Kashyap, it is like this: just as the one who is protected by mantra and
medicine cannot be harmed by poison, so the bodhisattva who possesses
wisdom and skillful means cannot be harmed even by the poisons of
emotional affliction. Poison can do no harm to those people who recite mantra,
and bodhisattvas who possess wisdom cannot be deceived by emotivity.
Kashyap, it is like this: The excrement of the big city is valuable for sugarcane
fields and grape fields, and, Kashyap, the fertilizer of the bodhisattva’s
emotional affliction benefits buddha-dharma. Just as the excretion of the big
city is useful as fertilizer in sugarcane fields, so the emotional afflictions of the
bodhisattvas are beneficial to Buddha’s teaching.In luminous mind, emotion can be taken as an enhancement, and with the
Dzogchen view, there is no need to speak more. In the tantra The Lamp of the
Three Modes, it is said,
In one single clear meaning, no ignorance;
Many skillful means, no difficulty;
With the power of a sharp mind,
The path of tantra is best!In that way thought helps rather than harms the yogin. As the rigzin Garab Dorje
says, as quoted by Longchenpa in The Heart-Essence of Vimalamitra,
In pure timeless spaciousness,
Momentary attention to adventitious pure presence,
Like a jewel recovered from the ocean depths,
The dharmakaya is not created or modified by anyone.This crux of “thought released upon its arising” is the main Cutting Through
training of view and meditation combined.
3.23 DETACHMENT FROM SAMSARA, NIRVANA, AND THE PATH BETWEEN THEM IS THE CRUX
The famous Indian king Ashoka ruled almost one third of India, and there has
never been another like him. One day he invited his Hindu priests to the palace
and asked them how he could become even more powerful and famous. The
priests advised him that he had accomplished most of the things that needed to be
done, but if he yearned for still greater fame, he should build ten thousand stupas
and sacrifice human beings at each. The king, agreeing to this plan, went to the
borders of his empire and ordered the construction of a beautiful temple. He then
appointed a priest to take care of the temple, ordering him to kill any person who
might visit. The priest began his duty of sacrificing the devotees who came to visit
the temple, and when the number of sacrificial victims had reached five thousand,
a monk, a disciple of the arhat Kriti, who had reached the stage of the path of
training, happened to present himself there. The priest caught him and was about