The Crappy Story (Or, I Don't Believe in Samsara)
Anatta is a seal, not a stage. Awareness has always been non-dual. Appearances have always been non-arising... All are always and already so. Only dualistic and inherent views are obscuring these experiential facts... Self-liberation is the thorough insight that this liberation is always and already is; spontaneously present, naturally perfected!
— Thusness ("Presence is Spontaneously Perfected")
In the light of this empty clarity,
I have come to a simple discovery
About a view I absorbed—
Long ago, in a dream,
From a great scholar who knew many, many things:
A view of liberation as "digesting samskaras."
This idea of karmic residues
As something actually existing in the subtle body,
That are latent, then activate,
Birthing profound individual suffering,
And perhaps, one day, fully dissolve—
Thus the individual is liberated!—
Is just a crappy story.
If the samskaras have no existence
Apart from the fabrication in the moment—
Which is birthless;
If they have no actual substance;
If they don't arise from an independently existing bodymind;
Then the idea of digesting them is ridiculous.
It's like trying to remove, purify, or clear out
A phantom that has no base.
Like trying to clean a hologram.
Wow! What a surprise!
I, the yogini, laugh, and delight!
If there is no continuity of a process,
Then the idea of a state
In which these magical residues are gone, one day,
Was a dream to begin with.
There is nothing to correct.
This is Mahamudra.
I wish this could be explained, but it cannot.
Listen—
The view of trying to get rid of something
Is based on a subtle self-hatred.
It splits the indivisible sky.
The pain becomes a demon;
The wound is the ghost, fighting a shadow.
Shatter the view!
Innately pure, unborn—
The phenomena are simply This.
Afflictive emotions: nothing but This.
The "residues": nothing but This!
Primordial Wisdom Play.
Shatter the karmic compulsion!
Shatter habitual resistance, control!
Cut through!
You want to do something about the experience?
This is the identity of the practitioner—a hidden pride.
Maybe the story about "samskaras" was initially a useful one.
Unlike the western therapeutic idea of healing,
With its suffocating, sterile worldview
This spiritual story helped to cover the shame
With a noble purpose, a sense of sacred.
The idea of someone walking the path,
A process of realization.
A hope of nirvana…
In the end, it turned out to be imagination.
A sky-flower.
A hallucination.
The funny thing is
That the great scholar also knew this.
They said: karma is not real!
The scriptures describe this paradox.
They said this, while consumed by their demons,
Terrified by the shadowy depths.
Karma is nothing but the immediate display
Samsara and nirvana in a timeless flash
In which we crave, fight, or resolve imaginary stuff.
The desire, clinging, and aversion... neither real nor unreal.
Terrified of the shame—it’s like annihilation.
This pride, this I-making,
Is the fundamental delusion.
Listen—
The seeds have no power
If they are not fed with this conception.
Their true nature...
Is the Great Expanse.
Like a phantasmagoric mirage,
Samsara and nirvana have no birth.
Are baseless.
Primordially pure.
It’s like a dream!
This is Emptiness.
Shunyata.
Healing beyond healing.
I, the yogini, rejoice in groundlessness.
I dance, laugh, and enjoy Great Bliss.
