4. Purifying — cleansing karma

Pure and Impure

According to Tibetan spirituality, our true nature is inherent purity, primordial wisdom and luminous clarity. Looked at from this ultimate perspective, our “normal” state seems clouded by the darkness of ignorance and confusion. The strong identification and preoccupation with “biology and biography”—our physical body and our personal history—easily obscures the still, ever-present matrix of light and consciousness that is the real “me.” Based on this misidentification, or fall from inherent purity, we think thoughts, speak words and perform actions that leads us further astray. This is due to the infallible law of cause and effect, known in the East as karma: you reap what you sow.

Through TruSol or purification practices, we can:

• Clear negative karma before it ripens into serious problems.
• Cleanse the mind of lingering guilt, doubt and shame.
• Purify the effects of anger, hostility or jealousy.
• Cleanse the environment that retains the negative imprints from others, from the TV and media, and other forms of mental pollution.

Karmic Levels

Tibetan spirituality teaches that much of our current situation, including our happiness, our level of freedom and even our intelligence, is based on karma—the fruit of past actions. Based on misdirected desire, aversion and confusion, we have performed inappropriate actions of body (stealing, killing, sexual disrespect), speech (lying, creating discord, harsh words, gossip) and mind (hatred, ill-will, greed, jealousy, wrong views or skepticism about what is spiritually valuable).

Harming others or ourselves in a variety of ways, these deeds leave disruptive traces or “stains” that pollute our lives. As has been said many times, the only really good thing about bad karma is that it can be purified and removed from our lives.

Environmental Stains

What Went Wrong

In relation to our environment, many karmic impurities arise through our unskillful actions and deeds toward the land. In Asian countries, as well as native cultures of North and South America, Siberia and so on, the land is never excavated, nor a tree felled, without proper ritual and propitiation of the resident energies. The land is alive and vibrant and highly populated by non-human beings. Thus, despoiling or polluting it has consequences on our own lives.

Disrespecting Earth

We may stress our relationship with the land by disregarding or not respecting its integrity, or we can also create conflicts through carelessness, such as throwing waste in clean fields or waterways. If we consider the massive pollution of collective humanity over months and years, we can understand the tremendous karmic impact such actions have on global peace and prosperity.

Purification Practice

Various healing rituals (Nöl Sang, Rabné and Trul) help clear non-productive or negative energies, while inviting powerful positive forces to enhance all aspects of life. In these purificatory practices, we invoke many different spiritual forces as specific antidotes to corresponding contaminations of body, mind or spirit. Part of this ritual process is a recognition of our faults and failings in relation to ourselves, others and the environment, and an intent to correct whatever faulty actions or misunderstandings have occurred.

Offerings are made to repay the karmic debts we have incurred and heal our core being. Specific mantras, with their powerful spiritual vibrations, induce inner and outer cleansing. Ultimately, purification can transform the “five poisons” of hatred, desire, jealousy, ignorance and greed into their underlying pristine nature of clarity, compassion, right activity and wisdom.