As higher awareness, they teach
what they experience within.
What fetters them they will call liberation. A glass trinket colored green, to them is a priceless emerald.
Deluded, they know not a gem
from what they think it should be.

They take copper to be gold.
Bound by discursive thought,
they think these thoughts
to be ultimate reality.
They long for the pleasures experienced in dreams.
They call the perishable body-mind eternal bliss supreme.

By the symbol EVAM they think
self-clearness is achieved.
By the different situations that demand four seals they call
what they have fancied spontaneity.
But this is looking at
reflections in a mirror.

As under delusion’s power a herd of deer will rush for the water in a mirage which is not recognized,
so also the deluded quench not
their thirst, are bound by chains
and find pleasure in them,
saying that all is ultimately real.

Tantra is transcendence. It is neither indulgence nor repression. It is walking on a tightrope, it is one of the greatest of balances. It is not as easy as it appears, it needs very delicate awareness. It is a great harmony.

It is very easy for the mind to indulge. The opposite is also very easy: to renounce. To move to the extreme is very easy for the mind. To remain in the middle, exactly in the middle, is the most difficult thing for the mind, because it is a suicide for the mind. The mind dies in the middle and the no-mind arises. That’s why Buddha has called his path majjhim nikaya – the middle path. Saraha is a disciple of Buddha, in the same lineage, with the same understanding, with the same awareness.

So this very fundamental thing has to be understood, otherwise you will misunderstand Tantra. What is this razor’s edge? What is this being exactly in the middle? To indulge in the world, no awareness is needed. To repress worldly desires, again no awareness is needed. Your so-called worldly people and your so-called otherworldly people are not very different; they may be standing back-to-back but they are not very different at all, they are of exactly the same type of mind. Somebody is hankering for money, and somebody is so against money that he cannot even see currency notes; he becomes afraid and a trembling arises in him. These people are not different; for both of them money is of great importance. One is in greed, one is in fear, but the importance of the money is the same: both are obsessed with money.