Meditation and Purification...

Student reads from PB: "Meditation without purification may be dangerous."

S: What kind of meaning would he put into purification?

AD: It covers the gamut. Purification is something that you gradually keep adding to. You don't try all at once to do everything. But you try to live a more ethical life, you try to take care of your body. You attempt to leave out any unethical actions. If there is hatred in a person's heart he really can't meditate. If there is preoccupation with some greed or lust, all these things must gradually be weeded out. So it is in the grand sense that purification must be taken. We can only do it a little at a time. As long as a person is constantly striving to improve his ethics, his character, his morality, then it is all right.

But some people sit to meditate and their heart is full of envy or hatred or something. They are asking for trouble, because it boomerangs, comes right back. Do you remember we pointed out that meditation is very creative, the kind of thoughts you think in those periods when your mind is concentrated inevitably have to get manifested? So meditation without purification may be dangerous.


-- Anthony Damiani and student 8/83