No One Can Purify You: Why Early Buddhism Says You’re Not Dirty — and Not Clean Either (Bhante Dr. G. Chandima)

🧠💥 Purity in Early Buddhism: Not What You Think

1. Purity Is Not What the World Thinks It Is

➡️ Shock factor: Early Buddhism deconstructs external purity. Ritual baths, caste-based notions, and even extreme asceticism are useless if the mind is still defiled by greed, hatred, and delusion.

2. Purity is a Process, Not a Status

➡️ Purity isn’t something you are — it’s something you do. It’s not a condition imposed by birth or priesthood (monk/nun), but a psychological transformation through meditative development.

🌀 Your entire identity is a karmic compost pile — and through mindfulness, you compost that pile into a lotus.

3. Even the Concept of Purity Must Be Let Go

➡️ The truly awakened sees beyond dualities. The obsession with “purity” itself becomes a hindrance when clung to.
🧘 The purest being does not label anything “pure.”

4. No One Can Make You Pure — Not Even a Buddha

“Tumhehi kiccaṁ ātappaṁ, akkhātāro tathāgatā.”
— Dhammapada 276

“You yourselves must strive. The Buddhas only show the way.”

➡️ No one can sprinkle water on your forehead and zap you clean. You purify yourself — through wisdom, effort, and insight.

🧬 Purity is DIY Enlightenment.

5. Paradox: Purity Arises by Embracing the Impure

“Yathā agāraṁ succhannaṁ vuṭṭhī na samativijjhati...
evam subhāvitaṁ cittaṁ rāgo na samativijjhati.”
— Dhammapada 13/14

Just as rain cannot leak into a well-thatched house, lust cannot penetrate a well-developed mind.

➡️ This means even when lust, hatred, or confusion arise, the well-trained mind doesn’t let them in. You don’t fight defilements with repression. You outgrow them.

🧠🔥 The impure becomes fuel for the fire of awakening.

6. The Ultimate Purity Is the Absence of ‘I’

“Sabbe dhammā anattā.”
— Dhammapada 279

“All phenomena are not-self.”

➡️ Purity is not a purified self — it’s the realization there never was a fixed self to purify.
🕳️ You don’t just clean the mirror — you realize the mirror was a projection all along.

 In Sum: Early Buddhist Purity Is...

🔥 Not ritualistic, but transformative
🌀 Not fixed, but fluid
🧠 Not external, but internal
🪷 Not achieved, but realized
🌪️ Not personal, but selfless

Want to truly understand purity?

Watch your thoughts without owning them. Let them rise and fall.
That’s the real sacred bath — where the ego dissolves, and the Dhamma remains.