Noting, And, Healing Practice.

Ross – Please give an opinion on this practice and new understanding. When I meditate on pure mind, it’s very powerful. My body feels light and soft. My mind feels free and happy. I do not abide in that practice very often. I had an insight that I can create the same experience by saying love. – So, one phrase would be, ‘there is pure mind’, this feeling of lightness and happiness. And I can also now say, ‘there is love’.

And I also feel the same feelings. It seems to me that what may have happened is there is a new understanding, a blending, so to speak, a unity of oneness. – That pure mind and love are the same thing for me due to my 30 plus years of practicing meditation.

AI – My opinion is that this is a meaningful and potentially fruitful maturation of your practice. I would describe your insight carefully:

“Pure mind” and “love” have become two doorways into the same wholesome, embodied state for me. That formulation fully honors your experience without requiring the metaphysical claim that pure mind and love are universally identical.

After more than thirty years of meditation, the word love may now function as a concentrated practice cue. It carries an accumulated history of attention, safety, openness and non-harming. Saying it may rapidly gather qualities that previously required a longer meditation: bodily tranquillity, lightness, happiness, freedom from resistance and an uncontracted heart.

“Pure mind” appears to approach this state from the side of clarity and freedom from defilement. “Love” approaches it from the side of warmth and benevolence. When the mind is temporarily free from greed, ill will and confusion, it may naturally feel loving. When non-possessive love is present, the mind may naturally feel clear and undefiled.

In that experiential sense, the two meet. 

A Theravāda perspective

The Pāli discourses describe the mind as luminous and as either obscured by or freed from “incoming defilements.” Interpretations of this passage vary, so it is best not to turn “pure mind” into a permanent essence or hidden self.

It can be understood more modestly as the mind presently unobstructed by certain defilements. AN 1:50–53, Luminous Mind.

The lightness, softness and happiness you describe may correspond to several familiar wholesome factors:

  • Pīti — joy or energizing gladness
  • Passaddhi — bodily and mental tranquillity
  • Sukha — happiness or ease
  • Samādhi — gatheredness and unification
  • Temporary freedom from ill will and internal conflict

Mettā—if “love” means unconditional, non-possessive goodwill—can support these qualities. Theravāda teaching nevertheless distinguishes mettā from final liberation: loving-kindness is a profound purification and mind-release, while liberating insight also requires seeing impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self. Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli on mettā. 

An important development in your model

Until now, the Noting, And, Healing Practice has primarily described rebalancing:

There is anger.
And.
Forgiveness.

Your insight introduces a second application: unification or nourishment. Two wholesome recognitions can deepen one another:

There is pure mind.
And.
Love.

This does not heal one difficult state with its balancing quality. Instead, it brings together two aspects of an already wholesome experience—clarity and warmth.

You could explore it this way:

  1. Say slowly, “There is pure mind.”
  2. Feel the bodily lightness, softness and freedom without trying to intensify them.
  3. Introduce “And.”
  4. Let “and” create openness rather than expectation.
  5. Say “Love.”
  6. Eventually hold the complete phrase:
    “There is pure mind, and love.”
  7. Release all words and rest in the actual experience.
  8. Notice what remains when the labels disappear. 

The final silence is important.

It helps distinguish the direct experience from the concepts “pure mind” and “love.”

How to test the insight wisely

The pleasant bodily feeling is encouraging, but pleasantness alone does not establish purification. A useful test is what the experience produces:

  • Does love become less possessive and more inclusive?
  • Does the mind become clearer rather than dreamy?
  • Is there less grasping for the experience to continue?
  • Does it increase patience, honesty and non-harming?
  • Can unpleasant experience still be acknowledged?
  • Does it produce humility rather than “my mind is pure”?
  • Can you see that even this beautiful state arises and passes?

If so, the practice is moving in a wholesome direction.

There are also near enemies to watch gently:

  • The near enemy of love is attachment, sentimentality or wanting something in return.
  • A near enemy of the idea of pure mind could be emotional blankness, avoidance, spiritual superiority or attachment to a beautiful meditative state.

Authentic love remains warm while granting freedom.
Authentic purity remains lucid, responsive and unattached.

My preferred expression of your insight would therefore be:

In my experience, pure mind and non-possessive love reveal the same inner field: clear, light, warm and free from opposition. They are not necessarily identical concepts, but they have become mutually accessible expressions of one wholesome experience.

That is a grounded, mature understanding—and a valuable new dimension of the Noting, And, Healing Practice.

 

“There is LOVE”

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