have lost the concept of the door as a single entity. If we accept the human body as
a single composition of its upper and lower constituents, then the head and the
feet become identical. This is clearly not rational. By the same token, if we
investigate atoms or particles, by the logic of one and many (or singular and
plural), we will find that insofar as they can exist neither as a unity nor a
multiplicity, they are mere imputations of mind and are actually empty.
This emptiness is not a vacuum. It is always filled with the appearances of any
kind of thing whatsoever—houses, possessions, mountains, creatures, feelings and
judgments, and so forth. All these things, so full of expectation and apprehension,
are nonexistent yet apparent, and they are called “samsaric phenomena” or
“mental projections.”
Consider another example: human beings believe that the earth is our
supporting ground, but some animals, like rock-eating frogs, regard it as food.
Similarly, water is considered by human beings to be a liquid for drinking and
washing and a source of nourishment for plants; but for fish, this same water is
regarded as a house or as clothes. Similarly, the differing karmic imprints in
various beings determine different responses to the same substance. For example,
meat creates pleasure in tigers and other carnivorous animals that regard it as
food, whereas rabbits and other herbivorous animals regard it with fearful
distaste. Likewise, people who smoke cigarettes gain pleasure from it, while the
very smell of it creates headache and nausea in nonsmokers.
In this way different types of beings share a common collective karmic vision
while at the same time experiencing differing personal karmic visions. Water,
earth, and the other great elements appear similarly to all human beings as a
common perception of the outer world, while the individual’s personal vision is
the product of his or her own dispositions, perspective, hearing, and experience.
These latter dissimilar conditions lead us to see the very same thing as either a
source of pleasure or a source of sorrow.
1.5 ALL THINGS ARE FIGMENTS OF THE MIND
Appearances that in reality are not separate from our mental projections are
mistaken for an objective and independent outer part, while our experience of
what seems to be an independent inner reality is mistaken for an independent
apprehending subject; yet neither of these apparent poles goes beyond the limits of
the intellectual mind.
In The Wish-Fulfilling Treasury, Longchenpa says,
Intoxicated by the psychedelic dhatura [thorn apple],
In the vast gamut of appearances, no matter what arises for us,
All is hallucination and thus nonexistent;
The six classes of beings and all delusory appearances,
Likewise, are pastiches of a mistaken intellect:
Know every single one as an image of emptiness!