categories) are like last night’s dream, then we achieve that freedom. Desire is the
yearning never to lose our happiness; anger rears against fear of the pain of
suffering that we try to avoid; through jealousy we compete with people of the
same status to facilitate our own happiness; we envy the good fortune of others;
through pride we presume to possess a clean, happy, eternal body, and this
perception inspires us to challenge other people’s systems of belief; and stupidity is
a lack of percipience in the physical, energetic, and mental dimensions: these five
are the principal causes of suffering for oneself and others. If we know, however,
that these emotions are naturally without substantial existence, just like last
night’s dream, and that they are the illusory play of the mind, then the specific
attribute of suffering—that intolerable sharp pain—will not arise.
In the dream state, if we dream that our beloved son has died, we grieve; but as
soon as we wake up, we know that our son’s death was just a dream image and
our suffering is relieved. Similarly, if we understand that no matter what emotion
we have—whether pride, anger, desire, or anything else—it has no substantial,
inherent existence, that it is just a figment of mind, and if we let it dissolve in
mind, then the basis for suffering vanishes. There is no need to depend upon
intoxication to eradicate suffering. Nor is there any need of guidance from
another; we ourselves are the guide. When we are happy, there is a tendency for
pride to increase and that becomes a hook that drags us down. If at that time we
know everything as magical illusion, the pride of wealth and power will become
the means to bring greater peace, and the round of suffering will cease. In his
Exhortation to Read the Seven Treasuries, Patrul Rinpoche says,
With perseverance, tortured minds’ chains are broken,
Happiness is mellowed, frustration assuaged;
This message is the one that cannot deceive,
So chant The Treasury of the Dharmadhatu as a song!In that way, all phenomena transcend their illusory dualistic nature.
1.7 DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN IMPURE OUTER APPEARANCES AND THE PURE NATURE OF REALITY
Whatever people assert in ordinary conversation, positive or negative, is
determined by the experience that has arisen in their own mind. If they make
claims about what is neither visible nor obvious, they are questioned because their
claims seem beyond proof and thus invalid. The mind works like speech in this
respect. Because the mind accepts only what is seen clearly, what is evident, in
Varanasi the Buddha Shakyamuni first taught the four noble truths, a message
suitable to the minds of ordinary people. According to the perspective of cause and
effect and what to accept and what to reject, the truth of suffering and the truth of
the origin of suffering are the effect and the cause, respectively, of samsara, which
is to be abandoned; and the truth of the cessation of suffering and the truth of the
path to cessation are the effect and the cause, respectively, of nirvana, which is to
be cultivated. Only gradually, later on, do we discover that the only effective way