The Changeless Nature

132 The Changeless Nature325 Cool, delicious, soft, light water fallen from the cloudsacquires so many tastes through contact with salty and other grounds.Likewise the rain of the eightfold water of the sublime,falling from the heart of that vastest cloud of compassionate love,assumes many a flavour according to beings 1 various states of mind.326 Those of appreciative faith, the middling and those with animosityform three groups comparable to humans, peafowl and craving spirits.327 in the cloudless end of spring, it is men and these non-flying birds,and in the summertime, when it rains, the craving spirits, who suffer.This example is made since, depending on whether there is or nota rain of dharma from compassion's multitudes of clouds,then worldly beings will either aspire to or have animosity for dharma.328 Deluging mighty raindrops, hurling down hailstones or thunderbolts,clouds do not consider the small fauna or those run to the hills.Likewise the clouds of perfect knowledge and compassionate love,with their very fine or larger drops, do not mind that somewill purify their defilements and others tend to believe in a self.329 In this samsara of beginningless births and deaths,there are five sorts of sentient being.Just as there is no nice smell in excrement,among those five there is no contentmentTheir sufferings are like the unceasing painof burns, wounds, chemical scalds and so on.Compassion's clouds cause a mighty rainof true dharma which will soothe all those.330 Those endowed with prajna have no longingfor even the highest celestial or human sovereignty,having understood that divine death and transmigration,as well as humans' constant searching, are 'misery'.They have also seen, through prajna and through followingwith trust the tathagatas' excellent teachings:'this is suffering', 'this is its cause'and 'this is its cessation' through 'understanding'.