Sweeping the mind

I make it a point to sweep my house everyday or at least once every other day. I've swept my house for years and everytime I sweep I think to myself, "will it ever come a day when I don't have any more dust to sweep?". Would it not be cool if on one fine day I find that I have finally swept off all of the dust that I don't have to sweep anymore. Maybe wishful thinking!

It was while I was sweeping that it came to my mind, "aren't our minds just the same?". Like our houses it has dust and it keeps accumulating dust. By dust I mean 'unwholesome thoughts'. To name a few unwholesome thoughts:- anger, greed, aversion, desire, jealousy, resentement. Well how do we sweep the dust off of our minds? Well for that we use Sila (moral conduct), Samadhi (concentration) and Panna (Wisdom). While we have brooms, vaccum cleaners, wipes and many other cleaning products to clean our houses, to clean the dust out of our minds we need the three brooms:-sila, samadhi and panna. Actually it's like having one broom with three different functions. Anyway, we have to use the three aspects to sweep the unwholsome thoughts from our minds. Like we clean our houses everyday, we have to clean our minds everyday as well.

Don't you find that some people hardly clean their houses. And because of it not only they have dust on the floor but also they have cobwebs and insects, accumulation of unwanted things from years ago and sometimes people even get sick because of their uncleanliness. It takes enormous effort and time to clean up such messes. Of course some people give up or even rationalize "Oh well cleaning everyday, what's the purpose, it will go back to being the same old dirty place, so why bother cleaning at all". So they come to live with the dust and the mites and the cobwebs. Dirty becomes "invisible" to them.

I find that this is exactly what we do with our minds. It takes effort and time and brutal honesty to open the doors to the inner house, we call the mind, and clean up its messes. But rarely will someone undertake such an enormous task. It's almost as we've given up because it's too much a pain to clean and therefore we'd rather leave it "undistrubed". What happens as a result is that over time, the dust (unwholesome thoughts) get so accumulated that our minds get festered with mites, insects, cobwebs that are much harder to clean. Mind insects and cobwebs are:- greed, ill-will, ingnorance. They become deeply rooted in the mind. In the end we get sick. By sickness I mean:- becoming miserable, getting angry, become jealous, depression, never being satisfied, complaining, being mean to others.

What is most sad to see, is that people tend to live with such illness despite suffering from them incessantly. It almost becomes a way of life, a way to be because "it is so" or becasue people think that "this is life happening". It's NOT life happening. It's what's we are doing to our lives, unfortunately. Don't you also find that it's easier to see the "other person's dirty house" than your own "dirty house"?. In the same manner, we are also extremely clever at 'seeing the dirt in the other person", than the "dirt in us"! Perhaps you can use this to do some soul searching!

Anyway, the questions arises, "OK let's say we start clearning our minds everyday, with all of our might, does that mean we have to keep sweeping forever, like we sweep our houses?". Well that's the point. We DON'T!

Unlike our houses, we don't have to keep sweeping our mind's unwholesome thoughts forever. You will find that the more you sweep off the dust in your mind, the less it tends to accumulate. But gurantee that you will find dust (lots of it) and you will find insects and also some illness. But I will also gurantee that you will find, overtime, that you get rid of some illnesses, some insects and that the accumulation becomes less and less. I am also sure that, unlike in our real houses, there will come a day when one sweeps the last bit of dust from the mind and finds that one can just relax without anymore sweeping. I believe this is what the Buddha called 'Nibbana".