by Longchenpa
Buddha Śākyamuni
Guru Padmasambhava
Longchen Rabjam Drimé Özer
The Padmakara Translation Group gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Tsadra Foundation in sponsoring the translation and preparation of this book.
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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Boulder, Colorado 80301
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© 2017 by the Padmakara Translation Group
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover art: Detail of thangka of Milarepa, Tibet, 19. Jh.; inv. no. IId 13769, Essen collection; Photographer: Omar Lemke © Museum der Kulturen Basel, Switzerland; All rights reserved.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Klong-chen-pa Dri-med-’od-zer, 1308–1363, author. | Klong-chen-pa Dri-med-’od-zer, 1308–1363. Sems nyid ngal gso. English. | Klong-chen-pa Dri-med-’od-zer, 1308–1363. Bsam gtan ngal gso. English. | Klong-chen-pa Dri-med-’od-zer, 1308–1363. Sgyu ma ngal gso. English. | Comité de traduction Padmakara, translator.
Title: The Trilogy of rest / Longchen Rabjam; translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. Description: First edition. | Boulder: Shambhala, 2017– | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017009896 | ISBN 9781611805161 (hardback: v. 1)
eISBN 9780834841161
Subjects: LCSH: Rdzogs-chen—Early works to 1800. | BISAC: RELIGION / Buddhism / Tibetan. | RELIGION / Buddhism / Sacred Writings. | RELIGION / Buddhism / Rituals & Practice.
Classification: LCC BQ7662.4 .K5465 2017 | DDC 294.3/420423—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009896
v5.1
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Alak Zenkar Rinpoche
Foreword by Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche
Translators’ Introduction
Part One: Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind
Prologue
1. The Freedoms and Advantages of Human Birth So Hard to Find
2. Impermanence
3. The Sufferings of Saṃsāra
4. The Karmic Law of Cause and Effect
5. The Spiritual Master
6. Refuge
7. The Four Unbounded Attitudes
8. Cultivating the Attitude of Mind Oriented toward Enlightenment
9. The Generation and Perfection Stages and Their Union
10. The View That Dwells in Neither of the Two Extremes, the Wisdom whereby the Nature of the Ground Is Realized
11. The Path: Stainless Meditative Concentration
12. The Three Aspects of Meditative Concentration
13. The Great, Spontaneously Present Result
Conclusion
Part Two: Excerpts from The Great Chariot
The Mind Is the Root of All Phenomena
Mind, Intellect, and Consciousness
The Eight Consciousnesses as the Basis of Delusion
The Three Natures
The Universal Ground
The Universal Ground, the Eight Consciousnesses, and the State of Sleep
The Tathāgatagarbha
Refuge
The Three Concentrations of the Generation Stage
The Simple Practice of the Generation and Perfection Stages
The Mind and the Objects That Appear to It
The Omniscient Longchenpa Speaks about His Realization
Notes
Texts Cited in The Great Chariot
Bibliography
Index
E-mail Sign-Up
FOREWORD
ALAK ZENKAR RINPOCHE
Supreme among the vast array of pith instructions,
Bringing into one epitome
The crucial points without exception of the Tripitaka
And the four classes of Tantra,
These volumes are the summit of a myriad treatises
That heal and that protect,
A perfect chariot of teaching clear and unsurpassed,
The supreme means whereby
The minds of those who wander in the triple world,
Find rest in freedom.
Priceless in this universe,
This scripture is the image of the speech of Longchen,
Dharma king from Samyé, who in times to come
Will have the name of the Victorious Merudipa.
It is a beauteous mirror formed of flawless crystal
That reveals the sense of the essential lore
Of the three yogas and nine stages of the Mahayana,
Passed down by word of mouth and in the precious treasures,
Rich patrimony of the line of knowledge-holders
Of the Ancient Translations.
Your aspiration first arose
Upon the shoulders of the eastern hills
And now your translation in a foreign tongue
Shines like the day-creating sun
Assisted by the light of publication’s wizardry.
I celebrate its coming,
The sweet friend of the lotus of the Buddha’s doctrine.
From the smiling blossom of delight and happiness
There falls such honeyed nectar of rejoicing
That, not waiting for the songs of the applauding bees,
I cannot help but pour out my congratulation.
I who have grown old beneath this canopy of joy,
This great refulgence of the sunlight
Of the doctrine of the powerful Sage,
Cannot but speak my praises of your wish
To be of service to his teaching.
Therefore may this lucid textual explanation,
Indeed a health-sustaining herb
For teachings of the Ancient Translation School
And source of glorious sustenance for many beings,
Increase a hundred, thousand, millionfold
And be widely spread and propagated.
With excellent aspiration and activity for the Buddha’s doctrine in general and especially for the orally transmitted and treasure teachings of the Ancient Tradition of the Great Secret, the Padmakara translators have rendered into English the root texts of the Trilogy of Rest, which are now published together with their autocommentaries, the spotlessly clear exposition of the mighty Conqueror Longchen Rabjam. With joy and admiration, I, Thubten Nyima, join my hands at my heart and offer flowers of rejoicing. Written in the fragrant city of Chengdu on the twelfth day of the seventh month, in the year 2017.
FOREWORD
JIGME KHYENTSE RINPOCHE
AT THE CONCLUSION of the great autocommentary to his long and beautiful poem Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind, Gyalwa Longchenpa gave the reason for his massive composition. He began by lamenting the fact that the great masters of the past, whose works were clear, comprehensive, and utterly trustworthy, had passed away. Their place had been taken by scholars of incomplete learning and understanding who, through clinging to words and formulas, had failed to penetrate the essential meaning of the teachings. They perceived differences and even contradictions between the views of the sūtras and the tantras of the Mahāyāna—where no such conflicts existed.
It was to correct this misunderstanding that Longchenpa composed his Trilogy of Rest and in particular its first section, Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind, which is an exposition of the stages of the path. Here, the sūtras and tantras are explained progressively
—from the preliminary reflections that cause the mind to take an interest in spiritual values, to the view and practice of the Great Perfection—in order to show how the earlier teachings are enlarged and completed by those that follow. Scriptural authority, reasoning, and the essential instructions of the practice lineage are all invoked to demonstrate that the Pāramitāyāna and the Mantrayāna form a single, perfectly integrated vehicle suited to the varying abilities and aspirations of practitioners, and grounded, from beginning to end, in bodhichitta: the wish to attain buddhahood for the sake of others.
The basis of all progress on the path is faith: confidence in the Buddha as a trustworthy guide, in the truth of the Dharma that he expounded, and in the Saṅgha that over the centuries has preserved and practiced the teachings, and transmitted them to us. But if faith in the Three Jewels is the essential foundation, it is only through actually implementing the teachings that we can free ourselves from the confusion and meaningless sufferings of saṃsāra. This being said, it is obvious that in order to practice the teachings, we need to know what they are. We need to understand them as clearly and as accurately as possible. We need to be certain of their truth.
When the Buddha said that we should not accept his teachings out of blind faith but should examine them and put them to the test of reasoning and experience, he was not just expressing the fearless confidence of someone who had discovered and seen the truth for himself. He was telling us that we too must come to the same realization on the basis of our own efforts. It is we who must attain liberation for ourselves; the Buddha cannot do it for us. He shows us the way; it is for us to follow the path and reap its fruit.
For some people—thanks no doubt to study, reflection, and meditation, and the great accumulation of merit in previous existences—faith and devotion to the teacher and the lineage are able to bring them in this life to the final goal without much need of learning. For most of us, however, the path of faith and devotion is not enough. In addition, we need to receive many teachings, to reflect on them and to understand them as best as we can with our rational intelligence. It is not enough to simply take the teachings on trust, telling ourselves that they must be true because they come from the Buddha, or because the lamas teach them. Neither is it enough to indulge in an equally superstitious belief that the teachings must be true because they happen to be supported by the findings of modern science. No, we must be ready to make the effort to understand the teachings for ourselves, as best we can, following the logical arguments set forth in the great texts, so that in the end we too will arrive at a state of irreversible conviction and will be able to follow the path with unshakeable confidence.
It was with this in mind and in order to educate us in the Dharma that Longchenpa composed the text contained in this book. Like Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path, Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Tsongkhapa’s Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path, and Jigme Lingpa’s Treasury of Precious Qualities, Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Rest, and especially Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind, is one of the great expositions of gradual teachings in Tibetan literature. It is fortunate that these great texts are becoming available in English translation and I hope that Western students of the Buddha’s teachings will profit greatly from them.
TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION
THE PRESENT VOLUME is a translation of Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind (Sems nyid ngal gso) by Longchen Rabjam, or Longchenpa, as he is more commonly known. It begins a project to translate the entire Trilogy of Rest (Ngal gso skor gsum), of which it is the first part. Consequently, before any attempt to introduce this first volume, it seems appropriate to discuss some more general matters that apply to the trilogy as a whole. This concerns most notably the details, insofar as they can be ascertained, of Longchenpa’s life and times, and a general presentation of his extant writings.
Longchenpa is celebrated as one of the greatest scholars and masters of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is universally respected as the preeminent exponent of the Great Perfection, or Dzogchen (rdzogs chen), the highest vehicle of the nine-vehicle system used in the Nyingma tradition as a means of classifying the teachings of the Buddha. In terms of learning and realization, no one since the heroic age of Vimalamitra and Guru Padmasambhava, the abbot Śāntarakṣita and King Trisong Detsen, is said to have equaled the sublime eminence of Longchen Rabjam, the Omniscient King of Dharma.
From the extensive corpus of his collected works, those that have survived are prized not only for their subtlety and erudition, as well as, in many cases, their poetic beauty, but also because they are said to have emanated from the mind of one who, from an early age, had accomplished high realization of the Great Perfection. The extraordinary quality of Longchenpa’s works derives, as Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche once remarked, from the fact that they are not the compositions of an ordinary mind, but sprang spontaneously from the state of Longchenpa’s enlightened wisdom, like the songs of realization (Skt. doha) of the mahāsiddhas of India. Longchenpa’s writings are themselves vehicles of powerful blessings, instruments that, given the right circumstances, may facilitate and increase the spiritual realization of their readers.
This peculiar quality reflects the nature of the Great Perfection teachings themselves. It is generally said that the various levels of Buddhist doctrine, whether these are arranged according to the traditional tripartite scheme of the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma, or as various systems of tenets arranged in an ascending order of subtlety, are all based on the views or philosophical understandings of the nature of phenomena that are specific to them. One speaks therefore of the Vaibhāṣika view, the Sautrāntika view, the Yogācāra view, the Madhyamaka view, the view of the sūtras, the view of the tantras, and so on. These views are keys to the understanding and implementation of the doctrinal system in question. Therefore, it is usually said that when one embarks upon the study and practice of a given teaching in the hope of attaining its result, the establishment of the view is the indispensable first step. For most people, the integration of any given view comes gradually, through the reception of instructions from a qualified source, through careful reflection on them in order to deepen intellectual understanding and remove doubts, and finally through meditation, thanks to which the instructions are perfectly assimilated, and understanding ripens into realization.
In terms of the nine-vehicle system, the progressively sophisticated views of the first eight vehicles, from the Śrāvakayāna up to and including the Anuyoga of the inner tantras, all share a common feature. They are, as philosophical positions, established according to the rational processes of the discursive mind. The teachings are explained, analyzed, and understood by ordinary intellectual methods and through the kind of reasoning that—given intelligence, merit, hard work, and perseverance—is open to every human mind in the ordinary sense of that word. The view thereby established, whether of Sūtra or of Tantra, lays the ground for meditative practice and subsequent conduct in the “postmeditation” situations of daily life.
From the views of the lower eight vehicles, however, that of the Great Perfection, or Atiyoga, stands apart. For in addition to a particular understanding of the nature of phenomena, both mental and extramental, acquired through study and reflection (a feature it shares with the lower views), the true and authentic view of the Great Perfection consists in the direct recognition of the nature of the mind itself. This recognition is, of course, prepared for by the reception of teachings on the view in the usual way and by assiduous aspirational practice. Nevertheless, the actual view of the Great Perfection to which these teachings relate only indirectly—in the manner of a finger pointing at the moon, to use the traditional image—is not something arrived at simply through the exercise of reason or ordinary intelligence, however well informed or acute that intelligence may be.
The nature of the mind, the pure state of awareness, which in the terminology of the Great Perfection is referred to as rigpa, is said to lie outside the range of the discur
sive intellect. As the very nature of the mind, it is indeed that which makes all intellection possible. It underlies and logically precedes every state of ordinary cognition, and for that very reason it can never itself become the object of such cognition. This is why the authentic view of the Great Perfection, the recognition of the nature of the mind, transcends every kind of theory, philosophical position, or doctrinal tenet. It cannot be described or explained. It cannot be taught.
It can, however, be pointed out and recognized when a qualified master encounters a disciple who, through training and vast reserves of merit, has achieved the necessary level of receptivity. When this occurs, it happens quite naturally in an intimate human relationship where the blessing power of the master’s own realization makes contact with the complete openness of the disciple—a state of pure and perfect confidence in the master and the teaching that, for want of a better word in English, has been described as devotion.
This extraordinary event, in which the nature of the mind is pointed out and recognized, may take place in any number of situations that, to an outside observer, might well seem completely ordinary and mundane. There was, for instance, nothing particularly unusual in the appearance of the stars in the evening sky above the hillside where Patrul Rinpoche and his disciple Nyoshul Lungtok were lying. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the sound of the dogs barking down below in the Dzogchen monastery. And yet such was the receptivity and readiness of Nyoshul Lungtok, the fruit of his merit and the purification of his mind stream, that, in that peaceful exchange, when Patrul Rinpoche said, “That is the meditation,” Nyoshul Lungtok understood what his master meant and entered into the same direct vision of the nature of the mind that Patrul Rinpoche was himself experiencing.1 Not that such introductions are always so serene. Patrul Rinpoche had himself received a very different pointing-out instruction from Do Khyentse, who grabbed him by the hair, threw him to the ground, and gave him a severe thrashing, insulting him and calling him an “old dog.” But, as Tulku Thondup explains, the end result was the same: “At that moment, Patrul realized the unhindered intrinsic awareness, clear like the cloudless sky.”2