by Longchenpa
And the other of the four extremes,
Unthinkable, unspeakable, beyond expression,
They are that state wherein the far shore is attained.
Empty is their nature, where all concepts are no more.
Only buddhas, no one else, experience them.136
8. Within the palace of the dharmakāya utterly unborn,
The victorious buddhas of the three times constantly abide.
And yet they do not see each other: all is dharmatā.
They abide, so it is said, within the deep and peaceful nature.
And just as, at an earlier or later time,
The space within a vase remains the same,
Within this state of suchness,
The Conquerors are but one expanse of wisdom.
9. The dharmakāya, ultimate reality,
Is perfect cognizance of emptiness,
The gathering of wisdom,
The culminating point of the perfection stage.
10. From this very state there manifests
The self-experienced saṃbhogakāya
Endowed with the five excellencies:
Place, time, teacher, teaching, retinue.
The place is called the Field of Dense Array of Luminosity.
It glows with clear and shining lights of the five colors,
Like brilliant rainbows bright and clear,
Which fill the vault of heaven,
Pervading the abyss of space
Above, below, and everywhere.
And in it there are beauteous palaces,
Their four doors graced with cornices,
With five concentric walls with ledges all endowed
And pendent strings of pearls.
They all have covered terraces with balustrades
And shrine rooms graced with domes.137
11. The spaces of the palaces are all filled
With parasols and banners, tail fans, strings of tiny bells,
Banners of victory, canopies, and every ornament.
There the goddesses of pleasure send forth clouds of offerings.
Within, without, on all sides, everything is bathed
In swirling beams of light.
The center and the four directions are bedecked
With ornaments of corresponding hue and other brilliant colors.
Wherever one may look, there they appear of varying size.
The whole of space is filled by them:
Countless, teeming, like the seeds within an open pod of sesame.
Within the palaces are thrones
Upheld by lions, horses, elephants, peacocks, shang-shang birds.
Upon them there are lotuses and disks of sun and moon.
12. The time is no specific time;
It is the perfect ground beyond all movement and all change.
The no-time of the three times is Samantabhadra’s time.
All three are perfectly the same: an all-pervading suchness.
It is a nature that is pure from the beginning.
13. The Teachers with their bodies blazing
With the major and the minor marks
Are Vairocana and Akṣobhya,
Ratnasambhava and Amitābha, Amoghasiddhi,
Each of them encircled with four buddhas.
Each is joined in union with his respective consort:
Ākāśadhātvīśvarī, Vajramāmakī,
Buddhalocanā, Pāṇḍaravāsinī, Samayatārā,
All adorned with proper ornaments.
Rays of light stream forth from them:
In order, blue, white, yellow, red, and green.
These are the peaceful buddhas who reside
Within the lower maṇḍala.
While up above are found the wrathful ones.138
These are the five glorious herukas:
Buddha, Vajra, Ratna, Padma, Karma
(United with five wrathful queens),
Each one surrounded by another four.
Other features do they have, but they surpass description.
14. The teaching is the Natural Great Perfection,
The expanse indescribable,
Beyond the reach of thought and word.
15. Each buddha has a retinue not lower than himself in dignity,
For it is but his self-experience:
Eight pairs of bodhisattvas, male and female;
Four doorkeepers with female counterparts.
All together there are two and forty peaceful deities,
Six of which are the nirmāṇakāya,
For others may behold them;
Two are dharmakāya, because they are within the ultimate expanse.
The remaining thirty-four belong
To the saṃbhogakāya’s self-experience,
The specific retinue of which comprises twenty-four.139
16. To the retinue of the wrathful deities belong
Eight mataraḥ, Gaurī and the rest,
And Siṃhamukhā and other of the eight piśācī goddesses,
The four guardians of the doors,
And eight and twenty mighty goddesses.
Of the eight and fifty wrathful deities,
Forty-eight belong to the specific retinue.
All are terrible devourers, all blazing in appearance.
All are unendurable with nine wrathful demeanors.140
17. All the maṇḍalas, moreover, “present in the body”
Are buddhafields, which are the exclusive self-experience
Of the saṃbhogakāya.
Of all the peaceful and the wrathful deities,
Those that are perceived by beings to be guided
Are nirmāṇakāyas.
They are not the exclusive self-experience
Of the saṃbhogakāya.141
18. All the deities of the buddhafields
Endowed with five perfections
Are the self-experience of the saṃbhogakāya.
Therefore they are not distinguished
In their rank: some low, some high.
They shine with rays of brilliant sparkling light
And are resplendent, clear, and radiant.
This is the experience of the buddhas,
Who see and praise each other.
19. Even the most pure of beings to be trained
Are powerless to behold these beauteous buddhafields
That are arrayed on every side.
They are like the empty forms of yogic experience,142
Beyond the grasp of thought.
They are the exclusive purview
Of the Conquerors, past, present, and to come.143
20. From within this very state,
And in the worlds of beings to be taught,
The Teachers who instruct them
Show themselves by gradual degrees.
Such is the nirmāṇakāya luminous in character;
The nirmāṇakāya, guide of beings;
And the diversified nirmāṇakāya.144
All of them are striving for the sake of living beings.
21. The five nirmāṇakāya Teachers, luminous in character,145
Dwell in their respective fields:
Akaniṣṭha, Abhirati, Śrīmat,
Padmakūṭa, and Sukarmasiddhi.
They are the buddhas of the five families:
Akṣobhya, Vairocana, and the rest.
They blaze with light that issues
From the major and the minor marks of buddhahood.
They manifest in countless forms both peaceful and ferocious,
Laboring spontaneously for the twofold benefit of beings.
22. By nature, these five Teachers
Are the five primordial wisdoms:
Dharmadhātu, mirrorlike, equality,
All-discerning, and the wisdom all-accomplishing.
Each of these has four attendant wisdoms;
All are of a single taste.
23. The primal wisdom of the dharmadhātu
Is
completely motionless, transcending all duality
Of apprehended-apprehender,
All conceptual extremes.
The mirrorlike primordial wisdom
Is the luminous and empty ground of all arising.
It is the great wellspring of the three remaining wisdoms.
In the primal wisdom of equality everything is equal.
Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are not two,
For they completely coincide.
All-discerning wisdom knows things in their difference—
It is a perfect knowledge of phenomena
In both their nature and their multiplicity.
Wisdom all-accomplishing is perfect and enlightened action,
Constant, unimpeded with regard to all phenomena.
24. The retinue composed of those who may be trained
Consists of bodhisattvas who reside on the ten grounds.
The teaching comes through rays of light
That shine out from the Teachers in deep concentration,
And the bodhisattvas thus conceive the wish
To cleanse the obscurations from their ground of realization,
Removing avarice and all the rest.
They look upon their Teachers, who are utterly unstained,
And see the difference that divides them still from them.
They cleanse the obscurations that remain,
Progressing to the ground of Universal Light.
And when their perfect form appears
As though reflected in a glass,
They bring about the wealth and benefit of beings.146
25. Concerning then the time,
The Teachers manifest in the saṃbhogakāya fields
In seamless continuity
Until the bodhisattvas have achieved their freedom.
26. The nature of those Teachers may be ascertained
In terms of one (or other) of the five enlightened families.
When those yet to be trained
Are primarily engaged to purify their ignorance,
They do so in the field of Akaniṣṭha.
Vairocana is their Teacher, and the teaching
Is the pure primordial wisdom of the dharmadhātu.
Likewise for their anger to be purified,
Akṣobhya’s field appears.
Ratnasambhava appears to cleanse away their pride,
And Amitābha for attachment and desire.
Amoghasiddhi manifests for cleansing of their envy.
27. Although the Teachers manifest as the saṃbhogakāya,
Their retinues and all the rest are different from themselves.
Therefore all are not saṃbhogakāya but “half-nirmāṇakāya”:
The nirmāṇakāya luminous in character
Perceived by beings who are pure.
Since they do not show themselves
Except for those residing on the grounds of realization,
They are called nirmāṇakāya that is “half-appearing.”147
28. The ground is even in those buddhafields,
And there are lovely palaces contrived
Of seven kinds of jewels ablaze with rays of light
That shine in all the ten directions.
There are countless bodhisattvas, lotus-born.
And every happiness that they might wish for
Falls upon them like a shower of rain.
In all four periods of the day,
The stainless Dharma is set forth with bell-like sound.
With wishing-trees and wish-fulfilling gems,
With lakes and streams, these beauteous fields
Are the peaceful nirmāṇakāya, luminous in character.
29. Likewise there are countless wrathful maṇḍalas
And pure celestial realms with massing clouds of ḍākinīs.
There are also the pure fields of glorious herukas of five families.
All of these appear to those
Who’re adept in the Secret Mantra.
Nowadays the learned and accomplished know them
As the pure celestial realms of great felicity.148
30. From within the fields of the saṃbhogakāya
There arise nirmāṇakāyas who are guides of beings,
Who appear in each of the six realms
As their respective Teachers:
Indra, Vemacitra, Śākyamuni, Dhruvasiṃha,
Jvālamukha, Dharmarāja.
In all the fields that lie in all the ten directions,
These six sages purify the minds of beings of the six migrations.
31. The emanations, primary and secondary,
Of these six sages are beyond imagining.
In each divine realm,
From the realms of Brahmā and of Īśvara
As far as Akaniṣṭha, they appear
As Teachers who instruct the gods in their respective kingdoms.
32. For human beings also they appear
In forms appropriate to them.
They manifest as śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas,
As kings, and so forth, guides for all humanity.
They appear as various guides in the asura realms,
And likewise for the animals,
They manifest as birds among the birds
And as majestic lions for the creatures of the wild.
These different kinds of Teacher are indeed beyond imagining.
And in the hells and preta realms,
They work for beings’ sake in forms adapted to their state.
33. All these guides of beings have two kinds of wisdom:
That which knows the nature of all things
And that which knows them in their multiplicity.
They know the nature of phenomena
And they know phenomena, each by each, without confusing them.
Thus they labor for the twofold goal of beings.
34. The wisdom that beholds the nature of phenomena
Knows the emptiness of things
And expounds for wandering beings
The teaching that will lead to utter peace.
The wisdom that beholds the multiplicity of things
Cognizes, without mixing them, the mind, sense powers, and the rest;
It sets forth countless ways of teaching.
35. All these emanations are perceived by those who are impure.
Their field is the six worlds of the six kinds of beings.
These Teachers manifest according to the form of beings to be guided.
Their teachings are not uniform
But partake of different vehicles.
And the time that they appear
Is in accordance with the karmic destiny of beings.
36. In the six worlds of six kinds of beings,
As the fruit of action and habitual patterns, good and bad,
There are various states of being,
High and low, with joys and suffering.
These states and even the six Teachers who appear therein
Are but beings’ subjective visions—
Like buddhas and like beings seen in dreams:
Pure is their nature, yet their form impure.
The buddhas’ different, manifest, appearances
Are but the play of their compassion.
37. These six Teachers are the emanations
Of compassion without bounds.
Throughout the time saṃsāra lasts,
Their enlightened action will continue endlessly.
38. From their enlightened action there appears
The diversified nirmāṇakāya,
Which includes material things:
Supports for offerings—such as paintings, statues,
Various natural forms and writings;
Gardens, lotuses, and wishing-trees,
Sublime pavilions and pleasure groves,
Caravansaries and boats and bridges;
Jewels and lamps, food, clothing, and conveyances;
All such things: material objects
That appear to bring great help to beings.
39. Immediately they bring happiness and joy
And ultimately they place beings on the path to peace.
The diversified nirmāṇakāya
Spontaneously effects the benefit of beings.
40. Where there are no more beings to be trained,
The guides withdraw, subsiding in the ultimate expanse.
They are like the moons reflected in the water,
Which gather back into the moon above
When there are no more water vessels.
The self-experienced saṃbhogakāya
Melts back into the dharmakāya,
Just as at the end point of its phases,
The moon without increase or diminution
Sets and is absorbed by space itself.
And then, when there are beings to be guided,
The Teachers, as before, will gradually appear.
Such is the result, spontaneously present.
41. By virtue of this explanation,
Which has the nature of supreme and highest peace,
May beings stay within the luminous expanses of their minds.
And, wearied by mistaken clinging to the two extremes,
Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,
May their minds today find rest.
CONCLUSION
From the great clouds of the merit
Of this well-turned explanation,
May there fall a copious rain
Of happiness and peace.
May all the beings of the three worlds
See an increase in their fortune and prosperity.
May they naturally achieve
The wealth of the Victorious Ones.
These days, the impure eyes of common minds
Perceive as contradictory
The distinct paths of mantra and transcendent virtues.
Failing thus to unify them,
They regard them with a partial bias.
But here, the meaning supreme and profound
Of both the causal and resultant vehicles
Has been distilled into a unity
Adapted to the practice.
It was composed by Drimé Özer,
Rising Rays of Stainless Light,
At Orgyen Fort at Gangri Thökar.
By this merit may all beings in the world
Attain the highest state of complete peace,
Wherein the kāyas and the wisdoms are inseparably joined.
May there be good fortune everywhere and always.
PART TWO