The Gesar epic is a vast body of literature that recounts the struggles of Gesar Norbu Dradul, the legendary 12th century King of Ling in Eastern Tibet. Gesar was renowned for the many battles and quests he undertook to secure the wellbeing, prosperity and peace of his embattled kingdom, and he came to be regarded as the embodiment of continuous cultural and spiritual renewal.
In all his endeavors, Gesar is inspired by fearless compassion. Unafraid of chaos, he is able to uncover a path of wakefulness and harmony even in the most perilous and compromising situations. His unconditional commitment to others gives birth to the confidence that always uncovers spontaneous, precise and vital expressions of enlightened mind. Thus, he is revered throughout central Asia in Buddhist, Shambhala and shamanic teachings as the perfect warrior.
The Spirit of Renewal
Gesar's character in all his journeys is somewhat unique in Asian folklore. He is, even from before his birth, an enlightened being. However he is also a classic epic hero, prey to a range of flaws. Unlike the Buddha who, having once realized enlightenment, was invulnerable to worldly sorrows and blandishments, Gesar is repeatedly caught in nets of outer and inner conflict. And he repeatedly engages his torment and confusion in order to uncover the freedom of fundamental wakefulness.
The deepest impulse in the Gesar tradition is the constant renewal of enlightenment in the world. It is this dynamic—the constant rediscovery of wakefulness and compassion within the most horrific, grotesque, and frightening situations—that accounts for the Gesar epic's continued vitality and its many elaborations.
A Living Tradition
One of the world’s most extensive bodies of epic lore, the Gesar songs and stories have long focused the social and spiritual aspirations of Eastern Tibet, Western China, Mongolia, Buryatsia, and the Kalmuk Republic. This epic tradition is still alive, in a wide variety of forms, today.
Itinerant Gesar singers perpetuate the saga’s basic episodes and characters in improvised songs and chants, with some illiterate singers pretending to recite from written texts, and others unfurling scrolls that depict the tales of their songs. In eastern Tibet and elsewhere, an elaborate theatrical tradition boasts distinctive dances, costumes, and backdrops.
The epic has also been composed in written form, most famously in the early 20th century at the behest of Mipham Rinpoche, the great Nyingma lama and scholar. This written tradition includes many liturgies invoking Gesar as a deity, protector, and spiritual guide. Of the written versions now available to us from Tibet, Mongolia, and Ladakh, many were adapted in whole or in part from the songs and performances of one or more singers. Meanwhile new episodes arise in response to the inspiration and needs of the time. One lama, for example, hearing of the horrors of World War Two, composed an episode in which Gesar goes to Germany to conquer Hitler.
The Gesar epic is unlike the Mahabharata, which exists in one definitive written form, or the Ramayana which exists in two. Throughout India and South East Asia, the many theatrical and spiritual variations of these two great Indian epics assume the stability of the root texts. By contrast, there is no “definitive” Gesar epic, which is constantly evolving—as are its modes of presentation (with some songs and performances containing only selected episodes). In this sense, it is very much a living, improvisatory tradition. Because its message continues to inspire people in many cultures to find courage and hope in the hardships they encounter daily, new renditions of the Gesar epic have often arisen in times of special uncertainty and danger.
The Heart of the Story
The Gesar Epic has a core repertoire of episodes. These include Gesar's celestial origin and miraculous birth, his childhood and accession to the throne, his four great campaigns against the demonic lords of the four directions, and his departure from this earth. Other episodes tell of his battles in foreign lands, undertaken to procure various spiritual and material riches for the people of Ling. (These can be found in Alexandra David Neel’s Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling, Douglas Penick’s Warrior Song of King Gesar, and Robin Kornman forthcoming translation, among others.)
The episode recounted here is also part of the traditional canon, but less well known and tells of Gesar’s journey to rescue his mother from hell. To do so, Gesar, after encountering the great protectors Vajrasadhu and Vetali, enters the kingdom of Yama, Lord of Death (part 1) he then travels through the six realms of existence and the interim states or bardos (part2). And afterwards, he visits the Kingdom of Shambhala, where he meets four great warrior rulers who frame this journey in a worldly societal context (part 3). Finally, (in part 4), King Gesar makes his last return to Ling.
This episode is in some ways the epitome of all Gesar’s other endeavors. Here he experiences of the six realms of being: hell, the realm of hungry ghosts, animals, humans, jealous gods, and gods. These realms are traditional in Tibetan, Indian and other central Asian cosmologies, but even as they may be considered ‘real’ places, they also represent the kinds of worlds that evolve from our own states of mind. Thus, when our anger becomes completely solid, our world becomes a constant source of pain; when our craving becomes incessant, we inhabit a world of utter deprivation; willful ignorance makes a world of endless apprehension; clinging to stability accentuates a world of constant change; envy produces a world where what is most desired is the possession of others; and the hallucinations of self-absorption flourish in complete indifference. From this point of view, we may find that all these realms not just resonate but even exist in our human world.
At the same time, the actual experiences of anger, craving, ignoring and so forth are all intensely, even unsparingly alive. We try to harness them to our narrative of a solid self achieving goals in a solid world, but, letting go of such reference points, the energy of the passions themselves becomes a path of enlightenment. Passions wake us up to what is real in the world, in ourselves, in life, in dying. Thus, Gesar’s experience of each realm leads him to realize the immediate enlightenment within it.
Although in this rendition, the six realms and the Buddhas within them are represented traditionally, this story lives beyond its original cultural framework. The inner truth of Gesar’s journey is not ultimately confined to any specific imagery. The demonic figures are expressions of our own inner terrors; the Buddhas ( literally: ‘awakened ones’) refer to the intrinsic clarity and vividness of our own minds. Beyond any specific cultural or spiritual tradition, Gesar continues to provoke and inspire because we continually feel that there is an intensity, a truthfulness beyond our own limitations, and we continue to dare to seek it, even beyond the limits of life and death.
*
As this entire episode has never been translated into English, I have relied on the Gesar tradition as transmitted to me by the Vidyadhara, the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, the Dorje Dradul of Mukpo Dong. I have also been given unstinting and generous assistance from the teachings of His Holiness Orgyen Kusum Lingpa, the Venerable Tulku Thondup, the Venerable Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, the Venerable Yangthang Tulku, and the Venerable Namkhai Drimed Rinpoche. I am also deeply indebted to Ives Waldo, the late Robin Kornman, Blake Thomson, and the works of R.A. Stein, Alexandra David Neel, Ida Zeitlin, and Geoffrey Samuels.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
THE GATES OF KALAPA
GATE 1
Beyond the small stream of a life
Led striving with memory,
A cold thought at one's back:
Possibility, obligation, achievement
Heard of but not yet known or seen;
To turn from this
Past the poverty of holding back,
Past choosing,
Past consulting needs as oracles;
Past the all-consuming vacuum
That is called a self,
Wandering diminished in a shadow world:
To turn from this,
And see beneath a clear vast cobalt sky
The world in autumn,
In hazy gilded light
Turned crisp by cold air.
The mountain's purple shadowed clefts
Blacken remote stands of pine.
Against the dust of early snow.
Tree tops burn against the sky,
Yellow and red light filling leaves,
And ripple with the sound of distant clapping hands.
The smell of wood smoke hovering in the dry air
Bears the deeper scent of horses and of mouldering grass;
A taste in the air of dried corn and snow:
Here, in this world, longing ripens
In fulfillment of an afternoon
As gold fulfills light and space,
Pervading mountain tops, wheat stalks, a ripe pear.
Deer move warily to fodder, and geese arch to winter home,
And stillness.
GATE 2
In this mirror of limitless ayatanas,
The Kingdom of Shambhala opens from the heart
In this, the immediate path of timeless time,
The gold eight petalled heart lotus of Shambhala opens.
Watching a hornet circle in the air,
Sight, turning beyond aims,
Enters into ceaseless expansion,
Is pure awareness.
Listening to a silvery wind chime,
Hearing, turning beyond questioning,
Enters into silent immensity,
Is pure space.
Smelling the perfume on a passerby,
Smell, turning beyond memories,
Enters into wordless depth,
Is pure time.
Tasting the bitterness of strong black tea,
Taste, turning beyond satisfactions,
Entered into inescapable intimacy,
Is pure love.
Feeling the thick fur of a horse's winter coat,
Touch, turning beyond preference,
Enters into all-pervasive contact,
Is real non-duality.
Aware of time's passage,
Consciousness, turning beyond meanings,
Enters into its unobstructed boundlessness,
Is pure light.
Body and wakefulness inseparable:
This is the spontaneous union of kaya and jnana:
The self-existing mandala of dralas.
The Kingdom of Shambhala
Lives as a pure realm,
On the earth, and in the heart.
Shambhala is alive in the senses
And opens itself
As one turns one's face
To the full hot light of the blazing sun.
GATE 3
Like touching a rock face,
Because it is the support of life,
Entering it is like falling
Into a fathomless golden sea.
Like drinking liquor,
Because it is luminous,
Entering it is like being flooded
With joy.
Like hearing the sound of a silver bell
Because it is true,
Entering it is like being stripped
Of petty mind.
Because it is powerful
Entering it is like being struck
By a blue-white lightening bolt.
Because it is all victorious,
Entering it is like knowing reality
Irreversibly.
Douglas Penick, Magyel Pomra Sayi Dakpo 10/18/94
Beyond the small stream of a life
Led striving with memory,
A cold thought at one's back:
Possibility, obligation, achievement
Heard of but not yet known or seen;
To turn from this
Past the poverty of holding back,
Past choosing,
Past consulting needs as oracles;
Past the all-consuming vacuum
That is called a self,
Wandering diminished in a shadow world:
To turn from this,
And see beneath a clear vast cobalt sky
The world in autumn,
In hazy gilded light
Turned crisp by cold air.
The mountain's purple shadowed clefts
Blacken remote stands of pine.
Against the dust of early snow.
Tree tops burn against the sky,
Yellow and red light filling leaves,
And ripple with the sound of distant clapping hands.
The smell of wood smoke hovering in the dry air
Bears the deeper scent of horses and of mouldering grass;
A taste in the air of dried corn and snow:
Here, in this world, longing ripens
In fulfillment of an afternoon
As gold fulfills light and space,
Pervading mountain tops, wheat stalks, a ripe pear.
Deer move warily to fodder, and geese arch to winter home,
And stillness.
GATE 2
In this mirror of limitless ayatanas,
The Kingdom of Shambhala opens from the heart
In this, the immediate path of timeless time,
The gold eight petalled heart lotus of Shambhala opens.
Watching a hornet circle in the air,
Sight, turning beyond aims,
Enters into ceaseless expansion,
Is pure awareness.
Listening to a silvery wind chime,
Hearing, turning beyond questioning,
Enters into silent immensity,
Is pure space.
Smelling the perfume on a passerby,
Smell, turning beyond memories,
Enters into wordless depth,
Is pure time.
Tasting the bitterness of strong black tea,
Taste, turning beyond satisfactions,
Entered into inescapable intimacy,
Is pure love.
Feeling the thick fur of a horse's winter coat,
Touch, turning beyond preference,
Enters into all-pervasive contact,
Is real non-duality.
Aware of time's passage,
Consciousness, turning beyond meanings,
Enters into its unobstructed boundlessness,
Is pure light.
Body and wakefulness inseparable:
This is the spontaneous union of kaya and jnana:
The self-existing mandala of dralas.
The Kingdom of Shambhala
Lives as a pure realm,
On the earth, and in the heart.
Shambhala is alive in the senses
And opens itself
As one turns one's face
To the full hot light of the blazing sun.
GATE 3
Like touching a rock face,
Because it is the support of life,
Entering it is like falling
Into a fathomless golden sea.
Like drinking liquor,
Because it is luminous,
Entering it is like being flooded
With joy.
Like hearing the sound of a silver bell
Because it is true,
Entering it is like being stripped
Of petty mind.
Because it is powerful
Entering it is like being struck
By a blue-white lightening bolt.
Because it is all victorious,
Entering it is like knowing reality
Irreversibly.
Douglas Penick, Magyel Pomra Sayi Dakpo 10/18/94
Monday, February 8, 2010
TILOPA; THE STREAM OF SELF-EXISTING FIRE
THE STREAM OF SELF-EXISTING FIRE
A GURU YOGA FEAST INVOKING
THE LIFE FORCE OF LINEAGE
THE DEATHLESS TILOPA
1
Gathered here in the charnel ground of all phenomena
Surrounded by the corpses of rotting hopes, false assumptions,
Decaying love, possessions that will soon be stolen away;
Sitting amidst the ashes of dreams and secret ambitions,
The air is choked with the smoke of ignorance
That renders all around us almost invisible;
Here we are paralyzed by the winds of hope and fear
As predatory ghosts of uncertainty, doubt, and anguish swirl about.
Confessing our myriad delusions,
O Tilopa,
We look for you, the fount of lineage,
The father of refuge.
Aspiring to see the living face of enlightenment
In the darkness of this world,
We call on you.
2
Now, on this powerless ground of utter futility,
Arise from the eternal womb of emptiness,
Telo come here in this very place
Come here and display the Vajra Dance
Utterly consume this vajra feast.
In consuming the offering of food,
Display the living body of reality.
In accepting the offering of song
Display the living speech of reality.
In consuming the offering of amrita,
Display the living mind of reality.
I offer myself in body speech and mind.
Please take your seat here.
Please show yourself now as life itself
3
Accepting these offerings,
Consuming us utterly,
Though you do not move or stir,
We request you now to appear.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living paths of development and completion.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living experience free from bias.
As you crush the husk of samsara itself,
May we meet you face to face
In the living bond of samaya.
As you crush the husk of a body that arises from karma,
May we meet you face to face
In the complete committment of inner heat.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the lilmitless illusion of embodiment
As you crush the husk of the three worlds,
May we meet you face to face
In the luminous expanse of dream.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the unimpeded flow of all-pervasive luminosity.
As you crush the husk of a body that tends to clings to an I
May we meet you face to face
In passing freely from illusory life to life.
As you crush the husk of a body that cling to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In completely transforming the apparition of existence.
As you crush the husk of craving in the duality of samsara and nirvana,
May we meet you face to face
In the one taste of great bliss.
Offering the mudra to the Guru who is Buddha himself,
May we meet you face to face
In the great mirror of Mahamudra which is Reality itself.
Offering you our body as the mandala of existence,
May we live in the ever present spontaneous union
Of mother and child luminosity
Inseparable from your body, speech, and mind
In the ceaseless co-emergence of the bardo.
4
Here, by the power of life itself,
You arise unborn
From the red thousand-petalled lotus
Which is the spontaneous flowering,
The living purity of all outer and inner phenomena,
The secret space of Prajnaparamita.
Seated with your left leg down and your right knee raised,
Your naked body shimmers
Like the pale autumn sky at sunrise.
You are covered with ash.
Your wild black hair is bound up into a loose topknot.
Your blood-shot eyes burn like the noon sun.
Your face is sun-burned and unshaven.
You grimace and your sharp irregular teeth clash
With the sound of breaking glass.
You smile lasciviously
And every movement of the air seems melodious.
Your expression, is shameless, impenitent
Lustful and indifferent.
In your right hand you hold an ancient skull-cup
Brimming with liquor.
In your left hand, you hold a living silver fish
Whose red guts hang from its belly.
Your scent is tangy and feral.
You are still as a wolf awaiting its prey.
You are luminous as the full moon at midnight.
Suddenly, you arise on your seat
In the shimmer of all perception.
Suddenly you sing
In the beating heart of the body.
You are presence itself.
5
In endless union with the self-existing consort,
In the yoga of Chandali,
You are the heat of fire.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of illusory body,
You are the solidness of earth.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of dream,
You are the movement of wind.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of luminosity,
You are primordial space.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of transference,
You are the pervasiveness of water.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of bardo,
You are consciousness itself.
In inseparable non-dual union,
You dwell in the empty essence
In the luminous heart of the primordial consort
Where all inner and outer phenomena
Rise, dwell and die.
Free from experience,
You are not born;
You do not remain;
You do not die.
OM AH HUM
TILO, TILO TILO
HRIH AH HAM
AH AH AH HUM PHAT
6
Sought in the mirage of appearance,
You change form and disappear.
Found in the mirage of appearance,
You are mute.
Supplicated in the mandala of appearance,
You show the luminous empty heart
Piercing through all the illusions of pleasure and pain.
All that exists and does not exist,
All that moves and does not move,
All that is mind and is beyond mind,
Offering and offered inseparable,
Swirls in your kapala.
RAM YAM KAM
Unborn,
As our senses shine.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the corpse,
The natural kingdom of body.
Living,
As the seasons pass.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the root,
The unceasing power of speech.
Without past
As in the alternation of day and night,
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the tree,
The deathless lineage co-emergent wisdom.
Beyond awareness
There is reality here and now.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the stream
Ungraspable, complete, alive.
Experience now
The bliss of Tilopa's mind:
This unborn word:
This naked world.
7
(These are the oral instruction which Tilopa himself sang to Naropa)
You are a worthy vessel.
In the monastery of Pullahari,
In the limitless expanse of luminosity, beyond concept,
The sparrow of mind, moving from life to life,
Has flown on the wings of co-emergence.
Do not yearn for belief in a self.
In the monastery of non-dual prajna,
In the offering pit of the illusory body,
By the radiance of awareness rising from the bliss and heat of inner heat,
The fuel of the kleshas and conventional concepts
Of body, speech and mind has been burnt up.
Do not pine for the duality of this and that.
In the monastery free from words and concepts,
The sharp knife of prajna,
Of Mahasukha, of Mahamudra
Has cut the rope of ambition in the bardo.
Dismiss the craving which causes all attachment.
Walk the hidden path of the Wish-Fulfilling Gem
Leading to the realm of the heavenly tree, the changeless.
Untie the tongues of mutes.
Stop the stream of samsara, of belief in a self.
Recognize your true nature as a mother knows her child.
Prajna is self-aware,
Beyond the path of speech
And the object of no thought whatsoever .
I, Tilopa have nothing at which to point.
Know this as pointing in itself to itself.
Do not imagine, think, deliberate,
Meditate, act, but be at rest.
Do not be concerned with any object.
Reality, self-existent, radiant,
In which no memory can disturb you,
Cannot be called a thing
(1)
8
O great Tilopa
O incomparable
O unborn and deathless one,
As you have never departed,
By your unsparing kindness,
May we remain In the Great Inseparability
Of your unchanging body speech and mind.
If there is any continuity of anything,
It is you.
If there is any lineage of anything anywhere,
It is you.
If there is love,
It is you.
By the power of your motiveless intention
Which fills the sky like ceaseless wind,
May every illusory being,
Drifting frantically through the skies like dust
Find completion
In the vast luminous single mandala of your being.
AH AH AH
**********************************************************
The spontaneously arisen, mysterious and eternal Khenpo Ganshar, the deathless Mahasiddha, Tilopa himself is an unceasing, boundless, torrential river of purity raging through the polluted desert of this age.
This has been written with one pointed devotion and confidence so that his children and grandchildren and all generations yet to come never imagine they are parted from him.
Chodzin Paden
Magyel Pomra Sayi Dagpo
October 15, 1996 Boulder, Colorado
_________________________________________________________
(1) Adapted from The Life and Teaching of Naropa- Herbert V. Guenther
Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK 1963 :PP 94-5
A GURU YOGA FEAST INVOKING
THE LIFE FORCE OF LINEAGE
THE DEATHLESS TILOPA
1
Gathered here in the charnel ground of all phenomena
Surrounded by the corpses of rotting hopes, false assumptions,
Decaying love, possessions that will soon be stolen away;
Sitting amidst the ashes of dreams and secret ambitions,
The air is choked with the smoke of ignorance
That renders all around us almost invisible;
Here we are paralyzed by the winds of hope and fear
As predatory ghosts of uncertainty, doubt, and anguish swirl about.
Confessing our myriad delusions,
O Tilopa,
We look for you, the fount of lineage,
The father of refuge.
Aspiring to see the living face of enlightenment
In the darkness of this world,
We call on you.
2
Now, on this powerless ground of utter futility,
Arise from the eternal womb of emptiness,
Telo come here in this very place
Come here and display the Vajra Dance
Utterly consume this vajra feast.
In consuming the offering of food,
Display the living body of reality.
In accepting the offering of song
Display the living speech of reality.
In consuming the offering of amrita,
Display the living mind of reality.
I offer myself in body speech and mind.
Please take your seat here.
Please show yourself now as life itself
3
Accepting these offerings,
Consuming us utterly,
Though you do not move or stir,
We request you now to appear.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living paths of development and completion.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living experience free from bias.
As you crush the husk of samsara itself,
May we meet you face to face
In the living bond of samaya.
As you crush the husk of a body that arises from karma,
May we meet you face to face
In the complete committment of inner heat.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the lilmitless illusion of embodiment
As you crush the husk of the three worlds,
May we meet you face to face
In the luminous expanse of dream.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the unimpeded flow of all-pervasive luminosity.
As you crush the husk of a body that tends to clings to an I
May we meet you face to face
In passing freely from illusory life to life.
As you crush the husk of a body that cling to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In completely transforming the apparition of existence.
As you crush the husk of craving in the duality of samsara and nirvana,
May we meet you face to face
In the one taste of great bliss.
Offering the mudra to the Guru who is Buddha himself,
May we meet you face to face
In the great mirror of Mahamudra which is Reality itself.
Offering you our body as the mandala of existence,
May we live in the ever present spontaneous union
Of mother and child luminosity
Inseparable from your body, speech, and mind
In the ceaseless co-emergence of the bardo.
4
Here, by the power of life itself,
You arise unborn
From the red thousand-petalled lotus
Which is the spontaneous flowering,
The living purity of all outer and inner phenomena,
The secret space of Prajnaparamita.
Seated with your left leg down and your right knee raised,
Your naked body shimmers
Like the pale autumn sky at sunrise.
You are covered with ash.
Your wild black hair is bound up into a loose topknot.
Your blood-shot eyes burn like the noon sun.
Your face is sun-burned and unshaven.
You grimace and your sharp irregular teeth clash
With the sound of breaking glass.
You smile lasciviously
And every movement of the air seems melodious.
Your expression, is shameless, impenitent
Lustful and indifferent.
In your right hand you hold an ancient skull-cup
Brimming with liquor.
In your left hand, you hold a living silver fish
Whose red guts hang from its belly.
Your scent is tangy and feral.
You are still as a wolf awaiting its prey.
You are luminous as the full moon at midnight.
Suddenly, you arise on your seat
In the shimmer of all perception.
Suddenly you sing
In the beating heart of the body.
You are presence itself.
5
In endless union with the self-existing consort,
In the yoga of Chandali,
You are the heat of fire.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of illusory body,
You are the solidness of earth.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of dream,
You are the movement of wind.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of luminosity,
You are primordial space.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of transference,
You are the pervasiveness of water.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of bardo,
You are consciousness itself.
In inseparable non-dual union,
You dwell in the empty essence
In the luminous heart of the primordial consort
Where all inner and outer phenomena
Rise, dwell and die.
Free from experience,
You are not born;
You do not remain;
You do not die.
OM AH HUM
TILO, TILO TILO
HRIH AH HAM
AH AH AH HUM PHAT
6
Sought in the mirage of appearance,
You change form and disappear.
Found in the mirage of appearance,
You are mute.
Supplicated in the mandala of appearance,
You show the luminous empty heart
Piercing through all the illusions of pleasure and pain.
All that exists and does not exist,
All that moves and does not move,
All that is mind and is beyond mind,
Offering and offered inseparable,
Swirls in your kapala.
RAM YAM KAM
Unborn,
As our senses shine.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the corpse,
The natural kingdom of body.
Living,
As the seasons pass.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the root,
The unceasing power of speech.
Without past
As in the alternation of day and night,
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the tree,
The deathless lineage co-emergent wisdom.
Beyond awareness
There is reality here and now.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the stream
Ungraspable, complete, alive.
Experience now
The bliss of Tilopa's mind:
This unborn word:
This naked world.
7
(These are the oral instruction which Tilopa himself sang to Naropa)
You are a worthy vessel.
In the monastery of Pullahari,
In the limitless expanse of luminosity, beyond concept,
The sparrow of mind, moving from life to life,
Has flown on the wings of co-emergence.
Do not yearn for belief in a self.
In the monastery of non-dual prajna,
In the offering pit of the illusory body,
By the radiance of awareness rising from the bliss and heat of inner heat,
The fuel of the kleshas and conventional concepts
Of body, speech and mind has been burnt up.
Do not pine for the duality of this and that.
In the monastery free from words and concepts,
The sharp knife of prajna,
Of Mahasukha, of Mahamudra
Has cut the rope of ambition in the bardo.
Dismiss the craving which causes all attachment.
Walk the hidden path of the Wish-Fulfilling Gem
Leading to the realm of the heavenly tree, the changeless.
Untie the tongues of mutes.
Stop the stream of samsara, of belief in a self.
Recognize your true nature as a mother knows her child.
Prajna is self-aware,
Beyond the path of speech
And the object of no thought whatsoever .
I, Tilopa have nothing at which to point.
Know this as pointing in itself to itself.
Do not imagine, think, deliberate,
Meditate, act, but be at rest.
Do not be concerned with any object.
Reality, self-existent, radiant,
In which no memory can disturb you,
Cannot be called a thing
(1)
8
O great Tilopa
O incomparable
O unborn and deathless one,
As you have never departed,
By your unsparing kindness,
May we remain In the Great Inseparability
Of your unchanging body speech and mind.
If there is any continuity of anything,
It is you.
If there is any lineage of anything anywhere,
It is you.
If there is love,
It is you.
By the power of your motiveless intention
Which fills the sky like ceaseless wind,
May every illusory being,
Drifting frantically through the skies like dust
Find completion
In the vast luminous single mandala of your being.
AH AH AH
**********************************************************
The spontaneously arisen, mysterious and eternal Khenpo Ganshar, the deathless Mahasiddha, Tilopa himself is an unceasing, boundless, torrential river of purity raging through the polluted desert of this age.
This has been written with one pointed devotion and confidence so that his children and grandchildren and all generations yet to come never imagine they are parted from him.
Chodzin Paden
Magyel Pomra Sayi Dagpo
October 15, 1996 Boulder, Colorado
_________________________________________________________
(1) Adapted from The Life and Teaching of Naropa- Herbert V. Guenther
Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK 1963 :PP 94-5
Monday, January 4, 2010
THE STREAM OF SELF-EXISTING FIRE
A GURU YOGA FEAST INVOKING
THE LIFE FORCE OF LINEAGE
THE DEATHLESS TILOPA
1
Gathered here in the charnel ground of all phenomena
Surrounded by the corpses of rotting hopes, false assumptions,
Decaying love, possessions that will soon be stolen away;
Sitting amidst the ashes of dreams and secret ambitions,
The air is choked with the smoke of ignorance
That renders all around us almost invisible;
Here we are paralyzed by the winds of hope and fear
As predatory ghosts of uncertainty, doubt, and anguish swirl about.
Confessing our myriad delusions,
O Tilopa,
We look for you, the fount of lineage,
The father of refuge.
Aspiring to see the living face of enlightenment
In the darkness of this world,
We call on you.
2
Now, on this powerless ground of utter futility,
Arise from the eternal womb of emptiness,
Telo come here in this very place
Come here and display the Vajra Dance
Utterly consume this vajra feast.
In consuming the offering of food,
Display the living body of reality.
In accepting the offering of song
Display the living speech of reality.
In consuming the offering of amrita,
Display the living mind of reality.
I offer myself in body speech and mind.
Please take your seat here.
Please show yourself now as life itself
3
Accepting these offerings,
Consuming us utterly,
Though you do not move or stir,
We request you now to appear.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living paths of development and completion.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living experience free from bias.
As you crush the husk of samsara itself,
May we meet you face to face
In the living bond of samaya.
As you crush the husk of a body that arises from karma,
May we meet you face to face
In the complete committment of inner heat.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the lilmitless illusion of embodiment
As you crush the husk of the three worlds,
May we meet you face to face
In the luminous expanse of dream.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the unimpeded flow of all-pervasive luminosity.
As you crush the husk of a body that tends to clings to an I
May we meet you face to face
In passing freely from illusory life to life.
As you crush the husk of a body that cling to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In completely transforming the apparition of existence.
As you crush the husk of craving in the duality of samsara and nirvana,
May we meet you face to face
In the one taste of great bliss.
Offering the mudra to the Guru who is Buddha himself,
May we meet you face to face
In the great mirror of Mahamudra which is Reality itself.
Offering you our body as the mandala of existence,
May we live in the ever present spontaneous union
Of mother and child luminosity
Inseparable from your body, speech, and mind
In the ceaseless co-emergence of the bardo.
4
Here, by the power of life itself,
You arise unborn
From the red thousand-petalled lotus
Which is the spontaneous flowering,
The living purity of all outer and inner phenomena,
The secret space of Prajnaparamita.
Seated with your left leg down and your right knee raised,
Your naked body shimmers
Like the pale autumn sky at sunrise.
You are covered with ash.
Your wild black hair is bound up into a loose topknot.
Your blood-shot eyes burn like the noon sun.
Your face is sun-burned and unshaven.
You grimace and your sharp irregular teeth clash
With the sound of breaking glass.
You smile lasciviously
And every movement of the air seems melodious.
Your expression, is shameless, impenitent
Lustful and indifferent.
In your right hand you hold an ancient skull-cup
Brimming with liquor.
In your left hand, you hold a living silver fish
Whose red guts hang from its belly.
Your scent is tangy and feral.
You are still as a wolf awaiting its prey.
You are luminous as the full moon at midnight.
Suddenly, you arise on your seat
In the shimmer of all perception.
Suddenly you sing
In the beating heart of the body.
You are presence itself.
5
In endless union with the self-existing consort,
In the yoga of Chandali,
You are the heat of fire.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of illusory body,
You are the solidness of earth.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of dream,
You are the movement of wind.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of luminosity,
You are primordial space.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of transference,
You are the pervasiveness of water.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of bardo,
You are consciousness itself.
In inseparable non-dual union,
You dwell in the empty essence
In the luminous heart of the primordial consort
Where all inner and outer phenomena
Rise, dwell and die.
Free from experience,
You are not born;
You do not remain;
You do not die.
OM AH HUM
TILO, TILO TILO
HRIH AH HAM
AH AH AH HUM PHAT
6
Sought in the mirage of appearance,
You change form and disappear.
Found in the mirage of appearance,
You are mute.
Supplicated in the mandala of appearance,
You show the luminous empty heart
Piercing through all the illusions of pleasure and pain.
All that exists and does not exist,
All that moves and does not move,
All that is mind and is beyond mind,
Offering and offered inseparable,
Swirls in your kapala.
RAM YAM KAM
Unborn,
As our senses shine.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the corpse,
The natural kingdom of body.
Living,
As the seasons pass.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the root,
The unceasing power of speech.
Without past
As in the alternation of day and night,
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the tree,
The deathless lineage co-emergent wisdom.
Beyond awareness
There is reality here and now.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the stream
Ungraspable, complete, alive.
Experience now
The bliss of Tilopa's mind:
This unborn word:
This naked world.
7
(These are the oral instruction which Tilopa himself sang to Naropa)
You are a worthy vessel.
In the monastery of Pullahari,
In the limitless expanse of luminosity, beyond concept,
The sparrow of mind, moving from life to life,
Has flown on the wings of co-emergence.
Do not yearn for belief in a self.
In the monastery of non-dual prajna,
In the offering pit of the illusory body,
By the radiance of awareness rising from the bliss and heat of inner heat,
The fuel of the kleshas and conventional concepts
Of body, speech and mind has been burnt up.
Do not pine for the duality of this and that.
In the monastery free from words and concepts,
The sharp knife of prajna,
Of Mahasukha, of Mahamudra
Has cut the rope of ambition in the bardo.
Dismiss the craving which causes all attachment.
Walk the hidden path of the Wish-Fulfilling Gem
Leading to the realm of the heavenly tree, the changeless.
Untie the tongues of mutes.
Stop the stream of samsara, of belief in a self.
Recognize your true nature as a mother knows her child.
Prajna is self-aware,
Beyond the path of speech
And the object of no thought whatsoever .
I, Tilopa have nothing at which to point.
Know this as pointing in itself to itself.
Do not imagine, think, deliberate,
Meditate, act, but be at rest.
Do not be concerned with any object.
Reality, self-existent, radiant,
In which no memory can disturb you,
Cannot be called a thing
(1)
8
O great Tilopa
O incomparable
O unborn and deathless one,
As you have never departed,
By your unsparing kindness,
May we remain In the Great Inseparability
Of your unchanging body speech and mind.
If there is any continuity of anything,
It is you.
If there is any lineage of anything anywhere,
It is you.
If there is love,
It is you.
By the power of your motiveless intention
Which fills the sky like ceaseless wind,
May every illusory being,
Drifting frantically through the skies like dust
Find completion
In the vast luminous single mandala of your being.
AH AH AH
**********************************************************
The spontaneously arisen, mysterious and eternal Khenpo Ganshar, the deathless Mahasiddha, Tilopa himself is an unceasing, boundless, torrential river of purity raging through the polluted desert of this age.
This has been written with one pointed devotion and confidence so that his children and grandchildren and all generations yet to come never imagine they are parted from him.
Chodzin Paden
Magyel Pomra Sayi Dagpo
October 15, 1996 Boulder, Colorado
_________________________________________________________
(1) Adapted from The Life and Teaching of Naropa- Herbert V. Guenther
Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK 1963 :PP 94-5
THE LIFE FORCE OF LINEAGE
THE DEATHLESS TILOPA
1
Gathered here in the charnel ground of all phenomena
Surrounded by the corpses of rotting hopes, false assumptions,
Decaying love, possessions that will soon be stolen away;
Sitting amidst the ashes of dreams and secret ambitions,
The air is choked with the smoke of ignorance
That renders all around us almost invisible;
Here we are paralyzed by the winds of hope and fear
As predatory ghosts of uncertainty, doubt, and anguish swirl about.
Confessing our myriad delusions,
O Tilopa,
We look for you, the fount of lineage,
The father of refuge.
Aspiring to see the living face of enlightenment
In the darkness of this world,
We call on you.
2
Now, on this powerless ground of utter futility,
Arise from the eternal womb of emptiness,
Telo come here in this very place
Come here and display the Vajra Dance
Utterly consume this vajra feast.
In consuming the offering of food,
Display the living body of reality.
In accepting the offering of song
Display the living speech of reality.
In consuming the offering of amrita,
Display the living mind of reality.
I offer myself in body speech and mind.
Please take your seat here.
Please show yourself now as life itself
3
Accepting these offerings,
Consuming us utterly,
Though you do not move or stir,
We request you now to appear.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living paths of development and completion.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the living experience free from bias.
As you crush the husk of samsara itself,
May we meet you face to face
In the living bond of samaya.
As you crush the husk of a body that arises from karma,
May we meet you face to face
In the complete committment of inner heat.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the lilmitless illusion of embodiment
As you crush the husk of the three worlds,
May we meet you face to face
In the luminous expanse of dream.
As you crush the husk of a body that clings to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In the unimpeded flow of all-pervasive luminosity.
As you crush the husk of a body that tends to clings to an I
May we meet you face to face
In passing freely from illusory life to life.
As you crush the husk of a body that cling to an I,
May we meet you face to face
In completely transforming the apparition of existence.
As you crush the husk of craving in the duality of samsara and nirvana,
May we meet you face to face
In the one taste of great bliss.
Offering the mudra to the Guru who is Buddha himself,
May we meet you face to face
In the great mirror of Mahamudra which is Reality itself.
Offering you our body as the mandala of existence,
May we live in the ever present spontaneous union
Of mother and child luminosity
Inseparable from your body, speech, and mind
In the ceaseless co-emergence of the bardo.
4
Here, by the power of life itself,
You arise unborn
From the red thousand-petalled lotus
Which is the spontaneous flowering,
The living purity of all outer and inner phenomena,
The secret space of Prajnaparamita.
Seated with your left leg down and your right knee raised,
Your naked body shimmers
Like the pale autumn sky at sunrise.
You are covered with ash.
Your wild black hair is bound up into a loose topknot.
Your blood-shot eyes burn like the noon sun.
Your face is sun-burned and unshaven.
You grimace and your sharp irregular teeth clash
With the sound of breaking glass.
You smile lasciviously
And every movement of the air seems melodious.
Your expression, is shameless, impenitent
Lustful and indifferent.
In your right hand you hold an ancient skull-cup
Brimming with liquor.
In your left hand, you hold a living silver fish
Whose red guts hang from its belly.
Your scent is tangy and feral.
You are still as a wolf awaiting its prey.
You are luminous as the full moon at midnight.
Suddenly, you arise on your seat
In the shimmer of all perception.
Suddenly you sing
In the beating heart of the body.
You are presence itself.
5
In endless union with the self-existing consort,
In the yoga of Chandali,
You are the heat of fire.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of illusory body,
You are the solidness of earth.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of dream,
You are the movement of wind.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of luminosity,
You are primordial space.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of transference,
You are the pervasiveness of water.
In endless union with the self existing consort,
In the yoga of bardo,
You are consciousness itself.
In inseparable non-dual union,
You dwell in the empty essence
In the luminous heart of the primordial consort
Where all inner and outer phenomena
Rise, dwell and die.
Free from experience,
You are not born;
You do not remain;
You do not die.
OM AH HUM
TILO, TILO TILO
HRIH AH HAM
AH AH AH HUM PHAT
6
Sought in the mirage of appearance,
You change form and disappear.
Found in the mirage of appearance,
You are mute.
Supplicated in the mandala of appearance,
You show the luminous empty heart
Piercing through all the illusions of pleasure and pain.
All that exists and does not exist,
All that moves and does not move,
All that is mind and is beyond mind,
Offering and offered inseparable,
Swirls in your kapala.
RAM YAM KAM
Unborn,
As our senses shine.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the corpse,
The natural kingdom of body.
Living,
As the seasons pass.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the root,
The unceasing power of speech.
Without past
As in the alternation of day and night,
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the tree,
The deathless lineage co-emergent wisdom.
Beyond awareness
There is reality here and now.
This is the direct experience
Of Tilopa, the stream
Ungraspable, complete, alive.
Experience now
The bliss of Tilopa's mind:
This unborn word:
This naked world.
7
(These are the oral instruction which Tilopa himself sang to Naropa)
You are a worthy vessel.
In the monastery of Pullahari,
In the limitless expanse of luminosity, beyond concept,
The sparrow of mind, moving from life to life,
Has flown on the wings of co-emergence.
Do not yearn for belief in a self.
In the monastery of non-dual prajna,
In the offering pit of the illusory body,
By the radiance of awareness rising from the bliss and heat of inner heat,
The fuel of the kleshas and conventional concepts
Of body, speech and mind has been burnt up.
Do not pine for the duality of this and that.
In the monastery free from words and concepts,
The sharp knife of prajna,
Of Mahasukha, of Mahamudra
Has cut the rope of ambition in the bardo.
Dismiss the craving which causes all attachment.
Walk the hidden path of the Wish-Fulfilling Gem
Leading to the realm of the heavenly tree, the changeless.
Untie the tongues of mutes.
Stop the stream of samsara, of belief in a self.
Recognize your true nature as a mother knows her child.
Prajna is self-aware,
Beyond the path of speech
And the object of no thought whatsoever .
I, Tilopa have nothing at which to point.
Know this as pointing in itself to itself.
Do not imagine, think, deliberate,
Meditate, act, but be at rest.
Do not be concerned with any object.
Reality, self-existent, radiant,
In which no memory can disturb you,
Cannot be called a thing
(1)
8
O great Tilopa
O incomparable
O unborn and deathless one,
As you have never departed,
By your unsparing kindness,
May we remain In the Great Inseparability
Of your unchanging body speech and mind.
If there is any continuity of anything,
It is you.
If there is any lineage of anything anywhere,
It is you.
If there is love,
It is you.
By the power of your motiveless intention
Which fills the sky like ceaseless wind,
May every illusory being,
Drifting frantically through the skies like dust
Find completion
In the vast luminous single mandala of your being.
AH AH AH
**********************************************************
The spontaneously arisen, mysterious and eternal Khenpo Ganshar, the deathless Mahasiddha, Tilopa himself is an unceasing, boundless, torrential river of purity raging through the polluted desert of this age.
This has been written with one pointed devotion and confidence so that his children and grandchildren and all generations yet to come never imagine they are parted from him.
Chodzin Paden
Magyel Pomra Sayi Dagpo
October 15, 1996 Boulder, Colorado
_________________________________________________________
(1) Adapted from The Life and Teaching of Naropa- Herbert V. Guenther
Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK 1963 :PP 94-5
Sunday, December 6, 2009
About KING GESAR
(The following appeared tirst in New Muse, but I’ve changed it somewhat for publishing in the blog Word and Wordless. I was asked to write the piece as part of the publicity for the release of Sony Classical’s wonderful (And with Yo Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax, Deborah Marshall, Peter Serkin, Omar Ibrahim among others how could it not be?) of ‘King Gesar’ which Peter Lieberson composed and for which I wrote the text. It was also supposed to provide some discreet tub thumping (eliminated here) for the premiere of our opera ‘Ashoka’s Dream’. )
THE WORD AND THE WORDLESS
There is, of course, awareness beyond thought.
*
In our collaborations, neither Peter nor I have thought of our work as particularly “spiritual” or as bearing the message of some particular religious outlook. But we do share a view, or a sensibility that sound, whether formalized in music or specified in words, is a communication from and to the world that is all-pervasive, alive and never ceasing. Whether presented in melody, rhythm, and the movement of chordal structures, or articulated in the language of conversation, of epics, love poems, of comedies, elegies, novels, or tragedies, sound is awareness as continuity.
*
As a child, I found music more vivid and compelling than painted images, sculpture or words. Since then, though I have never had the slightest ability to play or compose, music remains not only a love, but a model for what I have wanted to realize through writing. It always remains entirely mysterious how music, by arranging sounds without any conventional meaning according to varying underlying formal logics, can move us into the deep, subtle movements of existence and invite more profound involvement with them.
But language itself is hardly less unfathomable. Words distinguish and separate one experience from another, but brought together in stories and poems, they brought the lives of others to life and enabled me to explore worlds in time and space far beyond my own. So while music provided a feeling of continuity with wordless inner live, words provided a vivid sense ways of life long gone and deeds that would have otherwise been long forgotten.
*
Peter Lieberson and I met thirty-five years ago when we were each beginning our respective careers as composer and writer, and from the very start we wanted to write opera together. In the following years, though we both studied with Trungpa Rinpoche teacher, we usually have ended up living fairly far apart, so our friendship has developed over many years in numerous visits and dinners, sometimes with our families, sometimes not, and in correspondence, phone, fax, and the like.
And I think we both feel, even though we have never discussed it, that in combining words and music, we have the opportunity to convey the worlds which expand in the immediacy of so many ordinary moments which subtly present but usually bypassed.
*
Often, standing alone in a crowd, one may see a flock of birds wheel before a sky-scraper, hear a child whistle, smell rain coming, and experience some poignant feeling of meaning. We cannot explain, reduce, or convey this feeling of elusive significance in terms of the outer circumstances from which it arose. Nor can we capture it by referring to our own inner states of mind or the history of our moods. It cannot be directly stated.
The essence of what we feel then is both specific to a moment and somehow outside of its circumstances; intimate, it is somehow impersonal. There is a kind of freedom from contingencies here, and this may be experienced as freedom of longing, freedom of enjoyment, freedom of feeling or awareness. It does not remain, can barely be remembered, and is, in some elusive way, very near our core.
In general, our world is an unceasing welter of conflicting emotions, obsessive thinking, long term ambitions and desires, and a pervasive uncertainty about what is, or is not, truly real, valuable, and significant. But in certain moments, like a bubble rising out of a rushing stream, such subtle feelings bring a stillness free from all this.
Then, as we try to verbalize and hold such moments in the language and memory of personal continuity, the experience fades. We lose the heart of it. We are returned to the clamor of outer and inner life.
*
The obdurate and impassioned 14th century Zen genius, Ikkyu wrote of our passage between unsought stillness and unceasing movement like this:
From the world of passion,
I return to the world beyond passion.
A gap.
If the rain comes, let it rain.
If there is wind, let it blow.
*
When we try to articulate and convey anything whatsoever, be it lust, rage, understanding, sorrow; whether it be smoothness or sweaty heat, or granular roughness; or whether it be more complex sequences: aspirations not quite reached, hopes overwhelmed in passion, longings sustained by unfulfillment, insights that did not quite hold up; when we try to articulate and convey what we have felt and know, that same empty silence, the suspended moment of presence arises, mocking our intentions.
It is mysterious that this gap bubbles up through the stream of our intentions again and again.
*
Although in the early eighties, Peter had set some poems of mine for the Fromm Foundation, our first real collaboration began with King Gesar, a chamber opera commissioned by Hans Werner Henze for the Munich Biennale. Peter and I discussed the piece extensively before I wrote it, but I felt it necessary to write a full account of Gesar’s most famous exploits before I made excerpts for the libretto. (This was later published by Wisdom Publications and will soon be re-issued.) Then it was edited and slightly altered as musical needs dictated.
King Gesar is based on a Tibetan and Central Asian epic which is part of a bardic tradition, involving narrative, chant and song still alive today, and tells the story of the semi-mythical medieval monarch, Gesar, King of Ling. Gesar, as is said, was born completely enlightened in order to overcome the demonic forces in his world. However, unlike the conventional Western notion of 'enlightenment' which usually is taken to mean: serene, otherworldly, unflappable, and consistently full of wise sayings and cryptic advice, Gesar is a warrior. His life is a life of battles, treachery, ruses, jokes, and feasting. Within that, he is always acting to renew uncompromising wakefulness and to restore confidence in the potential of human life. The demons he fights are neighboring lords who embody the self-serving territoriality of envy, fear, lust, greed, and so forth. Often he loses himself completely to those mental states before he can conquer them. Thus, in order to realize the freedom, dignity and luminosity of open direct experience, Gesar moves through his wild and shifty world with ferocity, passion, crude humor, and uncompromising simplicity.
Working on this grandiose, gaudy, barbaric, yet somehow very human play called forth a scale of gesture and utterance that left me uncertain of its possible effect. When I was done, I had no idea what to think of it. I also had no idea of what Peter would do or what the music would sound like. But when I finally heard the words and music together for the first time in Munich, the power, extravagance, and lyric delicacy of Peter’s created a world where the words seemed more pointed and resonant. The world of Gesar was present in the hall, and it was like listening to, as Peter put it, a “campfire epic”.
*
Sound, of course, is a ceaseless communicative presence. Within this, music is distilled from our appreciation of the pattern and flow of all that lingers on the edge of comprehension. Words rise in the precision of our desire to communicate that appreciation. Music is more true because, even if notated, it exists only moment by moment. Writing is more true because of its lavish, shifting specificity. Music is delusory because of its freedom from embodiment. Words are delusory because they make the insubstantial seem solid. Joined, words and music create a reciprocal context, not necessarily more ‘real’, but often more haunting.
*
Ikkyu again:
From the endless realms of sight and sound
One transparent note emerges in the cold.
The crazy master had a few tricks up his sleeve;
Wind and bell meet high above the frozen balustrade.
*******
THE WORD AND THE WORDLESS
There is, of course, awareness beyond thought.
*
In our collaborations, neither Peter nor I have thought of our work as particularly “spiritual” or as bearing the message of some particular religious outlook. But we do share a view, or a sensibility that sound, whether formalized in music or specified in words, is a communication from and to the world that is all-pervasive, alive and never ceasing. Whether presented in melody, rhythm, and the movement of chordal structures, or articulated in the language of conversation, of epics, love poems, of comedies, elegies, novels, or tragedies, sound is awareness as continuity.
*
As a child, I found music more vivid and compelling than painted images, sculpture or words. Since then, though I have never had the slightest ability to play or compose, music remains not only a love, but a model for what I have wanted to realize through writing. It always remains entirely mysterious how music, by arranging sounds without any conventional meaning according to varying underlying formal logics, can move us into the deep, subtle movements of existence and invite more profound involvement with them.
But language itself is hardly less unfathomable. Words distinguish and separate one experience from another, but brought together in stories and poems, they brought the lives of others to life and enabled me to explore worlds in time and space far beyond my own. So while music provided a feeling of continuity with wordless inner live, words provided a vivid sense ways of life long gone and deeds that would have otherwise been long forgotten.
*
Peter Lieberson and I met thirty-five years ago when we were each beginning our respective careers as composer and writer, and from the very start we wanted to write opera together. In the following years, though we both studied with Trungpa Rinpoche teacher, we usually have ended up living fairly far apart, so our friendship has developed over many years in numerous visits and dinners, sometimes with our families, sometimes not, and in correspondence, phone, fax, and the like.
And I think we both feel, even though we have never discussed it, that in combining words and music, we have the opportunity to convey the worlds which expand in the immediacy of so many ordinary moments which subtly present but usually bypassed.
*
Often, standing alone in a crowd, one may see a flock of birds wheel before a sky-scraper, hear a child whistle, smell rain coming, and experience some poignant feeling of meaning. We cannot explain, reduce, or convey this feeling of elusive significance in terms of the outer circumstances from which it arose. Nor can we capture it by referring to our own inner states of mind or the history of our moods. It cannot be directly stated.
The essence of what we feel then is both specific to a moment and somehow outside of its circumstances; intimate, it is somehow impersonal. There is a kind of freedom from contingencies here, and this may be experienced as freedom of longing, freedom of enjoyment, freedom of feeling or awareness. It does not remain, can barely be remembered, and is, in some elusive way, very near our core.
In general, our world is an unceasing welter of conflicting emotions, obsessive thinking, long term ambitions and desires, and a pervasive uncertainty about what is, or is not, truly real, valuable, and significant. But in certain moments, like a bubble rising out of a rushing stream, such subtle feelings bring a stillness free from all this.
Then, as we try to verbalize and hold such moments in the language and memory of personal continuity, the experience fades. We lose the heart of it. We are returned to the clamor of outer and inner life.
*
The obdurate and impassioned 14th century Zen genius, Ikkyu wrote of our passage between unsought stillness and unceasing movement like this:
From the world of passion,
I return to the world beyond passion.
A gap.
If the rain comes, let it rain.
If there is wind, let it blow.
*
When we try to articulate and convey anything whatsoever, be it lust, rage, understanding, sorrow; whether it be smoothness or sweaty heat, or granular roughness; or whether it be more complex sequences: aspirations not quite reached, hopes overwhelmed in passion, longings sustained by unfulfillment, insights that did not quite hold up; when we try to articulate and convey what we have felt and know, that same empty silence, the suspended moment of presence arises, mocking our intentions.
It is mysterious that this gap bubbles up through the stream of our intentions again and again.
*
Although in the early eighties, Peter had set some poems of mine for the Fromm Foundation, our first real collaboration began with King Gesar, a chamber opera commissioned by Hans Werner Henze for the Munich Biennale. Peter and I discussed the piece extensively before I wrote it, but I felt it necessary to write a full account of Gesar’s most famous exploits before I made excerpts for the libretto. (This was later published by Wisdom Publications and will soon be re-issued.) Then it was edited and slightly altered as musical needs dictated.
King Gesar is based on a Tibetan and Central Asian epic which is part of a bardic tradition, involving narrative, chant and song still alive today, and tells the story of the semi-mythical medieval monarch, Gesar, King of Ling. Gesar, as is said, was born completely enlightened in order to overcome the demonic forces in his world. However, unlike the conventional Western notion of 'enlightenment' which usually is taken to mean: serene, otherworldly, unflappable, and consistently full of wise sayings and cryptic advice, Gesar is a warrior. His life is a life of battles, treachery, ruses, jokes, and feasting. Within that, he is always acting to renew uncompromising wakefulness and to restore confidence in the potential of human life. The demons he fights are neighboring lords who embody the self-serving territoriality of envy, fear, lust, greed, and so forth. Often he loses himself completely to those mental states before he can conquer them. Thus, in order to realize the freedom, dignity and luminosity of open direct experience, Gesar moves through his wild and shifty world with ferocity, passion, crude humor, and uncompromising simplicity.
Working on this grandiose, gaudy, barbaric, yet somehow very human play called forth a scale of gesture and utterance that left me uncertain of its possible effect. When I was done, I had no idea what to think of it. I also had no idea of what Peter would do or what the music would sound like. But when I finally heard the words and music together for the first time in Munich, the power, extravagance, and lyric delicacy of Peter’s created a world where the words seemed more pointed and resonant. The world of Gesar was present in the hall, and it was like listening to, as Peter put it, a “campfire epic”.
*
Sound, of course, is a ceaseless communicative presence. Within this, music is distilled from our appreciation of the pattern and flow of all that lingers on the edge of comprehension. Words rise in the precision of our desire to communicate that appreciation. Music is more true because, even if notated, it exists only moment by moment. Writing is more true because of its lavish, shifting specificity. Music is delusory because of its freedom from embodiment. Words are delusory because they make the insubstantial seem solid. Joined, words and music create a reciprocal context, not necessarily more ‘real’, but often more haunting.
*
Ikkyu again:
From the endless realms of sight and sound
One transparent note emerges in the cold.
The crazy master had a few tricks up his sleeve;
Wind and bell meet high above the frozen balustrade.
*******
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Gateways to Shambhala
A GATEWAY TO SHAMBHALA
(This essay previously appeared in Cahiers De L'Herne)
“It became clear to me that humankind is full of gods, like a sponge immersed in the open sky. These gods live, attain the apogee of their power, then die, leaving to other gods their perfumed altars. They are the very principles of any total transformation. They are the necessity of movement.” – Louis Aragon (Le Paysan de Paris. – Paris, Gallimard 1953-P. 143)
I
As is well known, Gautama Buddha renounced the possibility of being a world ruler in order to take the path which led supreme complete enlightenment. He made this choice in order to discover a way to liberate all sentient beings from the endless cycles of delusion and suffering in which they are inevitably ensnared.
The choice he made and indeed advocated in most of his subsequent teachings is based on a strict dichotomy between the world of form and the formless, between engagement in the secular world of humankind and commitment to spiritual awakening. This has been the paradigm for enlightenment not just in Buddhism but in most other world religions.
After Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche left Tibet and his traditional role as an abbot-lama, he began to explore the possibilities in re-uniting these two paths. In the Political Treatise, one of the earliest texts written after he came out of Tibet, he expressed the view that the spiritual path is not the only means to enlightenment, nor is it necessarily the highest of such paths. In fact, he considered that the path of a political or social leader could be a more evolved manifestation of the awakened state.
While Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized the continuity between spiritual practice and ordinary daily life in the way he taught Buddhist practices, it was in presenting the Shambhala teachings that he opened a form where engagement in the secular world became a complete path of enlightenment.
It is implicit in the Shambhala view that enlightenment can be realized by many paths of discipline. But, as the great early twentieth century sage, Jamyang Mipham Rinpoche once observed, while the goal of every (Buddhist) path is the same, the experience and the way it is conveyed is colored by the path which was taken to reach it.
Thus the enlightenment, the unconditioned awareness that may be realized by a concert pianist or a diplomat or a nurse or an astronomer or a vagrant differ from one another as they do from that of a religious practitioner. The teachings relating to the Kingdom of Shambhala constitute a vision in which these many paths may find greater clarity, inspiration and support on a common ground.
II
There are many ancient legends concerning the Kingdom of Shambhala as an enlightened society. Nevertheless, it is not a past ‘golden age’ since it is still considered to be alive. Nor is it is not a future utopia in the Occidental sense of being an arrangement of laws and institutions set forth to produce some kind of ideal state of existence. The “vision of Shambhala” is not a vision of something seen, but rather a way of seeing and perceiving and acting in the context of the phenomenal world. The Kingdom of Shambhala is an innate and spontaneous longing to realize the freedom of the awakened state within the context of our existing social life.
Unlike a monastic path which emphasizes cultivating the awakened state by renouncing worldly pre-occupations and the detailed exploration of mind itself, the Shambhala path proposes going into the world ever more deeply and thoroughly. This is the path of discovering the vivid wakefulness in every aspect of daily living as one leads the life of a householder: working, cooking, cleaning, and relating to spouses, lovers, parents, children, friends and neighbors. When we cut through the narrow preoccupations and projections of ego-fixation, wakefulness illuminates as the processes of everyday tasks.
This path is a discipline much like art and requires attention to the minutiae of the mundane and love in the ways one shapes it. It is in some ways more difficult than the monastic approach since there is no vinaya (monastic rules) and less outward communal support.
To intensify this awareness, Trungpa Rinpoche introduced (in addition to the practice of meditation and the teachings now part of Shambhala Training) the practices of poetry, Kyudo (‘Zen archery’), flower arranging, equitation, theater, Bugaku, calligraphy, cooking and military strategy, among others. Such personal disciplines establish a basis for sharing the world and uncover, moment by moment, the ongoing ground of enlightened society.
III
There are however obvious and continuing obstacles on this path. How easy it is to conflate indulgence and appreciation, self-aggrandizement and inspiration, obsession and discipline. Trungpa Rinpoche was untiring in his scorn for comfort- seeking and the pursuit of endless entertainments. These were in his view the building blocks of what he called “the cocoon” and this desire to build a private world of ease and diversion around ourselves is not merely a psychological quirk but one with solid cultural enfranchisement.
As Walter Benjamin noted in his discussion of trends that began during in France in the period of Louis-Phillippe (1789):
“For the private citizen, for the first time the living-space became distinguished from the place of work. The former constituted itself as the interior. The office was its compliment. The private citizen who in the office took reality into account, required of the interior that it should support him in his illusions. The necessity was all the more pressing since he had no intention of adding social preoccupations to his business ones. In the creation of his private environment he suppressed them both. From this sprang the phantasmagoria. This represented the universe for the private citizen. In it he assembled the distant in space and in time. His drawing room was a box in the world-theater.”
(Walter Benjamin, tr. Harry Zohn- Paris the Capital of the Nineteenth Century, NLB 1973pp.167-8)
And in moving to his considerations on art nouveau, he continued:
Art nouveau “appeared, according to its ideology, to bring with it the perfecting of the interior. The transfiguration of the lone soul was its apparent aim. Individualism was its theory.” (supra. P.168)
With the telephone, television and attendant home entertainment systems, the internet, and so forth, these trends have clearly accelerated to a level that would have been impossible to imagine even fifty years ago. Now it is quite easy to be informed about events throughout the world, the nation, one’s city, and one’s neighborhood, and to conduct widespread communications about them without leaving home or meeting anyone face to face. Immediacy, presence, authentic community and even solitude are, within this social construct, exotic. Alone amid the endless torrent of images, commercial promises, manufactured needs and ‘information’, silence and the sheer momentariness of life afford only haunting anxiety.
IV
“The people need poetry that will be their own secret
to keep them awake forever,
and bathe them in the bright-haired wave
of its breath.”
(Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems, tr. Brown and Merwin, Atheneum Press, NY 1974, p.xiii)
The stories and songs concerning the Kingdom of Shambhala as an enlightened society have been current throughout central Asia for a thousand of years, and have, as David-Neel, Stein, Hessig, Bernbaum, Samuels and Roerich among others have shown, provided enduring inspiration for rulers as well as ordinary men and women. This lore exists in liturgies, prayers, songs, epics, histories and folk tales. In them Shambhala itself is often described in three simultaneous ways: as a real place on the earth which is sometimes manifest and sometimes not; as a pure realm, a place where the practice and communication of the awakened state of mind proceed without obstacle; and as the innate structure of the human heart.
In this tradition, the Kingdom of Shambhala is not just an enduring aspiration for enlightened society but is equally a kind of ongoing substrate within our lives. For just as it is said that enlightenment is the natural state, it is likewise true that the Kingdom of Shambhala represents the intrinsic ground of all societal possibilities.
Beyond the lore that describes the Shambhala kingdom and its rulers, there are also accounts of heroes and heroines for whom Shambhala provided crucial inspiration or who expressed this vision from their own intuition. These stories do not take place in an ideal world and are concerned with the struggle to uplift the human condition.
In several important texts, Trungpa Rinpoche gave particular emphasis to four historical exemplars of the spontaneous appearance of the Shambhala path. These four ancestral sovereigns combine the inspired and the pragmatic in a very heightened way. All are warriors. None received the throne as a matter of course but had to seize the throne and make great alterations in the pre-existing social order. Sometimes these changes were in the direction of restoring tradition and sometime they involved ideas and institutional norms that were entirely new. In uplifting their social world entirely, the ways in which these monarchs ruled each represents a specific kind of fruition of the warrior’s path. Trungpa Rinpoche correlated each of these sovereigns with specific attributes from the Shambhala teachings, and considered that each was the embodiment of specific qualities of the warrior. Trungpa Rinpoche therefore referred to these four as the ancestral sovereigns of Shambhala.
First mentioned of the four ancestral sovereigns is Ashoka Maharaja who ruled India and lived from 304- 232 BC. Ashoka is the warrior-monarch associated with meekness, modesty, kindness and mercy. He embodies the activity of pacifying, and in his own life transformed himself from a rapacious conqueror into one who extended non-violence and compassion as the foundation of his laws and polity.
Next is Gesar, King of Ling who is semi-legendary but who lived in the ninth or tenth century AD. Gesar is associated with perkiness, unceasing discipline and uninterrupted wakefulness. He embodies the action of cutting through all delusions. Gesar unhesitatingly plunged himself into demonic realms of madness and chaos in order to conquer them.
Then follows the third Ming Emperor, Yong Le who lived from 1360 to 1424. The Yong Le Emperor is connected with the quality of outrageousness in going completely beyond hope and fear to immerse himself in all the complex totality of the world and its requirements. He magnetized and illuminated his empire, and established an order that lasted for three hundred years.
Finally, there is Prince Shotoku Taishi who was Regent of Japan and lived 574-622 AD. Prince Shotoku Taishi embodies the warrior quality of inscrutability, unshakable confidence pervading one’s whole existence such that one does not need to act nor to doubt those actions one has undertaken. As a Prince Regent of Japan, Shotoku Taishi did not take the throne but enriched his country by initiating many spiritual and temporal forms that characterize Japanese culture to this day.
The ancestral sovereigns of Shambhala delineate a terrain in which spiritual enlightenment would appear, at first, to be in conflict with secular life, but they proceed to explore ways in which the two can, and in fact, must be carried forward inseparably. By so doing, the spirit and the reality of Shambhala dawns.
Each of these four rulers opened the path of secular enlightenment in the heart of his social order and each worked unceasingly until it pervaded his entire society. Their vision was shared with all their subjects and was in turn embodied by many. Though their lives were immersed in the needs of a specific time and place, the accounts of their deeds resonate as a living possibility without the constraints of time and space.
So it is said of the ancestral sovereigns
If there is a vision of mercy in this world,
It is Ashoka.
If there is a vision of victory in this world,
It is Gesar.
If there is a vision of luminosity in this world,
It is Yung Lo.
If there is a vision of true warriorship in this world,
It is Shotoku Taishi.
-The Razor of Kalapa
V
Even the most cursory review of human history cannot avoid the fact that to live on this earth is to inhabit a slaughterhouse. For more than five thousand years, the number of lives subjected to war, slavery, starvation, plague, grinding labor, random violence and terrible uncertainty dwarf the number of lives that have been prosperous and secure. We cannot escape the recognition that our heroes tower over battlefields littered with legions of the anonymous dead and our histories of our momentary Golden Ages do not recount the lives of the masses that endured the grinding misery of unending servitude.
And yet, at the same time, human beings have never ceased to produce heroes, moral exemplars, teachers and artists. The past is equally bursting with heartbreaking and hauntingly beautiful artifacts: pottery, sculpture, painting, songs, stories, dances, buildings, philosophies and spiritual visions.
Truly, suffering and beauty are inextricable in this realm and it is here that the four ancestral sovereigns have by their great endeavors marked their age with the light of an inspiration that continues into our own time.
A definitive representation of such figures is neither possible nor, perhaps, fruitful. The stories of the ancestral sovereigns can manifest in innumerable permutations and renditions as epic, as fiction, as song, music and drama. One hopes, in exploring and presenting the stories of these rulers, that they open a further and more intense and deeper sense of life altogether.
Because, as is said:
As a kingdom on this earth,
As a Pure Land ,
As eternal in the human heart,
Shambhala opens
In the unchanging heart-light
To which you return.
-The Razor of Kalapa
(This essay previously appeared in Cahiers De L'Herne)
“It became clear to me that humankind is full of gods, like a sponge immersed in the open sky. These gods live, attain the apogee of their power, then die, leaving to other gods their perfumed altars. They are the very principles of any total transformation. They are the necessity of movement.” – Louis Aragon (Le Paysan de Paris. – Paris, Gallimard 1953-P. 143)
I
As is well known, Gautama Buddha renounced the possibility of being a world ruler in order to take the path which led supreme complete enlightenment. He made this choice in order to discover a way to liberate all sentient beings from the endless cycles of delusion and suffering in which they are inevitably ensnared.
The choice he made and indeed advocated in most of his subsequent teachings is based on a strict dichotomy between the world of form and the formless, between engagement in the secular world of humankind and commitment to spiritual awakening. This has been the paradigm for enlightenment not just in Buddhism but in most other world religions.
After Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche left Tibet and his traditional role as an abbot-lama, he began to explore the possibilities in re-uniting these two paths. In the Political Treatise, one of the earliest texts written after he came out of Tibet, he expressed the view that the spiritual path is not the only means to enlightenment, nor is it necessarily the highest of such paths. In fact, he considered that the path of a political or social leader could be a more evolved manifestation of the awakened state.
While Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized the continuity between spiritual practice and ordinary daily life in the way he taught Buddhist practices, it was in presenting the Shambhala teachings that he opened a form where engagement in the secular world became a complete path of enlightenment.
It is implicit in the Shambhala view that enlightenment can be realized by many paths of discipline. But, as the great early twentieth century sage, Jamyang Mipham Rinpoche once observed, while the goal of every (Buddhist) path is the same, the experience and the way it is conveyed is colored by the path which was taken to reach it.
Thus the enlightenment, the unconditioned awareness that may be realized by a concert pianist or a diplomat or a nurse or an astronomer or a vagrant differ from one another as they do from that of a religious practitioner. The teachings relating to the Kingdom of Shambhala constitute a vision in which these many paths may find greater clarity, inspiration and support on a common ground.
II
There are many ancient legends concerning the Kingdom of Shambhala as an enlightened society. Nevertheless, it is not a past ‘golden age’ since it is still considered to be alive. Nor is it is not a future utopia in the Occidental sense of being an arrangement of laws and institutions set forth to produce some kind of ideal state of existence. The “vision of Shambhala” is not a vision of something seen, but rather a way of seeing and perceiving and acting in the context of the phenomenal world. The Kingdom of Shambhala is an innate and spontaneous longing to realize the freedom of the awakened state within the context of our existing social life.
Unlike a monastic path which emphasizes cultivating the awakened state by renouncing worldly pre-occupations and the detailed exploration of mind itself, the Shambhala path proposes going into the world ever more deeply and thoroughly. This is the path of discovering the vivid wakefulness in every aspect of daily living as one leads the life of a householder: working, cooking, cleaning, and relating to spouses, lovers, parents, children, friends and neighbors. When we cut through the narrow preoccupations and projections of ego-fixation, wakefulness illuminates as the processes of everyday tasks.
This path is a discipline much like art and requires attention to the minutiae of the mundane and love in the ways one shapes it. It is in some ways more difficult than the monastic approach since there is no vinaya (monastic rules) and less outward communal support.
To intensify this awareness, Trungpa Rinpoche introduced (in addition to the practice of meditation and the teachings now part of Shambhala Training) the practices of poetry, Kyudo (‘Zen archery’), flower arranging, equitation, theater, Bugaku, calligraphy, cooking and military strategy, among others. Such personal disciplines establish a basis for sharing the world and uncover, moment by moment, the ongoing ground of enlightened society.
III
There are however obvious and continuing obstacles on this path. How easy it is to conflate indulgence and appreciation, self-aggrandizement and inspiration, obsession and discipline. Trungpa Rinpoche was untiring in his scorn for comfort- seeking and the pursuit of endless entertainments. These were in his view the building blocks of what he called “the cocoon” and this desire to build a private world of ease and diversion around ourselves is not merely a psychological quirk but one with solid cultural enfranchisement.
As Walter Benjamin noted in his discussion of trends that began during in France in the period of Louis-Phillippe (1789):
“For the private citizen, for the first time the living-space became distinguished from the place of work. The former constituted itself as the interior. The office was its compliment. The private citizen who in the office took reality into account, required of the interior that it should support him in his illusions. The necessity was all the more pressing since he had no intention of adding social preoccupations to his business ones. In the creation of his private environment he suppressed them both. From this sprang the phantasmagoria. This represented the universe for the private citizen. In it he assembled the distant in space and in time. His drawing room was a box in the world-theater.”
(Walter Benjamin, tr. Harry Zohn- Paris the Capital of the Nineteenth Century, NLB 1973pp.167-8)
And in moving to his considerations on art nouveau, he continued:
Art nouveau “appeared, according to its ideology, to bring with it the perfecting of the interior. The transfiguration of the lone soul was its apparent aim. Individualism was its theory.” (supra. P.168)
With the telephone, television and attendant home entertainment systems, the internet, and so forth, these trends have clearly accelerated to a level that would have been impossible to imagine even fifty years ago. Now it is quite easy to be informed about events throughout the world, the nation, one’s city, and one’s neighborhood, and to conduct widespread communications about them without leaving home or meeting anyone face to face. Immediacy, presence, authentic community and even solitude are, within this social construct, exotic. Alone amid the endless torrent of images, commercial promises, manufactured needs and ‘information’, silence and the sheer momentariness of life afford only haunting anxiety.
IV
“The people need poetry that will be their own secret
to keep them awake forever,
and bathe them in the bright-haired wave
of its breath.”
(Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems, tr. Brown and Merwin, Atheneum Press, NY 1974, p.xiii)
The stories and songs concerning the Kingdom of Shambhala as an enlightened society have been current throughout central Asia for a thousand of years, and have, as David-Neel, Stein, Hessig, Bernbaum, Samuels and Roerich among others have shown, provided enduring inspiration for rulers as well as ordinary men and women. This lore exists in liturgies, prayers, songs, epics, histories and folk tales. In them Shambhala itself is often described in three simultaneous ways: as a real place on the earth which is sometimes manifest and sometimes not; as a pure realm, a place where the practice and communication of the awakened state of mind proceed without obstacle; and as the innate structure of the human heart.
In this tradition, the Kingdom of Shambhala is not just an enduring aspiration for enlightened society but is equally a kind of ongoing substrate within our lives. For just as it is said that enlightenment is the natural state, it is likewise true that the Kingdom of Shambhala represents the intrinsic ground of all societal possibilities.
Beyond the lore that describes the Shambhala kingdom and its rulers, there are also accounts of heroes and heroines for whom Shambhala provided crucial inspiration or who expressed this vision from their own intuition. These stories do not take place in an ideal world and are concerned with the struggle to uplift the human condition.
In several important texts, Trungpa Rinpoche gave particular emphasis to four historical exemplars of the spontaneous appearance of the Shambhala path. These four ancestral sovereigns combine the inspired and the pragmatic in a very heightened way. All are warriors. None received the throne as a matter of course but had to seize the throne and make great alterations in the pre-existing social order. Sometimes these changes were in the direction of restoring tradition and sometime they involved ideas and institutional norms that were entirely new. In uplifting their social world entirely, the ways in which these monarchs ruled each represents a specific kind of fruition of the warrior’s path. Trungpa Rinpoche correlated each of these sovereigns with specific attributes from the Shambhala teachings, and considered that each was the embodiment of specific qualities of the warrior. Trungpa Rinpoche therefore referred to these four as the ancestral sovereigns of Shambhala.
First mentioned of the four ancestral sovereigns is Ashoka Maharaja who ruled India and lived from 304- 232 BC. Ashoka is the warrior-monarch associated with meekness, modesty, kindness and mercy. He embodies the activity of pacifying, and in his own life transformed himself from a rapacious conqueror into one who extended non-violence and compassion as the foundation of his laws and polity.
Next is Gesar, King of Ling who is semi-legendary but who lived in the ninth or tenth century AD. Gesar is associated with perkiness, unceasing discipline and uninterrupted wakefulness. He embodies the action of cutting through all delusions. Gesar unhesitatingly plunged himself into demonic realms of madness and chaos in order to conquer them.
Then follows the third Ming Emperor, Yong Le who lived from 1360 to 1424. The Yong Le Emperor is connected with the quality of outrageousness in going completely beyond hope and fear to immerse himself in all the complex totality of the world and its requirements. He magnetized and illuminated his empire, and established an order that lasted for three hundred years.
Finally, there is Prince Shotoku Taishi who was Regent of Japan and lived 574-622 AD. Prince Shotoku Taishi embodies the warrior quality of inscrutability, unshakable confidence pervading one’s whole existence such that one does not need to act nor to doubt those actions one has undertaken. As a Prince Regent of Japan, Shotoku Taishi did not take the throne but enriched his country by initiating many spiritual and temporal forms that characterize Japanese culture to this day.
The ancestral sovereigns of Shambhala delineate a terrain in which spiritual enlightenment would appear, at first, to be in conflict with secular life, but they proceed to explore ways in which the two can, and in fact, must be carried forward inseparably. By so doing, the spirit and the reality of Shambhala dawns.
Each of these four rulers opened the path of secular enlightenment in the heart of his social order and each worked unceasingly until it pervaded his entire society. Their vision was shared with all their subjects and was in turn embodied by many. Though their lives were immersed in the needs of a specific time and place, the accounts of their deeds resonate as a living possibility without the constraints of time and space.
So it is said of the ancestral sovereigns
If there is a vision of mercy in this world,
It is Ashoka.
If there is a vision of victory in this world,
It is Gesar.
If there is a vision of luminosity in this world,
It is Yung Lo.
If there is a vision of true warriorship in this world,
It is Shotoku Taishi.
-The Razor of Kalapa
V
Even the most cursory review of human history cannot avoid the fact that to live on this earth is to inhabit a slaughterhouse. For more than five thousand years, the number of lives subjected to war, slavery, starvation, plague, grinding labor, random violence and terrible uncertainty dwarf the number of lives that have been prosperous and secure. We cannot escape the recognition that our heroes tower over battlefields littered with legions of the anonymous dead and our histories of our momentary Golden Ages do not recount the lives of the masses that endured the grinding misery of unending servitude.
And yet, at the same time, human beings have never ceased to produce heroes, moral exemplars, teachers and artists. The past is equally bursting with heartbreaking and hauntingly beautiful artifacts: pottery, sculpture, painting, songs, stories, dances, buildings, philosophies and spiritual visions.
Truly, suffering and beauty are inextricable in this realm and it is here that the four ancestral sovereigns have by their great endeavors marked their age with the light of an inspiration that continues into our own time.
A definitive representation of such figures is neither possible nor, perhaps, fruitful. The stories of the ancestral sovereigns can manifest in innumerable permutations and renditions as epic, as fiction, as song, music and drama. One hopes, in exploring and presenting the stories of these rulers, that they open a further and more intense and deeper sense of life altogether.
Because, as is said:
As a kingdom on this earth,
As a Pure Land ,
As eternal in the human heart,
Shambhala opens
In the unchanging heart-light
To which you return.
-The Razor of Kalapa
Sunday, October 4, 2009
INTRODUCTION
The articles and other pieces on this blog are here to comment on and enrich the material in THE WARRIOR SONG OF KING GESAR and CROSSINGS ON A BRIDGE OF LIGHT. If you wish to, please submit your own work. Thank you for your interest and participation.
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