When the King of Uddiyana found the Lotus-Born in the middle of Dhanakosha Lake, he asked these questions of Padmasambhava:
"Wondrous youthful Son of the Lotus, who is your father? Who is your mother?" and, "To which country do you belong?" Because they were on the Indian continent, he asked, "To which caste do you belong?" Since Padmasambhava manifested in the form of an eight-year old, the king also asked the question, "What food have you been eating?" Padmasambhava answered, "My father is the wisdom of awareness, and my
mother is Samantabhadri, which is the union of bliss and emptiness." He then said, "The country of my citizenship is the unborn dharmadhatu. I belong to the caste of inseparable space and awareness, and the food that sustains me is the food of duality." Now we know his parents, what he has been eating to sustain his activity of conquering emotions, and the country of his citizenship. It is not so outrageous. It seems quite normal. We have a father, we have a
mother, and we have a country of citizenship.
In this youthful infant on a lotus, there was a sense of freshness, of fresh breath, in the very nature of his manifestation. He was full of inquisitive mind, and completely free of any fear of touching anything. This seems to be the nature of our awakened mind, the child-like aspect of our mind, which is also infant-like and completely in the nature of primordial freshness. There is a
sense of total freedom from fear, complete space, and complete fearlessness about touching anything.
This is the primordial state of our mind. The youthful infant, Padmasambhava, manifesting on a lotus, is exactly the nature of our mind. Our mind may be born in the muddy lake of samsara, and the lotus may be born in this muddy lake of samsara, but the lotus itself is completely free from any dust. It remains beautiful, full of color and freshness. Actually, this is quite
contradictory in a way. It is a very interesting phenomenon. The pond and the mud of samsara actually keep the lotus fresh. And within that lotus, there is an enlightened infant, full of freshness and inquisitive mind.
In a Vajrayana sense, samsara keeps nirvana alive. Emotions keep our enlightened mind alive in some way. As we say in our lineage prayers, "samsara and nirvana are inseparable." They are like the two sides of a coin.
Whether it is samsara that we see, or nirvana, depends on which side of the coin we are looking. It depends on how we flip our coin. And when we don't know how to flip it, we flip out.
This is an excerpt from the full text of the article published in Bodhi 5.
