[From a teaching on Essence of Wisdom: Stages of the Path, Part 15, by Lama Tashi Topgyal. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]
What is the nature of amrita? What is really meant by amrita?
This is the key point: it’s not just that some things that exist, such as the five meats and five nectars, and so on, that have these special attributes. The view of amrita accomplishment is that everything in the environment – below the ground, on the ground, and in the sky – all of the elements, all of the aggregates of sentient beings, all of the objects of the senses, and all of our kleshas — all of these fives — the five elements in the external world and within our bodies in the form of flesh, blood, warmth, breath, and space; the objects of the five senses; and the five kleshas — what appear to us as those things have really, from the beginning, been self-arisen, great, five amritas.
So the view is that everything is amrita. And it always has been. Therefore, it does not need to be changed. You don’t need to change things or sublimate them in some way into some kind of amrita. They are; they always have been. Nothing exists other than the five amritas. Briefly put, the view is that all of samsara and nirvana is amrita. And that’s why in our messed-up perception, we see five elements, five aggregates, five senses, five kleshas, and so forth.
