Refuting the Fear of Unreality and Natural Purity

1. Perception Without Existence

Things do not truly exist, yet they are perceived.
Addictions have no inherent reality, yet purification occurs.
For the immature, this seems frightening:
How can something unreal appear?
How can one purify what has no substance?

The awakened ones answer:
it is like a magical illusion—appearing vividly, grounded nowhere.
Or like the sky—vast, empty, and unstained no matter what passes through it.
Unreality does not invalidate appearance;
it frees appearance from the burden of solidity.

2. Appearance Without Duality

A painting—technically flat, lacking height and depth—
still appears to have dimension.
The eye sees more than is there.

In the same way, duality appears within unreal construction,
even though no actual duality exists.
Subject and object, self and other,
seem to stand apart,
yet they arise from one field of imagination.

Understanding this removes fear:
appearance does not demand inherent existence.
Illusion does not obstruct functioning.

3. Purification Without Production

When muddy water settles and becomes clear,
the clarity is not produced by the mud;
clarity was always there.
Purification is simply the removal of obscuring conditions.

The mind functions exactly the same way.
When agitation, confusion, and addiction settle,
the mind’s clarity is not something newly created—
it simply reveals itself.
Purification is discovery, not manufacture.

4. Natural Luminosity and Accidental Faults

The mind is naturally luminous,
but that luminosity is clouded by accidental faults—
habits, impulses, emotional storms, conceptual distortions.
These impurities do not define the mind;
they merely obscure it.

There is no second mind, no separate entity underneath.
The only mind that exists is this reality-mind,
the mind whose nature is suchness itself.
Its luminosity is not attained from outside,
nor produced from conditions—
it is the ground.

Understanding this dissolves fear.
If the mind’s luminosity were something fragile or newly created,
it could be lost.
But because it is intrinsic,
purification is inevitable
once the obscurations are removed.