A Lullaby to Awaken the Heart

The Aspiration Prayer of Samantabhadra and Its Commentaries

Karl Brunnhölzl

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781614294979
• eBook ISBN:
  9781614295174
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

A key Dzogchen text—available together with its Tibetan commentaries, including from the fifteenth Karmapa—from a preeminent translator.

The Aspiration Prayer of Samantabhadra, one of the most famous and often-recited Dzogchen texts, is at once an entreaty by the primordial buddha, Samantabhadra, that all sentient beings recognize the nature of their minds and thus become buddhas, and also a wake-up call by our own buddha nature itself. This monumental text outlines the profound view of Dzogchen in a nutshell and, at the same time, provides clear instructions on how to discover the wisdom of a buddha in the very midst of afflictions.

In this volume, Karl Brunnhölzl offers translations of three versions of the Aspiration Prayer and accompanies them with translations of the commentaries by Jigmé Lingpa, the Fifteenth Karmapa, and Tsültrim Sangpo. He offers further contextualization with his rich annotation and appendices, which include additional translation from Jigmé Lingpa, Longchenpa, and Patrul Rinpoche. This comprehensive, comprehensible book illuminates this profound text and greatly furthers our understanding of Dzogchen—and of our own nature.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Part I. Samantabhadra and His Legacy
• Part II. The Aspiration Prayer of Samantabhadra
• Part III. Translations
• Appendix 1. The Outlines of the Commentaries
• Appendix 2. The Ground, Its Manifestations, and Samantabhadra’s Freedom
• Appendix 3. The Arising of Delusion and the Unchanging Inherent Purity of All Saṃsāric Manifestations
• Appendix 4. How Buddha Nature and Its Pure Qualities Pervade All Sentient Beings
• Appendix 5. The Distinctions between All-Ground and Dharmakāya as well as Mind and Wisdom
• Appendix 6. The Kāyas and Wisdoms
• Appendix 7. The Many Facets of the Single Freedom
• Appendix 8. An Aspiration Prayer for Ground, Path, and Fruition by Jigmé Lingpa
• Appendix 9. The Essential Point of Practice by Patrul Rinpoche
• Appendix 10. Afflictions as Wisdom, Skandhas as Avalokiteśvara by Patrul Rinpoche
• Chart: The Ground, Its Manifestations, and the Resulting Freedom or Delusion
• Notes
• English–Tibetan Glossary
• Tibetan–English Glossary
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Copyright