Visuddhimagga and the Seven Purifications

The seven purifications of the Visuddhimagga, passed on one to the next like relay chariots, from conduct to liberating knowledge

The Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification, is the best-known manual of Theravada practice, and its backbone is a list of seven purifications (satta visuddhi). The list comes from the Relay Chariots discourse (Rathavinīta Sutta, MN 24), a conversation between Venerable Sāriputta and Venerable Puṇṇa Mantāṇiputta. Its point is simple and easy to forget: each purification serves the next, and all of them serve one goal, complete extinguishment without grasping. This page tells the story behind the list, explains each of the seven, shows how Buddhaghosa built the Visuddhimagga on them, and places the sixteen insight knowledges within them.

The seven purifications in the Relay Chariots discourse

The discourse tells how a group of monks who had spent the rains in the Buddha's home country came to see him at Rājagaha and praised Venerable Puṇṇa Mantāṇiputta: content with little, secluded, accomplished in ethics, concentration and wisdom, and always encouraging his companions in these things. Sāriputta, who was sitting nearby, hoped to meet him. Later, when Puṇṇa came to see the Buddha at Sāvatthī and went into the Dark Forest for the day's meditation, Sāriputta followed, sat under another tree, and in the evening went over to talk. Centuries later the list they discussed that day became the frame of the Visuddhimagga's whole account of wisdom.

Sāriputta asked: is the spiritual life lived under the Buddha for the sake of purification of conduct? No, said Puṇṇa. He asked about each of the seven in turn, and each time the answer was no. Then what is it for? For complete extinguishment without grasping (anupādā-parinibbāna). Is any one of the purifications that extinguishment? No. Is it something apart from them? No again. Puṇṇa explained: if any purification were itself the goal, something still bound up with grasping would be called extinguishment; but if the goal lay apart from them, an ordinary person who has none of them would be extinguished. The puzzle is resolved by the simile that follows.

The simile of the relay chariots

Puṇṇa took the example of King Pasenadi of Kosala. While staying at Sāvatthī he has urgent business in Sāketa, so seven chariots are stationed in relays between the two cities. He mounts the first at the palace gate; it takes him to the second, where he changes; and so on, until the seventh brings him to the palace gate at Sāketa. If someone asks whether he came by this chariot, the right answer is not a plain yes or no but an account of how he travelled, one chariot after another. Each purification is like one of the chariots. None of them is the destination, yet none of them can be skipped.

Evameva kho, āvuso, sīlavisuddhi yāvadeva cittavisuddhatthā,
cittavisuddhi yāvadeva diṭṭhivisuddhatthā,
diṭṭhivisuddhi yāvadeva kaṅkhāvitaraṇavisuddhatthā,
kaṅkhāvitaraṇavisuddhi yāvadeva maggāmaggañāṇadassanavisuddhatthā,
maggāmaggañāṇadassanavisuddhi yāvadeva paṭipadāñāṇadassanavisuddhatthā,
paṭipadāñāṇadassanavisuddhi yāvadeva ñāṇadassanavisuddhatthā,
ñāṇadassanavisuddhi yāvadeva anupādāparinibbānatthā.
In the same way, friend, purification of conduct is only for the sake of purification of mind; purification of mind only for purification of view; purification of view only for purification by overcoming doubt; that only for purification by knowing and seeing what is and is not the path; that only for purification by knowing and seeing the way; that only for purification by knowing and seeing; and purification by knowing and seeing only for complete extinguishment without grasping.
MN 24

The Pali word yāvadeva means 'only as far as' or 'just for the sake of'. Conduct is valuable because it carries you to a settled mind, not because keeping rules is a goal in itself. The teaching guards against two mistakes: thinking that good conduct or deep calm is enough, and thinking you can leap to wisdom without them. At the end Puṇṇa learns that his questioner was Sāriputta himself, and the two rejoice in each other's words. The Visuddhimagga keeps the same spirit: each purification is a means, and only nibbāna is purity itself.

The seven purifications one by one

Purification of conduct (sīla-visuddhi): body, speech and livelihood free of harm. For monks the Visuddhimagga names four parts: the monastic code, guarding the senses, a pure livelihood, and reflecting before using the requisites. For lay people it is the five or eight precepts kept with intention.
Purification of mind (citta-visuddhi): a mind cleared of the hindrances by concentration. The Visuddhimagga means the eight attainments together with access concentration, the concentration just short of absorption. Insight teachers explain that for someone who goes straight to insight, the steady moment-to-moment concentration that comes with close noting does this work.
Purification of view (diṭṭhi-visuddhi): seeing mind and matter as they are, just mind and matter with no being or self behind them, so that the view of a self loosens. In the Visuddhimagga this starts with defining mind and matter.
Purification by overcoming doubt (kaṅkhāvitaraṇa-visuddhi): seeing the conditions of mind and matter, so that doubts about oneself in the past, present and future settle.
Purification by knowing and seeing what is and is not the path (maggāmaggañāṇadassana-visuddhi): as insight grows, light, rapture and the other imperfections of insight appear. The meditator recognises that they are not the path; the path is insight that keeps on noting. The Visuddhimagga treats this in chapter 20.
Purification by knowing and seeing the way (paṭipadāñāṇadassana-visuddhi): the nine insight knowledges, from arising and passing away to conformity, described in chapter 21 of the Visuddhimagga.
Purification by knowing and seeing (ñāṇadassana-visuddhi): knowledge of the four noble paths of stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning and arahantship.

The first two are conduct and concentration; the last five are wisdom. So the seven purifications are another way of seeing the threefold training of ethics, concentration and wisdom, with the wisdom part spelled out in five steps. In the Visuddhimagga's terms the first six are mundane, still within the world, and only the seventh is supramundane, beyond it.

How the Visuddhimagga is built

The Visuddhimagga was composed by Buddhaghosa, who worked at the Great Monastery (Mahāvihāra) in Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka, in about the fifth century. The title means the path of purification, and purification here means nibbāna, which is free of every stain. The Visuddhimagga opens with a verse from the Saṁyutta Nikāya: a wise person, established in conduct, developing mind and wisdom, ardent and discerning, can untangle this tangle. The rest of the Visuddhimagga unfolds those three parts of the verse.

Conduct (chapters 1 and 2): ethics and the ascetic practices, matching purification of conduct.
Concentration (chapters 3 to 13): choosing and developing the 40 meditation subjects and the fruits of concentration, matching purification of mind.
Wisdom (chapters 14 to 23): first the soil of wisdom, namely the aggregates, sense bases, elements, faculties, truths and dependent origination (chapters 14 to 17); then purifications three to seven, one chapter each (18 to 22); and finally the benefits of wisdom (23).

The Visuddhimagga pictures its wisdom section as soil, roots and trunk. Teachings such as the aggregates and elements are the soil; purification of conduct and of mind are the roots; the other five purifications are the trunk. The image shows why the seven cannot be pulled apart: a trunk without roots cannot stand, and roots without soil cannot grow. This soil of wisdom is the same ground as the objects of insight, the things vipassana takes as its object.

Where the sixteen insight knowledges fit

Later meditation manuals gathered the knowledges described in the Visuddhimagga into a single list, the 16 stages of insight. Set against the seven purifications of the Visuddhimagga, they fall into place like this:

Purification of conduct and of mind: none of the sixteen yet; this is the base of ethics and concentration.
Purification of view: knowledge distinguishing mind and matter.
Purification by overcoming doubt: knowledge of conditions.
Path and not-path: comprehension and the early knowledge of arising and passing away.
Knowing the way: the nine insight knowledges, from mature arising and passing away to conformity.
Knowing and seeing: path knowledge, with change of lineage just before it and fruition and reviewing after it.

What this means for practice at home

The lesson of the relay chariots holds for everyone, ordained or not. Start with conduct you can really keep, such as the five precepts. Train the mind to settle every day, then use that settled mind to watch body and mind as they are. Do not stop at good conduct because you feel you are a good person now, do not stop at calm because it is pleasant, and do not skip conduct and concentration in a hurry to be wise. Each chariot is there to carry you to the next.

The seven purifications also help you read your own experience more honestly. If the mind is too scattered to see anything clearly, the work right now is purification of mind. If it is calm but you do not yet see body and mind arising and passing, the work is purification of view: turn to mind and matter as they are. If practice is going so well that it is tempting to rest in it, the work is the fifth purification: knowing that even this is not the path. For a step-by-step start, read how to do vipassana. The Visuddhimagga is long, but this one image of the chariots carries its whole design.

Based on: Rathavinīta Sutta (MN 24) · Visuddhimagga, by Buddhaghosa