The Foundations of Buddhism

The Buddhist Path
good conduct and the practice of calm meditation in the manner
just described. Together these two purifications are seen as the
roots for the five purifications directly concerned with insight.

The first of these is 'purification of view', also ,referred to as

'the analysis of formations'. At this stage the practitioner is con-

cerned with beginning to break down his sense of a substantial

self. To this end he contemplates any given experience in terms

of the five aggregates, or the six senses and their respective

objects. The purpose here is to impress upon the mind that, when

we look at any particular experience, what we find is not a sub-

stantial person or being but just mind and body in dependence

upon each other. Like two sheaves of grass propped up against

each other, if we remove one the other falls. But in undertaking

this practice we are warned to be careful. Some may be unre-

sponsive to this teaching, but others may go too far and think

that the task is to annihilate themselves.

Having established a sense of experience as subsisting in the

interdependence of mind and body, the practitioner moves on

to the fourth purification, that of 'crossing over doubt'. The prac-

tice at this stage is referred to as 'comprehension of conditions'.

In the previous stage the practitioner contemplated the inter-

dependence of mind and body in any given experience; here he

broadens the meditation to take in the past, present, and future.

In other words, the practice moves from the contemplation of

the particular to the general, and one begins to see that what is

in operation is a universal 'law'-the law of dependent arising;

one begins to see that, just as mind and body are interdependent

now in the present, so they have been in the past and so they

must be in the future. One sees that mind and body, although

existing, have not been created or brought into being out of noth-

ing by some creator God. Thus there is no particular beginning

to their existence and no end. The law of dependent arising alone

is a sufficient explanation of their existence. Direct insight into

this process is presented as deeply affecting the meditator.

His outlook on the world is profoundly changed. His under-

standing of the teaching has ceased to be purely theoretical

and become a matter of direct experience which cannot be

denied. Thus the meditator is said to cross over doubt and