The Changeless Nature

Buddha Nature 55The man who tries to get the honey surrounded by myriads ofhoney-bees disperses all the bees and procures the honey as he wishes.In this example, the untainted intelligence (buddha-nature) which isin all beings is like the honey and the victorious ones, skilled invanquishing the bee-like negative affects, are like the man.Third ExampleUnthreshed kernels of grains, still inside their husks, are unfit foruse as food by man. Whoever wants to use them for food has to firstremove the grain from the husk.Similarly, as long as the essence of the victors, present in all beingsbut mixed with the impurities of the negative affects, has not beenfreed from its entanglement with those negative affects, then itsbuddha-activity in the three worlds 40 will not be accomplished.Not yet de-husked and incompletely-threshed kernels of rice,buckwheat and barley still have their husks, 'beards' and so on. Justas these are unusable as tasty food for man, so also is the 'lord of allqualities' (the buddha-nature), present in all beings but in a formwhich is still unliberated from the shell of the defilements, unable togive the taste of the joy of dharma to those beings, who are afflictedby the defilement-hunger.Fourth ExampleThe gold of a man on a journey dropped into a place containingrotting rubbish. The gold, of indestructible character, remained inthat same place, in the same condition, for many centuries.One day, it was noticed there by a god endowed with perfectdivine vision, who told someone seeking gold, "Once you havecleansed this substance, which is so highly-valued, then put it to theuses to which it can be put".In a similar way, the victors see the quality of beings (the buddhanature)sunken into the filth-like negative affects. They cause a rain ofpure dharma to shower upon these beings to cleanse them of thesenegative affects' mire.