The Vajra Essence

“Like the sun briefly appearing through a break in the clouds, this will not remain for long. Why? Because there are no teachers who know how to explain it, and there are few people who have the karma, prayers, and fortune to receive it. Thus, just as it has emerged from absolute space, it will reabsorb back into it.”

Some cannot calm their thoughts because the mind is so agitated, [31] and they experience uncomfortable pains and maladies in the heart, the life-force channel, and so on. Those with unstable minds, with a wind constitution, or with coarse minds may fall unconscious or slip into a trance. Such people should relax and let thoughts be as they are, continually observing them with unwavering mindfulness and careful introspection.

external space and the internal mind the same or different?

Establishing the Mind as Baseless and Rootless

the four thoughts that turn the mind40 — and the seven uncommon inner preliminaries.41

Phase 1: Taking the Impure Mind as the Path

To those fettered by selfishness, I teach that by opening their hearts to all beings throughout space, without concern for their own welfare, they will see the truth of the nonduality of self and other.”

However, only those who have stored vast collections of merit in many ways, over incalculable eons, will encounter this path. They will have aspired repeatedly and extensively to reach the state of perfect enlightenment, and they will have previously sought the path through other yānas, establishing propensities to reach this path. No others will encounter it.

The great, sublime path that brings all sentient beings to the grounds and paths34 of liberation is called the swift path of the clear-light Great Perfection. This is the most sublime of all Dharmas. It is a general synthesis of all the paths, the goal of all yānas, and an expansive treasury of all secret mantras.

This illusorily displayed buddhafield was vast and spacious, and its surface was smooth, level, and pliant to the touch. Verdant hills of medicinal herbs [6] were fragrant with mists of pleasing aromas. The whole ground was completely covered with various radiant, luminous, clear, sparkling, shimmering, lovely flowers in shades of white, yellow, red, green, and blue and variegated hues. In the four directions were four oceans of ambrosia imbued with eight excellent qualities.24 On the shores of those great oceans were pebbles of jewels, sands of gold, turquoise meadows, and overarching halos of rainbows.

Forests of wish-fulfilling trees flourished in the four cardinal directions, billowing forth clouds of sensory offerings. Various types of beautiful apparitional birds voiced