As mentioned above, “Our ordinary perception is similar to perception when we
are under the influence of dhatura,” and, as quoted from The King of Samadhi
Sutra, “Eyes, nose, and ears cannot be trusted.” We grow strong in confidence
through such statements. By force of understanding that the six kinds of beings are
figments of mind, we gain confidence in the undeniable evidence that an
individual’s different actions produce variable experience of happiness or
suffering. Without needing to examine cause and effect, we will know
indisputably that this is so.
In The Treasury of the Dharmadhatu, Longchenpa says,
Creativity is projected as display into another dimension,
Where it appears as the multifarious variety of the universe.
Never say categorically that there is no cause and effect!When we gain full confidence in the interdependence of outer and inner causes
and conditions, the knot of hope and fear regarding acceptance of nirvana and
rejection of samsara will be untied instantaneously. At that moment we become
great yogins and yoginis, perfected in the matrix of pure presence that is the
sameness of samsara and nirvana. Anyone, man or woman, who hears,
experiences, and realizes such a view will remain in the state of permanent
supreme blissfulness or enjoy the happiness of uncontaminated primal awareness
as the most fortunate of noble beings. Though such beings appear outwardly
human, their mind is the same as Buddha. These yogins and yoginis experience
everything—both suffering and happiness—as happiness.
How do ordinary beings experience suffering and happiness? When our daily
work goes well, whether business, manufacturing, education, farming, office
management, politics, or anything else, we feel pleasure. When it goes badly, we
feel unhappiness. Sometimes unwanted things occur, and we suffer. Like a
revolving wheel, happiness and suffering alternate continuously in ordinary
people’s experience no matter whether they are leaders or common people, rich or
poor. Obviously, every individual experiences both suffering and happiness.
In this world, at this very present moment, some are singing out of happiness,
and some are crying out of frustration. Since both happiness and suffering are free
from causality, we always tend to feel joy in pleasure and sorrow in suffering, and
if we are happy, we see all as pleasure, and if we suffer, we see all as sorrow.
Ignorant of our own self-envisionment, we see pleasure as continuous, and
likewise we regard suffering as true and unremitting whenever we are stuck in it.
Due to this, if we get a little happiness, arrogance increases, and if we get a little
suffering, aversion increases, and so forth. Arrogance and aversion are like the
roots of a tree out of which the branches of suffering grow.
This happens because we do not know that both happiness and suffering are
figments of mind. As mentioned above, yogins’ and yoginis’ own envisionment of
illusion cannot torment them because they have understood that all happiness and
suffering are merely mental appearances, and that, free of all marks of referential
focus, the nature of mind is nonexistent and sealed by the impress of the