal-driven effort. This attitude enhances the experience of joy.

Joy uplifts the heart when practice becomes dry or heavy. Even amidst suffering, joy arises through seeing progress on the path, through generosity, virtue, and reflection on the Dhamma.

Like all conditioned phenomena, joy is volitionally fabricated, impermanent, non-self, and ultimately unsatisfactory. So we welcome it, without clinging, without making a self out of it.

Seven Factors: Tranquility

Tranquility naturally arises as the more active factors, investigation, energy, and joy, begin to settle internal agitation. It emerges gradually as the result of further letting go.

Joy, for all its brightness, carries a hum of exhilaration that can be tiring. But as joy fades, it doesn’t leave emptiness, it leaves serenity. In the absence of striving, the body relaxes. Mental, verbal, and volitional formations soften. The scattered pieces of awareness begin to draw inward.

Tranquility in Practice

Tranquility reveals itself in different ways, sometimes as a gentle unwinding, sometimes as deep, luminous stillness. Recognizing these varying degrees helps us discern what is ready for deeper practice and what may need compassionate attention first.

If tranquility feels distant or elusive, it’s worth investigating: Are unwholesome habits or subtle tensions clouding the calm? Is the body carrying stress? Is the environment too stimulating? Bringing gentle awareness to these conditions opens space for tranquility to naturally arise.

Physical tension can often be softened through slow, mindful movement or embodied awareness. Mental disturbances don’t require suppression, they require space. Acknowledge them, investigate their nature, and let them pass. Tranquility isn’t forced. It is allowed.

Rather than resisting disturbance, we learn to stay with it, patiently, curiously. This non-reactive presence gradually deepens into tranquility, not through control, but through understanding.

Cultivating tranquility is essential for deepening insight and wisdom. As the mind settles and distractions fade, awareness sharpens, and the subtle workings of the mind become clearer. This refined clarity provides a stable foundation needed for the final factors of enlightenment: concentration, equanimity, and liberation.

Seven Factors: Right Concentration

And what is the faculty of concentration?

Here a noble disciple, having made letting go the object, attains concentration, attains unification of mind.

He dwells secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, entering and remaining in the first jhāna, which includes directed thought and evaluation, as well as joy and pleasure born of seclusion.

SN48.10

Right Concentration is the eighth factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, as taught by the Tathāgata throughout the discourses. It serves as the still, unified ground from which liberating insight arises. Far from being an escape, it is the foundation for wisdom, supporting clear seeing into the true nature of reality.

In the suttas, the Tathāgata defines Right Concentration as:

And what, disciples, is right concentration? Here, disciples, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a disciple enters and dwells in the first jhāna … the second … the third … the fourth jhāna. This is called right concentration.

MN117

Thus, Right Concentration is specifically the cultivation and sustained abiding in the four jhānas, progressively subtler states of unification, characterized by increasing serenity, stillness, and equanimity. These abidings are not abstract ideals but lived experiences, where the coarser movements of the mind gradually fade, and a profound inner steadiness emerges.

What is the faculty of concentration? The one-pointedness of mind.

MN44

One-pointedness is often misunderstood as intense focus on a single external object. However, in the suttas, it is consistently described as a quality of the mind itself.

This refers to the unification of the mind, a gathering inward of attention and energy so that the mind is no longer scattered among various sense-objects. It does not refer to a spatial "point" from which perception arises, but to the collected, stable state of consciousness.

Right concentration is not about shrinking the world to a point. It is about gathering the world into one unified abiding. From that wholeness, clarity and wisdom naturally emerge.

Calming Mental Fabrications

Mental fabrications, particularly feeling and perception, are gradually calmed as concentration deepens. In the Ānāpānasati Sutta, the Tathagata gives a direct instruction:

He trains: ‘I will breathe in calming mental fabrication.’ … ‘concentrating the mind’ … ‘liberating the mind.’

MN118

Through calming and unifying the mind, the habitual tendencies to fabricate reactions and perceptions begin to subside. Emotional momentum slows. The mind stops chasing or pushing away experience. This stillness prepares the ground for the next phase.

As the mind becomes concentrated and unified, the conditions for mental proliferation weaken. This is reflected in the fourth jhāna, a state where the subtle movements of mind fall silent:

With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, he enters and dwells in the fourth jhāna, which has neither-pain-nor-pleasure and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity.

MN140

At this stage, the mind abides in deep tranquility, neither producing new fabrications nor reacting to old ones. The push and pull of craving and resistance fade, revealing a clear and balanced presence.

This is how Right Concentration supports letting go. When the mind is calm, collected, and free from agitation, it becomes a fit vessel for insight. In a simile from the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the Tathagata describes this quality:

When the water is still and clear, you can see to the bottom … In the same way, when the mind is concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilements, it becomes malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability.

AN5.28

Such a mind does not need to grasp at release, it lets go naturally, not through force, but through seeing.

Right Concentration is not a rigid focus, but a calm and stable abiding that arises through sustained mindfulness. Rather than being manufactured, it emerges when the mind stops striving and gently settles into the present.

True concentration is the collectedness of mind, a deep, effortless stability that arises when there is no more need to control or resist conditions. It is the peaceful unification of awareness.

As we continue to cultivate tranquility and contentment, the mind settles even more deeply. It becomes still, unified, and free, no longer driven to seek anything beyond this very moment.

Develop concentration, disciples; a disciple who is concentrated understands things as they really are.

What does he understand as it really is?

The arising and passing away of form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness.

And what is the arising of form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness?

Here a disciple delights in, welcomes, and remains holding to.

And what does he delight in, welcome, and remain holding to?

He delights in, welcomes, and remains holding to form.

From delighting in, welcoming, and remaining holding to form, delight arises.

The delight in form is clinging.

With clinging as condition, there is becoming;

with becoming as condition, there is birth;

with birth as condition, arise aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair.

Thus arises this entire mass of suffering.

SN22.5

Seven Factors: Equanimity

This is peaceful, this is excellent, namely, equanimity. For him, whatever arises as pleasant, unpleasant, or both pleasant and unpleasant ceases; equanimity remains. Just as, Ānanda, a strong man might easily spit out a lump of saliva gathered on the tip of his tongue; in the same way, Ānanda, for anyone, whatever arises as pleasant, unpleasant, or both pleasant and unpleasant ceases quickly, immediately, and effortlessly; equanimity remains, this is called, Ānanda, in the discipline of the noble ones, the unsurpassed development of faculties regarding tastes discernible by the tongue.

MN152

And now, we arrive at the seventh and final factor of enlightenment: Equanimity. Equanimity is a state of deep inner balance, an unshakable calm that remains steady amid the storm, untouched by external events or internal tides. It’s not cold detachment; it’s clarity. It’s mental stability wrapped in acceptance and grounded presence.

This deep sense of balance allows the mind to remain undisturbed, regardless of circumstances. Rather than being tossed around by life's highs and lows, equanimity fosters a steady, peaceful perspective.

Equanimity allows us to face suffering directly without reactivity, neither craving for escape nor sinking into despair.

As our insight into impermanence sharpens, the grip of fleeting pleasures or disappointments begins to loosen. What once seemed joyful may reveal itself as subtly stressful. And in that recognition, the mind settles, not out of resignation, but out of wisdom.

By directing our attention wisely, especially toward perceptions of impermanence, danger, and detachment, we cultivate the conditions necessary for liberation. When we see that all things are in constant flux, our impulse to cling to or resist specific experiences diminishes. This shift in perspective allows us to navigate life's joys and challenges with greater ease.

True equanimity isn’t indifference, it’s engagement without entanglement. It’s a heart wide open, free from clinging and resistance. It arises from seeing clearly, not from numbing out. It’s not about suppressing emotion; it’s about flowing with it without losing our footing.

Just as this body is sustained by food, stands because of food, and does not stand without food; in the same way the seven factors of enlightenment are sustained by their respective nourishments, stand because of nourishment, and do not stand without nourishment.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen mindfulness enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen mindfulness enlightenment factor?

There are things that are the basis for the mindfulness enlightenment factor. In this, appropriate attention is frequently given: this is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen mindfulness enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen mindfulness enlightenment factor.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen investigation of dhamma enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen investigation of dhamma enlightenment factor?

There are wholesome and unwholesome dhammas, blameworthy and blameless dhammas, inferior and superior dhammas, and dhammas that are dark and bright with their counterparts.

In this, appropriate attention is frequently given: this is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen investigation of dhamma enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen investigation of dhamma enlightenment factor.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen energy enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen energy enlightenment factor?

There are the elements of initiative, exertion, and endeavor. In this, appropriate attention is frequently given: this is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen energy enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen energy enlightenment factor.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen joy enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen joy enlightenment factor?

There are things that are the basis for the joy enlightenment factor. In this, appropriate attention is frequently given: this is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen joy enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen joy enlightenment factor.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen tranquility enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen tranquility enlightenment factor?

There are tranquility of body and tranquility of mind. In this, appropriate attention is frequently given: this is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen tranquility enlightenment factor, or for the development and completion of arisen tranquility enlightenment factor.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of unarisen For the arising of the concentration enlightenment factor, or for the development and fulfillment of the arisen concentration enlightenment factor? Disciples, there is a sign of concentration, a sign of non-distraction.

Here, frequent wise attention: this is the nourishment for the arising of the not yet arisen concentration enlightenment factor, or for the development and fulfillment of the arisen concentration enlightenment factor.

And what is the nourishment for the arising of the not yet arisen equanimity enlightenment factor, or for the development and fulfillment of the arisen equanimity enlightenment factor?

Disciples, there are states conducive to the equanimity enlightenment factor. Here, frequent wise attention: this is the nourishment for the arising of the not yet arisen equanimity enlightenment factor, or for the development and fulfillment of the arisen equanimity enlightenment factor.

Just as this body is sustained by food, stands dependent on food, and does not stand without food; in the same way these seven factors of enlightenment are sustained by nourishment, stand dependent on nourishment, and do not stand without nourishment.

SN46.2

Perception: Seclusion From The Senses Toward Jhāna

The deeper purpose behind purifying our perceptions and cultivating the Seven Factors of Enlightenment is, ultimately, to enter and dwell in jhāna.

To abide in this unified state, the Tathāgata taught that we must first make a clear and deliberate shift in how we perceive reality, moving from perceptions rooted in the physical world to those grounded in the mental domain.

This transition involves gently releasing our habitual engagement with the five physical senses, and attuning instead to more subtle, elevated perceptions grounded in mental form and inner experience.

This is not merely an idea to grasp with the intellect, it is a process that unfolds through direct, embodied practice. Awareness begins to withdraw from coarse, sensory-bound perceptions and gradually settles into a subtler realm: the space of the Higher Mind. Here, freed from the pull of sensory contact, the mind finds its abiding in jhāna.

Seclusion from Sensual Perception

The Tathagata emphasized that genuine seclusion from sensual desire is essential as the foundation for entering the first jhāna.

This seclusion goes beyond physical isolation, it penetrates the mind itself. It involves a conscious disengagement from the mental act of perceiving through the five senses. That is, not only stepping away from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch externally, but also releasing the mind’s internal tendency to fabricate and identify with them.

This dual movement, external withdrawal and internal renunciation, lays the groundwork for jhāna, where awareness shifts to a more subtle mode, free from the gravitational pull of the sensory world.

Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a disciple enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.

MN39

In this state, perception no longer attends to forms, sounds, smells, tastes, or bodily sensations. Instead, awareness turns inward, toward a purely mental field, the domain of mind-consciousness. The mind becomes rooted in its own knowing.

Importantly, the mind is not cut off, it remains alert and present. But it no longer constructs meaning or identity from sense-contact. Sensory impressions cease to appear as mental events.

Perceptions Abandoned, Perceptions Cultivated

Feeling born of contact with the five faculties is not to be experienced in that state... Whatever there is there of feeling, perception, and consciousness, those things are more peaceful than peaceful.

MN43

In practical terms, this means we begin to relinquish familiar, sense-based perceptions: “this is a sound,” “this is pain,” “this is my body.” These impressions, rooted in sensory contact, gradually fall away. The mind stops identifying with them, stops reacting to them. They fade like echoes.

In their absence, subtler perceptions emerge. These are not triggered by the outer world but arise from the stillness of the mind itself, mental signs that reflect increasing purity and collectedness.

One may experience inner light, a radiant sense of presence, waves of rapture, deep pleasure, or a quiet, boundless stillness. These are not sensory hallucinations—they are mental phenomena, born from the refinement of perception.

Beyond the experience of jhāna itself, the Tathāgata also taught that certain perceptions must be actively cultivated. These are deliberate tools of training, mental impressions that guide the mind toward dispassion, clarity, and eventual release.

Disciples, when a disciple practices the perception of impermanence, the perception of not-self, the perception of unattractiveness, the perception of dispassion, the perception of cessation, the perception of letting go... this is called the perception leading to the ending of perception.

AN10.60

These purposeful perceptions loosen clinging, weaken identification with the aggregates, and prepare the mind for both deeper samādhi and liberating insight.

The Role of Mental Perceptions in Training

He does not see forms with the eye... He does not hear sounds with the ear... He does not smell odors with the nose... But there is still the perception of light, of vision that is mental, not physical.

AN1.51

The path of perception unfolds through three essential movements:

• Releasing: Letting go of coarse, unwholesome, and sense-bound impressions.
• Establishing: Rooting attention in refined mental signs of collectedness.
• Observing: Contemplating mental phenomena with wisdom, leading to insight.

This is beautifully illustrated in the simile from the Dīgha Nikāya:

Just as a clean, well-polished mirror reflects images clearly, so too a mind well-concentrated sees reality as it is.

DN15

Through seclusion from sensory contact and the cultivation of refined mental perception, anchored in mindfulness and right view, we align with the essence of the Tathagata’s path of concentration.

As perception becomes more purified, the mind grows luminous and stable. And from that stillness, insight naturally arises: insight into impermanence, into the absence of self, and into the cessation of suffering.

Perception: Applying The Seven Factors Of Enlightment

When we train the mind to perceive impermanence, not-self, or unattractiveness, we’re essentially guiding it toward truth. But even wholesome perceptions like these can be perceived in distorted ways.

For instance, perceiving impermanence might stir feelings of aversion. Reflecting on unattractiveness could lead to dullness. And observing not-self may result in a dry, lifeless view, disconnected from experience.

That’s why the seven factors of enlightenment don’t just support insight, they also correct it. They help balance, brighten, and open perception, ensuring that these tools for purification don’t become sources of imbalance themselves.

Take the perception of impermanence. The mind might feel anxious, even disheartened, thinking, “Everything changes, so what’s the point?” When this turns into aversion or collapse, the antidote is joy. Joy reminds us that letting go is liberating. That simplicity brings lightness. With joy, impermanence becomes freeing, not grim.

Or maybe we're contemplating the unattractiveness of the body, and the mind slips into heaviness or aversion. The perception grows lifeless. Here, the factor of energy, revives it. It brings clarity, brightens engagement, and keeps us investigative rather than depressed.

Now imagine the mind turning toward not-self, only to end up detached, even blank. Investigation, reignites intimacy with the experience. It asks, “What is this, really? Where is ‘I’ being imagined?” With curiosity, insight becomes alive again.

There are times we perceive danger in feeling, and the mind tightens, thinking every sensation is a threat. Tranquility, gently reassures: “Yes, there's danger, but no emergency.” With calm presence, perception grows clear and steady.

And when analysis becomes too much, jumping from one idea to another, concentration grounds us. It anchors the mind in the breath, a sensation, or stillness, letting depth settle in.

Finally, in any perception, be it impermanence, unattractiveness, not-self, or danger, the mind might subtly lean: grasping, rejecting, shaping. Equanimity offers a steady hand. It sees clearly, but doesn’t cling. It welcomes everything without reaction, allowing insight to deepen in quiet balance.

In this way, the seven enlightenment factors don’t just show up as we purify perception, they help shape and steady it. Even the most skillful views can be misapplied. But these seven guide us back to center:

• Joy lifts dryness in the face of impermanence.
• Energy clears the fog when pondering unattractiveness.
• Investigation adds vitality to not-self reflections.
• Tranquility softens the edges of perceived danger.
• Concentration gathers scattered thought and brings cohesion.
• Equanimity steadies the mind from leaning too far in any direction.
• And mindfulness keeps track of it all—moment to moment.

With these seven forces fully alive, perception becomes like a flowing stream, accurate, but also balanced, bright, and deeply engaged. What is seen is true. And how it is seen is skillful.

In this way, the purification of perception and the cultivation of the enlightenment factors move together, each guarding and guiding the other toward freedom.

Seven Factors: Working With Suffering

When suffering arises—physical pain, emotional pain, grief, or fear—the untrained mind reacts with aversion, clinging, or confusion. The Disciple, on the other hand, uses the seven factors, balancing them to work together as a perfect medicine:

• Mindfulness notices suffering.
• Investigation understands its nature.
• Energy sustains the effort to remain present.
• Joy prevents despair.
• Tranquility calms agitation.
• Concentration steadies attention.
• Equanimity allows full awareness without identification or aversion.

Seven Factors: Applying The Seven Factors When Suffering Arises

The Tathāgata does not teach us to avoid suffering, but to meet it with wisdom. The mind’s habitual reactions are craving, aversion, and ignorance. The Seven Factors provide a balanced response to suffering, which leads not to further entanglement, but to release.

Using Mindfulness, we see it directly. We do not suppress or deny it. We simply recognize that "Pain is present. Fear is present. Anxiety is present." Mindfulness anchors us and prevents habitual reactions.

Through Investigation we look into the nature of the suffering: Is it physical? Emotional? Mental fabrication? Is there craving for it to stop? Fear that it will continue? Is it permanent? Investigation allows us to see suffering as a process, not as “me” or “mine.”

We use energy to become relentless. We strengthen our intention not to fall into despair or aversion. We make the effort to stay mindful, to examine, and to patiently endure. This is courageous energy, perseverance.

Even amidst pain, we gladden the heart by seeing: We are practicing the path of the nobles ones. We are meeting suffering with wisdom, not blind reactivity. This is noble, we are walking where the Buddhas walk. Joy here does not mean pleasure, but gladness born of inner confidence, uplift, and warmth.

As joy balances fear and heaviness, tranquility arises. Breathing slows and relaxes. The heart settles. Tranquility allows for endurance without tension.

The mind becomes settled and unified and is not shaken by thoughts or emotion. Concentration allows clear seeing of impermanence, non-self, and the conditional nature of suffering.

With equanimity, the mind is now neither clinging nor resisting. Pain is seen as pain. It arises, it stays, it passes. Equanimity frees the mind from identification and reaction. The mind rests simply noticing: "This too is not mine, not I, not myself."

The Seven Factors are the mental qualities that allow insight into the very root of suffering. Without these factors developed, insight cannot take root deeply.

Seven Factors: The Five Spiritual Faculties

The Five Faculties are the "engine" that powers the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. They regulate and balance the development of the factors according to your personal tendencies.

Faith: supports Joy, Tranquility, and Equanimity. Faith brings confidence and trust in the path, in the Tathāgata, and in our capacity to awaken. It uplifts the mind when doubt or discouragement arises. For those prone to excessive skepticism or dryness, developing faith directly supports the arising of Joy (pīti) and softens the heart.

Energy: directly powers Investigation and Effort. This is the same energy as one of the Seven Factors. For those prone to laziness or sluggishness, energy must be emphasized. Without energy, investigation and mindfulness do not sustain.

Mindfulness: is both a faculty and a factor. It governs the balance between faith and wisdom, energy and concentration. Mindfulness is always useful.

Concentration: supports Tranquility and Equanimity. For those prone to restlessness or distraction, developing concentration helps steady the mind. Concentration allows insight to go deep.

Wisdom: guides Investigation and Equanimity. Wisdom knows what is skillful and unskillful. It understands dependent origination, impermanence, and not-self. For those prone to blind faith or emotional overwhelm, wisdom must be emphasized to guide investigation wisely.

“When faith is too strong and wisdom weak, one becomes gullible.
When wisdom is too strong and faith weak, one becomes skeptical.
When energy is too strong and concentration weak, one becomes restless.
When concentration is too strong and energy weak, one becomes lazy.

MN152

• When there is doubt, discouragement apply Faith which results in Joy, Tranquility.
• When there is laziness, sluggishness apply Energy which results in Investigation, Energy.
• When there is distraction, restlessness, apply Concentration which results in Tranquility, Equanimity.
• When there is Blind faith, emotional overwhelm apply Wisdom which results in Investigation, Equanimity.

Mindfulness is usefull under all circumstances.

Seven Factors: The Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths describe the problem and its solution. Dependent Origination explains how suffering arises and ceases. The Seven Factors of Enlightenment are the internal mechanism that brings the mind from ignorance to knowledge, from bondage to release.

The Seven Factors help you see, understand, and directly realize each of the Four Noble Truths:

1. Dukkha — Suffering: Mindfulness sees suffering as it arises. Investigation examines its nature.
2. Samudaya — Origin of suffering (craving): Investigation and Wisdom recognize craving as the cause. Energy sustains this observation.
3. Nirodha — Cessation of suffering: Concentration allows seeing the fading and cessation. Joy and Equanimity gladden and balance the mind to rest here.
4. Magga — Path leading to cessation: The Seven Factors are themselves a refined version of the path. They fulfill Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration, Right Effort, and support Wisdom.

Dependent Origination describes how suffering is manufactured moment-by-moment. The Seven Factors work as the counter-condition to this process:

• Ignorance (avijjā): Investigation of dhammas (dhammavicaya), Wisdom.
• Volitional formations (saṅkhārā): Mindfulness sees the formation arise and pass.
• Consciousness (viññāṇa): Concentration stabilizes attention to see consciousness clearly.
• Contact (phassa): Mindfulness and Equanimity balance the response to contact.
• Feeling (vedanā): Equanimity allows feelings to arise without craving.
• Craving (taṇhā): Investigation reveals craving as unprofitable; Joy counters dissatisfaction.
• Clinging (upādāna): Equanimity allows release from attachment.
• Becoming, Birth, Aging and Death (bhava, jāti, jarāmaraṇa): When craving and clinging cease, the whole chain collapses.

Imagine Dependent Origination as a fire fueled by craving and ignorance. The Seven Factors are like seven streams of cooling water poured on the fire:

• Mindfulness pours awareness on the burning.
• Investigation exposes the fuel sources.
• Energy keeps pouring water steadily.
• Joy refreshes the heart, preventing panic.
• Tranquility cools the heat.
• Concentration directs the flow precisely.
• Equanimity allows the burning to cease naturally without interference.

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The Battle Within

Upāsikā Kee Nanayon

Clear insight doesn’t come from thinking and speculating. It comes from investigating the mind while it’s gathered into an adequate level of calm and stability. You look deeply into every aspect of the mind when it’s neutral and calm, free from thought-fabrications or likes and dislikes for its preoccupations. You have to work at maintaining this state and at the same time probe deeply into it, because superficial knowledge isn’t true knowledge. As long as you haven’t probed deeply into the mind, you don’t really know anything. The mind is simply calm on an external level, and your reading of the aspects of the wanderings of the mind under the influence of defilement, craving, and attachment isn’t yet clear.

So you have to try to peer into yourself until you reach a level of awareness that can maintain its balance and let you contemplate your way to sharper understanding. If you don’t contemplate so as to give rise to true knowledge, your mindfulness will stay just on the surface.

The same principle holds with contemplating the body. You have to probe deeply into the ways in which the body is repulsive and composed of physical elements. This is what it means to read the body so as to understand it, so that you can explore yourself in all your activities. This way you prevent your mind from straying off the path and keep it focused on seeing how it can burn away the defilements as they arise, which is very delicate work.

Being uncomplacent, not letting yourself get distracted by outside things, is what will make the practice go smoothly. It will enable you to examine the defilements in the mind in a skillful way so that you can eliminate the subtlest ones: ignorance and delusion. Normally, we aren’t fully aware of even the blatant defilements, but now that the blatant ones are inactivated because of the mind’s solid focus, we can look into the more profound areas to catch sight of the deceits of craving and defilements in whatever way they move into action. We watch them, know them, and are in a position to abandon them as soon as they wander off in search of sights, sounds, smells, and delicious flavors. Whether they’re looking for good physical flavors, bodily pleasure, or good mental flavors, we have to know them from all sides, even though they’re not easy to know because of all the many desires we feel for physical pleasure. And on top of that, there are the desires for happiness imbued with pleasurable feelings, perceptions that carry pleasurable feelings, thought-fabrications that carry pleasurable feelings, and consciousness that carries pleasurable feelings. All of these are nothing but desires for illusions, for things that deceive us into getting engrossed and distracted. As a result, it isn’t easy for us to understand much of anything at all.

These are subtle matters and they all come under the term, “sensual craving”, the desire, lust, and love that provoke the mind into wandering out in search of the enjoyment it remembers from past sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations. Even though these things may have happened long ago, our perceptions bring them back to deceive us with ideas of their being good or bad. Once we latch onto them, they make the mind unsettled and defiled.

So it isn’t easy to examine and understand all the various defilements within the mind. The external things we’re able to know and let go of are only the minor players. The important ones have gathered together to take charge in the mind and won’t budge no matter how you try to chase them out. They’re stubborn and determined to stay in charge. If you take them on when your mindfulness and discernment aren’t equal to the fight, you’ll end up losing your inner calm.

So you have to make sure that you don’t push the practice too much, without at the same time letting it grow too slack. Find the Middle Way that’s just right. While you’re practicing in this way, you’ll be able to observe what the mind is like when it has mindfulness and discernment in charge, and then you make the effort to maintain that state and keep it constant. That’s when the mind will have the opportunity to stop and be still, to be stable and centered for long periods of time until it’s used to being that way.

Now, there are some areas where we have to force the mind and be strict with it. If we’re weak and lax, there’s no way we can succeed, for we’ve given in to our own wants for so long already. If we keep giving in to them, it will become even more of a habit. So you have to use force, the force of your will and the force of your mindfulness and discernment. Even if you get to the point where you have to put your life on the line, you’ve got to be willing. When the time comes for you really to be serious, you’ve got to hold out until you come out winning. If you don’t win, you don’t give up. Sometimes you have to make a vow as a way of forcing yourself to overcome your stubborn desires for physical pleasure that tempt you and lead you astray.

If you’re weak and settle for whatever pleasure comes in the immediate present, then when desire comes in the immediate present you fall right for it. If you give in to your wants often in this way, it’ll become habitual, for defilement is always looking for the chance to tempt you, to incite you. As when we try to give up an addiction to cigarettes, or meat: It’s hard to do because craving is always tempting us. “Take just a little,” it says. “Just a taste. It doesn’t matter.” Craving knows how to fool us, the way a fish is fooled into getting caught on a hook by the bait surrounding the hook, screwing up its courage enough to take just a little, and then a little more, and then a little more until it’s sure to get snagged. The demons of defilement have us surrounded on all sides. Once we fall for their delicious flavors, we’re sure to get snagged on the hook. No matter how much we struggle and squirm, we can’t get free.

You have to realize that gaining victory over your enemies, the cravings and defilements in the heart, is no small matter, no casual affair. You can’t let yourself be weak or lax, but you also have to gauge your strength, for you have to figure out how to apply your efforts at abandoning and destroying to weaken the defilements and cravings that have had the power of demons overwhelming the mind for so long. It’s not the case that you have to battle to the brink of death in every area. With some things, such as giving up addictions, you can mount a full-scale campaign and come out winning without killing yourself in the process. But with other things, more subtle and deep, you have to be more perceptive so as to figure out how to overcome them over the long haul, digging up their roots so that they gradually weaken to the point where your mindfulness and discernment can overwhelm them. If there are any areas where you’re still losing out, you have to take stock of your sensitivities to figure out why. Otherwise, you’ll keep losing out, for when the defilements really want something, they trample all over your mindfulness and discernment in their determination to get what they’re after: “That’s what I want. I don’t care what anyone says.” They really are that stubborn! So it’s no small matter, figuring out how to bring them under control. It’s like running into an enemy or a wild beast rushing in to devour us. What are we going to do?

When the defilements arise right before your eyes, you have to be wary. Suppose you’re perfectly aware, and all of a sudden they spring up and confront you: What kind of mindfulness and discernment are you going to use to disband them, to realize that, “These are the hordes of Mara, come to burn and eat me. How am I going to get rid of them?” In other words, how are you going to find a skillful way of contemplating them so as to destroy them right then and there?

We have to do this regardless of whether we’re being confronted with physical and mental pain or physical and mental pleasure. Actually, pleasure is more treacherous than pain because it’s hard to fathom and easy to fall for. As for pain, no one falls for it because it’s so uncomfortable. So how are we going to contemplate so as to let go of both the pleasure and the pain? This is the problem we’re faced with at every moment. It’s not the case that when we practice we accept only the pleasure and stop when we run into pain. That’s not the case at all. We have to learn how to read both sides, to see that the pain is inconstant and stressful, and that the pleasure is inconstant and stressful, too. We have to penetrate clear through these things. Otherwise, we’ll be deluded by the deceits of the cravings that want pleasure, whether it’s physical pleasure or whatever. Our every activity, sitting, standing, walking, lying down, is really for the sake of pleasure, isn’t it?

This is why there are so many, many ways in which we’re deluded with pleasure. Whatever we do, we do for the sake of pleasure without realizing how deeply we’ve mired ourselves in suffering and stress. When we contemplate inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness, we don’t get anywhere in our contemplation because we haven’t seen through pleasure. We still think that it’s a good thing. We have to probe into the fact that there’s no real ease to physical or mental pleasure. It’s all stress. When you can see it from this angle, that’s when you’ll come to understand inconstancy.

Then once the mind isn’t focused on wanting pleasure all the time, its stresses and pains will lighten. It will be able to see them as something common and normal, to see that if you try to change the pains to find ease, there’s no ease to be found. In this way, you won’t be overly concerned with trying to change the pains, for you’ll see that there’s no pleasure or ease to the aggregates, that they give nothing but stress and pain. As in the Buddha’s teachings that we chant every day: “Form is stressful, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness are all stressful.” The problem is that we haven’t investigated into the truth of our own form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. Our insight isn’t yet penetrating because we haven’t looked from the angle of true knowing. And so we get deluded here and lost there in our search for pleasure, finding nothing but pain and yet mistaking it for pleasure. This shows that we still haven’t opened our ears and eyes; we still don’t know the truth. Once we do know the truth, though, the mind will be more inclined to grow still and calm than to go wandering off. The reason it goes wandering off is because it’s looking for pleasure, but once it realizes there’s no real pleasure to be found in that way, it settles down and grows still.

All the cravings that provoke and unsettle the mind come down to nothing but the desire for pleasure. So we have to contemplate so as to see that the aggregates have no pleasure to offer, they they’re stressful by their very nature. They’re not us or ours. Take them apart and have a good look at them, starting with the body. Analyze the body down to its elements so that the mind won’t keep latching on to it as “me” or “mine.” You have to do this over and over again until you really understand.

It’s the same as when we chant the passage for Recollection while Using the Requisites, food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, every day. We do this so as to gain real understanding. If we don’t do this every day, we forget and get deluded into loving and worrying about the body as “my body,” “my self.” No matter how much we keep latching onto it over and over again, it’s not easy for us to realize what we’re doing, even though we have the Buddha’s teachings available, explaining these things in every way. Or we may have contemplated to some extent, but we haven’t seen things clearly. We’ve seen only in a vague blurry way and then flitted off oblivious without having probed in to see all the way through. This is because the mind isn’t firmly centered. It isn’t still. It keeps wandering off to find things to think about and get itself all agitated. This way it can’t really get to know anything at all. All it knows are a few little perceptions. This is the way it’s been for who knows how many years now. It’s as if our vision has been clouded by spots that we haven’t yet removed from our eyes.

Those who aren’t interested in exploring, who don’t make an effort to get to the facts, don’t wonder about anything at all. They’re free from doubt, all right, but it’s because their doubts have been smothered by delusion. If we start exploring and contemplating, we’ll have to wonder about the things we don’t yet know: “What’s this? What does it mean? How should I deal with it?” These are questions that lead us to explore. If we don’t explore, it’s because we don’t have any intelligence. Or we may gain a few little insights, but we let them pass so that we never explore deeply into the basic principles of the practice. What little we do know doesn’t go anywhere, doesn’t penetrate into the Noble Truths, because our mindfulness and discernment run out of strength. Our persistence isn’t resilient enough, isn’t brave enough. We don’t dare look deeply inside ourselves.

To go by our own estimates of how far is enough in the practice is to lie to ourselves. It keeps us from gaining release from suffering and stress. If you happen to come up with a few insights, don’t go bragging about them, or else you’ll end up deceiving yourself in countless ways. Those who really know, even when they have attained the various stages of insight, are heedful to keep on exploring. They don’t get stuck on this stage or that. Even when their insights are correct they don’t stop right there and start bragging, for that’s the way of a fool.

Intelligent people, even though they see things clearly, always keep an eye out for the enemies lying in wait for them on the deeper, more subtle levels ahead. They have to keep penetrating further and further in. They have no sense that this or that level is plenty enough, for how can it be enough? The defilements are still burning away, so how can you brag? Even though your knowledge may be true, how can you be complacent when your mind has yet to establish a foundation for itself?

As you investigate with mindfulness and discernment, complacency is the major problem. You have to be uncomplacent in the practice if you want to keep up with the fact that life is ebbing away, ebbing with every moment. And how should you live so that you can be said to be uncomplacent? This is an extremely important question, for if you’re not alive to it, then no matter how many days or months you practice meditation or restraint of the senses, it’s simply a temporary exercise. When you’re done, you get back to your same old turmoil as before.

And watch out for your mouth. You’ll have trouble not bragging, for the defilements will provoke you into speaking. They want to speak, they want to brag, they won’t let you stay silent.

If you force yourself in the practice without understanding its true aims, you end up deceiving yourself and go around telling people, “I practiced in silence for so many days, so many months.” This is deceiving yourself and others as well. The truth of the matter is that you’re still a slave to stupidity, obeying the many levels of defilement and craving within yourself without realizing the fact. If someone praises you, you really prick up your ears, wag your tail and, instead of explaining the harm of the defilements and craving you were able to find within yourself, you simply want to brag.

So the practice of the Dhamma isn’t something that you can just muddle your way through. It’s something you have to do with your intelligence fully alert, for when you contemplate in a circumspect way, you’ll see that there’s nothing worth getting engrossed in, that everything, both inside and out, is nothing but an illusion. It’s like being adrift, alone in the middle of the ocean with no island or shore in sight. Can you afford just to sit back and relax, to make a temporary effort and then brag about it? Of course not! As your investigation penetrates inwardly to ever more subtle levels of the mind, you’ll have to become more and more calm and reserved, in the same way that people become more and more circumspect as they grow from children to teenagers and into adults. Your mindfulness and discernment have to keep growing more and more mature in order to understand the right and wrong, the true and false, in whatever arises: That’s what will enable you to let go and gain release. And that’s what will make your life in the true practice of the Dhamma go smoothly. Otherwise, you’ll fool yourself into boasting of how many years you practiced meditation and will eventually find yourself worse off than before, with defilement flaring up in a big way. If this is the way you go, you’ll end up tumbling head over heels into fire, for when you raise your head in pride, you run into the flames already burning within yourself.

To practice means to use the fire of mindfulness and discernment as a counter-fire to put out the blaze of the defilements, because the heart and mind are aflame with defilement, and when we use the fire of mindfulness and discernment to put out the fire of defilement, the mind can cool down. Do this by being increasingly honest with yourself, without leaving an opening for defilement and craving to insinuate their way into control. You have to be alert. Circumspect. Wise to them. Don’t fall for them! If you fall for whatever rationale they come up with, it means that your mindfulness and discernment are still weak. They lead you away by the nose, burning you with their fire right before your very eyes, and yet you’re still able to open your mouth to brag!

So turn around and take stock of everything within yourself. Take stock of every aspect, because right and wrong, true and false, are all within you. You can’t go finding them outside. The damaging things people say about you are nothing compared to the damage caused inside you when defilement burns you, when your feeling of “me” and “mine” raises its head.

If you don’t honestly come to your senses, there’s no way your practice of the Dhamma can gain you release from the great mass of suffering and stress. You may be able to gain a little knowledge and let go of a few things, but the roots of the problem will still lie buried deep down. So you have to dig them out. You can’t relax after little bouts of emptiness and equanimity. That won’t accomplish anything. The defilements and mental effluents lie deep in the personality, so you have to use mindfulness and discernment to penetrate deep down to make a precise and thorough examination. Only then will you get results. Otherwise, if you stay only on the surface level, you can practice until your body lies rotting in its coffin but you won’t have changed any of your basic habits.

Those who are scrupulous by nature, who know how to contemplate their own flaws, will keep on the alert for any signs of pride within themselves. They’ll try to control and destroy conceit on every side and won’t allow it to swell. The methods we need to use in the practice for examining and destroying the defilements within the mind aren’t easy to master. For those who don’t contemplate themselves thoroughly, the practice may actually only increase their pride, their bragging, their desire to go teaching others. But if we turn within and discern the deceits and conceits of self, a profound feeling of disenchantment and dismay arises, causing us to pity ourselves for our own stupidity, for the amount to which we’ve deluded ourselves all along, and for how much effort we‘ll still need to put into the practice.

So however great the pain and anguish, however many tears bathe your cheeks, persevere! The practice isn’t simply a matter of looking for mental and physical pleasure. “Let tears bathe my cheeks, but I’ll keep on with my striving at the holy life as long as I live!” That’s the way it has to be! Don’t quit at the first small difficulty with the thought, “It’s a waste of time. I’d do better to follow my cravings and defilements.” You can’t think like that! You have to take the exact opposite stance: “When they tempt me to grab this, take a lot of that, I won’t! However fantastic the object may be, I won’t take the bait.” Make a firm declaration! This is the only way to get results. Otherwise, you’ll never work yourself free, for the defilements have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves. If you get wise to one trick, they simply change to another, and then another.

If we’re not observant to see how much we’ve been deceived by the defilements in all sorts of ways, we won’t come to know the truth within ourselves. Other people may fool us now and then, but the defilements fool us all of the time. We fall for them and follow them hook, line, and sinker. Our trust in the Lord Buddha is nothing compared to our trust in them. We’re disciples of the demons of craving, letting them lead us ever deeper into their jungle.

If we don’t contemplate to see this for ourselves, we’re lost in that jungle charnel ground where the demons keep roasting us to make us squirm with desires and every form of distress. Even though you have come to stay in a place with few disturbances, these demons still manage to tempt and draw you away. Just notice how the saliva flows when you come across anything delicious! So you have to decide to be either a warrior or a loser. The practice requires that you do battle with defilements and cravings. Always be on your guard, whatever the approach they take to seduce and deceive you. Other people can’t come in to lead you away, but these demons of your own defilements can because you’re willing to trust them, to be their slave. You have to contemplate yourself carefully so that you’re no longer enslaved to them and can reach total freedom within yourself. Make an effort to develop your mindfulness and discernment so as to gain clear insight and then let go until suffering and stress disband in every way!

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Purifying The Mind: Using The Four Elements

The Tathāgata taught that all forms, whether gross or subtle, internal or external, are ultimately composed of the Four Great Elements: earth, water, fire, and air. These elements, when wisely contemplated, offer powerful antidotes to the Five Hindrances and serve as a way to develop the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

The Five Hindrances—desire, ill-will, sloth, restlessness, and doubt—do not always appear as distinct, easy-to-identify obstacles. Often, they are embedded within experience itself: in the way we see the world, how we hold our breath, our posture, how we relate to pain, crave control, or resist discomfort. They shape perception from within, like a hidden lens we're unaware we're looking through. They are subtle impressions. We don't always see them directly; instead, we see through them.

Just as a doctor uses contrast dye in an X-ray or MRI scan to reveal what’s hidden in the body, so we apply one of the four elements to perception to reveal what is hidden in the mind. When we perceive everything as the earth element, for example, we create a contrast. It is a way of perceiving, of simplifying the field of experience so that what is impure becomes obvious. What sticks out is the clinging, resistance, and the making of "me, myself, or mine."

In the same way that a physician chooses a specific contrast dye to highlight different systems in the body—blood vessels, bones, or tissues, we can use the perception of the different elements (earth, water, fire, and air) to highlight different types of clinging, aversion, and delusion. Each element has its distinct energetic quality, and when brought into focus, it allows distorted perception to stand out clearly—so it can be known, understood, and ultimately released.

The Tathāgata taught us to contemplate the four great elements not only as a way to recognize the hindrances when they arise, but also as a way to purify perception at its root. When we perceive everything as the earth element, for example, we have purified perception. By doing this continually, the mind becomes more and more purified.

When we purify perception, we unify the field of experience. The mind becomes collected and unified (concentrated), no longer scattered among different perceptions. This results in a bright and clear mind, with perception no longer stained by craving or aversion. The mind it is pliable and steady and is now ready for deep insight.

This is why contemplation of the elements is so potent: it both exposes the hindrances and develops the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

Keep in mind, however, that the following are just examples. Just as the four great elements: earth, water, fire, and air, can come together to create all forms, we too can use them skillfully, flexibly, and creatively to highlight the hindrances and purify perception.

Let us now look at each element and some examples to understand how it can counter a particular hindrance and foster a corresponding Enlightenment Factor.

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The Earth Element

• Counteracts: Ill will, restlessness and worry.
• Develops: Tranquility, Equanimity.

The earth element, which represents stability, hardness, and groundedness, helps still the agitated mind and ill will. When one contemplates and perceives all experiences as grounded in the earth, with a mountain-like steadiness, restlessness fades. This stability develops the tranquility factor, bodily and mental calm. Just as the Earth is unmoved by storms or anything else, the tranquil mind is undisturbed by agitation with anything in experience

Just as people throw what is clean and what is unclean on the earth, feces, urine, spit, pus, or blood, and the earth is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted because of this; in the same way, you should develop a mind like the earth, vast, exalted, and measureless. You should develop this perception for the removal of anger.

AN5.161

Just as a rock mountain is unwavering, immovable.. even so, when one dwells with a mind imperturbable by contacts

AN6.55

Just as, Rahula, the earth is not repelled, humiliated, or disgusted by anything clean or unclean placed on it; similarly, Rahula, develop mindfulness that is like the earth.

For, Rahula, for one who is developing the mindfulness that is like the earth, agreeable and disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not overpower his mind.

MN62

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Contemplating the Earth Element

To practice, we are not merely observing things as earth, but we immerse ourselves in the earth, realizing unity of perception, seeing everything as earth itself:

My experience, this very body and mind, is earth. And all experiences, without exception, rise and fall back into earth. Nothing stays in experience. From this earth-element, thoughts arise, feelings arise, memories arise, but none of them remain suspended. Each one, no matter how high or bright, falls back to earth.

Joy rises — it is earth. Fear rises — it is earth. Craving rises — it too is earth. All formations arise from earth and dissolve into earth.

Nothing escapes this gravity. All formations return. Like ashes falling on ashes, like dust settling on dust, all experience returns to where it all came from — earth.

So what is there to cling to? Where is the 'me, myself, or mine' in all of this?

When I place my mind on the unshakable, my mind does not waver, does not become agitated, does not settle, becomes liberated. Thus, one should be mindful there.

MN122

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The Water Element

• Counteracts: Ill-will
• Fosters: Loving-kindness & Joy

The water element represents cohesion, softness, and fluidity. It counters ill-will by washing away hardness of heart. Contemplating the water element, or visualizing gentle flowing water melting away all experience, dissolves rigidity and hostility.

We use the water element to purify our awareness by seeing it as a lens through which to view all experience. Through this lens, everything is fluid, nothing solid, everything flows, nothing is static. There's nothing to cling to, which naturally leads to non-attachment, equanimity, and insight into impermanence.

Contemplating the Water Element

We see the entire body, mind, and world of experience as immersed in the water element, observing all phenomena as flowing, dissolving, disappearing, and ultimately being swallowed by the great ocean of emptiness, non-clinging, and cessation.

All of experience is water. Thoughts surge like waves. Emotions rise like the tide. Memories swirl like eddies. Desires ripple and then fade.

We immerse ourselves in this water, no longer standing apart, no longer trying to resist the current. We become the stream.

Each perception is a droplet. Each contact is a ripple. Each 'I am' is a fragile foam on the surface. And where do they go?

These aggregates, these appearances, they arise like ripples, float like foam, burst like bubbles, vanish like illusions, and all of it flows away.

They disappear into the great ocean, where names, forms, and perceptions vanish, where there is no more coming and going.

When you see form as foam, feeling as bubbles, and perception as a mirage, there is nothing to hold, nothing to resist, and the clinging mind dissolves.

For everything is already flowing. Already dissolving. Already being swallowed by the great ocean.

What are you trying to hold together that wants to flow?

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Fire Element

• Counteracts: Sloth and torpor (thīna-middha)
• Fosters: Energy (vīriya-bojjhaṅga)

Fire is the element of heat, transformation, and illumination. When the mind is dull, invoking inner warmth or meditating on the dynamic nature of heat in the body rekindles vitality.

Just as a smith blows up his fire, so should a disciple torpor by arousing energy.

SN46.53

The Tathāgata praised the energy Enlightenment factor, as a counter to mental sluggishness. Fire inspires motion and action, igniting the torch of wakefulness.

Contemplating the Fire Element

The body is on fire, the eyes are on fire.

But this fire does not hold. It does not preserve. It does not cling. It burns away.

Thoughts arise, and already they are burning away. Feelings swell, only to dissipate. Pleasure flickers, and then it's gone. Grief arises, and it dissolves in the heat.

There is no need to control. Everything is burning away on its own.

What remains when nothing is held back, when all formations are surrendered to the great fire of time?

Let it burn away. Let it pass. Let it vanish, naturally, gently, truly. No self is lost, only the illusion of permanence.

There is just this moment, this warmth, this flickering, this releasing.

This is not annihilation — this is clarity. This is not destruction — this is the law of nature.

All is burning… burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion… burning with birth, aging, and death.

SN35.28

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Air Element

• Counteracts: Sensual desire (kāmacchanda)
• Fosters: Mindfulness (sati-bojjhaṅga)

Air represents motion, breath, and expansion. When caught in sensual craving, attention is drawn outward. By observing the breath — the expression of the air element, one can recollect the body and cultivate sati, clear mindfulness.

Just as a skilled turner… trains himself breathing in and breathing out… mindful, he breathes in… mindful, he breathes out.

MN118

Seven Factors: Brahmavihāras

The Brahmavihāras: mettā (good-will), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (empathetic joy), and upekkhā (equanimity), are traditionally practiced toward living beings. However, their highest potential is realized when they are applied inwardly, toward one's own mind and its formations. This inner direction not only purifies the heart but fosters the direct development of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment by transforming our relationship with experience itself.

Whatever mental fabrications there are that are rooted in desire, all are abandoned through the mind released in loving-kindness...

AN8.63

Let's look at how each Brahmavihāra can be inwardly applied toward our own mental states to cultivate each of the seven bojjhaṅgā:

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1. Mettā: Good-Will Toward Our Mind States

Instead of directing mettā outward, we turn it inward toward our own mind, especially when observing unwholesome thoughts, irritation, or fear. Rather than resisting or condemning these formations, we meet them with an unconditional kindness or good-will. This practice softens the resistance that prevents mindfulness and unifies the mind, preparing it for both rapture (pīti) and concentration (samādhi).

Whatever thought arises, one understands: ‘This is a mental formation.’ With kindness, the mind does not cling.

SN47.10

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The utility of mettā lies in its ability to counter not only overt hatred or anger but refined layers of aversion, such as:

• Frustration at the mind wandering during practice ("Why is this happening again?")
• Irritation toward tiredness, dullness, or sluggish effort ("I should be doing better.")
• Judgmental thoughts toward mental distractions ("This thought is unworthy. This state is wrong.")
• Impatience with emotional pain or sorrow ("This shouldn’t still be here.")
• Harsh striving masked as discipline ("I’ll push through this, whether or not it hurts.")

All of these are subtle versions of ill-will toward one's own mind. They perpetuate the cycle of suffering not by aggression, but by resistance.

For example, during practice, when a difficult mental formation arises, see it with good-will. Repeat gently. Do not expect immediate transformation—but watch how the resistance softens, and mindfulness stabilizes.

As we refine our practice, mettā is no longer something we do, but a way of seeing. It is not a phrase, not a feeling, not even a deliberate attitude, it becomes the very lens through which the mind regards its own processes.

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2. Karuṇā: Compassion for Painful Mind States

Compassion, inwardly directed, is the ability to hold your own suffering states, grief, anger, regret, with tenderness and wisdom. Rather than pushing these away or falling into aversion, karuṇā sees the dukkha in the formation. This clarity supports mindfulness and investigation.

You can silently see: “This is suffering, this too is a part of my condition,” thereby stabilizing awareness and opening a gentle space for exploration.

Seeing the danger in unwholesome states, the mind inclines to compassion toward its own wounded tendencies.

MN19

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3. Muditā: Joy in Recognizing Wholesome States

Joy or Muditā becomes a powerful force when applied to our own skillful thoughts and inclinations. When a wholesome intention arises, like renunciation, patience, or clarity, we rejoice! Take joy in the arising of wholesome states. This inner joy becomes energy and rapture, sustaining the practice and counteracting dullness or dissatisfaction.

Rather than focusing on what's wrong in the mind, recognize what’s working. Let the joy of the path feed itself.

One recollects their own virtue, and joy arises… from joy, rapture; from rapture, tranquility…

AN11.2

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4. Upekkhā: Equanimity with All Arising and Passing Formations

Equanimity or Upekkhā, when inwardly directed, means regarding every arising mental fabrication, pleasant or painful, with deep equanimity. Not apathy, but clear seeing: "This too is conditioned. This too arises and ceases." Such equanimity naturally supports mindfulness, concentration, and the factor of equanimity itself.

Equanimity allows you to see the composite nature of all experience, neither clinging to delight nor recoiling from distress.

He regards feeling as feeling… mind as mind… he dwells independent, not clinging to anything in the world.

MN10

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The Brahmavihāras, inwardly directed, become a compassionate frame for observing impermanence. They protect against self-judgment, energize wholesome qualities, and balance the extremes of indulgence and aversion.

Purifying The Mind: Developing The Higher Mind

Now that we have covered the mind stream and how intention, attention, and perception need to be purified into a collected energy for clear seeing, and the destruction of the taints, it is important to understand one key point.

It is not the mind itself that penetrates the taints, it is wisdom. This wisdom depends on awareness to see things as they truly are, free from the fabrications created by the mind.

That is why we purify our intentions, attention, and perceptions, resulting in a collected and purified mind. Only when the mind is purified, and awareness embraces all experience, can wisdom truly see things as they are.

This is why, throughout the Tathāgata's teachings, he emphasizes the importance of developing awareness that is both broad and refined. Such awareness helps prevent us from becoming caught up in our moment-to-moment experience.

To avoid entanglement in our own fabrications, we must cultivate awareness that embraces everything arising in experience without clinging or aversion. This requires gathering the scattered mind by calming bodily, mental, and verbal formations, while at the same time expanding awareness so that all experience is encompassed.

In the Gradual Training, this process begins with coarse bodily awareness, "dwelling body in body," then moves to "feelings in feelings," progresses to the subtleties of the mind, and ultimately reaches formless perception. This is how we develop the "higher mind," Jhana, which is the goal of this stage in the Gradual Training.

Beginning with Full-Body Awareness

In Right Mindfulness, we first start by experiencing the whole body, so that all bodily formations are known as they arise and pass away. Instead of getting lost in fabrications, we experience everything with detachment. Awareness becomes broad enough to include the entirety of physical experience, preventing entanglement in sensations or thoughts.

Here, a disciple, having gone to the forest, to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut, sits down; having folded his legs crosswise, set his body erect, and established mindfulness in front of him. Ever mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out... he trains thus: 'I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body.'

MN10

As stability is established, the Tathāgata instructs further refinement of awareness in the Ānāpānasati Sutta (MN 118). One trains to become aware not only of the breath (body), but also of feelings, mental states, and mental processes. The field of mindfulness expands and becomes more subtle with each of the four dwellings of mindfulness. This gradual subtlety is crucial. Without it, one remains stuck at the level of coarse bodily sensations and emotions.

Having dwelled “feelings in feelings,” this marks the beginning of transcending coarse identity, the physical body. As one withdraws interest from the physical and begins to observe the mind as mind, dwelling in the mental body, one starts to see that thoughts too are conditioned phenomena, not worthy of clinging. Thus, refinement naturally leads to dispassion.

Entering the Higher Mind: Jhāna and Beyond

When awareness becomes tranquil, unified, and joyful, one enters the jhānas, Right Concentration. These are stages of the higher mind. In MN 8, the Tathāgata praises the cultivation of these states:

Quite secluded from sensual pleasures... a disciple enters upon and abides in the first jhāna... second... third... fourth jhāna. This is called the development of the higher mind.

MN8

However, it is crucial to recognize that jhāna is not something one jumps into. In the Gradual Training, jhāna is the fruit of abandoning the hindrances through the cultivation of the seven factors of enlightenment:

When he sees that the five hindrances are abandoned in him... joy arises. In one who is joyful, rapture arises. The body becomes tranquil, and he enters the first jhāna...

MN27

The seven factors: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity, are developed to remove obstacles and purify the mind. These conditions make jhāna possible and provide the clarity needed to observe formations without entanglement.

Jhāna then becomes not a state, but a dwelling place for practicing Right Concentration, enabling one to remain with the processes of perception and fabrication, detached, while clearly seeing their conditioned nature.

When he sees that the five hindrances are abandoned in him... joy arises. In one who is joyful, rapture arises. The body becomes tranquil, and he enters the first jhāna...

SN46.3

Without this progressive refinement of awareness, attention, and perception, the mind remains entangled with the coarse phenomena of form, feeling, and identity. The Tathāgata repeatedly emphasizes that clinging arises due to ignorance and attachment to what is misperceived as permanent, satisfying, or self. By moving into subtler dimensions of awareness, these misperceptions become more transparent. As the Cūla-Suññata Sutta (MN 121) says:

Not attending to the perception of the village... of people... of earth, he attends to the singleness dependent on the dimension of infinite space... consciousness... nothingness... neither perception nor non-perception... He understands: 'This is empty of what is not empty of.'

MN121

This insight into emptiness culminates in the realization of non-self, where one ceases to identify with any experience at all, gross or subtle. Thus, true freedom arises not from escaping experience, but from deeply knowing it in its subtlest layers, without grasping.

A subtle but crucial aspect of this process is the necessity of remaining outside of fabrications at all times. Rather than being entangled in bodily sensations, thoughts, or even refined meditative states, the disciple must abide in a knowing that is always apart, observing but not identified. In these increasingly subtle states, awareness dwells beyond entanglement, perceiving all formations as empty and not-self. This non-entangled stance is the essence of liberation.

Integrating Collection and Expansion: Subduing and Seeing

To do this we must collect all the mental processes and formations, those that give rise to perception, feeling, and conceptual space, by subduing the forces of greed, aversion, and delusion.

This 'collected mind' refers to the calming and stilling of the fabrications through mindfulness. But simultaneously, we must expand our awareness beyond these very fabrications.

This expansion does not negate the collected state; rather, it ensures that our mindfulness includes and transcends these formations, allowing them to be clearly seen, understood, and ultimately let go.

This dual movement, of gathering inward through stillness and expanding outward through insight, prevents us from identifying with the aggregates.

In simple terms, we collect the mind and it's scattered formations, so that these formations do not obstruct clear seeing. At the same time we expand awareness, so that all of experience is included in that awareness without clinging. To refine our perception until all fabrications are seen as they are: impermanent, unsatisfactory, not-self. Through this refinement of awareness, from body to formlessness, we dislodge the view that clings to identity.

Purifying The Mind: Seclusion

Being endowed with clear knowing, the Tathāgata further instructs him: Come, disciple, frequent a secluded dwelling - a forest, the root of a tree, a mountain, a cave, a cemetery, a forest haunt, an open space, a heap of straw.

He frequents a secluded dwelling - a forest, the root of a tree, a mountain, a cave, a cemetery, a forest haunt, an open space, a heap of straw. After his meal, on returning from his alms round, he sits down, folding his legs crosswise, setting his body erect, and establishing mindfulness in the body.

He lives with a mind free from covetousness, cleansing his mind of covetousness; he lives with a mind free from ill-will, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings, cleansing his mind of ill-will; he lives free from sloth and torpor, perceiving light, mindful and fully aware, cleansing his mind of sloth and torpor; he lives free from restlessness and remorse, with an inner tranquility, cleansing his mind of restlessness and remorse; he lives free from doubt, having crossed over doubt, unperplexed about wholesome states, cleansing his mind of doubt.

MN107

Abandoning the Hindrances and progressing through the subsequent stages of the Gradual Training depend on seclusion, both physical and mental. This does not mean only brief retreats, but extended periods of solitude. As part of the practice of abandoning the Hindrances, it will be necessary to find a quiet, natural setting such as a forest, hill, hut, cabin, or a silent room.

It will be necessary to disconnect completely from human contact, phones, and all forms of reading except Dhamma. Only the bare necessities should be brought: clothing, food, water, and shelter.

Seclusion is primarily from the "world," meaning the Five Senses. Right Mindfulness requires subduing greed and aversion for the "world."

Seven Factors: Liberation

With the destruction of the taints (āsava), one’s mind is liberated. Knowing: ‘Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.

MN72

At LiberationEnlightenment:

Mindfulness (sati) holds steady, fully present, not wavering. The mind clearly sees what is happening without confusion.

Investigation of Dhammas (dhammavicaya): fully penetrates the three characteristics: Anicca: All formations are impermanent. Dukkha: All formations are unsatisfactory. Anattā: All phenomena are not-self.

Energy (vīriya): is unwavering but balanced — no more striving, but fully alert.

Joy (pīti): has matured into deep gladness at the nearness of release.

Tranquility (passaddhi): allows the mind to remain serene in the face of profound insights.

Concentration (samādhi): holds the mind unified like a steady flame undisturbed by wind.

Equanimity (upekkhā): allows total surrender: No clinging. No aversion. No fear. The mind fully lets go.

“There is, disciples, that base where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no air... no this world, no other world... neither this nor that — this is the end of suffering.

ud1

The Seven Factors themselves are not Nibbāna. They are the conditions that lead to seeing Nibbāna. Once full liberation occurs, even the Seven Factors are no longer actively cultivated. The arahant lives with a purified mind that naturally abides without effort.

Here a disciple frequents a secluded lodging: a forest, the root of a tree, a mountain, a ravine, a hillside cave, a charnel ground, a jungle grove...

He sits down cross-legged after his meal, having returned from his alms round, setting his body erect and establishing mindfulness on itself. He lives with a mind free from covetousness for the world, cleansing his mind of covetousness; free from ill-will and harm, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings, cleansing his mind of ill-will; free from sloth and torpor, alert and mindful, cleansing his mind of sloth and torpor; free from restlessness and remorse, calm in mind, cleansing his mind of restlessness and remorse; free from doubt, having crossed over doubt, confident in skillful qualities, cleansing his mind of doubt.

Just as a person would take a loan for a venture, and the venture succeeds, he would then repay his old debts and still have surplus for supporting his family, thinking, I took a loan for a venture, it succeeded, I repaid my debts and have surplus for my family, and he would be joyful and happy.

Similarly, a sick person, suffering and severely ill, unable to eat and lacking strength, later recovers, can eat and regains strength, thinking, I was sick, suffering, unable to eat, now I am recovered, can eat, and have regained strength, and he would be joyful and happy.

Just as a person imprisoned would later be released safely without loss of property, thinking, I was imprisoned, now I am released safely without loss of property, and he would be joyful and happy.

Just as a slave would later be freed, becoming independent and free to go where he wishes, thinking, I was a slave, now I am free and independent, and he would be joyful and happy.

Just as a wealthy person traveling through a dangerous road would emerge safely without loss of property, thinking, I traveled through a dangerous road and emerged safely without loss of property, and he would be joyful and happy.

In the same way a disciple sees these five hindrances un-abandoned in himself as debt, sickness, imprisonment, slavery, and a dangerous road. When these five hindrances are abandoned, he sees himself as debt-free, healthy, released from prison, freed from slavery, and in a safe place.

Having abandoned these five hindrances, impurities of the mind that weaken wisdom, secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, he enters and remains in the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion...

MN39

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Sutta Study