“Let’s take the example of clouds appearing in the sky,” replied Bhagawan.
“They are not different from the nature of the sky, but suddenly they obscure
the sky. Emotions arise in the same way. The luminous nature of mind is
seemingly suddenly obscured by emotion, but in reality it is never obscured.”Finally, the child said “By your grace, I have gained full self-confidence. I have
spoken my mind without hesitation, and now I seek your forgiveness.”Then the Bhagawan Buddha took out his right hand from his robe, and the
child took hold of a finger of his hand and stood up. Bhagawan took him out of
that empty house and put him on the path. The people were surprised that the
Bhagawan answered the questions of a mere child who was so afflicted, and
the people were amazed and paid homage to the Buddha.“You have purified your karma,” he said to the child. “Now remember the root
of your past virtue and let it be known to the people gathered here by a display
of some miracle.” Then the child sprang from the ground to a spot seven feet
high in the sky and light radiated from him and that light spread over Sravasti
and throughout the whole world.That story is told in verse in the sutra. Here it is simplified in prose. Read the
sutra if you would like to know more.
As in the sutra The Teaching of the Noble Youth “Incredible Light,” The Supreme
Tantra of Lord Maitreya notes that the mind has the quality of clear light but is
obscured by adventitious emotional afflictions. Nine similes illustrating our
ignorance of the hidden luminous mind are given there: (i) ignorance of buddha
wrapped within a closed lotus; (ii) ignorance of honey within a flower; (iii)
ignorance of a seed within its chaff; (iv) ignorance of gold in a cesspit; (v)
ignorance of treasure beneath the earth; (vi) ignorance of a tree inside the bark;
(vii) ignorance of a jewel inside tattered clothes; (viii) ignorance of a king inside
the womb of a poor woman; (ix) ignorance of solid gold in the mud. Like that, the
buddhas guide us by metaphor. Buddha-nature is wrapped within desire, hatred,
and ignorance as illustrated by the nine examples above. Those who do not realize
it are like an elephant keeper who keeps his elephant in a stable and then goes
searching for it in the jungle—a totally futile exercise. Knowing that buddha is
within but looking for him outside is like sitting beside a lake and begging for
water, or like having a feast spread in front of one and yet dying of hunger, and so
on.
Believing that happiness and sadness depend on external objects, those who do
not understand that buddha is within are, as we say, deluded. So all human
beings, great, small, and middling, always strive to attain happiness and abandon
sadness only through external objects. We search for objects, argue about objects,
wander around objects, but we do not investigate where happiness and sorrow
come from, their cause, or who experiences them. Failing to investigate the source
of happiness and sadness and searching for them instead in the objective field is