NAGARJUNA
The nature of all things
Appears like a reflection,
Pure and naturally quiescent,
With a non-dual identity of suchness.
The common mind imagines a self
Where there is nothing at all,
And it conceives of emotional states -
Happiness, suffering, and equanimity.
The six states of being in Samsara,
The happiness of heaven,
The suffering of hell,
Are all false creations, figments of mind.
Likewise the ideas of bad action causing suffering,
Old age, disease and death,
And the idea that virtue leads to happiness,
Are mere ideas, unreal notions.
Like an artist frightened
By the devil he paints,
The sufferer in Samsara
Is terrified by his own imagination.
Like a man caught in quicksands
Thrashing and struggling about,
So beings drown
In the mess of their own thoughts.
Mistaking fantasy for reality
Causes an experience of suffering;
Mind is poisoned by interpretation
Of consciousness of form.
Dissolving figment and fantasy
With a mind of compassionate insight,
Remain in perfect awareness
In order to help all beings.
So acquiring conventional virtue
Freed from the web of interpretive thought,
Insurpassable understanding is gained
As Buddha, friend to the world.
***Excerpts from MAHAMUDRA VISION
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