The two obscurations

• Afflictive obscurations
• Grasping at true existence
• Confusion, attachment and animosity
• Afflictions and their seeds
• Cognitive obscurations
• Latencies of grasping at true existence and latencies of afflictions
• Differences between afflictive obscurations and cognitive obscurations
• Description of mistaken dualistic appearance
• How arhats, pure ground bodhisattvas and buddhas apprehend the two truths
• Non-afflictive ignorance

Samsara, Nirvana, and Buddha Nature 78: The Two Obscurations (download)

Contemplation points

1. Take some time to consider the dukkha that sentient beings cause each other – not due to earthquakes, cyclones, or the natural aging process, but the pain and suffering that beings inflict on each other in their confusion. To what extent have you contributed to that dukkha throughout your life? What negative habits have come from previous lives, leading you to harm others and what can you do to purify them? What negative habits are you cultivating in this life that you don’t want to take with you to future lives? Purify those as well. Make a determination to be mindful of your mental states so that none of your words and actions harm others. Resolve to do your best to create harmony, to lift up the oppressed, to include the excluded, and to help settle disputes.
2. What are the two obscurations? Describe each in your own words. Which have to be removed to attain liberation? Which have to be removed to attain full awakening?
3. What does it mean that there is the “appearance of inherent existence?” Where does the obscuration exist? What is the only consciousness that does NOT have mistaken dualistic appearances?
4. Although beings who are not yet Buddhas cannot see both veiled truths and their emptiness at the same time, the fact that they had a direct perception of emptiness influences how they see and interact with the world around them. Take some time to reflect on how a being at this level must toggle between conventionality and its emptiness, and how having that direct perception of emptiness might influence how they would perceive conventional phenomena.