GENTLY WHISPERED ~
28
ing that transparent clarity. In the same way, what we experience in samsara is rather like this clear water being obscured by pollution, as our inherent, ever-present buddha nature is masked by these four veils of obscuration. This situation of obscuration is also termed alaya. Alaya, then, is not only the fundamental or original state of consciousness, but it is also the discursive consciousness, the confused awareness from which arise all of the illusory or confused perceptions common among sentient beings. On the one hand, one.has the pure alaya, which is the inherent nature of mind itself as pristine awareness, this pure water. On the other hand, one has the practical situation of this impure alaya, which is the fundamental source of confusion and illusion due to the four different veils of confusion of the mind, this impure backwater. At this moment we are unenlightened sentient beings, which means that what we experience is an admixture of both the impure and pure alaya. Simultaneously, samsara is both the inherent (but obscured) buddha nature of mind and also the levels of confusion that result in this impure alaya, or the phenomenal world. Nirvana, however, is unobscured awareness having no confusion or karmic fruition to give rise to phenomenal causality. This concept of pure and impure alaya is important to comprehend. To use another metaphor, take the concept of the sun shining in a cloudless sky, an image of clarity and spaciousness, as the fundamental nature of mind. It is entirely possible that the sky can be obscured by clouds, fog, or mist, all of which can prevent the direct perception of the sun shining in the clear sky. Indeed, these clouds can also give rise to all kinds of other developments, such as lightning, thunder, hail, rain, or snow, which can completely obscure the sky's clear spaciousness. In the same way, these levels of ignorance and confusion of the mind give the result of all of the illusory projections that are ultimately unreal experiences which we, as unenlightened sentient beings, undergo in the belief that this is real. Because these delusions obscure true clarity, the result is sentient suffering and pain. In this case, the complication (such as the hail, the rain, and so forth, in our metaphor) is that pain, suffering, and confusion are experienced as a result of this mixture of the pure and the impure alaya.