Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

The environment where you are doing the meditation should be properly cleaned. While cleaning, you should cultivate the motivation that since you are engaged in the task of accumulating great stores of merit by inviting the hosts of buddhas and bodhisattvas to this environment, it is important to have a clean place. You should see that all the external dirt and dust around you is basically a manifestation of the faults and stains within your own mind. You should see that the most important aim is to purge these stains and faults from within your mind. Therefore, as you cleanse the environment, think that you are also purifying your mind. Develop the very strong thought that by cleaning this place you are inviting the host of buddhas and bodhisattvas who are the most supreme merit field, and that you will subsequently engage in a path that will enable you to purge your mind of the stains of delusions.

--from Path to Bliss: A Practical Guide to Stages of Meditation by H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa, edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications

The Dalai Lama Quote of the week comes to you with my thanks to Snow Lion Publications (which sends them to me).