..續本文上一頁that do have misleading consequences. Scholars always engage in a dialectical discourse in order to spot such flaws so that pupils learn to be critical and to recognize them, too.

　　The great scholars and Siddhas of the past went through the tremendous task and did not shy away from any hardships to preserve the teachings Lord Buddha imparted so sincerely and flawlessly. They felt extremely obliged to explain the meaning of the Buddha”s teachings correctly by meticulously composing treatises. If an error in a treatise slipped in, it was not considered mischievous or insulting to engage in critical rounds of refutations and proof; on the contrary, it encouraged authors to be more demanding of themselves so that mistakes would not occur.

　　Rangjung Dorje took the pain upon himself to write the next verse that presented arguments others may erroneously have.

　　If someone has the negative view

　　That the Buddha qualities have no cause,

　　Or conceive them not to be within oneself,

　　But created by external causes and conditions,

　　What difference is there between that and

　　 the eternalist and nihilist views of non-Buddhists

　　There are people who deny the existence of the precious Buddha nature and even claim that there is no cause for values of being. In the chapters on the unsurpassable qualities of the dharmakaya and the wonderful rupakayas, Rangjung Dorje described the thirty-two qualities of purification and the thirty-two qualities of maturation that appear when the obscurations have been eliminated and the true has emerged. He taught that the immaculate qualities of a Buddha manifest at the time of attainment and are not apparent as long as stains cover and conceal them.

　　The wrong view believes that there is no cause for the elimination of defilements everyone has. Some people mistakenly believe that there is no cause for the appearance of qualities abiding within everyone, and others claim that they are due to external causes and conditions when they do appear. Rangjung Dorje argued that such ideas are not different than those held by non-Buddhists, by Hindus, and others, who believe that Shiva or a god created all that is.

　　12. The Presence of Wisdom

　　In accordance with the teachings of Lord Buddha, the Third Karmapa composed the next verse in the treatise and spoke about the presence of wisdom.

　　The apparent momentary birth and cessation of the “mental events” (of Buddhas)

　　Correspond to the impure mental events (of beings).

　　If (the “mental events” of the Buddhas) were not like that,

　　The activity of the form kayas would cease.

　　However, they are not given the name “mental events,”

　　But (the name) “discriminating wisdom.”

　　In the section on how the form kayas appear in the chapter on the rupakayas, we learned that the purified nadis, vayus, and bindus manifest the rupakayas, the “form bodies of a Buddha.” We saw that the breath and vital airs within the body are interrelated with the mind and therefore with the path to illumination. Those instructions clarified the verse that states,

　　If (the “mental events” of the Buddhas) were not like that,

　　The activity of the form kayas would cease.

　　Mental events are called samskara in Sanskrit, “du-byed in Tibetan. The Sanskrit word is from sam, “completely,” and kara, “to create” or “make,” therefore samskara means “to make something perfectly, to put something together completely.” It can also mean “to accomplish, adorn, cleanse, train, educate.” The specific meaning that this word has in Buddhism, in terms of the twelve sequences of interdependent origination, is the creative power of the unenlightened mind, when living beings - out of weakness - turn their hearts away from natural human decency and perpetuate and reinforce afflictive thoughts. In terms of the five skandhas…

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