We're all junk hoarders

I remember being in India, in the north, in state called Himachal Pradesh. I had been traveling for a couple months, backpacking through India. At that time I was spending a few days practicing in a monastery called Tushita, in a small city called Mcleod Ganj, just north of Dharamshala. This is where the Dalai Lama has his Tibetan government in exile.

In the practice center, I remember hearing this quote that touched me. It was from a Tibetan bhikkuni (female monk). I forget exactly who it was. It may have been Tenzin Palmo. But it may have been someone else.

But what this bhikkuni said has stuck with me to this day. She likened the mind to a house.

She said, You live in this house everyday. You’ve lived in this house your entire life. Wherever you go, your mind goes with you, and this is the house you live in. Now, in a regular house, you will clean it from time to time. Take out the junk and the trash. Sweep and dust. Wash the floors. But what do we do with the mind? Quite the opposite! Most of us have lived our whole life without clearing out the junk we’ve stored. Resentment, fear, greed, anger, disappointment, insecurity. Each time we acquire a new one we store it inside. Like junk hoarders, we never take the time to sort through all the trash and rubbish we store in the house. We never take the time to do a deep clean of the house we live in.

She then went on to say, that this the role of meditation. To take the time to clean our inner home. We do so much work to make our outside pretty and beautiful. We get new clothes, new gadgets. We go to the gym to sculpt the body. We look for new careers, new relationships. But how little we do to take care of our inner world! The world that matters most.

This is what meditation is all about. To create inner harmony. To clean and purify the mind, and get rid of the junk that weighs us down in misery and dissatisfaction.

If you purify your mind, then wherever you go, you will be at peace.