Sounds of Innate Freedom

The Indian Texts of Mahamudra, Volume 4

Karl Brunnhölzl

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781614297161
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

The second volume in an historic and noteworthy 6-volume series containing many of the first English translations of the classic mahamudra literature compiled by the Seventh Karmapa as well as extensive commentary that brilliantly unravels enigmas and clarifies cryptic verses. Sounds of Innate Freedom: The Indian Texts of Mahamudra are historic volumes containing many of the first English translations of classic mahamudra literature. The texts and songs in these volumes constitute the large compendium called The Indian Texts of the Mahamudra of Definitive Meaning, compiled by the Seventh Karmapa, Chötra Gyatso (1456–1539). The collection offers a brilliant window into the richness of the vast ocean of Indian mahamudra texts cherished in all Tibetan lineages, particularly in the Kagyü tradition, giving us a clear view of the sources of one of the world's great contemplative traditions. Besides the individual dohas (couplets), vajragitis (vajra songs), and caryagitis (conduct songs) in this second volume in publication, the three extensive commentaries it contains brilliantly unravel enigmas and bring clarity not only to the specific songs they comment on but to many other, often cryptic, songs of realization in this collection. These expressive songs of the inexpressible offer readers a feast of profound and powerful pith instructions uttered by numerous male and female mahasiddhas, yogis, and dakinis, often in the context of ritual ganacakras and initially kept in their secret treasury. Displaying a vast range of themes, styles, and metaphors, they all point to the single true nature of the mind—mahamudra—in inspiring ways and from different angles, using a dazzling array of skillful means to penetrate the sole vital point of buddhahood being found nowhere but within our own mind. Reading and singing these songs of mystical wonder, bliss, and ecstatic freedom, and contemplating their meaning, will open doors to spiritual experience for us today just as it has for countless practitioners in the past.

APPENDIX 1: A PARACANONICAL VERSION OF TILOPA’S DOHĀ TREASURE (TEXT 72) AND HIS SIX NAILS THAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL POINTS

A DOHĀ TREASURE²¹¹¹

I pay homage to Śrī Vajrasattva

I pay homage to immutable self-awareness — mahāmudrā

This text has two parts:

1. The detailed teaching

2. The synoptical teaching

1. The detailed teaching

This has four parts:

1.1. Teaching the view

The skandhas, the dhātus, and the āyatanas,

without exception, arise in and dissolve back

into this very nature that is mahāmudrā [1]

It is free of the discursiveness of being and nonbeing

Don’t search for the actuality of nothing to engage mentally!

The nature of everything being delusive

is in want of a beginning as well as an end [2]

If something is the sphere of the mind,

it is not the basic nature but a subjective label

True reality isn’t [created] by gurus or students [3]

Without thinking of it as mind or nonmind,

know the one and only by discarding the many!

But if you cling to that one, you’re bound by just that true reality [4]

1.2. Teaching the meditation

I, Tailo, have nothing whatsoever to teach

My abode is neither isolated nor nonisolated

My eyes are neither open nor closed

My mind is neither contrived nor uncontrived [5]

Know that the native state cannot be engaged mentally!

In the dharmatā that is free from any discursiveness,

these experiences and thought processes are adventitious

If they are realized to be delusive, let them go as they please!

There is no ruin or profit and no gain or loss at all [6]

1.3. Teaching the conduct

Do not rely on forest hermitages by making any effort!

Bliss is not found through any bathing or purification

Even if you worship gods, you will not attain liberation

Know this free openness without anything to adopt or to reject! [7]

1.4. Teaching the fruition

This has two parts:

1.4.1. The temporary fruition

The awareness of your own true reality is the fruition

Simultaneous realization and attainment don’t depend on a path

However, worldly fools keep searching elsewhere

If depending on hope and fear is cut off, this is bliss [8]

1.4.2. The ultimate fruition

Wherever the mind’s clinging to “me” has found its peace,

there and then, appearances of dualistic clinging are at peace [9]

2. The synoptical teaching

Don’t ponder! Don’t think! Don’t examine or analyze!

Don’t meditate! Don’t analyze! Don’t hope or fear!

Without that, mind’s formations of clinging to something are free in their own place

Through this, let be right within the original dharmatā! [10]

This concludes “A Dohā Treasure” composed by the mighty lord of yogīs Tailopa. It was translated on his own by the Indian upādhyāya Vairocana[vajra].

TILOPA’S SIX NAILS THAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL POINTS

The Tibetan tradition also transmits a stand-alone teaching by Tilopa that is not contained in Tg, called Six Nails That Are the Essential Points.²¹¹² This short text corresponds closely to the first two and the last lines of the above stanza 10 in Tilopa’s Dohakoṣa and implicitly also includes its third line.

Gampopa’s Ornament of Precious Liberation presents this teaching as follows:

Don’t ponder!

Don’t think!

Don’t know!

Don’t meditate!

Don’t analyze!

Let it be in its own place!²¹¹³

Jamgön Kongtrul’s Treasury of Precious Instructions includes it in this form:

Don’t ponder!

Don’t think!

Don’t analyze!

Don’t meditate!

Don’t speculate!

Let be, naturally settled!²¹¹⁴

Tagpo Dashi Namgyal’s Moonbeams has it thus:

Don’t ponder!

Don’t think!

Don’t speculate!

Don’t meditate!

Don’t analyze!

Let naturally be!²¹¹⁵

Moonbeams comments that “Don’t ponder!” means not to pursue any thoughts about things in the past, because doing so will distract the mind. “Don’t think!” means not to contrive or evaluate what appears to the mind at present, because doing so makes the mind, which is to remain in meditative equipoise, fall under the sway of (extrinsic) conditions. “Don’t speculate!” means not to anticipate or invite any thoughts about what you might do in the future, because by doing so the mind moves toward those objects and becomes unstable. “Don’t meditate!”...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• (70) A Commentary Elucidating Native True Reality on “A Song That Is a Completely Filled Dohā Treasure Store”
• (71) A Dohā Treasure
• (72) A Dohā Treasure
• (73) A Commentary on Half a Stanza on True Reality Teaching That All Phenomena Are Utterly Nonabiding
• (74) The Purification of Being
• (75) A Discussion of Nonconceptuality
• (76) The Means to Realize the Unrealized
• (77) A Discussion That Is a Synopsis of the Essence in Its Entirety
• (78) The Root of the Accomplishment of Immortality
• (79) A Pith Instruction on Mahāmudrā
• (80) A Synopsis of Mahāmudrā
• (81) The Stages of Self-Blessing
• (82) Twelve Stanzas of Pith Instructions
• (83) An Investigation of the Mind
• (84) Familiarizing with the Basic Nature of the True State
• (85) A Dohā Treasure
• (86) A Song in Five Stanzas
• (87) A Glorious Vajra Song
• (88) The Samādhi of Yoga Conduct
• (89) Eighty-Four Lines by Śrī Virūpa
• (90) A Commentary on the Treasury of Conduct Songs
• Appendix 1: A Paracanonical Version of Tilopa’s Dohā Treasure (Text 72) and His Six Nails That Are the Essential Points
• Appendix 2: Marpa Lotsāwa’s Translation of a Paracanonical Version of Tilopa’s Pith Instruction on Mahāmudra (Text 79) with the Third Karmapa’s Outline and Commentary
• Appendix 3: Tāranātha’s Commentary on Kṛṣṇa’s Song in Five Stanzas (Text 86)
• Appendix 4: A List of Potential Quotes from Other Songs from the Caryāgītikoṣa in Text 90
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Translator
• Copyright