by Longchenpa
These two methods are combined in the Trilogy of Rest. In the manner of a treatise, this great work systematically presents the entire range of Buddhist doctrine, from the teachings of first turning of the wheel of Dharma up to the Great Perfection. At the same time, it includes practical and essential instructions for the implementation of the teachings. Longchenpa himself succinctly defines the three texts of the trilogy as “treatises of pith instructions.”
Inasmuch as the contents of the trilogy are laid out in a succession of logical steps, one would say that it belongs to the lamrim, or “stages of the path,” genre. Longchenpa says in his general outline, An Ocean of Elegant Explanations,27 “These three works show unerringly (a) the ground that is the view, (b) the path that is the meditation, and (c) the associated conduct that is their ancillary.” Accordingly, the first part of the trilogy, Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind, is concerned principally with a presentation of the ground or view. The text describes in thirteen chapters all that the practitioner must know in order to embark upon the path. Nevertheless, this text, the first part of the trilogy, is laid out according to an inner logic of its own. And although the view or ground is its main topic, this is supplemented by further material belonging to the teachings on the path and result. In this sense, Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind may be considered in itself an exposition of the stages of the path, a lamrim within a lamrim, so to speak.
The text begins with the basic reflections, the so-called four mindchanges, whereby the mind is reoriented away from the meaningless and destructive preoccupations of materialism and worldliness, and begins to yearn for inner freedom and a path of spiritual growth. This lays the foundation for a systematic exposition of the doctrine. The importance of a spiritual teacher and his or her requisite qualities are described. This is followed by instructions on refuge, the four boundless attitudes, and bodhichitta. As we have said, the emphasis is on instruction as the basis of practice, and therefore there is little in the way of purely philosophical explanation. Once the fundamental attitude of the Great Vehicle is introduced, the text immediately continues with an exposition of Tantra: a brief general introduction followed by instructions in the generation and perfection stages. This culminates, in chapter 10, in a detailed and beautiful discussion of the view of the Great Perfection.
The first ten chapters, taken together, thus constitute a presentation of the ground, the foundational view; this is followed, in chapters 11 and 12, by an exposition of the path in terms of meditative training in calm abiding and deep insight (śamatha and vipaśyanā). Finally, the concluding thirteenth chapter discusses the result of the practice, presented again from the point of view of the Great Perfection.
Once the foundation has been acquired through a correct understanding of the ground or view, the way is open for the full practice of the path. This is the main topic of the second part of the trilogy, Finding Rest in Meditation (bSam gtan ngal gso). This text consists of three chapters: The first is a discussion of the places and environments suitable for practice. The second is a description of the characteristics of people who are capable of such practice. Finally, the meditation itself is presented, along with the different methods associated with the concentrations on bliss, luminosity, and no-thought.
The trilogy concludes with instructions designed to guide and inform the practitioner’s conduct in the postmeditation period. In Finding Rest in Illusion (sGyu ma ngal gso), Longchenpa demonstrates, from the point of view of the Great Perfection and with the help of the eight traditional examples of illusoriness, that all experience, together with the subject of such experience, is devoid of intrinsic being. The nature of the ground, path, and result is thus revealed as the state of primordial emptiness.
The Trilogy of Rest consists of three root texts in verse. These are accompanied by extensive autocommentaries in prose: respectively, The Great Chariot (Shing rta chen po), The Chariot of Surpassing Purity (Shing rta rnam dag), and The Chariot of Excellence (Shing rta bzang po). These are further supplemented by brief epitomes that summarize the contents. Again respectively, these are The Garland of White Lotuses (Padma dkar po’i phreng ba), The Garland of Blue Lotuses (Pun da ri ka’i phreng ba), and The Garland of Mandāravā Flowers (Manda ra ba’i phreng ba). These are accompanied by a further three collections of practical instructions: respectively, The Excellent Path of Enlightenment (Byang chub lam bzang), The Essential Elixir (sNying po bcud bdus), and The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel (Yid bzhin nor bu).
Finally, the entire collection is rounded off by the general presentation that we have already mentioned: An Ocean of Elegant Explanations (Legs bshad rgya mtsho). This last text is quite extensive. It begins with a long description of the origin of the Buddhist teachings in the present universe. It continues with a discussion of the difference between the Sūtra and Tantra vehicles and supplies the classic instructions on how the teachings are given and received. The treatise then concludes with a brief presentation of the Trilogy of Rest according to the five-element structure and the fourfold interrelated purpose.28
It is in this final presentation that Longchenpa gives a subtle exegesis of the title of the first volume of his trilogy, in which he takes advantage of an ambiguity in the Tibetan expression (impossible to bring out in English). He explains that the term “mind” (sems nyid) may be understood in two senses: first, as the ordinary mind and its mental factors and, second, as the actual nature of the mind, the state of self-luminous wisdom. If sems nyid is understood in the first sense, the title of the book would be The Mind at Rest. He comments as follows:
There is a reason for the title The Mind at Rest. It is that mind and mental factors, the cause of saṃsāra, are the thoughts that superimpose existence onto the three worlds. They must therefore utterly subside in the ultimate expanse that is free of thought….As the Bodhicaryāvatāra tells us,
Pacify completely all discursiveness
And cultivate the mind of bodhichitta.
And it is said in the Madhyamakāvatāra,
The mind is stopped, the kāya manifests.
Since the discursive mind with its mental factors grows tired and exhausted again and again in saṃsāra, which is by nature but this very mind itself, it must take rest in the place of refreshment where all conceptual movement subsides: the primordial wisdom free of all thoughts, the dharmadhātu, transcendent wisdom. For this reason, I will compose a treatise about finding rest while traveling the path toward the ultimate mode of being of the mind.
If, on the other hand, sems nyid is understood in the second sense, the implication would be that Longchenpa’s text is an instruction on how to discover, and rest in, the mind’s true nature. In that case, a more fitting translation would be Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind. As the author comments,
All thoughts or mental states—the travelers that, turning and turning for a long time in saṃsāra, wear themselves out through their experience of hallucinatory appearance—are settled naturally in the state in which all concepts subside: the nature of the mind, their dwelling place of rest and ease. These exhausted travelers relax naturally in this place of refreshment. Body, speech, and mind are thus allowed to rest in a state of comfort. And this is the entry point to freedom.
The ambivalence of the Tibetan title of the first volume of the trilogy is reflected in the titles of the other two works. However, whereas “Mind at Rest” and “Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind” are both viable as titles of the first volume, the other two titles are less flexible. For example, Finding Rest in Meditation works quite well, whereas Meditation at Rest is much less felicitous. For this reason and for the sake of uniformity, we have opted for the formula “Finding Rest…” for all three titles.
FINDING REST IN THE NATURE OF THE MIND
The text in this present volume takes the form, as we have said, of a gradual exposition of the Buddhist doctrine, specifically oriented toward the Great Perfection teachings. As can be seen in the commentarial material supplied
in part 2, Longchenpa passes seamlessly through the different levels of Sūtra, Tantra, and the Great Perfection and thus produces a remarkably balanced and unified synthesis. Obviously, the text is not intended for a complete beginner in the sense of someone utterly ignorant of Buddhist teachings. The reader already needs a good grasp of the doctrine as well as sound general knowledge of the many technical terms that appear without explanation in the root verses. The latter are themselves often quite elliptical and are not always elucidated in the autocommentary, which, as a “meaning commentary,” discusses the general sense without entering into an explanation of every word.
The fact that the autocommentary of this text, The Great Chariot, has not been completely translated here may occasion some disappointment for the reader. It is true that in a perfect world, a full rendering would indeed have been a happy outcome. It should be realized, however, that The Great Chariot, as its name suggests, is an immense volume of over a thousand pages of Tibetan text. This in itself would generate at least three large volumes in English translation. Size itself is not, of course, an insurmountable obstacle, even though a translation of this size would entail years of work. The fact is, however, that Longchenpa was a scholar of enormous erudition, immensely well read. He was possessed moreover of a prodigious memory, which, it will be remembered, he exercised from his early years. This meant that even in solitude, far from any library, the “well-read scholar from Samyé” was able to illustrate his points with many quotations cited from memory. Wonderful as this is, it often poses insuperable problems for the would-be translator. The Great Chariot, for example, is replete with quotations taken from an entire library of sūtras, tantras, and śāstras. Moreover, these citations are sometimes very long and difficult, and their interpretation, if one is not to abandon oneself to sheer guesswork, calls for a detailed knowledge of their own commentarial background, should such a thing exist—a challenge indeed even for the most seasoned of Tibetan scholars. In the face of such difficulties, we have done our best to provide the reader with as much help as possible and attempted to produce what we hope will be a useful, compendious volume. We have supplemented the full translation of the root text, with a number of passages taken from The Great Chariot, in which Longchenpa discourses on important topics (the tathāgatagarbha, the universal ground, the status of objects of knowledge in the Yogācāra system, and so on). These passages are assembled in part 2 of the present book. The reader will also find that, on a number of occasions, explanatory endnotes have been culled from the same source. Moreover, even in terms of a general commentary, the reader is not left unsupported and will find in Jigme Lingpa’s Treasury of Precious Qualities and Kangyur Rinpoche’s commentary a wealth of explanatory information that has its roots in Longchenpa’s own teachings. Many endnotes direct the reader to relevant passages in those texts
One of the challenging but gratifying aspects of the present text is its aesthetic character. The poetic beauty of many of Longchenpa’s writings has often won the appreciation of Tibetan connoisseurs. Literature and poetics, both Sanskrit and Tibetan, were certainly important elements in Longchenpa’s formation at Samyé and Sangphu, adding technical skill to a natural gift of poetic feeling. And this was surely a considerable asset given the kind of writing that Longchenpa produced and in which he excelled: expositions of the Great Perfection, a tradition in which language seems so often to be pushed to its limits and strains to capture subtleties and elusive insights that seem to lie at the very limit of the mind’s grasp. For Western readers and translators, however, the famed beauty of Longchenpa’s language must to a large extent remain a speculative quantity. It is rare for non-native speakers ever to gain complete and unhindered access to the full repertoire—nuance, register, metaphor, allusion, sound, rhythm, and so on—of the poetics of any language. As an adequate rendering of Longchenpa’s poetry, this translation certainly makes no claims. But it will have served its purpose if it succeeds in capturing the author’s essential meaning and is able to suggest, if only in the manner of a distant prospect, something of the charm of Longchenpa’s writing and its ability to delight and inspire.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This translation project has been a long time coming. It was originally requested by Pema Wangyal Rinpoche sometime in the 1990s, but, with the best will in the world, it was superseded by a host of other projects. However regrettable such a delay may be, we are happy that it could have at last been rectified.
For the numerous occasions that Longchenpa quotes the Sūtrālaṁkāra and especially the Uttaratantra, we had recourse to the commentaries of Mipham Rinpoche translated by our colleagues Stephen Gethin and John Canti. We are grateful to them for allowing us to see their as yet unpublished manuscripts.
We also wish to record our most sincere thanks to Khenchen Pema Sherab of Namdroling Monastery in Mysore, India, for his endless patience and his precious and indispensable assistance, and to Khenpo Tendzin Norgyé of the same monastery for his help on several occasions. Finally, we would as ever like to express our deep gratitude to our teachers Pema Wangyal Rinpoche and Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche for their continued support and inspiration.
This text was translated by Helena Blankleder and Wulstan Fletcher of the Padmakara Translation Group.
Dordogne
December 31, 2016
PART ONE
FINDING REST IN THE NATURE OF THE MIND
A Teaching of the Great Perfection
IN SANSKRIT
Mahāsandhicittāviśrāntanāma
IN TIBETAN
rDzogs pa chen po sems nyid ngal gso zhes bya ba
PROLOGUE
Homage to Samantabhadra!
Primordial lord,
Vast unbounded ocean of unsounded depth,
Filled with qualities of wisdom and of love,
Wish-fulfilling wellspring of the buddhas and their heirs,
Who send forth massing clouds of joy and benefit:
To you I bow!
The spotless dharmakāya, luminous and clear,
Is the buddha nature of all beings,
Yet through their ignorance and clinging,
They wander in the cycle of existence.
In the wilderness of karma and defilement
They stray in weariness.
Today I will bring rest to their exhausted minds.
1. THE FREEDOMS AND ADVANTAGES OF HUMAN BIRTH SO HARD TO FIND
1. My friends, your human form endowed with precious freedoms and advantages
Of all the six migrations is the one most difficult to find.
Like blind men who have chanced upon a treasure of great price,
With joy achieve your benefit and happiness.
2. What are they, then, these freedoms and advantages?
You have not taken birth in hell or else as hungry ghosts,
As beasts or as long-living gods, or else among the wild men of the borderlands.
You do not have perverted views, have not been born with handicaps
Or in an age in which a buddha has not come.
From these eight unfree states you are completely free.
You have been born in human form and in a central land.
Your faculties are whole, your lives unmarred by evil ways,
And in the Doctrine you have confidence:
The five great personal advantages are all complete in you.
A buddha has appeared and set his Teaching forth.
The Doctrine still remains and beings enter it,
While others, through compassion, set it forth for them.
Such are your five advantages of circumstance.
In you the eighteen freedoms and advantages
Are all complete, and therefore here and now
Exert yourself wholeheartedly and win your freedom!
3. If in this life you fail to practice what is to your benefit,
In lives to come, you will not even hear of “happy destinies.”
And long in lower realms yo
u’ll turn and turn again,
Not knowing what you should and should not do.
Understand that you will stray upon false paths,
Drifting in saṃsāra that in time
Had no beginning and will have no end.
4. So now, while you are free and independent,
With propitious circumstances for the perfect path,
Rely upon the two accumulations,
Source of boundless excellence;
Leave the city of existence far behind.
5. If, now that you have found a precious boat,
You fail to cross saṃsāra’s shoreless sea,
How will you fare, tossed endlessly
On waves of torment and defilement?
6. So swiftly don the armor of your perseverance.
To still the troubles of your mind and mental factors,29
Climb the upward path of primal wisdom’s stainless clarity
And implement unceasingly the ways to your enlightenment.
7. If, having found this pure and precious vessel,
Ground of all prosperity and joy,
You fail to catch therein the cool rain of the Dharma’s nectar,
You will go to ruin in the torments of saṃsāra, nothing more!
8. From massing clouds of benefit and joy, of glorious great bliss,
A plenteous rain, primordial wisdom’s cooling stream,
Falls down upon the ground of freedoms and advantages,
The limpid minds of wandering beings.
Practice Dharma therefore with a joyful heart.