Property:SanskritTranslation
From Bodhicitta
This is a property of type Text.
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If you argue that the grossness is not separate from the feeling of pleasure, it is evident that pleasure is impermanent. If you accept that something non-existent cannot come into existence because of its non-existence, +
You accept, even against your will, the coming into existence of something manifest which does not exist. If you accept that the result is in the cause, someone eating rice is eating dung! +
Cotton seed would be bought at the price of cloth and worn as clothing! If you argue that ordinary people do not see this because of ignorance, one who understands this reality is in the same position. +
Anyway, even ordinary people know about that. In what way do they not see it? If you argue that there is no validity in the knowledge of ordinary people, even the direct perception of something manifest is not real. +
[Objection] If a means of knowledge is not a means of knowledge, surely knowledge gained by that means is false. Therefore, the emptiness of phenomena is not in reality ascertained. +
An Objector Interjects: If the validity of all sources of knowledge is denied, then would it not follow that all objects of human knowledge are false? Therefore, in an ultimate sense the emptiness of all entities cannot be established. +
The Author Replies: If one does not hold on to the reality of the imagined entity, then one does not grasp at its unreality. Therefore, the nonexistence of an entity that is unreal is itself clearly unreal. +
then the Buddha transmigrates too! What is the purpose, then, of the practices that lead to awakening?
The Author Replies: Magical creations do not cease while the series of conditions that produce them persists without interruption; +
In light of all of the above arguments, we conclude that nothing comes about without a cause, and that nothing is found preexisting in its conditions, whether taken separately or jointly. +
Nothing comes from elsewhere, nothing remains, nothing goes elsewhere. What difference is there between a magical creation and this that the foolish imagine to be real? +
One must carefully examine this matter: what is fashioned by magical trickery and what is fashioned by causes, whence has it arisen, where is it going to? +
That which we see in the presence of other phenomena, and which we do not see when they are absent, in what sense is this real, since it is artificially created and sustained, like the reflection in a mirror? +
What use does the already-existing entity have for causes? But, then, again, what use does the not-yet-existing have for them? +
No change occurs in w hat is not existing, even through the agency of hundreds of millions of causes. How could something in such a state become a real entity? Yet, what other thing could come into existence? +
If there is no existence at the time of its inexistence, at what point in time does an entity come into existence? For, non-existence cannot be displaced as long as the entity has not come into existence, +
and it is impossible for the entity to occur as long as non-existence has not been displaced. The existing entity cannot participate in non-existence, because this would lead to the absurd conclusion of two natures in one entity. +
Thus, nowhere is there cessation, nowhere is there existence. Therefore, all this universe is unborn, without cessation. +
but once the series of conditions is cut off, the phantom arises no more, even in a conventional sense.
An Objector Interjects: But if the mistaken mind does not exist either, then who apprehends the illusion? +
By extension of this analysis all the stations of sentient beings are like dreams, similar to the stem of the banana plant.<span class="smw-highlighter" data-type="8" data-state="inline" data-title="Note 1" title="1" tabindex="0"><span class="smwtticon bca-note note">1</span><span class="smwttcontent">The banana tree has no heartwood or essence; when its layers are peeled away, nothing is left.</span></span> In reality there is no difference between those who have attained the peace of nirvana and those who have not. +
Thus, among empty phenomena what can be gained, or lost? Who will be honored or despised, by whom? +
