BK154 The Auro of Wisdom/C5 Purification of the Mind

Adisciple once approached me with an offering and said, “Guru, please teach me how to gain great spiritual powers.”

I replied, “What I teach is how to purify the mind, not how to gain spiritual powers.”

My disciple asked, “Isn’t it true that buddhas have spiritual powers?” I said, “Buddhas do have spiritual powers, but those with spiritual powers are not necessarily buddhas.”

I told him that even ghosts have powers, and so do good and evil beings. The mara has spiritual powers, and so do non-Buddhist followers. Spiritual powers are an incidental phenomena, a by-product of your cultivation in Buddhism. People should not be attached to such phenomenal powers, or they will risk going astray onto the wrong path.

If you focus on cultivating spiritual powers, it will be easy to cling to those states. Wild and meandering thoughts will arise, leading you into delusion.

Eventually you shall fall into the grasp of mara. When you are attracted to various spiritual powers, you will deviate from the Buddha’s teachings and turn yourself into a demon of some kind.

What exactly does the Buddha teach us? It is still this familiar saying:

Not to do any evil, to carry out all good deeds, to purify the mind: this is the teaching of the buddhas.

I have written over a hundred fifty books. Seriously speaking, I can summarize the millions of words I’ve written into four words:

“Purification of the Mind.”

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the three karmas are transformed into three secrets: the secret of the body, the secret of speech, and the secret of the mind. The purification of the body, speech and mind is essentially the “purification of the mind!”

The act of cultivating your heart and purifying your mind leads you to buddhahood. To only develop spiritual powers leads you to becoming a mara. If you are a practicing True Buddha Tantra cultivator, you need to discern these matters carefully!