by Longchenpa
10. The sign of your success will be that self and other,
Friend and foe are equalized.
In conclusion, think that all the objects
Of this impartial attitude devoid of clinging—
All are but the mind,
And that the nature of the mind is similar to space.
Then with a mind completely free of concepts,
Rest within the ultimate condition, empty and unborn.
As a sign of your success, the realization
Of what is deep and peaceful will arise in you.
The fruit will be a mind that’s free from “near and far.”
The fundamental nature of all things
Will be spontaneously accomplished.
11. When thus your mind is even with regard to all,
Then just as you would wish
That your own mother meet with happiness,
Think the same for all embodied beings.
All living beings thus become the object of your love,
The form of which consists
In wanting, in the immediate term,
That beings have the happiness of gods and humankind,
And ultimately that they reach the bliss of buddhahood.
Beginning with a single being,
Train yourself to embrace all
Until the very confines of the ten directions.
12. As a sign of your proficiency,
You will have supreme and all-embracing love,
More than any mother for her only child.
Finally, great love that is beyond all clinging
Is to rest within the state
Where all are seen as equal.
It is the sign of love and emptiness united.
You will be purified by such a training,
And just the sight of you will bring delight to beings.
13. When you have embraced all beings with love,
Then just as in your mind you cannot bear
To contemplate the sorrows of your father or your mother,
Be likewise with the sufferings of wandering beings
And generate compassion.
Your loving parents in your former lives
Did evil deeds on your behalf,
For which they suffer heat and cold,
Hunger, thirst, and servitude and slaughter.
They founder in the great, tumultuous floods
Of birth, age, sickness, death—
Worn out by all their different sorrows.
14. They are destitute of tamed and peaceful minds
That yearn for freedom.
They have no virtuous friends to show them the true path.
And so—alas for them—
They wander in saṃsāra endlessly.
Are you able to forsake them, you who see them thus?
Instead, think rather from the center of your heart
And from the marrow of your bones:
“My body, all that I possess,
All the virtue gathered in the triple time—
May it, in this very instant,
Banish all the pains that beings have!”
15. The sign of your success is said to be
The inability to bear that beings suffer.
Subsequently you should evenly remain
In a compassion free of all conceptual reference.
Of this the sign is emptiness—
Emptiness united with compassion.
The fruit of such a training is a mind that’s free of malice,
A mind that does no harm, a wholesome mind,
A mind that will accomplish primal purity itself.
16. Softened by compassion, train yourself to take delight
When others find their own respective joys.
The object of your focus will be beings who are happy,
The form your attitude will take will be to think,
“What joy! These beings have no need of me
To bring them to the state of happiness!
For, best of all, they found it for themselves!
From this day till they gain enlightenment,
May they never lose their joy and comfort!”
Begin with one, then train yourself until
You have included every being.
17. The sign of your proficiency will be
That, being joyful, you will have no envious jealousy.
Later, when you concentrate on joy,
You will be free of all conceptual reference.
Naturally you will be at peace
With bliss in body, speech, and mind.
As fruit you will have joy and steady wealth.
18. Once you have grown used to them,
Begin with love and meditate upon them turn by turn.
By this means fixation on the four of them
Will, stage by stage, be halted.
If, when you meditate on love,
This causes you to cleave to everyone
As though they were your cherished friends,
This is halted by compassion
Focusing on suffering in its cause and fruit.
If compassion is deficient and fixated on an object,
Depression will be halted by nonreferential joy.
If through joy the mind is troubled,
Taking pleasure in distraction,
Meditate on great impartiality
Detached from what is near or far.
And when impartiality becomes indifference,
Meditate on love as you have done before,
And on the rest successively.
Easily, in such a way,
Stability and mastery are gained.
19. Those who have grown firm in such a training
Meditate upon the attitudes
In direct, indirect, alternate, or in any order.
Thus their realization of the four unbounded attitudes
Will grow and will be fresh.
It will become most firm and then extremely firm.
20. This practice will give rise to four results.
The fully ripened fruit is high birth and the final excellence.
In the desire realm one will gain
The body of a god or human being
And strive for others’ benefit.
The fruits resembling the cause
Are, actively, continued practice of the same,
And, passively, a happiness and freedom from adversity.
Thanks to the conditioning result,
One will be born in pleasant, wholesome, happy places,
Where people live in harmony, adorned with wealth.
Thanks to the proliferating consequence,
These four attitudes will grow in strength.
The riches of the two aims (for oneself and others)
Will be gained spontaneously.
21. By love is anger driven out;
The saṃbhogakāya and mirrorlike wisdom
Are completely gained.
The saṃbhogakāya is adorned
With all the marks, both great and small, of buddhahood.
By compassion clinging love is banished;
The dharmakāya and the all-discerning wisdom
Are achieved.
The dharmakāya is endowed
With strengths, distinctive qualities, and so forth.59
Sympathetic joy removes all jealousy;
The nirmāṇakāya and the sublime wisdom
All-accomplishing are gained.
The nirmāṇakāya is manifold with various forms.
Its enlightened action is spontaneously accomplished.
Impartiality removes both pride and ignorance.
The svābhāvikakāya is made manifest together with
The wisdom of equality, the wisdom of the dharmadhātu.
The svābhāvikakāya is the dharmatā
Beyond conceptual construction.
22. Therefore love, compassion, joy, impartiality
Are of unb
ounded excellence, and highly praised
By the unequaled Teacher of both gods and humankind.
Any path that lacks them is mistaken.
They err who have recourse to other teachers.
Embraced by the four boundless attitudes,
The path leads on to spotless liberation.
It is the way that all the buddhas tread,
Earlier and later, past, present, and to come.
23. The causal vehicle declares
That, just like seeds producing shoots,
Skillful means and wisdom bring forth the two kāyas.
The resultant vehicle declares
That the two kāyas are made manifest
When the twofold veil that hides them is removed.
As means to this, they both rely
Upon the path of limitless compassion.
In truth, with both the vehicles, the causal and resultant,
The practice is in harmony. It is the same.
It’s emptiness enlivened with compassion.
24. The sūtras have moreover said
That purity without beginning60
Rests primordially in beings like an uncreated seed.
The Mantrayāna likewise says that, from the first,
All beings possess the triple kāya, veiled though this may be
By adventitious veils that are to be removed.
In brief, the learned and accomplished all describe
The outer and the inner paths,
Respectively of sūtra and of mantra,
As one thing and the same.
Therefore, in the footsteps of the buddhas’ holy children,
Strive with effort in the four unbounded attitudes.
25. May these good words that lead to peace
Still all the turbulence of wandering beings’ minds.
Exhausted by pursuing wrong, mistaken, and inferior paths,
May their minds today find rest.
8. CULTIVATING THE ATTITUDE OF MIND ORIENTED TOWARD ENLIGHTENMENT
1. When you are well practiced
In the four unbounded attitudes,
Meditate upon the twofold bodhichitta, root of all the Dharma.
For this will bring you freedom from defilement,
And save you from the ocean of existence.
Bodhichitta drives away all fear, all pain, and every evil deed;
It vanquishes both karma and the sources of your suffering;
And from the circle of existence will bring beings into peace.
2. Even when this attitude of courage
Is not manifest and active,61
Compassion’s virtuous stream develops more and more,
And skillful means and wisdom are united—
Even in the state of meditative equipoise.
All one’s acts of word and deed are meaningful,
And one becomes the object of respect
For the very gods and all the world besides.
3. Small are the fruits of other virtues, and they wear away.
But virtue joined with such a precious state of mind
Increases and will never be exhausted—
Like crystal water flowing down into the sea,
And like abundant harvests grown in fertile soil.
4. It is the root or seed of every excellence;
Its nature is compassion.
Many are its fruits of happiness, even in saṃsāra,
And of supreme enlightenment it is the cause—
Enlightenment, which is of peaceful nature.
Strive therefore to generate this good and precious mind.
5. It is the perfect wish-fulfilling vase
Increasing all good fortune.
It is the source of bliss,
The supreme remedy that cures the ills of beings.
It is the sun of primal wisdom
And the moon that soothes all torment.
Like the sky it is immaculate;
Its qualities are like the starry host.
It is an ever-flowing spring of benefit and joy.
6. Beyond imagination are its merits,
Boundless like the massing clouds.
Like the buddhas’ wondrous qualities,
And like the dharmadhātu, they are infinitely vast.
7. Bodhichitta is the wish to gain
Sublime enlightenment for countless beings’ sake.
It is of two kinds: intentional and active.
Intention is the wish and action the pursuit
Of this attainment.
It is like the wish to go and actually setting out.
8. Bodhichitta in intention has, so it is said,
The nature of the four unbounded attitudes.
Active bodhichitta is the six transcendent virtues.
9. If, when motivated by one’s own advantage,
One worships for many a million kalpas
All the buddhas who pervade the whole of endless space,
The merit gained does not compare
With but the smallest fragment of the merit made
Through bodhichitta in intention.
10. For it is said that if one has, but for a single instant,
The wish and thought to take away
The slightest pain and suffering of beings,
One will be free from evil destinies
And taste unbounded bliss of gods and humankind.
11. Even greater are the benefits of active bodhichitta;
Indeed they are unlimited.
For this means actual engagement.
One instant of the practice of this supreme mind
Is said to equal the accumulations, both of wisdom and of merit,
Gathered over many kalpas.
12. For as the teachings say
Regarding the perfection of the two accumulations:
Whether it may be completed
In three immeasurable kalpas and so forth62—
Whether it is swift or slow to come,
Or whether freedom may be gained within a single life:
All this depends upon one’s strength of mind.
And when conjoined with supreme methods,
Supreme diligence, and supreme wisdom,
The mind is at its strongest and is unsurpassed.
13. This bodhichitta has the essence of compassion—
A wish-fulfilling tree that carries
The great load of beings in this world.
It has not appeared before,
Not even in the realm of Brahmā.63
Not occurring for one’s own sake, not even in one’s dreams,
How could it be conceived of or occur for others’ sake?
Thus one should rejoice. For, previously unknown,
This bodhichitta has now come to birth.
14. Now, from a virtuous friend does it arise
As rain that falls down from a wish-fulfilling jewel
To satisfy all wants.
A master such as this is excellent in qualities
And is free of any fault.
His fortunate disciples he inspires
By teaching on the evils of saṃsāra
And on the benefits of freedom (a teaching that is virtuous
In its beginning, its abiding, and its ending)
And by his endless praise of bodhichitta.
15. In a clean and pleasant place adorned with offerings,
Prepare by setting up an image of the Buddha
Together with the other necessary articles.
And then imagine, in the space in front of you,
The buddhas and the bodhisattvas
Like great banks of cloud that fill the sky.
For it is said that through the stainless strength of one’s own mind,
And the compassion of the sovereigns of love and wisdom,
All will be according to one’s wish.
Then invite them with a flower in your joined hands
Requesting them to take their seat.
Make offerings of baths, adornments, raiment, and the rest.
16. Then like a lotus bud appearing in a lovely pool
And opening with the rising of the sun,
Make a gesture with your two hands joined above your head.
With melodious praises, with countless emanated forms,
Bow down to them devotedly.
17. As many as may be the drops of water in the sea,
Or atoms in earth and in the king of mountains,
Merits such as this cannot be found in all the triple world.
Thanks to such prostration,
For as many times as there are atoms in the earth,
Down to the strong foundation of the universe,
You will become a Cakravartin king,
And finally you will attain
The state of supreme peace.
18. Presented in reality and imagined in your mind,
Make offerings in vast and unsurpassed array:
Flowers, incense, lamps, and food and drink,
Canopies and pennants floating in the air,
Parasols and melody,
Victory banners, yak-tail fans, drums, and all the rest.
And with your body, pleasures, and possessions
Make offerings to the buddhas,
The rare and supreme Teachers of all beings,
Together with their bodhisattva children.
19. With beautiful mansions of the gods
Adorned with traceries of jewels,
With dance and song, melodious airs,
And gently falling rain of tuneful praise,
With marvelous ornaments a hundredfold
Make offerings to them.
20. With jeweled mountains, woods, and lotus lakes,
The lovely haunts of goose and gliding swan,
With fragrant healing plants and wish-fulfilling trees
Weighed down with fruit and flowers—
With all these make your offerings to them.
21. With lilies of the night that harbor
Bees among their thousand moving petals,
And with lovely blossoms of the utpala that open wide
Beneath the rays of the unclouded sun and moon,
Make offerings to them.
22. With fragrant breezes wafted
By the opened buds of cooling sandal trees,
With pleasant caves and cliffs and wholesome vales,
And cooling streams and lakes,
Make offerings to them.
23. The hare-marked moon, all white on autumn nights,
Encircled by a garland of fixed stars,
Together with the day-star with its burning trellis of a thousand lights: