are all released in the matrix of the dharmakaya.
Only Dzogchen yogins and yoginis with such an understanding can boast of
freedom from karma. Just as when we fall sick, we need a doctor to heal us, or
when attacked by an enemy, we need to fight, or when we suffer some great loss
and thus endure some acute pain—as long as we are at the mercy of
circumstances, we should never say that there is no karmic cause and effect, or
even consider the possibility of its absence, because we cannot hide it from
ourselves. In Entry into the Middle Way, Chandrakirti said, “Take karmic cause and
effect for granted!” Just a single erroneous thought about the validity of karmic
cause and effect will bring endless negative karma. So it is imperative that we
trust in the conventional law of karma and follow correctly the rejection of vice
and the cultivation of virtue.
3.8 THE EVIDENCE OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF UNCHANGEABLE SELF-BENEFICIAL PURE
PRESENCE IS EQUANIMITY IN THE FACE OF THE EIGHT WORLDLY OBSESSIONS
In brief, although it is difficult to evaluate one’s own mind, still, we cannot keep
the mind secret from ourselves. Also we cannot judge the worth of our training. If
our pure presence is constant, or if genuine emptiness and compassion are
generated, then the evidence of that is an absence of hope regarding the four
positive mundane obsessions and an absence of fear in the face of the four
negative mundane obsessions. The four enjoyable mundane obsessions are taking
pleasure in profit, sensory pleasure, good reputation, and praise, and the four
abhorrent mundane obsessions are the loss that leads to poverty, the pain from
illness and robbery, the notoriety produced by false accusation, and the blame in
public for our faults or public criticism in general.
3.9 THE EVIDENCE OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF UNCHANGEABLE ALTRUISTIC PURE PRESENCE IS
SPONTANEOUS COMPASSION AND RELIANCE ON THE LAWS OF KARMA AND THEIR RESULTS
Since beings of the six realms have not understood the nature of pure presence,
internally due to dualistic perception as the cause and externally due to the five
sensual pleasures as condition, so all beings from beginningless time cling to “I”
and “mine,” and, as in a nightmare, they suffer. For them we have compassion.
Every single one of them has been a parent who cared for us lovingly. They all
wish for happiness, but they are unable to find the cause of it. With all their heart,
they want to avoid suffering, but they always create it for themselves and are
tormented by it. They are like a crowd of the blind left in the middle of a field
without any help. Compassion for them is a natural response, like a mother’s
instant response to her baby’s cries, as if she were caught by a naked electric wire.
A yogin or yogini who has realized emptiness naturally feels compassion toward
confused beings from the bottom of the heart.
In his Ketaka Commentary, Ju Mipham has: