Lady Tsogyal asked: “Shouldn't a practitioner of Secret Mantra take all disturbing emotions as the path?”
[Padmasambhava] replied: Of course they should be brought onto the path! But only a peacock can feed on poison. The person who is able to take disturbing emotions as path without abandoning them is rarer than the udumvara flower. While for someone of the highest caliber a disturbing emotion manifests as a helper, for a person of lesser capacity it becomes a poison. For this lesser type of person, it is more profound to abandon disturbing emotions! “After how much abandoning does one become adept?”, she asked. When you are not attached to disturbing emotions and sense-pleasures and they are experienced as magical illusions, then you needn't suppress disturbing emotions even when they do arise, as they don't harm. When they don't arise, you have no desire to produce them as you are free from expectations. When that happens, disturbing emotions have been brought onto the path. To try to utilize disturbing emotions as path while not having turned away from clinging to solid reality is like a fly becoming stuck in honey. Tsogyal, cut through straying in these ways! ~ from 'The Golden Rosary of Nectar' as translated in 'Advice From the Lotus Born' |