"As long as the state of enlightenment is not recognized, beings continue to experience illusory birth and death, along with the happiness and suffering inherent in conditioned existence. However, whatever the experience, the essence of enlightenment remains unpolluted, unobscured, and unmodified, just as sunlight maintains its nature of light regardless of the type of object it strikes.

The essence is not conditioned by any form of embodied life, whether fortunate or miserable, nor is it conditioned by any act, good or evil, or by knowledge or lack of knowledge. Although the essence is attended by impurity, its nature, like gold embedded in ore, remains always pure, untouched by emotional afflictions and conceptions."

Elio Guarisco