bardo

The First Twelve Days of the Bardo
THE ELEVENTH DAY OF BARDO
On the eleventh day Padma Heruka of the lotus family
in the west manifests. His impure aspect is desire and his
pure aspect is discriminating wisdom. With the attainment
of Buddhahood two wisdoms arise: the wisdom that knows
the true nature of phenomena and the wisdom that sees the
relative multiplicity of phenomena. Dharmadhatu wisdom,
mirror-like wisdom, and the wisdom of equality are
classified as the wisdom that knows the nature of things as
they are. The wisdom of discrimination and the wisdom of
the accomplishment of actions, and sometimes mirror-like
wisdom, belong to the wisdom that sees the variety of
phenomena.
If someone has attained Buddhahood, there is nothing
they don’t understand or know because they have wisdom
of discrimination, which sees everything distinctly from
everything else, i.e., everything is seen for what it is. This
means that the bad is not seen as good, or the good is not
seen as bad with the wisdom of discrimination. The impure
aspect of desire is accompanied by mixed ignorance, i.e.,
mixed with the other disturbing emotions. When desire is
strong, one doesn’t recognize things for what they are, i.e.,
one then thinks what is bad is good, what is good is bad.
When the disturbing emotion of desire is eliminated, one
has the wisdom of discrimination which can distinguish all
things from each other, the good, bad and so on.
The essence of Padma Heruka is discriminating wisdom
of the dharmakaya. The sambhogakaya manifestation of
this wisdom is the Buddha Amitabha. He appears as the
other Herukas, except that he is red in color.
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