Chone Lama Lodro Gyatso: You who absorb into sublime, immutable bliss
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Photo: 13th Dalai Lama (seated) with Tibetan officials at Hasting House in Calcutta, India; 1910.
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You who absorb into sublime, immutable bliss
all phenomena, moving and unmoving, infinite as space,
O glorious Heruka and Varahi, your consort,
I wear the jewel light of your feet as my crown.
Great bliss, the union of method and wisdom,
engaged in the play of the unmoving with movement,
this young coral maiden with beautiful eyes,
diamond queen, embrace me with your arts of love.
Adorning the highest part of my body,
my crown, with the jewel of your feet,
I recite these words of aspiration and prayer
with my palms folded at my heart.
When shall I ever achieve this state:
seeing all forms as mandala deities,
all sounds as vajra songs of tantra,
all thoughts as fuel to enflame
the spontaneous wisdom of emptiness and bliss?
When will I experience perfect purity?
By purging in profound absorption
all phenomena born of imaginative concepts,
fully aware that they open the way to self-arisen rikpa.
When will I run in a joyful step-dance,
the play of supreme illusion, the bliss-void wisdom,
in the dakin town, the emanation of pure realms --
where a hundred dharma doors are opened wide?
Outer dakinis hover above the twenty-four mystic places;
inner dakinis dwell in the sphere of radiant bliss.
When will I immerse in the glory of sexual play
through the secret act of conjoining space and vajra?
When can I arise as the great magical net --
the union of body and mind,
instantly burning all grossness of dualism
with the great bliss fire flaming the expanse?
When will I accomplish the natural feat
of absorbing the imperfections of illusion
into immutable bliss, this wheel of becoming,
engaged in the blissful play of union?
On the clear mirror of the luminous mind
my guru, my deity, and my mind reflect as one;
may I soon attain the good fortune of
practicing night and day this perfect meditation.
May my mind be always intoxicated
by drinking insatiably the nectar --
the delicious taste of sexual play
between the hero in his utter ecstasy
and his lover, the lady emptiness.
By entering deep into the sphere of voidness,
may I be endowed with the power of cleansing
this foul odor, grasping body, speech, and mind as ordinary,
through the yoga of perceiving all as divine.
May I come to see with naked eyes
the form of the fully emergent mandala
of perfect deities, the sport of the ever-present mind
inside the courtyard of the heart's dharma chakra.
O yoginis, heroines of the twenty-four places,
and the hosts of mantra-born and field-born dakinis
who possess powers swift as thought,
assist me in friendship of every kind.
(Chone Lama Lodro Gyatso)
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Source and Recommended Reading:
'Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight and Awakening'
By Thupten Jinpa (Author), Jas' Elsner (Author)
Purchase Book:
Amazon.com
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Description:
This is the first major anthology of Tibetan poetry to become available in the West. Translators Thupten Jinpa—one of the Dalai Lama's principal interpreters—and Jas' Elsner have created an accessible collection geared toward a general audience. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, poetry has long been one of the primary means of expressing spiritual experience. The splendid poems in this collection communicate spiritual insight with astonishing grace and precision. Songs of Spiritual Experience includes original translations of fifty-two poems, a lengthy introduction about the role of poetry in Tibetan Buddhism, and a helpful glossary that includes commentary on the poems. The book serves both as an introduction to Tibetan poetry and to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.
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