by Longchenpa
The second is the concentration of the ones who have so entered.
The third denotes the concentration of the noble ones.
These concentrations take away the states of mind
That are engrossed in objects of desire
And certainly result in perfect knowledge,
Preternatural cognition, and all the samādhis.
Of the powers of vision they give mastery,
The power to work wonders,
And a perfect mastery of mind.79
66. There are three kinds of wisdom:
Of hearing, of reflection, and of meditation.
This wisdom brings deep insight that destroys defilement.
It is the understanding of phenomena
And the nature of phenomena,
By which means you travel from the city of saṃsāra
To nirvāṇa’s peace.
67. Appearances are primordially unborn.
They are like reflections.
They are without intrinsic being
But appear in all their various forms.
When you understand their natural purity,
The fact that they arise dependently,
You swiftly reach the supreme state:
Nirvāṇa that abides in no extreme.
68. Possessing wisdom, one is freed through skillful means,
Just as poison is extracted with a mantric spell.
Without such wisdom, skillful means enslaves,
As though the remedy itself changed into something
That provokes disease, a source of pain.
Therefore cultivate that wisdom
Whereby the nature of phenomena is realized.
69. As you implement the six transcendent virtues,
You should understand that you yourself
Are like a magic apparition:
Do not reify the three spheres:
Virtue’s subject, object, action!
And with the twofold gathering,
You will swiftly gain the peace of buddhahood.
70. May the rain borne by the clouds of goodly virtue
Bring abundant harvests in the minds of beings now cleansed!
Exhausted and reduced by all the defects of saṃsāra,
May their minds today find rest.
9. THE GENERATION AND PERFECTION STAGES AND THEIR UNION
1. When your mind is set upon supreme enlightenment,
Embrace the generation and perfection stages
Of the outer and the inner Secret Mantra.
2. This has many methods and is free of hardship.
Though the goal is just the same,80
In means of application it is not unskilled.
It is designed for those of very high capacity.
Four Tantra classes have been taught:
Action, Conduct, Yoga, and the Unsurpassed.
3. These classes correspond
To time, or caste, or level of capacity.
The tantras are set forth according to
The Age Endowed with All Perfection,
The Age of Three, the Age of Two,
And finally the Age of Strife;
They are set forth for castes of priests, of merchants,
Kings, and then the lowest class, the menials.
They’re set forth, too, according to capacity:
Dull, medium, sharp, and very sharp.81
Ritual cleansing and ablution
Are mostly taught by Action Tantra.
Bodily and verbal conduct, mental meditation—
All in equal measure is the teaching of the Conduct Tantra.
The Yoga Tantra teaches chiefly meditation,
With bodily and verbal conduct taught as its ancillaries.
The Great Yoga Tantra is devoid
Of all intended acts of body, speech, and mind.
It’s free from subject-object dualism
And is the supreme training on the luminous nature of the mind.
It is set forth for those who do not care for cleanliness.
4. The Action, Conduct, Yoga Tantras
Are the “tantras of austerity.”
In Sanskrit they are known as Kriyā, Upa, Yoga.
They constitute the outer tantras,
In which one does not meditate upon
The father-mother deities in union,
One makes no use of five meats and five nectars,82
And ritual cleanliness is practiced.
5. The Highest Yoga Tantras are divided threefold:
Father, Mother, and the unsurpassed Nondual.
Respectively they chiefly teach
The generation and perfection stages
And their nondual union.
They are also known as Mahā, Anu, Ati.
Here the deities appear in union
And particular samaya substances are used.
Between the pure and impure no difference is observed,
For all is said to be of but a single taste:
The display of a single maṇḍala.83
6. When practicing the Kriyā Tantra,
The deity is higher; you take a lower place.
The mode is that of lord and subject,
And thus accomplishment is gained.
In Caryā Tantra,84 you regard
The deity and yourself as equal:
Yourself as the samayasattva
And the deity in front as the jñānasattva.
In this mode, of friend with friend,
Accomplishment is gained.
In the main practice of the Yoga Tantra,
No difference divides the deity from yourself.
Yet in the preparation and conclusion phases,
You must adopt a dualistic mode:
Invite the deity and ask it to depart.
When, like water into water poured,
The deity and yourself become nondual,
Accomplishment is gained.
7. In Mahāyoga, emphasis is placed
On skillful means:
The stage of generation and the winds.85
In Anuyoga emphasis is placed
On wisdom: the perfection stage
Together with the essence-drops.
In Atiyoga, everything is nondual;
Emphasis is placed on primal wisdom.
In all these three, the practice is performed
Within the knowledge that phenomena
Are all primordially equal.
8. Yourself and every being are from the outset
Perfectly enlightened.
Therefore bring to mind that aggregates,
The elements, the sources, and so forth
Are but a single maṇḍala86
And meditate on the two stages.
9. According to four ways of taking birth,
There are four ways to meditate.
To purify the tendency for egg birth,
As the preamble, start by taking refuge,
Generating bodhichitta, and performing
A short generation stage (invite the field of merit
And make offerings).
Then meditate upon their lack of real existence,
Thus gathering the two accumulations.
Subsequently meditate on the extended
Generation and perfection stages.
Just as there is, first, an egg, from which a chick is born,
Meditate successively upon
The generation and perfection stages,
First in short and then extended form.87
10. To purify the tendency to take birth in a womb,
Meditate successively, in detail,
First on refuge, then on bodhichitta,
Then upon the seed letter that from emptiness appears.
From this there comes the implement that then transforms
Into the body of the deity projecting rays of light.
This way of meditating is not, as previously,
Preceded by brief generation and perfection stage
s.
It is like the way the embryo develops in the womb
When, through the interaction
Of the wind-mind and the essence-drops both white and red,
There comes a spherical mass,
Which lengthens and solidifies
And passes through the other stages
Till the body is completely formed
And then emerges from the womb.88
11. To purify the tendency for taking birth
From warmth and moisture,
Take refuge, cultivate the mind of bodhichitta,
And simply say the name whereby
The deity appears from emptiness.
Then implement the generation and perfection stages.
Just as a body born from gathering of warmth and moisture
Is easily produced and born,
There is no need for complicated meditation
On syllables and implements.89
12. To purify the tendency to take miraculous birth,
Instantly and clearly meditate
Upon the generation and perfection stages.
And since miraculous birth occurs
Within a single instant,
There’s no need to meditate successively
On generation and perfection stages
Starting with the deity’s name.90
13. Although of these four ways to meditate,
You should practice most the one relating
To the womb birth you have taken,
Meditate upon them all to purify the tendencies
To other ways of being born.
As a beginner, more precisely, you should start
According to birth from an egg.
And when you have acquired some slight stability,
Proceed to meditate according to birth from a womb.
Then, gaining great stability, you should concentrate
According to the way of birth through warmth and moisture.
Finally, when thanks to intense training,
Excellent stability has been accomplished,
In a single instant meditate upon the deity,
Thus conforming to miraculous birth.
14. The perfection stage is twofold:
Accompanied, or unaccompanied, by visual forms.
When the visualization of the generation stage
Dissolves like clouds dispersing in the sky,
You should remain within the state of emptiness
Devoid of visual forms.
Thereby the generation stage, it should be understood,
Is perfected and completed.
But in the very moment that appearances occur,
Their nature is beyond conceptual construction.
Meditating on this undistractedly
Is the perfection stage with visual form.
Assisted by the practice without visual forms,
Beginners halt their clinging to the generation stage.
This is the antidote to clinging
To phenomena as real.
Assisted by the practice using visual forms,
Those who have stability in meditation
Halt their clinging to the perfection stage.
This is the antidote to clinging
To the reality of emptiness.91
15. Hereafter all appearances—
The generation stage, or skillful means,
And the mind that’s free from clinging:
The perfection stage or wisdom—
All become at all times indivisible.
16. Therefore, clinging to the true existence of appearances
Is halted by the generation stage,
While thoughts that cling to them as being illusions
Are dispelled in the perfection stage.
When there is no further clinging
To the true existence of appearances and emptiness,
The generation and perfection stages
Are inseparable and pure.
17. This, then, is the final vehicle, the Vajrayāna
Whereby those of high capacity achieve
Enlightenment in but a single life.
And afterward, wherever there are beings
To be trained in all the worlds,
Their enlightened deeds, in all their great variety,
Spontaneously unfold.
This then is the short and hidden path of great profundity
Of all the holders of the vajra, all past numbering.
It is a path adopted by the fortunate
Who wish for liberation in this very life.
18. On the basis of the practice
Of whichever Tantra class to which you tend
Is perfect buddhahood achieved.
First you must receive transmission of the blessings,
Permission for the practice,
Empowerment, and so forth,
According as each scripture stipulates.
These will bring the mind to ripeness.92
19. Especially, the path of the Great Yoga,
Secret and supreme, consists
In four empowerments, which ripen,
And generation and perfection stages, which bring freedom.
By the vase, the secret, the wisdom,
And the word empowerments
Are purified respectively the body, speech, and mind,
And all habitual tendencies
And all accomplishments are granted.
The gathering of merit is completed
Through the first three, while the fourth
Completes the gathering of wisdom.
The veils deriving from defilement
And the cognitive conceptual veils
Are also cleansed.
Therefore you should take the four maturing empowerments
And train in both the generation and perfection stages,
Whereby freedom is bestowed.93
20. When all the four empowerments are received complete
And the samaya pledge you now possess,94
Wishing then to implement
The wisdom of the nondual Atiyoga,95
21. Sit cross-legged upon a pleasant seat
And, taking refuge, cultivate the attitude of bodhichitta.
Then, from within the state
Devoid of all conceptual construction,
Wherein phenomena are empty, without self,
There appears the syllable hung.
From this and all around—
Above, below, in all the four points
And their intermediate directions—
There emanates a vast protective wheel
On whose ten spokes are standing
Ten ferocious deities.96
22. Outside and within,
In one great mass of blazing fire
Is the great maṇḍala of glorious Samantabhadra.
The palace is four-square.
It has four doors, each furnished with four cornices.
Its walls, five-layered, are surmounted by a ledge
And are surrounded by a plinth on which
The goddesses of the sense pleasures are dancing.
Beautiful with traceries and pendent strings of jewels,
It has a covered terrace and a balustrade,
Its dome surmounted with a jewel and vajra.
In the center of this maṇḍala,
Encircled by eight charnel grounds,
Are thrones upheld by lions, horses, peacocks,
Elephants, and shang-shang birds.
23. And here on lotuses and disks of sun and moon,
Are the buddhas of five families in union with their consorts.
Likewise there are bodhisattvas,
Male and female, eight of each.
At the four doors are eight father-mother guardians.
These, together with six Munis, all in their respective stations,
Variously hued, are perfectly equipped
With their respective ornaments and implements.
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The rays of light that stream from them
Are limitless and fill the whole of space.97
24. In the heart of the main deity,
Is Samantabhadra joined in union with his consort.
They are the maṇḍala’s foundation,98
Adorned by the major and the minor marks of buddhahood.
He is, like space, unstained;
Dark blue, he sits cross-legged.
Imagine him the size of your own thumb
And seated in a sphere of light.
From him lights radiate and purify
Phenomenal existence:
The universe and its inhabitants.
All becomes completely pure,
The sphere of male and female deities.99
25. Recite the three seed syllables
And those of the five families.100
Although resounding, they are empty
Like an unborn echo.
Rest then in the state of suchness uncontrived.
26. Primordially, your mind is of the nature of the deity.
Your body is its maṇḍala, your speech its secret mantra.
Beyond exertion, all is perfect:
The condition of sublime, primordial wisdom.
The samaya- and the jñānasattvas are inseparable:
There is no invocation of the latter
And no merging with it;
There is no need to ask the deity to depart.
There is no good or bad, no taking or rejecting.
This primordial maṇḍala has always dwelt within you.
Remember this and know it as your true condition.
You are not creating something that was not already there.101
27. In conclusion—if you are attached to it—
Dissolve the visualization gradually.
And free of all fixation, rest without conception.
If you have no clinging to the visualization,
Remain within the understanding
That everything is but illusion,
Like the moon reflected on the water.
Dedicate your merit to all beings.
28. In your day-to-day activities
Take everything as an illusion, clear yet empty.
Appearances and sounds are deities and mantra.
Thoughts and memories are primal wisdom.
At every instant, recognize them thus without distraction.
29. Keep your samaya pure, both root and branch.102
The five and twenty branch samayas are five groups of five:
The things that should be known,
The things not to be spurned, the things to be performed,
The things to be accepted,
And the things on which to meditate.