---
ai_generation_date: '2026-06-16'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
  - date: '2022-07-10'
    mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/16591/20220710-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-cleaning_the_mind.mp3
    speakers:
    - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1
    talk_start_time_seconds: 0
    title: Cleaning the Mind
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/16591
    video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: 9SMp5n8ZU_M
  imprecise_upload_date: '2023-05-04'
  title: Cleaning the Mind
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SMp5n8ZU_M
---

# Cleaning the Mind - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1)

*This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.*


## [Cleaning the Mind](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/16591)

Welcome. What I want to do today is to read and then discuss a famous verse passage from the Dhammapada that is sometimes called something like the universal discipline. The word *Pātimokkha*[^1] is the word that's used for the discipline of the monastics. They have all these rules they have to follow, somewhere between 227 and 311. Some stop counting at some point, but there are many, many rules for monastics as part of their discipline. This one is sometimes considered kind of like the universal rule of discipline, not just applying for monastics, but for everyone. It is relatively easy to memorize, so you might want to memorize it. 

This is my translation. The first line is translated as most people do. I did a translation of the Dhammapada 20 years ago, but I think I'll offer you my more recent doing:

*Doing no evil,*
*Engaging in what is skillful,*
*And purifying one's mind,*
*This is the teaching of the Buddhas.*

It is very poignant. Ending with "This is the teaching of the Buddhas" elevates this as being a pretty important little passage. Maybe it is the underlying principle that all Buddhist teachings can be an extension of and arise from.

The word "evil," I think, is a little bit problematic to use to translate this word. The Pali word is *pāpa*[^2], and I doubt it should be "evil" because in English, the word evil has such a huge Western, Judeo-Christian association. I don't know if it is appropriate for Indian religions and for Buddhism. So I now like to translate it as "doing nothing malevolent."

And then, "engaging in what is skillful." The word skillful is *kusala*[^3], which can also be translated as "wholesome." Wholesome has more of a feeling, for me, of something that's nourishing, something that is health-producing. Whereas "skillful" has the connotation of someone who is capable of doing something in a useful, beautiful, or skillful way. It is a very important word, and the fact that this word can mean both wholesome and skillful speaks to something very profound about the training in Buddhism—how we are training ourselves to become skillful in what is wholesome. 

Some translators will simply translate this line as, "Do no evil, do what's good." It is very simple and easy to remember. But it is doing nothing malevolent; engaging, cultivating, intending, and working at doing what is nourishing, healthy, skillful, or wholesome; and then purifying one's mind.

When I was thinking about this today, I was reminded of medical ethics. It is on my mind regularly enough because I am on an ethics committee at a local hospital. The basic ethical principles are quite important for the ethics committee and for hospital staff to consider. It is a little bit similar. Depending on the place, they have different orders of the basic principles, but it is avoiding maleficence—doing harm, doing ill—and practicing beneficence—doing what's beneficial.

In hospitals, the other important principle is respecting the autonomy of the patient, the person under care. Everyone has the ability to make their own choices. If they do not have the ability, that becomes one of the reasons why an ethics committee is engaged. If the person can't choose for themselves, should it be the doctor? Should it be a wider committee? What are the ethics of it? It involves respect for the patient, respect for human rights, and respect for their dignity. Sometimes what is added in hospitals is solidarity—that the medical staff should be in solidarity with the patient, to be their champion, be their companion, be in their camp.

I think that's pretty good for Buddhism, too. The first two are related, for sure. It has this very strong statement at the beginning: do no evil, do nothing malevolent. How do you know what's malevolent? Some of it has to do with our intention. Is there ill will? Is there hatred? Is there hostility? That's what is behind malevolence: making things worse. You can make things worse with good intentions, so I also like the idea of "don't make it worse." There's a little bit higher sensitivity there than simply asking, "Was my intention good?" Sometimes that is not good enough.

But here it is very clear: do nothing malevolent. The second one doesn't say "do good," like this is what you have to do. It says engage, cultivate, or develop your capacity to do what is skillful and what is wholesome. Those are the things, by definition in Buddhism, that come from non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion. In positive terms, it comes from the things that are opposite to greed, hate, and delusion. Some people like to make it really simple by saying: do what is generous, do what is kind or loving, and do what is wise.

Last night, I saw a movie, and sitting here, I'm still under the influence of it. It was a movie that was discombobulating in some ways, and as it intentionally discombobulated you more and more, it came to a final conclusion, which is: be kind. The movie is *Everything Everywhere All at Once*. If you want to be discombobulated, you can watch it. Or you can just take the message, "be kind," and then you don't have to see the movie. [Laughter]

In medical ethics, one of the challenges is that sometimes you don't want to cause harm, but you want to provide benefit, and sometimes those two principles are in opposition to each other. Then there is a whole discussion about how to work that out. I suppose that is also true in our ordinary human life. It is not often so clear, or just one way or the other. Maybe it is a little bit of both. We do make it worse; the transportation we used to get here today probably made the world a worse place. But if we completely avoid making the world worse, would we then fail to make it much better? 

My hope is—and I have dedicated my life to this idea—that Buddhist practice and these Buddhist values will make the world a better place, and make better people. People who are interested in benefiting the world, changing the world for the better. Maybe we have to compromise a little bit. We drive here, but in the bigger picture, maybe we find it inspires us, moves us, and makes us more capable of living a life that deals with the challenges that come, so we become agents for good in this world. We're balancing all these things.

Here, the Buddhist principle is not just "don't make it worse," which is beneficial to see, but also has challenges in understanding exactly what that means and how to balance it. Here, the principle is: do nothing malevolent. That is a wonderful line. Maybe it is hard to do, but that's the line we are trying to live on, this side of malevolence. We are not going to intentionally do something with hostility and harm. We still might make things worse, but at least we know ourselves well enough to know that we are not doing anything malevolent intentionally.

Most people don't think of themselves this way, and it might not be an inspiring teaching, "do nothing malevolent," but I think this world needs a dedication to this. For those of us who are basically not malevolent, I think it is possible to up the game and be even more sensitive, more attuned. I think this is one of the benefits of Buddhist practice: becoming more and more attuned to the subtlety in which this works in our minds, our conversations, and our connections to other people. 

It could be something small, like the way that you complain. There might be complaints that are appropriate. You go to the complaints department because something didn't work. You say, "By the way, I want to let you know something didn't work, and maybe you should know about this." They say, "Oh, thank you, we're grateful to know that." Versus coming in and saying, "You guys messed up!" Then you're sticking it to them, and there is malevolence, there is hostility.

Or, if you're living with someone and say, "I can't believe you left the dirty dishes in the sink again!" The tone of voice, the way it's said—you're angry, so it was a little bit hostile. It is a complaint, right? But does a complaint have to be hostile? You could say, "I have a notification to make about dishes in the sink. Would you like to hear it? It would be helpful for me if I could say something about the dishes in the sink. Is this the right time?" As opposed to growling.

As we develop in this practice, we might not think of ourselves in terms of doing something malevolent or evil. That's a big bar, I hope. But to start looking at it in more subtlety is natural as people develop mindfulness, concentration, and stillness. There is more and more sensitivity to the impact our own states of mind have, the impact of our words, and the impact of our intentions. 

One of the principles we'll discover is that if you do something malevolent, if you act with any hostility towards anybody else, you might be harming them, but you will definitely be harming yourself. You cannot harm anybody else intentionally with malevolence without harming yourself at the same time. I have known people who only gave up their malevolence when they realized, "Ouch, I had no idea how much I was harming myself." 

People can harbor resentment or anger for years. Resentment is a kind of malevolence. I've known people who, only after years, realize, "Oh, the person I'm resentful toward probably doesn't even remember I exist. I'm not harming that person anyway. I'm not getting back at that person. The only person who is hurting from my continued resentment is myself." For some people, that was the key that allowed them to put it down. This increased sensitivity shows the mutuality of harm—it goes both ways. 

This wonderful word, skillful or wholesome (*kusala*), has the same direction. As we do something skillful, something good and wholesome for the world, we are benefiting ourselves. If we are cultivating what is good, wholesome, ethical, and skillful in ourselves, inevitably it will be beneficial for the world. The world needs more examples of people who are living a skillful, wholesome, good life.

How do we do this so that it's not just living by principle, like "this is what I'm supposed to be doing"? That is the third principle here: purifying one's mind. I don't know how it is for you to hear this term, "purifying one's mind," as a principle. I know that for me, when I was younger, I was repelled by the words purification and purity. They had connotations of excessive puritanical notions, dualistic ideas that you're either completely pure or not. It seemed like a standard that lent itself to a lot of judgmentalism—the idea of sin and purity, that if you're not pure, you're not good.

But over the years, I have come to appreciate it more and more. What I appreciate about it is that I now associate this word purity with something becoming clean. For the mind to become clean. To view your own mind and see that it is clean, that it's clear. There is no dirt in there, there is nothing malevolent, there is no hostility, there is nothing greedy. There is nothing that we would feel awkward about having in the mind.

If your mind got plugged into a monitor so that everyone could see what goes on in there, and they look and say, "Wow, that's what that person thinks or is doing." If your mind was public to everyone, it would be no problem because it is clean.

I came to appreciate this through doing this Buddhist practice. At some point, I realized the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen in this world—and I have seen many beautiful places and many beautiful things—the most beautiful thing a person can encounter and see or perceive is a clean mind. To have touched that in myself is just astounding, to see that this is a possibility for us.

Clean your mind. We clean our teeth hopefully every day. We clean our bodies most days. We clean our dishes. Why not our minds? If you brush your teeth twice a day, maybe you should clean your mind twice a day. Meditate twice a day! Why not? The mind is probably one of the most influential forces in this universe of ours, at least in the human world. It's really influential. Harm comes from it, desired benefit comes from it, love comes from it, hate comes from it.

So, clean the mind, or empty the mind. Another way of saying it is to empty the mind of greed, hatred, and delusion. Empty the mind of attachment. And then the amazing thing happens: it just feels natural to avoid malevolence. It is not like a moral injunction; you are just like, "Of course. Why would I do something malevolent when that doesn't just make the mind dirty again, it actually scars the mind?" It is powerful language, isn't it? It scars the mind. If the mind is overly scarred, you don't even notice one more scar. You don't even know you're doing it. But when the mind becomes clean, you see the effect it has.

Engaging in what's skillful, nourishing, and wholesome is not an injunction. It's like, "Of course, that is what the clean mind wants to do." That is what it is about, to do the things which are clean, healthy, nourishing, and supportive.

I had a little bit of struggle with "purifying the mind" for a while because my first Buddhist practice was in Mahayana[^4] Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism. They had three principles like this. The first two were basically the same: avoid evil, do everything that is good. But the third one was "liberate all beings." So there is an idea of compassion, and I love the idea that we live for the liberation and benefit of others, and that practice is dedicated to that purpose.

The criticism of our tradition from the Mahayana perspective is that we are the selfish ones. We are the ones who are just involved in our own practice for our own liberation. The contrast of this line, "purify your mind," versus "liberate all beings," seems to accentuate this divide. I was a little troubled by this for a while, but I eventually came to realize that these two things are not so separate. If we clean our mind, purify our mind, empty our mind, then there is this greater sensitivity to harm, and to the state of other people. Empathy, mirroring other people, understanding other people, caring for other people. The natural outcome of a clean mind is that in some appropriate way for each person, we do care, we do want to liberate, we do want other people to benefit.

It is a little bit like on the airplane where you're supposed to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before helping the children or someone who needs help. Before you help someone else not be malevolent, maybe you should do it for yourself first. How well can you help other people to be non-malevolent if you are still being malevolent? How much can you help other people to do things which are skillful if you don't know what is skillful or what is wholesome yourself? These all go together. I don't think that self and other, benefiting oneself and benefiting others, are so separate. They come together more and more as we practice in Buddhism as a singular whole, inseparable from each other. It just seems so beautiful to me that that is the case.

These three principles kind of simplify all the rest of Buddhism. Some of Buddhism is philosophically profound, which can sometimes mean that it is complicated and difficult to understand. But if you remember it all arises from these simple principles, everything is an expression of that, a manifestation of that, a commentary on that, or a support for that. Maybe it is all kind of simple. 

I'll read it again with my current translation choice:

*Doing nothing malevolent,*
*Engaging in what is skillful and wholesome,*
*And purifying one's mind,*
*This is the teaching of the Buddhas.*

## Q&A

So that is the talk. We have a few more minutes left in the scheduled dharma talk time. After this, we'll have a picnic outside for those of you who'd like to stay, but if you'd like to ask any questions or have any commentary about what I said, you're welcome to.

**Questioner 1:** Thank you, Gil[^5]. I thought your commentary about the medical connection was pretty apt. I believe that the Buddha Gautama[^6] was actually referred to as the physician, so I just found that connection nice.
**Gil Fronsdal:** Yeah, I'm inspired by the connection as well, the overlap, and inspired by medical ethics. Just in general, I wish the rest of society would adopt it. Thank you. Yeah, you can pass the mic back, but let Edna speak first.

**Questioner 2:** Thank you very much for the talk, Gil. I have a question about purifying the mind and cleaning one's mind. What about when the emotions are really strong and kind of rule you? What would be the method of cleaning one's mind with strong emotions?
**Gil Fronsdal:** I think that meditation practice is an optimal way of doing it for many people, because we are cultivating the mindfulness to recognize what's happening in the mind. The recognition is very, very helpful, especially if the recognition of what's in the mind goes together with relaxing the mind, settling the mind, and stabilizing the mind. Then you are beginning to let go of the agitation, of the difficult aspects of the mind, the unclean aspects of the mind.

To see it clearly and allow it to settle. The more it settles, the more you see a calm mind, a clear mind, a clean mind. Then you have a new perspective to catch the difficulties when they do arise, because we have this background now of a clean cloth. You see a little spot of grease on it right away. But on a cloth that is full of grease, you don't see one more spot. We start seeing more and more. So I think meditation is a great way to do it, along with everything else Buddhism teaches us.

**Questioner 3:** I really appreciated the talk. I think there is so much that is so simple, but so complicated as well in terms of how to apply it. I just wanted to make a comment about the idea of resentment. A good friend of mine had said, "Resentment is like taking the pills and expecting the other person to die."

**Questioner 4:** I've watched some videos on medical ethics in my teaching, and I remember one of the four pillars is justice. I was thinking about justice as sorting things out in the bigger system, in the whole community. Maybe more of a Sangha[^7] way of looking at things.
**Gil Fronsdal:** Yeah, justice. Sometimes that has to do with equity and fairness. A big part of it is the fair usage of limited medical resources. Who gets it, and how do you decide who gets it when it is limited? How is it justice? How is it fair?

**Questioner 5:** I grappled a little bit with the speed of response. The dirty dishes analogy, for example: the amount of time it took to settle yourself and ask the question, rather than the gruff, "Why are the dishes dirty again?" The calm, equipoise, non-malevolent way. It feels like the environment is our dirty dishes, and our response is not speedy enough. So how do we approach that with non-malevolence?
**Gil Fronsdal:** I think that as we develop mindfulness, we develop more ability to monitor ourselves. We might not have the capacity to notice the subtlety of the intentions of what we're doing in the mind yet, but ideally, we get enough ability to monitor what we say and what we do with our hands. We learn to really bring a lot of attention to our tongue and our body, and learn how to restrain ourselves. At least restrain any time you are going to say something that you have doubts about whether it is really kind.

That restraint, which is not a very popular thing to do, might be the protection you need so you have the time to look deeper. That is why the principle is "don't make it worse." Just learn to restrain, learn to hold back. If your hand goes into a fist, you know to restrain it.

**Questioner 5:** The follow-up there is that even the restraint feels like an injury to self. As I contemplate climate change and what I should be doing, if I am not doing something, then I am somehow harming myself and not really acting as a beneficent actor.
**Gil Fronsdal:** We do the best we can, but don't make it worse. If the best you can do is not make the environment worse, but you are still harming yourself in some way, you also want to look more deeply at how you are harming yourself. Yes, if you're driving a car, you are indirectly harming yourself; it comes back to you a little bit. But if you are drowning in guilt, drowning in self-hostility, drowning in self-criticism, then you have added maleficence towards yourself. Then there are malevolent feelings and attitudes towards oneself, and any malevolence is not needed.

The training and the practice is to discover how not to add malevolence, hatred, or hostility towards oneself. That, I think, is brilliant: how to live in this world without malevolence towards oneself or others. So we are not struggling with guilt. In the Buddhist definition of guilt, it isn't just simply that we did something wrong and we know it; guilt has a sense of self-hatred in it. The practice is to purify ourselves of that. That is as important as not having malevolence out there, harming out there. You don't want to pollute yourself.

**Questioner 5:** This reminds me of that penultimate moment of the Buddha's enlightenment where he turns inwards and notices the second arrow[^8], and pulls that out. But I've been stuck with that second arrow recently with some of the events of the globe.
**Gil Fronsdal:** Yeah, it's challenging to be a human being, especially in this modern world. Part of the skill of practice is also to learn to somehow be a little bit more relaxed, or have the capacity to feel the discomfort that we feel, to feel the challenges of the mind, and not to add second, third, or fourth arrows. We aim to build the ability to open up kindly to how challenging this is for us and what we are doing on the inside.

**Questioner 6:** Thank you very much. I just wanted to add one slight thought on the physician's oath, which also begins with "first do no harm." It seems really interesting that there's not only that parallel, but the comment you made about the rules for the monastics. In some sense, the physician has an extra obligation as a decision-maker or someone who is in charge of the patient's life. Another way that they sometimes think about it is, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," which goes back to your initial point of "don't make it worse." That is something that I've ruminated on as your dharma talk unfolded.
**Gil Fronsdal:** Great. Thank you. Yeah, it is a wonderful principle: don't make it worse. I think it is fantastic to carry that with you. Thank you so much. Now we are going to take one question from the YouTube audience that someone put in the chat. Evelyn asks, "Gil, how do you navigate the idea of putting one's mind on a screen where everyone can see how clean it is, with avoiding shame and embarrassment about all of the current blotches?"

That is a good question. How to avoid shame and embarrassment? Well, some degree of embarrassment seems healthy. It is not necessarily self-harm or self-hatred. It is just like, "Oh, you know, this is unfortunate." But shame is much more painful and difficult. Shame has some kind of self-harming aspect to it that is unnecessary. It is a profound thing. A lot of people feel shame, and it is a difficult state, one that we sometimes learn from society and from other people, and we internalize it for ourselves.

It might be that before making your mind public to everyone, maybe resolving the issue of shame is important. I don't want to make it harder for anybody—what I am about to say is meant to be freeing and compassionate. Shame involves a degree of conceit. Not the conceit of being arrogant, but the conceit of being excessively preoccupied with ourselves, with self-identity, how we are represented, how we are seen, and how we are understood. Of course we are that way; our society trains us to be that way. 

But Buddhist practice shows us how much we can let go of self-preoccupation, self-definition, the attachment to self-ideas, and self-views about oneself. Then it is a lot easier to have our behavior transparent so other people can see it, because we don't get stuck in our self-concept. We don't linger in it. We try to do better, but we don't define ourselves by it. To really study this idea of shame and free ourselves from it before we become more transparent, I think, is really worthwhile.

When I was ordained as a Zen priest and monk 40 years ago, one of the remarkable things that happened with that ordination—that I wasn't thinking about or planning, it just kind of happened—was that I saw in the weeks after the ordination that I was now a public figure. I had a shaved head, I wore robes. My shortcomings were much more obvious, and I was much more conscious of them than I had been before.

At the same time, it was more okay to have them. It wasn't like I barreled ahead and just did terrible things in the world because I had these shortcomings; I was going to practice with them and try to work with them. I had anger, so I had to work with my anger and try to keep it in check so it didn't cause harm. But I became much more sensitive to these shortcomings, and it was more okay to have them because, in the language I had back then, I was now a "child of the Buddha."

I had been ordained, and somehow being a child of the Buddha was being in the fold of the Buddha's lap. I was being held by this compassionate, caring force in the universe, and I was accepted for who I was as a practitioner with my shortcomings. It was wonderful. I thought it was really significant to both become more sensitive to my shortcomings so I could practice with them and clean, and at the same time, for it to be more okay to have them. That made it a lot easier to work with them, because I didn't have the conceit, the concern, or the shame for having them. It was more like, "Of course I have them. Now I get to practice with them."

So Evelyn, I hope my answer gives you something to chew on that is useful.

---
[^1]: **Pātimokkha:** The basic code of monastic discipline, consisting of rules for Buddhist monks and nuns.
[^2]: **Pāpa:** A Pali word often translated as evil, wickedness, or bad merit.
[^3]: **Kusala:** A Pali word meaning skillful, wholesome, or karmically fruitful.
[^4]: **Mahayana:** One of the two major existing branches of Buddhism (the other being Theravada) which emphasizes the bodhisattva path and the liberation of all beings.
[^5]: Original transcript said 'dr bronson', corrected to 'Gil' based on context and the speaker's name.
[^6]: Original transcript said 'the foot that goeth alma', corrected to 'the Buddha Gautama' based on context.
[^7]: **Sangha:** The Buddhist community of monks, nuns, novices, and laity.
[^8]: **Second Arrow:** A teaching from the Buddha (Sallatha Sutta) illustrating that while physical pain (the first arrow) is unavoidable, mental suffering (the second arrow) is optional.