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The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral,
Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness,
Like they who lick the honey from a razor’s edge.
How pitiful are they who cling strongly to concrete reality:
Turn your attention within, my heart friends.
Nyoshul Khen Ripoche
Once you have the View, although the delusory perceptions of samsara may arise in your mind, you will be like the sky; when a rainbow appears in front of it, it’s not particularly flattered, and when the clouds appear it’s not particularly disappointed either. There is a deep sense of contentment. You chuckle from inside as you see the facade of samsara and nirvana; the View will keep you constantly amused, with a little inner smile bubbling away all the time.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
When the compassionate bodhicitta radiates beyond conceptions and conceptual states, it is known as prajnaparamita, the practice of transcendental knowledge. Good concentration in itself will not break through our attachment to samsara. We have to go deeper, in order to realize everything as a transparent display of the primordial truth. Transcendental wisdom, the prajnaparamita, realizes all conditions as a display of the primordial nature, and it takes us beyond acceptance and rejection, hope and fear, dualistic thoughts, and ego-clinging. Transcendental knowledge breaks through every one of those notions and reveals the vastness of great equanimity. The nature of this paramita is to understand phenomena clearly, seeing all beings as they are without distortion. To have a perfect insight into the relative, absolute, and unified levels of truth is the basic understanding of the prajnaparamita.
If you cling to the disciplines of generosity, morality, or patience, you are merely going from one extreme of samsara to the other. You simply create a new form of bondage. In order to free ourselves from this trap, we have to release all our ego-clinging and break through the net of dualistic conceptions. The teachings of the prajnaparamita help bring this about. Rather than holding on to a narrow and limited understanding about one aspect of the practice, we are availed of a vast, panoramic view. Remember, paramita means going beyond, or transcending, the dualistic application of these practices. This sixth paramita transforms the other five into their transcendental state. Only the light of transcendental knowledge makes this possible.
Door to Inconceivable Wisdom and Compassion
...if you have not purified ordinary appearances into emptiness, how could you possibly meditate on the mandala circle? The fact that all phenomena are emptiness, that samsara and nirvana are inseparable, is the very reason we are able to actualize this by meditating on the mandala circle. In other words, emptiness is the basis for the development stage. As it is said, "For the one to whom emptiness is possible, anything is possible." If all phenomena were not empty and ordinary appearances were truly present, development stage meditation would be impossible, as the following quotation points out: "Even though one might empower wheat to be rice, rice won't actually appear." However, even if all phenomena are realized to be empty in this way, without the momentum of great compassion you will not be able to manifest the rupakayas to benefit others. This is similar to the listeners and solitary buddhas, who enter into a state of cessation and do not benefit others with rupakaya emanations.
Once one understands this point, it will be like the following saying: ''All these phenomena are like an illusion and birth is like taking a stroll in a park...." Said differently, one will no longer dwell in existence, while through compassion, one will not get caught up in a state of peace either. This is the great, universal path of the offspring of the victorious ones. For all these reasons, making sure the three absorptions are not isolated from one another is a vitally important point.
Jigme Lingpa, Patrul Rinpoche, and Getse Mahapandita, from Deity, Mantra, and Wisdom: Development Stage Meditation in Tibetan Buddhist Tantra
The Buddha was often referred to as the Awakened One. Awakened to all the illusions and freed from them. The analogy that is often used is that the non-enlightened state is like being asleep. This is because your Buddha-nature, your enlightened awareness, is masked by a the sleep of ignorance, greed, and hatred. When you awake to the fact that that all is part of the illusion of egocentricity, you are free from that illusion. So you are awakened from the ego-illusion and all that goes with it.
Rob Nairn
Nirvana is the actual antidote or “active ingredient” in the medicine of the Dharma. A single, direct, nondualistic realization of emptiness eradicates permanently some portion of the desire, hatred, and ignorance that have bound one in misery for infinite cycles of time up until that moment. Repeated realizations over many lifetimes are still needed before all of the ancient roots of ignorance can be eradicated. During this training, the bodhisattva alternates between periods of meditation on emptiness and periods of compassionate action in the world. Even after the bodhisattva escapes samsara altogether, she must still practice for a long time to overcome the “hangover” of dualistic appearances, the aftereffects of having been ignorant for so long. Finally, these last limitations are cleared away and the bodhisattva becomes a buddha. A buddha continuously knows emptiness directly while also simultaneously acting compassionately in the world of persons and forms.
Guy Newland, Introduction to Emptiness: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path
All the violence, fear and suffering
that exists in this world
comes from grasping at "self".
What use is this great monster to you?
if you do not let go of the "self",
there will never be an end to your suffering.
Shantideva
