The Dalai Lama - The Essential Nature of Mind Is Pure

HEALING ANGER:
The Power of Patience
from a Buddhist Perspective
by the Dalai Lama,
translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa
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Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

What premises or grounds do we have for accepting that mental afflictions can be ultimately rooted out and eliminated from our mind? In Buddhist thought, we have three principal reasons for believing that this can happen. One is that all deluded states of mind, all afflictive emotions and thoughts, are essentially distorted in their mode of apprehension, whereas all the antidotal factors such as love, compassion, insight, and so on not only are undistorted, but they also have grounding in our varied experience and in reality.

Second, all these antidotal forces also have the quality of being strengthened through practice and training. Through constant familiarity, one can enhance their capacity and increase their potential limitlessly. So the second premise is that as one enhances the capacity of these antidotal forces and increases their strength, one is able to correspondingly reduce the influences and effects of delusory states of mind.

The third premise is that the essential nature of mind is pure; in other words, there is the idea that the essential nature of mind is clear light or Buddha-nature.

So it is on these three premises that Buddhism accepts that delusions, all afflictive emotions and thoughts, can be ultimately eliminated through practice and meditation. (p.38)

--from Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective by the Dalai Lama, translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications

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