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Empowerment into the True Significance 3

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
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Empowerment into the True Significance




Then Sattvavajra addressed the great Vajrasattva with these words:


All the Buddhas of the three times

Use magical words and grammar

To demonstrate the self-evident presence

Of great wisdom.


I beg you to proclaim with certainty

An elucidation of the essence of unspeakable awareness,

Using the stages of instruction

That have been used before.


Then the great Vajrasattva proclaimed these words:


O Mahasattva,

The Tantra that is Equal to the End of the Sky

Is an elixir of the heart-space of the Great Perfection.

You present a request for a visualization and a method,

For a gradual investigation of its faults and virtues is dear to you.


You hold the treasure of the dominion of the sky.

Your heart of luminous self-awareness is untroubled.

It dwells in a light of uncontrived luminescence.

Its significance is not fixed and cannot be conceptualized.

It is not a thought that we can calculate.

It is not associated with our thoughts.

It is not to be practiced.


Our awareness abides in an uncontrived dimension.

We live in the resolve of unthinkable awareness,

Abiding there forever,

In an instant.

This is not something to think about or to practice.

There is no visualization of any levels.


We use the upadeśa for completing a royal investiture,

And an intellect that does not designate or hold on,

To know the heart-essence of the wisdom of conceptualization.

We engage ourselves with an intellect of uncontrived awareness

In the wisdom that illuminates obstructions.


We use a practice of compassion and skill in method

To illuminate everything in our awareness,

Though it be uncontrived.


We use any means there may be

To progressively develop applications for our thoughts,

And by force of the distinction

Between our wishes and our engagements,

Living beings are enlightened in a single moment.


We abide in the uncomplicated mandala of our awareness,

With a mind of uncontrived awareness.

Through the good works of spontaneously formed non-activity,

We naturally dwell where there are no tasks or searches.


In the dominion of the way things are,

All pathways are luminescent in perfection,

Without our travelling them.


Using the lamp of our own awareness of magical words,

The particularities of our thinking become clear,

Just as they are.


There are the methods of empowerments

And of granting blessings.

This is the yoga of the supreme vajra.



By the vajra that holds the elixir of wonders,

A person who lives in holiness

Will have no deceitful or faithless attitudes.

He will hold the cascading water

As if he were a monk,

And through the door of recollections

On his three doors of body, speech, and mind,

He must give up his body, speech, mind,

Furniture, fields, male and female servants,

His spouse, gold, silver, five kinds of jewels,

Son, daughter, foot-messengers, and grain,

Without an impoverished attitude.


Then, we may be beaten or pierced,

Or get five kinds of cattle,

And begin to have experiences,

Or we may not be in contact with holy ones for a long time,

Our repute will be luminous,

And then will decline.


Those who these things happen to

Will have their promises burnt to ashes.

They will be cleansed and anointed.

Their personal problems will be swept away.

They will not break their vows for anything,

Or let them be stolen, denigrated,

Or become thrown-off oaths.

They will work to cleanse themselves,

Using eighteen vows.

Then they will reach the self-luminous heart of our lord.

They will abide in the equanimity of self-luminescent light.

They will use an uncomplicated attitude

To understand unity,

And bow to the luminosity of self-awareness,

To the Great Perfection.


Your self-awareness demonstrates the heart essence of your wisdom,

So use the proclamations on unspoken awareness

To illuminate what it means

To be aware of your self.[46]

You are a child of uncontrived awareness

Who surely understands.

You illuminate yourself by yourself.

You must have definitive teachings about unsought awareness

To comprehend what is above your intellect.


But if someone has broken their samaya,

And we talk about or explain secret wisdom to them,

Presenting them with the aural transmission of the Great Perfection,

Then we will, at that very moment, be destroyed,

As if we were ground up by a mountain of soda.[47]

The dakinis and avowed ones will join together

In the land of the charnel ground of burning corpses.

The wild animals will congregate,

And it will seem that we are delivered to them.


Our vajra guru may be a blind man.

This is surely so,

But we go to his place.

We depend on him to see our path.

This need not be mentioned.

It is beyond our understanding.


Those with awareness will use preliminary practices

To cleanse themselves.

The finest children, whose virtues are complete,

Are to be granted empowerment,

And granted the experience of blessings,

Then they will be like the light of a thousand suns.

Once they achieve the abode of empowerment in all things,

They enter the self-luminous light of wisdom.

Once they savor the taste of hundreds of happinesses,

By this alone they will become perfect Buddhas.


In the yoga of living without searching

Our awareness is engaged in the transmission,

And is evident as an uncontrived clear light.

Through applications that equal the end of the sky,

Immeasurable wonders are perfected in our hearts.


So it is that after we have pleased our guru,

He opens the doors of his breast of precious jewels,

And uses whatever methods are available

To use his countenance to show the jewels,

And explain to us the measure of our warmth.


He uses the mirror of transmitted methods

To made these things evident

To the faces and senses of his disciples,

Even though the blazing jewels of true luminosity

Are not to be symbolized or designated.


Through the samadhi of the clear light of the circle

We abide as one,

Where differences are not clear.

We use the self-luminous wisdom that does not abide

To study the upadeśa that are like a waterfall.

For those in the fierce space that is not to be dwelt within,

We offer the upadeśa for praising elephants.

They must not remain there, but move on,

So we must give them an elephant’s belly.


For people who do not grasp,

Or who are decreasing their grasping,

We give the upadeśa on awareness that has form.


For those who hold to a permanence

In their methods and wisdom,

We give the upadeśa of kissing and bones.


For the unfortunate whose senses are poor,

We give the upadeśa on comprehensive instructions.


For people who are external, internal, and secret,

We give the upadeśa on calculations, apprehensions,

Investigation, and the common winds.


For people who have intellect and understanding,

We give the upadeśa of the magical mirror.


For those who are learned in attachment, desire, and lust,

We give the upadeśa for banking up this precious happiness.


For those that are learned in a reality that clings to permanence,

We give the upadeśa for investigating essences.


For those who are knowledgeable and whose senses are tame,

We give the upadeśa of an awareness that has signs.


For people who are addicted to objects,

We teach methods for controlling the senses.


For people who delight in words,

We give the upadeśa of description through grammar.


We penetrate those who ask a river of questions

About placing themselves in equanimity,

With the upadeśa of a river of paths to practice.


For the very finest,

Those who have intellect and are fortunate,

We give the upadeśa that are like mixtures of water.


We do not engage

This awareness that does not hold on or search.

This is how we see awareness.

We place ourselves in the state of an uncontrived luminous light.

We do not follow any trails.

We do not seek any object.


The self-luminous has no faults.

It does not think of itself.

It does not seek a dominion.

It is totally without any desirous attitudes.

It is clear light.

It has no position.

It is all-encompassing.

It is not to be visualized.

It is free from the limitations

Of the hopes and worries in our thoughts.

It is like the blazing light of the sun,

And has no position.


Its blessings are entirely pervasive and encompassing.

It is like a blazing precious gemstone.

Everything is reflected there,

Just as it is.

The self-luminosity of this awareness,

Which does not search,

Is free from every clinging

To a source of application.


So he spoke.


From the Great Tantra Equal to the End of the Sky, this is the seventh chapter: Empowerment into the True Significance.


The Self-luminescence of Awareness



Then the Tathagata Vajrasattva made a request with these words:


The embodiment that is pervaded

By the bodies, speech, and minds

Of all the Victorious Ones of the three times

Does not support conceptualizations.


O Lord,

I beg you to teach me

How to cleanse these definitions

So that they are wisdom itself,

And then implement this essentially self-luminous awareness

So that holy ones who are able to experience and investigate it

May understand what this self-luminescence is.



Then the Tathagata, the Blissful Vajrasattva,[48] proclaimed these words:


O Mahasattva,

Just as each and every appearance

In the mandala of the wisdom of self-awareness

Is free from all the conventionalities

Made up by designations,

Anything that we look at

Through this mandala of equanimity

That has no position

Will be luminous in this way.


In the essence of secret wisdom,

Which is solitary,

We do not grasp,

And are free from all things.

The space of the perfection of self-luminescent wisdom

Contains all the Dharmas that are spoken and are apparent.


In that true nature that is not a duality,

For it is one,

We are free from all the conventionalities

Made by definitions.


Every image arises without hindrance

In the mirror of self-luminescent methods.

This self-luminescent roundness

Is an uncontrived reality.

We abide in the resolve of unexaggerated awareness.

It is uncontrived and self-luminous,

Pure like the sky.


In the way of being like the sky,

Which does not abide,

The dominion of the Dharma,

Which is primordially pure,

Engages in the dominion of self-luminous self-awareness.

This is a non-dual path,

Which has no borders or center,

An abode of awareness,

Which is pure and has no attachments.


In a crystal palace of totally clear light,

Beyond the ways of measurement and enumeration,

Without our thinking of it or doing anything,

There is the supreme self-evidence

Of a pure embodiment of unchanging awareness.

Without our seeking them,

We come to have the attributes and good works of these three:

To be unspeakable,

To be self-luminous,

And to be pervasively encompassing.


This unspeakable dominion of the Dharma,

That has no works,

Is luminescent in everything.

It has no conceptions.


Awareness is uncontrived,

And does not hold on or search.

As equanimity is luminous in the space of awareness,

Awareness will be instantaneously clear,

Without our engaging in the mandala of self-awareness.


This is a knowledge that cuts through conventionalities,

Things being clear or unclear,

Being held or not held.


The true nature of this is not connected to any support.

It may be luminescent in anything.

It is not to be visualized.


The truth of self-luminous awareness

Is not to be exemplified

Using the language of definitions.

The transmission in which luminous experience is not presented

Is to live as if in the taste of delight.

We depart from a hundred palaces of awareness,

And dwell forever in the clear light,

Which is not to be defined.

Apply yourself in keeping with the transmitted scriptures.

Live with an attitude that you will not fail.

Everything that was not clear

Will be clear,

In unity.


An awareness of the state of self-luminous wisdom,

Which is solitary,

Is a self-apparent vase.

It does not exist in the way of subjects and objects.

It does not illuminate itself.

It illuminates others.

But it is neither of these.


The unlimited transmission is free and clear

From both exaggeration and depreciation.

We engage in self-occurring conditions

Without adulterating them.


When we have experience of self-luminous awareness

We will have no delight in or eagerness for definitions.

There are no dharmas that are destroyed or not destroyed.

An attitude of engagement does not occur to us.

An undisturbed river shines by itself,

So we must dwell always in untroubled practices.


The wheels of hell are intolerable.

We must know the state of self-luminous wisdom.

In the dominion of the Dharma of uncomplicated awareness

There is a river that is untroubled

By intolerably fierce sorrows,

Or by any pleasurable happiness that may be evident,

And is luminous by itself.


This is the playfulness of wisdom.

It is evident in the state of non-dual self-luminescence.


This self-occurring and uncreated wisdom,

This self-empowering king of awareness,

Has no consideration for remedies.

It is outstanding.

It is capable of letting free

The transmissions of knowledge used by others.

In this magnificent non-dual wisdom,

We do not engage in an awareness that holds to duality,

For it is not the supreme bliss of clear light.


Conceptualizations do not abide in defined dharmas.

They are not directed towards nirvana.

They do not dwell in attitudes that propagate samsara.

Our unattached intellect remains luminously

In a samadhi that has no borders.

We are not distracted,

And do not dwell on joinings or separations.

Our uncontrived heart-essence is formed spontaneously.

There are bountiful particularities of its ability.

It is like a blazing vajra jewel.

It is the one thing that overwhelms everything.

It is like the light at the heart of the sun.


Samsara is self-luminous wisdom.

We do not use virtuous or evil karma

In the fashion that gold is colored or shaped,

To contrive things.


Like a bird living in the sky,

We are happy along the pathways of samsara’s crevasses.

Like a magical illusion,

We do not shift away from our natural condition.


By the grace of the leader of all who live,

We are blessed that we do not fall into evil.

The power and force of self-luminosity are inconceivable.

Self-luminescent wisdom has no going or coming.

Self-luminous compassion has no position or preference.

Self-luminous samadhi is not to be visualized.

True self-luminosity is something we do not engage.


The wind of the motion of thoughts

Does not dwell in this self-luminosity.

It has no bondage or liberation.

Luminosity is just like an oil lamp.

A mind without conceptions does not engage.

We do not think of anything.

We do not consider anything.

This is not anything.

That is how it is.


When we assert a visualized concern

On the boundless vajra sky,

This is a mistaken path.


The sun of wisdom’s heart-essence rises.

It is perfected in the treasure of self-evident awareness.

It is not related to borders, centers, or areas,

For they do not apply to an equanimous mind.


Non-dual awareness alone

Engages in the clear light that is not to be engaged in.

It is like pouring water into water.

This is how we place ourselves

In the way of non-dual living.


Samsara is obviously the heart-essence of wisdom.

The sun that burns away samsara

Has been empty of dark limitations

Since the primordial.

The sun of luminous wisdom pervades everything.

It is not a visualization.

It is not anything.

It is everything.


Compassion that has no position or preference

Encompasses all things,

As does the border of the sky.

The ocean of wisdom has no shores.

It holds the mandala of liberation in its entirety.

The embodiment of this naturally uncontrived heart-essence,

The mandala of the sun that does not shine,

Abides in a sky-space that we do not seek,

And like the mandala of the sky,

It shines in the state of its uncontrived nature.


The crown of true loftiness

Will not be touched by perspectives on conclusions.

A limit of reality,

In the way things are, without center or border,

Be it contrived or uncontrived,

Does not exist anywhere,

But abides in its own domain.

This domain is an uncontrived ground of peace.

The true nature of primordial peace

Does not conceive of emptiness or non-emptiness.


The conclusion of thoughts is just not to think.

Do not blame wisdom,

Which has no boundaries or center,

For having or not having a border or center.


The great light of faultless wisdom

Blazes in the self-luminescence of samsara.

The sky-like condition of the source

Is an abode where the apparent world

Is wisdom,

And this is the overall luminosity of wisdom.


There never was an obstruction made by ignorance

That is outside of the wheel of luminous wisdom.

The wheel of All Good awareness

Is not anything at all.

It is not to be stopped.

The reality that is not to be thought upon

Is not troubled by objects to be thought on or studied.


In the samadhi of natural abundance

We do no acts of expanding or contracting our minds.

We abide primordially

In the state of self-liberation.

The state of supreme enlightenment,

Which is not contrived,

Is such that no matter what it seems to become

It is not a material thing, but appears to be.


In the mandala of the self-evident mind

There are vast hundreds of thousands of mandalas of freedom.

They abide in the dimension of a wisdom

That we do not travel over.

Our awareness engages in them suddenly,

Without a meditation.


When our own minds are not clear

We do not abide in this Dharma that has no duality.

Our playfulness does not stop, however,

And may be evident as anything at all.


We condense our awareness into an uncomplicated dimension.

Our statements keep to the wheels of grammar.

Through grammar we penetrate the dimension of the true meaning.

Our awareness is free from holding on

To the mirror of the mind that subsumes everything.

We do not contemplate anything.


The significance of luminescent wisdom

Is not apparent to us when we worship

Using methods that are secret in themselves.


From the Great Tantra Equal to the End of the Sky this is the eighth chapter: The Self-luminescence of Awareness.



What is Obscured by What?



Then that holy Sattvavajra addressed the Tathagata Vajrasattva with these words:


Kye Ma’o!

The significance of non-duality

In the clarity of the wisdom of awareness

Of all the Buddhas

Is not apparent.

Please explain why it is shadowed.


After he had asked this, the Tathagata Vajrasattva proclaimed these words:


The true nature of secret wisdom is bound,

For individuals,

In the nets of conceptualizations.

We do not understand that reality is self-evident,

So we fall into the cities of perversion.


So he spoke.


O Mahasattva,

The true essence of all the Buddhas

And the significance of non-dual secret wisdom

Are joined together with the end of the sky.


The mirror of the wisdom that illuminates everything

Is not samsara.

It is not nirvana.

The sky,

An awareness of the clear light of wisdom,

Is a wisdom of the self-luminescent awareness

Of all the Buddhas and all sentient beings.

It is primordially manifest, specific to everything.


Its reality is not to be anything at all.

It is free from every reality.

It is free from change.

It is free from conceptions.

It is luminous as the heart-essence of wisdom.

An analogy is that a single bone in the water

Will either meet up with or not meet up with conditions

That enable it to seem to appear in different ways.

The self-luminescence of the Victorious One’s wisdom

Is separated in its being either understood or not understood,

But while in reality we do not visualize these things,

We think about them,

And they are well known to be essential for training.

They do not have the force of self-luminescent awareness,

And there are an inconceivable number of specifics

On their perspectives on what transcends the world,

And on the world.

In reality they are all subsumed within the clear light of awareness.


In the same way that they lack the force of awareness,

They are reverted Dharmas,

Conceptions of the existence or non-existence

Of a self, of a Lord of Creation,

Of a natural time, or of chance encounters.

We are free of them all.


Once we divide virtue from non-virtue

We have things to take on or to remove.

We are confused about what is superior.

Those who hold to stages,

In the way of what is higher or lower,

Have reasons to be weary

About making themselves want to attain them.


Once we depend on the four truths

And the path with its sixteen aspects

We must get totally rid of our emotional problems,

So that we progressively attain Entry into the Stream,

And other such states,

Which are childish, wearisome, and meaningless.


They say that once we use dependencies and connections

As a cause for cessation,

We will stop up the wheel of worldly existence.

This is in contradiction to the significance

Of neither ceasing nor pursuing.

They hold on to things like the significance of non-duality,

And for three immeasurable eons

They study the ten stages, the five paths, and the Perfections,

While they maintain the dualistic conceptions

Of removing things and taking things on.

They attain their own levels,

But they do not make it to the end.

They fail at what it means to be non-dual and self-luminescent.


While the dominion of the Dharma is primordially one,

They use taking in and holding onto

A wisdom that rejects and accepts,

Whether it is pure or is impure,

To attain Vajradhara,

And reach their final fruition.


They do not understand the significance

Of omniscient pure light.

They do not understand the significance

Of secret wisdom.

They have not acquired the empowerment of awareness,

The royal investiture.


While non-dual luminescence is solitary,

They hold to two sides,

Which they do not define.

They maintain an understanding of desire and delusion

As the only definite result of their desires.


The non-duality of a duality is just the same.

An anklet and a golden vase are not the same thing.

Their value is uncertain,

As is our profit.

This obstructs the significance of luminescent wisdom.


They use a progression of blessings, visions, central ceremonies,

The development of mandalas, recitations, and shining samadhis

In their desire for the level of Dense Array.[49]

They use conceptualizations to shadow

The significance of self-luminosity.

They use a cause

To develop something that is self-occurring.

They define wisdom

According to the way of things starting and finishing.

This is in contradiction to the significance

Of self-appearing wisdom.


They use the generation from the Mahāyoga,

With a four-part generation and perfection,

To put things together.

They dwell on the path of the Vision Keepers.

They are empowered.

Their mandala of wisdom shines.

They use their bodies, speech, and minds,

A crystal palace,

An invocation, a recitation, and an offering of praise,

To progressively cleanse all their conceptualizations,

But they desire a fruition,

So they do not gain their objective.


The wisdom of awareness is unitary,

But they tie it in a knot made of three samadhis.

Who could split the mandala of undefined self-luminescence

Into something that is either peaceful or wrathful?


For the pervasive soul of all things[50]

That is wisdom,

Arrival and non-arrival are Dharmas of delusion.

It is not necessary to cleanse

The self-luminescent wisdom of the three worlds,

Of expansions, contractions, or obstructions,

Or to generate the unborn heart-essence of enlightenment

As a deity, from out of one of the four kinds of birth.

It is a delusion.


The gradual development of happiness

In the self-luminescence of the wisdom of a single moment

Has not been exemplified.


They hold their breath and stop breathing.

They count,

And they cleanse their average minds,

Then they join together with their perfected minds,

But they do not get the meaning of self-luminescent wisdom.

They use a fierce introduction into opening and closing

The three channels where wisdom is condensed,

In connection with a structure of four mirrors

To stick the mandala of the sky into a lonely place.

They do not reach the end

Of the true light of burning wisdom.

They draw everything in,

Then join it into a single circle of wisdom.


This string of ropes made of magical jewels

Is like a crystal.

It holds a circle of purity.

Its light pervades and encompasses the three worlds,

Then melts once again into the heart-essence of wisdom.

The ambrosia fills up the dominion of the sky,

Then they savor the tastes of a hundred kinds of happiness

By cleansing the sky with ambrosia:

A great thousand of worlds spread out in clear light,

But this is also a contrivance.

It is a reverted pathway.


The mandala of the dominion of undeceiving power

Exists as a triangle, with what a shape!

There is a jeweled wheel on top of it,

Resting in the style of a construction of mirrors.

It has two sets of thirty-two.

They have a seed of coolness at their centers,

And are surrounded by the wheels of peace.

Both have eight leaves shining brightly.

There is one for each of the three wonders there are

In having the wisdom of the dominion of the Dharma

In our spirits.


Spheres of light rays and Putri Oṃ

Are in the way of tents made of bright silk.

What seem to be magical eyes and Apri Hūṃ

Are in the way of stringing blue crystal beads.

You must know that the sliver of the dark-red moon,

In the shape of a bow,

Is Bridu Oṃ.


The six classes of sentient beings do not understand this.

When we understand,

Our bodies, speech, and minds

Are blended in non-duality.

This is wisdom.


Through knowing their four parts,

There is a basis for the eight.

You must understand them

Using the way of illusions.

After the seed of the heart-essence blazes in light,

We abide in the heart-essence of the indestructible circle.

We remain on this level,

Where our breath and the rest are self-liberated,

On the level of pervasive and encompassing wisdom.


From out of the mandala of the twin thirteens,

There emerges the mandala of luminescent wisdom.

This unites the symbols for the wheel of sixteen.

Then there are those that bend downward or twist upward,

The ten or the four pairs,

All these Dharmas are of the taste

Of the wisdom of five-fold luminosity.


In the mudra of all the Dharmas that carry spells,

We complete the parts concerning blessings,

And the granting of empowerments,

And there in the taste of happiness,

Which comes from an awareness of uniting with what we adore,

There are these two parts: The occurrence and the engagement.

The pair of eights, the pair of fours, and the two sixteens

Are born together in their own luminosity.

The samadhi on the bliss of desire is pleasant.


This is a transmission on self-luminescent wisdom

That has no contradictions.

They do not get the meaning of what it is

To have no cause or conditions,

But they are superior with regard to the ways of ornaments and things.

They use a follow-up yoga,

The nature of which is our dominion and our wisdom,

To look at things in the way of their purity of cause and result.

They use the power of the samadhi of light

To go to the level of Vajrasattva.

They truly do achieve the fruition of their own level,

But they have no ultimate fruition.


All of these are paths for the world.

We will not find the meaning of self-luminosity

Through a search.

While in a state of non-duality

We cling to a duality.

We wander on ahead

Through the state of self-luminescence.


While we are free from causes and conditions,

We look for causes and results.


While in an uncontrived state,

We contrive things with our graspings.


While in a state that is not the be travelled over,

We travel along a path.


We are one,

But we hold to the duality of a self and others.


All of these things obscure the meaning of wisdom.

They make us fall into the three dominions of samsara.


We abide in a solitary self-luminescence that subsumes everything,

Regardless of what we look at,

While we touch the dominion of self-luminescence.

This dominion of the Dharma

Is free from the clingings that come with planetary concerns.

We do not think of it for ourselves,

And it does not think.


Awareness is born instantaneously,

Without our engagement.

This is the definition of total clarity.

It is perfect awareness.

It does not stay anywhere.

It goes everywhere.


When our cravings are luminescent in this uncontrived dimension,

We know that samsara is primordial Buddhahood.

Compassion is not a topic for our ideas.

It is naturally free of anguish.

Its luminescence is pervasive.


We do not engage in changing

Our intended object or our understanding.

In the mirror of self-luminescent wisdom,

We use a wisdom that is not associated with visualization or grasping

To enter into true contact,

In a single moment.

That which does not abide

Abides in ourselves,

And we ourselves cut through

The objects that we visualize.


Our awareness does not construct a support structure for grammar.

We do not follow the trails of sensory objects.

When we do not understand how this is,

It does not matter how we may scrutinize it.

It will not be that way.


So he spoke.


From the Great Tantra Equal to the End of the Sky, this is the ninth chapter: What is Obscured by What?


A Perfect Store



Then again the holy Sattvavajra addressed him with these words:


The unsought is obviously perfected

In the heart-essence of wisdom.

Lord,

Please explain this to me clearly,

Without confusing the particulars.


Then the Tathagata Vajrasattva proclaimed these words:


Reality is the self-evident Bodhicitta.

There is a magnificent non-dual wisdom

In the mandala of self-evident self-awareness.

When we do not continue to divide and combine things

Our awareness will be engaged in what this means,

But we use a division of real things and thoughts

To present how to see it,

And we teach it like that,

Using two ways to perceive the essence.

This is not the wisdom of self-awareness.


When we cease to continue with the Dharmas that cut off yoga

Our three bodies are perfected in the space of awareness.

Our abode is uncomplicated awareness.

Its teaching is a self-luminous mirror.

Its time is inconceivable.

The treasure of awareness is inclusive of every composition.

It is none other than the self-luminous itself.


Awareness is a treasure that does not shift or change.

Its perfection is not fixed.

You will understand this

In a time that thought does not comprehend.


O Mahasattva,

This teaching,

That the pure land of the embodiment of the Dharma,

Is a Dharma treasure,

And is encompassed everywhere by the sky,

Is that reality and sentience are inseparable,

But are described to be

A pure land of the embodiment of the Dharma.


The place is the Akaniṣṭa of awareness,

A blazing crystal palace

That is without embellishments,

A house for wisdom

That has no borders or center,

Where both sentient beings and Buddhas reside.


Our teacher,

The self-evident clear light,

Vajrasattva,

The Lord of the Dharma,

Uses the essence of unspeakable awareness

To teach the Dharma that does not come or go.

His uncomplicated blessings spread in the ten directions.

The essence of self-luminous awareness

Is explained using unspoken blessings.

We are aware of ourselves

In the wisdom of magnificent self-luminosity.

We understand this forcefully.


The retinue is the Buddha himself.

We do not abide by the dualistic Dharmas that others do.

The retinue is made from the resolve

Of the clear light of awareness.

It gathers and remains without being organized.

Everything is the heart-essence of wisdom.

We explain this to ourselves.

We comment on it ourselves.

Everything is subsumed within the heart-essence of wisdom.

This is indeed the retinue of the Bodhicitta.

All the non-dual spaces of self-luminescent compilation

Are subsumed within the light of awareness.

There are no Dharmas that are not subsumed

Within the true nature of non-dual luminescence.


The time is the time when everything is equal.

The essence of self-luminosity has no top or sides.

Particular events in the three times

Are gathered into unity

In this self-evident Bodhicitta.


The teaching is the self-luminescence of every Dharma,

An unchanging space that is neither contrived nor adulterated.

The wisdom of non-dual awareness

Is revealed by way of its self-appearance.

We will understand this

By placing ourselves within this uncontrived natural condition.


There are two or three insiders

Who proclaim the teachings,

But we will understand them

When we use the way of instantaneous engagement.

Clear knowledge is not to know anything at all.

This is how we clearly know the self-appearance of wisdom.


The teacher is Perfect Enjoyment,

For his pleasures equal the end of the sky.

His body, speech, and mind have no borders or limits.

So it is that his pure land is pervasive.


The place is the great Akaniṣṭa.

Through the blessings of uncomplicated awareness

We abide at the crystal palace of the river of wisdom.

It has neither outside nor inside.

It is luminous wisdom.


The teacher, Perfect Enjoyment,

Takes to himself the self-evident signs and exemplary markings,

And takes possession of every bliss.

His disposition is to visualize wisdom.


The retinue is established in true self-awareness.

They are, in fact, a retinue made up of

The lords of the ten levels.

All of them are engaged in the significance of self-luminosity,

And use a way in which their names are the same.


The compiler is the Lord of Secrets, Vajradhara.[51]

He was empowered by all the Victorious Ones

To compile this ocean of teachings that has no sound

Into the mandala of the wisdom of awareness.


The time is the time when our awareness is settled in equanimity.

We do not shift from the state of self-luminosity.

This is the time we are aware

That equanimity is self-liberation.

There is nothing definite to be presented,

Saying: “This.”


The teaching is the three secret mantras for wiping up.[52]

It blesses our contemplation,

And is explained through a lineage.

We use a clear samadhi to study and understand it.

We explain it by teaching its essence,

Describing it to be a teaching of Perfect Enjoyment,

Describing it to be a manifestation of natural compassion.


The pure land is the dominion of the magnificent sky,

Or it might be the three thousand worlds.

This is how they are described

At the beginning of the Vinaya.


The place is not defined.

It is endless.

It is wherever the six classes of sentient beings

Want to be.

It is where innumerable beings dwell,

Endless places, including Vajrasana.

There are Lords of Sages beyond counting.

In their summation,

They are the six manifest wisdoms.

They use techniques,

The power of control and the renunciation of enjoyments,

To be lamps to guide living beings.


Their retinue are those who have found false paths,

And sentient beings of the six classes.

There are monks, and all the rest,

In a variety of forms.

They are retinues representing a variety of communities.


He takes them in,

Using the way of the Three Baskets,

And uses the power of their different preferences

To teach them

In keeping with the way things are presented

On the stages of the lesser vehicles.

But all of them listen to the Bodhicitta,

And are joined in an uncontrived self-evident light.


In the essence of secret wisdom

The way things appear is the way that they are.

This treasury of the luminescence of the secret mirror

Is like the light at the heart of the sun.

It shines.

It is totally distinct from any object.

It is none other than

The state of totality.

It is itself beyond the objects

That are for thinking or talking.

Non-conceptual compassion is pervasive like the sky.

There is no consciousness that holds onto the sky.


The teacher is me.

The teaching is me.

The community in audience is me.

The compiler is me.

I am the self-luminous.

I abide in myself.

I am nothing at all.

I am clear light.


So he spoke.


From the Great Tantra Equal to the End of the Sky, this is the tenth chapter: A Perfect Store.


Seeing the Self-Luminescence of Wisdom



Then that holy Sattvavajra addressed him with these words:


We are a gathering of aware ones.

How are we to investigate luminous wisdom?

How does the playfulness of miraculous manifestation

Rise up out of the wheel of self-originated awareness?

Sun of Wisdom,

Blessed One,

Please explain what it means to be self-originated.


Then the Blessed One, the Tathagata Vajrasattva, proclaimed these words:


O Mahasattva,


Self-originated wisdom has no cause or conditions.

It has been self-apparent since the primordial.

It is the best of lights.

It is nothing at all.

In shines in everything.

It is a compassion that has no position.

It is engaged in everything.

It harbors no clinging to positions.

It harbors no thoughts.

It is like the mandala of the sun and moon

Shining in the sky.



When we think of the differences,

Every method of training remains in our minds

As self-originating awareness.


The transmission of the perfection of the dominion of the Dharma

That has no tasks,

The heart-treasure of the secret treasury of awareness,

Is a supreme bliss for our bodies, speech, and minds.

It takes us to the space

Where our awareness is totally pervasive.


The self-luminescence of wisdom is not a view.

It has no object.

It is not complicated.

It is just how it is.

It arises by itself

As a wheel of self-apparent awareness,

Without an object.

We use awareness to see it.


This awareness is not connected to our thoughts.

Awareness does not conceptualize anything.

This is not like the Magnificent Middle Way,

And is not to be associated with the planets.

This is the way things are,

And so it is that through awareness itself this is obvious.


The way things are is not any kind of contrivance.

No matter what kinds of thoughts we start to have

That hold onto subtle and gross things,

Or to enumerations and definitions,

These thoughts are, in fact,

A sky of pure shining light.


Non-dual self-luminescence moves in unity.

When we look at it,

We don’t see its meaning.

When we don’t look at it,

We see its meaning.

Both of these are uncontrived self-awareness.

Do not practice on the trails of seeing or not seeing.


Everything is the Bodhicitta,

So do not continue

With Dharmas of false ideas and searches.

Self-origination is not an engagement in definitions.

No matter how we look at it, it is clear,

And is not to be visualized.

We use a yoga that has no origin or applications,

And the way things are,

To conceptualize the meaning of this.


The eye of wisdom has no view and does not see.

Dharmas are luminous in the Bodhicitta.

The Bodhicitta is, itself, clear light.

It has no border or center.

It dwells in unity.


Whatever may appear,

Be it the five desires, the five objects,

Or the five attachments and hatreds,

There is nothing other than our mind.

It is not them,

While it is not anything else.

Samsara blazes in the light of wisdom.


We use an awareness that is self-luminous and does not engage

To investigate the essence without seeing it or engaging in it.

We use a luminescent wisdom that has no position

To overwhelm the ones who see things in terms of positions.

In the beginning there is no motion in our minds.

In the end we leave behind the limitations of birth and death.

The self-originating vajra has no birth or ending.

It is perfected in a single instant.

It is not developed gradually.


There are no instants.

There is no continuity.

The self-luminescence of awareness is perceived directly.

The stages of inference are lies that deceive us.


The transmission of the luminescence of unique reality

Is a Bodhicitta made of causes and conditions,

And supports a wheel of spinning wisdom.

It may manifest as anything.

It is clear in everything.

It dwells in the dominion of the self-luminescent sky.


We place the wheel of aware wisdom

Over the wheel of delusion,

The happiness and sorrow of the apparent world.

In the state of self-origination,

There is nothing else.

Without any joining or separation,

It touches us.

This encompassing and pervasive awareness

Is All Good.

The way it shines is how it is.

Its space expands and contracts,

But is unpolluted and entirely perfect.

It shines as one.


The light of supreme awareness

Pervades the crystal palace of the luminescent sky.

Self-luminescent awareness has been determined to be the best.

We will understand this clearly

When we join symbols with meanings.


The highest of the secret Dharmas

Is the supreme state of invisible awareness.

It transcends the objects of our thought and practice.

We cannot conceptualize a definition that is not complicated.


To begin with,

All the Dharmas that appear,

Or are of the world,

Are in a true condition of being unborn.

In the interim,

They transcend thoughts and practices.

In the end,

They do not have any definition for themselves.

All three of these are spheres

For the unborn embodiment of the Dharma.


We do not confuse the individual sensations we experience

With an object, or a sense organ, or a practice.

This is clear.

The self-occurring will occur to us in any case.


The true nature of the embodiment of perfect pleasure shines.

It encompasses all things,

And is able to achieve its purpose.

An inconceivable variety of things

Rise up in our awareness.

They are manifest to us,

And work out for us.


Self-originating awareness is a manifest embodiment.

It may, of course, be any subtle or gross body

Among all those who are born and live.

It appears in the playfulness of a miraculously occurring embodiment.


The supreme embodiment of the clear light of wisdom

Is beyond any words that may be spoken

About clear and empty awareness

In any language that is superior or average.

It is free from them.


To be free from speech

Is actually an undeceiving speech.

It is not a visualization.

It is not an engagement in thoughts about definitions.


We use the finest heart-essence

Of the embodiment of the Dharma

To speak,

A shining experience of encountering signs

To understand,

And the birth of certainty

To cut through our doubts.


When we use the signs,

We will not have two ways to understand the meaning.

This is clearly stated

Among the proclamations of Perfect Enjoyment.


Because it is able to achieve its purpose

Without mixing with conventionalities,

It is related to a purpose,

And is luminously pervasive.

It accords with everything

Joining with its own symbols.


The speech of manifest beings is naturally pervasive.

The nature of words that are not to be spoken

Everywhere illuminates the totality of what is self-originated.

The sounds we hear

About this miraculously occurring self-luminescence

Appear to us as the speech of playful wisdom.

Awareness that remembers and thinks does not see anything.

Self-luminous liberation does not contemplate anything.


The finest heart of non-dual awareness

Has no conceptual definitions.

The many things are self-luminous,

And transform into happiness.

They are not anything at all.

They are luminescent in everything.

We enter the pathway of the happiness of clear light.


The heart of great bliss

Is pervasively encompassing.

It is not connected in any way

With the many things.

It does not dwell alone,

But shines pervasively,

With considerations for accommodating everyone.


For us, this heart of self-originated manifestation

That is in a state that does not move and does not stay,

Is Vajrasattva, The Magnificent Sky.[53]

It is the finest heart of self-luminous miraculous occurrence.


This miraculous occurrence happens

In the playfulness of our hearts,

Like the blazing light rays of the sun.

In unsought self-originating awareness

A compassion that does not search

Is pervasively luminous.

It dwells in everything.

It is not to be visualized.

The pervasive light of the glorious sky

Naturally shines on all living beings.


The clear light at the end of the vast sky

Shines brightly on the world in a single instant.

Samsara is the self-luminosity of self-awareness,

But when the wisdom of our awareness is not clear,

Even the sun of wisdom will set,

Without concern for the significance of self-luminescent awareness.


If we use words for the self-originated,

To follow its trail,

We will not get at its essence.

We part ourselves from the luminous wisdom itself,

As if it were a binding-knot made of iron.

We plant large spikes into ourselves,

Which turn out to be a resolve for non-conceptual clarity.


The supreme treasure of a self-luminous entering into the transmission

Does not contain a single conceptualization or definition.


We have moved into the transmission of the unchanging vajra.

If the unspeakable mandala of the mind

Had not been exemplified,

With the intention of guiding monkeys,

We would not understand the significance

Of self-luminous awareness.


A house of treasure shines and illuminates.

In this same way, we will not contemplate words

When certainty is born in us.

Once we have united an awareness of wisdom

With the wheel of luminous self-origination,

We will blaze in the true mandala of wisdom,

As if it were an isle of blazing jewels.


Everything is luminous in the mandala of wisdom.

We use the method of using unseeking awareness as a lamp,

For it is naturally without darkness,

To engage in this mandala that we do not see or visualize,

And abide in it with an undistracted mind.


Anything that may appear is the self-luminescence of awareness,

And will cut through the darkness of shadows.

What is there to do about searching for causes and conditions,

When we have the magnificent method

Of primordial Buddhahood?


The definition of the heart-essence of wisdom

Is that it illuminates pervasively,

And has no true nature.

It shines in the mirror

Of the luminous apparent world,

But is not defined as awareness.


Once we understand that

There is no engagement,

No view,

And nothing to search for,

We remain in our own uncontrived dance,

Without thoughts,

And without the feelings that come from visualizations.


So he spoke.


From the Great Tantra Equal to the End of the Sky, this is the eleventh chapter: Seeing the Self-Luminescence of Wisdom.



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