by Longchenpa
The self-arisen ground, the vast expanse.
For those who from the outset stay
Within this state of suchness,
There’s no deviation, there’s no place where they might deviate.
There is no exertion, no progressing,
No attaining and no nonattaining.
This they know with certainty
And, free from expectation of results,
Are perfect buddhas in that very instant.
A yoga such as this is but an infinite expanse.
4. Those of moderate and basic scope
Must strive in meditation.
They must train by various means
Until their ego-clinging sinks into the ultimate expanse.
If this is now explained in greater detail,
Beings are led into saṃsāra
By injurious discursive thought.
That this might now subside,
These beings must engage in concentrative methods.
The vast expanse of wisdom free from all extremes
Will finally appear.
Defilement is suppressed by calm abiding;
It is uprooted by deep insight.114
5. For those of highest scope, injurious discursiveness
Arises as the dharmakāya.
For them there is no good or bad;
They do not need to train in antidotes.
Those of moderate scope must meditate upon the limpid state
Wherein both calm abiding and deep insight are united—
Discursiveness, both good and bad,
Dissolves within the ultimate expanse—
The realization of this union rises similar to space.
Those of basic scope strive first in calm abiding
Whereby they easily achieve stability in concentration.
Then they grow accustomed to deep insight all discerning
Whereby all outer things and inner states of mind
Arise as the nature, free and open, of the ground.
Thus it is important to discern the scope of beings.
6. Now the meditation will be taught
For those who are of moderate ability.
It is as when the water is disturbed by waves:
The stars reflected there are indistinct and trembling.
So too, when the untamed mind is troubled and excited,
Immersed in every kind of mental agitation,
Primordial wisdom, clear and limpid, nature of the mind,
Together with the starlike powers of vision
And of preternatural cognition,115 fail to manifest.
Therefore it is of the greatest moment
That the mind rest evenly, one-pointed and unmoving.
7. With one’s body in the seven-point posture,
Stable like Sumeru, king of mountains,
With the sense powers left untrammeled
Like a pool in which the stars are mirrored,
One should settle without sleepiness or agitation,
Free from all conceptual elaboration,
In the nature of the mind,
Luminous and empty like the limpid sky.
8. This is the primordial state,
The one and single nature:
The dharmakāya where the apprehending subject
And the apprehended object are not found
And where an unstained luminosity
Arises like the essence of the sun.
No center does it have, no limit:
Blissful, clear, and free from thought.
9. Emptiness, appearance: they are but a single thing,
Transcending the alternatives of being and nonbeing.
Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are not considered different.
The knower and the known have but a single nature.
Beyond equality and non-equality, the dharmatā is seen.
10. This is the vision of the sublime truth,
The cause of primal wisdom.
And later, seeing suchness,
The mind’s eye will gain perfection
Of the dharmakāya of the Conquerors.
Therefore, let the fortunate at all times stay
In meditative evenness.
11. The nature of the mind is without origin.
It is a state of purity, just like the sky,
Wherein, dissolving like the clouds,
The mental factors are not found.
With undistracted minds, from concepts free,
Let those of middle scope remain in even meditation,
In this unaltered primal state of suchness.
12. And like an ocean calm and limpid clear,
Let them be waveless, free of the turbidity
Of subject-object apprehension.
And in a sky-like state both luminous and empty,
Let them rest unclouded by discursive thought,
Not falling into one side or the other.
13. Not accepting, not rejecting,
Free from hope or fear,
Let them rest unmoving, firm,
Like Sumeru, the king of mountains.
Let them rest within a state that,
Like a mirror, is both pure and clear,
Wherein appearing things
Reflect without impediment.
14. Let them rest quite naturally
In the state of primal openness and freedom
That is like a rainbow, pure and clear,
Free from sinking and disturbance.
Like archers undistracted,
Let them, free from mental movement,
Rest in primal wisdom uncontrived.
Let them rest with no more hope and fear,
Like those who know they have achieved their goal.
15. This is a concentration pure intrinsically,
The union of calm abiding and deep insight.
Remaining in the unborn state is calm abiding;
Deep insight is to rest in clarity and emptiness
Without discursiveness.
Calm abiding and deep insight are not separate,
Joined without division in their single nature.
16. And now the mind is seen:
Profound and peaceful, free of all mentation,
Neither word nor concept can express it.
This primal wisdom—completely nonconceptual—of “light”
Is called the luminous wisdom that has gone beyond.116
17. Through seeing it, the mind becomes
Completely peaceful.
For everything occurring outside or within
There is but slight engagement
Whether of adopting or rejecting.
There rises from the state of emptiness
Compassion that is utterly impartial.
One acts with virtue for oneself and everyone,
Exhorting others to the same.
One takes delight in solitude,
Abandoning distraction and all busy occupation.
All conduct, even in one’s dreams, is virtuous:
One is well upon the path to freedom.
18. Then through increased habituation,
Primal wisdom, luminosity of mind, grow greater than before.
One understands that things as they appear
Are but illusions and the stuff of dreams.
Within the state of nonduality, they all are of one taste.
One sees that they are neither born nor unborn.
And primal wisdom of “increase of light”
Is gained completely free of thought,
Enhanced by joy in meditative concentration.
19. Now both mind and body
Are much purer than before.
Through skillful means and wisdom
Stainless understanding dawns.
Through clairvoyance and compassion
One brings benefit to others.
For saṃsāra one experiences a sorrowful revulsion
And is decided to abandon it.
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One understands that things are dreamlike
Even as one dreams of them.
One’s body has no lice or parasites,
And one remains in concentration,
Free from sinking and excitement, day and night.
Those who are like this come swiftly to the path of noble beings.
20. Subsequently, through increased familiarity,
There comes a concentration greater than the one preceding,
And the sun of realization rises never seen before.
Equality, the single nature of all things, is seen,
And thence one is possessed of stainless powers of vision
And of preternatural cognition.
Countless buddhafields are seen:
Hundreds, thousands, millions strong.
The stainless primal wisdom of the noble ones
Is manifestly gained: the wisdom of “light’s culmination.”
21. Through its increase, growing ever more sublime,
Unnumbered concentrations and qualities ensue.
Whether in the presence or the absence of conception,
Ultimate reality remains the same—
In which are found vast clouds of dhāraṇīs
And stainless primal wisdom.
Then the states of meditation and nonmeditation mingle,
And one is constantly in meditative equipoise,
Manifesting emanations past imagining.
One may enter boundless buddhafields
And enjoy the vision of primordial wisdom.117
22. The channels118 being purified,
The wind-mind is endowed with supreme qualities.
Now primordial wisdom is extremely vast and pure
And thus is called “light’s utter culmination.”
By such means does the noble path attain completion
And enlightenment is swiftly reached.
Such is the vehicle of the essence of clear light
By means of which the fortunate
Accomplish the result of freedom in this very life.
23. Those of least capacity should practice thus:
They should train in calm abiding and deep insight separately.
When both are stable they should practice them
Inseparably in union,
And train in countless meditative methods.
24. They should start by cultivating calm abiding.
They should take their seat in solitude
And count their breaths both in and out,
Their breath being visualized in various colors.
And in this way for several days,
They should tame their thoughts.
25. Then let them meditate on love
And on the other three unbounded attitudes,
On twofold bodhichitta, focusing thereafter
On some wholesome object—
An imagined deity, the drawing of a deity,
A scripture, and so forth—
Let them rest in meditation
One-pointedly, without distraction.
26. Settled in this way the mind is rendered serviceable.
It does not stray to other things
But rests upon its object.
Resting there, it stays in meditative equipoise.
Body, speech, and mind are filled with bliss,
And calm abiding, focused and unmoving, is achieved.
27. Training in deep insight follows.
All things appearing outwardly in both saṃsāra and nirvāṇa
Are like illusions and the stuff of dreams;
They’re like reflections, apparitions,
Echoes, cities in the clouds,
Tricks of sight, mirages: all without reality.
Appearing, they are empty by their nature.
28. Everything resembles space, without intrinsic being.
Thus practitioners should stay in meditative equipoise
Free from all conception, in the unborn nature.
They will understand that outer things are without self
And that the object that is there appearing
And the object apprehended in the mind
Are both without existence.
29. Then the mind should be examined thus:
“You, O mind, without reality and yet immersed in thought,
Busy with accepting or rejecting objects of the senses,
With truth and falsehood; sorrow, joy, indifference.
And yet, there’s no identifying you!
At first, whence do you come?
And now, where are you found?
And finally, where do you go?
What is your color and your shape?”
When the mind is scrutinized with such reflections,
Here is what is found.
30. At first, the mind is empty of a cause for its arising.
Then it is empty of a dwelling place,
And at the last, it’s empty of cessation.
It has no shape or color;
There’s no grasping or identifying it.
The former mental state has ceased,
The one to come is not yet born,
And in the present, mind has no abiding, outside or within.
Those who thus investigate will understand
That mind exceeds conceptual construction
And is similar to space.
31. Then they should lay aside reflection
As to what the mind is like,
And rest, as if reposing from fatigue.
They should not think of anything—
Investigation laid aside—
Reposing in the state
Where everything is even and beyond duality.
32. By this means, they’ll understand:
The person that’s attached to “I” is without self;
The clinging mind has no intrinsic being.
Then primal wisdom uncontrived appears,
In which are joined both calm abiding and deep insight—
Where mind and what appears to it are not two separate things
But are like water and the moon therein reflected.
33. Dividing them, one is deluded in saṃsāra.
Understanding that they are not two,
One journeys into peace beyond all sorrow.
Therefore one should train like this in nonduality.
The unborn nature of phenomena is but the nature of the mind.
The nature of the mind is pure and without stain.
One should rest without conceptual constructs
In empty luminosity unstained.
34. The troubles of defilement
Will thereby be completely pacified,
And in great primordial wisdom, free of concepts, one will stay.
Knowledge, preternatural cognition, concentration will be gained.
The nonduality of known and knower will be understood,
With freedom from extremes seen as the middle way.
35. Then no object is observed
Within the space-like mind
Of which the nature is devoid of thought elaboration.
And in that state where there is neither meditator
Nor something to be meditated on,
There is no doer, nothing to be done.
This primordial condition is the stainlessness
Of pure enlightenment.
36. There is no outer object found,
And what appears is like a trick of sight,
The image of the moon on water.
No apprehending subject does one find:
There’s no conceptual movement,
No falling to this side or to the other.
The mind and what appears to it
Are not two separate things;
There is but the state of wisdom that has gone beyond.
Profound and peaceful, free from thought,
Luminous and uncompounded:
Ultimate reality, like nectar, is assimilated.
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br /> 37. Free of clinging, concentration on the vast expanse
Is a great ship that crosses to the other shore
Of the ocean of the triple world.
There, upon the blissful ground,
The mind is an unbroken blissful stream.
It has attained the state of Natural Great Perfection.
38. Through the stillness of the mind
(Calm abiding, nature of the empty dharmakāya),
And through its luminosity
(Deep insight, nature of appearance of the rūpakāya),
The two accumulations, skillful means and wisdom,
The generation and perfection stages, are achieved.119
Deep insight brings to birth the wisdom of realization,
And in this wisdom, calm abiding causes one to rest.
39. When the mind is not at all immersed
In the apprehender or the apprehended,
In things and nonthings,
It’s then that in the ultimate expanse
From primal wisdom never parted,
The mind and mental factors utterly subside
And are no more.120
40. When in the mind’s nature, pure from the beginning,
Adventitious thoughts are purified,
Nine absorptions,121 miraculous power,
And preternatural cognition are achieved.
Countless kinds of concentration, clouds of dhāraṇīs,
Are likewise gained spontaneously.
41. From the mind in the desire realm,
Focused in a single point
There comes the first samādhi
With a concentration qualified by joy and bliss,
And by twofold discernment, gross and subtle.
From this there comes the second,
With a concentration qualified likewise
By joy and bliss and clarity of mind,
And by subtle, but not gross, discernment.
Then there comes the third samādhi,
Moist with joy and bliss, and with a concentration
Free from all discernment, gross and subtle.
And from the third, there comes the fourth
Equipped with beneficial qualities
And with a concentration marked by joy.122
42. Arising from the fourth, the limpid mind,
Pure, like space, attains to the absorption
Called “unbounded space,”
And thence the state wherein all things
Are but the mind devoid of all elaboration:
The absorption called “unbounded consciousness.”
From this there comes the unelaborated state wherein
The mind and what appears to it are not perceived: