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What are the refined defilements? Ajahn Dtun explains that coarse and moderate defilements rest on attachment to the body; once these are gone, greed, anger and sexual attraction no longer remain. What is left is a subtle delusion in which the mind attaches to itself, to the knower and to the present moment, taking pleasant mental feeling, memory, mental formations and consciousness as self.
This, he says, is the work of the anagami, the non-returner, whose mind is clean but not yet pure. Such a person, if they die before finishing, is reborn in the Pure Abodes and never takes a human birth again. Mindfulness and wisdom refined to that level see these four mental aggregates as mere functions of mind and let them go, until there is no attachment to past, future or present. He cites Ajahn Chah: no going forward, no going back, no standing still. For those still attached to the body, contemplating the mind simply means letting go of thoughts and moods, and the body must be contemplated first.