Lord Maitreya, in The Supreme Tantra, says,Impure, impurely pure, and perfectly pure
Are the three degrees of purity
Relating to sentient beings, bodhisattvas, and sugatas.Impure delusory appearance refers to sentient beings’ appearances. Impurely pure
appearances are of being and pure-lands, increasing in light and intensity from
the first bodhisattva level to the tenth, which is the bodhisattva’s envisionment.
The perfectly pure is the buddha’s envisionment with the twenty-five resultant
dharmas, the twenty-five aspects of buddha-potential in fruition (see section 4.1).
This last is the fourth, the ultimate appearance as the fruit.
Chandrakirti in his Entry into the Middle Way says,
Without dependence upon the relatively real
The ultimate meaning cannot be realized;
If the ultimate meaning is not understood,
Nirvana cannot be achieved.Appearances manifest according to karmically conditioned propensities, like
clouds of impure delusion; through the power of the meditation process, they
dissolve into the sky. After the purification that leaves no residue, the potential of
the five modes of being and the five modes of primal awareness arise like the sun
shining through a gap in the clouds. But in actuality, the intrinsic awareness of
Dzogchen is not produced or initiated by causes and conditions, for the potential of
pure being and primal awareness is intrinsically present and manifests
spontaneously.
All knowledge of things is unreal; appearances are like miracles of the mind, no
more than the cloud display of the rootless all-pervading sky. This is illustrated
and explained by many different metaphors. There is a Tibetan saying: “Don’t
parrot arrant nonsense; repeat only what is important.” Do not irritate intelligent
people by foolishly addressing a trivial point over and over again. On the other
hand, what is crucial and vital should be reiterated. If an attendant is to be sent
away on an important mission, he must first be instructed about the work a few
days before he leaves, and instructed then again a few days later; finally, we need
to give him instruction one last time while seeing him off at the airport. Until we
have a genuine realization that our envisionment of samsara and nirvana is
rootless and baseless, we need to be reminded a hundred times in various ways.
And we shouldn’t feel any irritation about that! As Shabkhar Lama says in his
Flight of the Garuda,
Emaho! My lucky heart-sons!
If the horse is not spurred, it will not gallop;
If the milk is not churned, butter will not congeal.