Sutra and Tantra: the Profound and Miraculous

WISDOM ACADEMY Sutra and Tantra: The Profound and Miraculous ROBERT A. F. THURMAN Lesson 10: Magic Body, Clear Light, and Complete Buddhahood Reading: Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages (The American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2010) Chapter 8: Two Reality Perfection Stage, pages 397–458 Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages (Rim lnga rab tu gsal ba’i sgron me) Practical Instruction in the King of Tantras, The Glorious Esoteric Community by Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa INTRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION by Robert A.F. Thurman Edited by Thomas F. Yarnall Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series Tengyur Translation Initiative Jey Yabsey Sungbum Collection Published by The American Institute of Buddhist Studies Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies Tibet House US New York 2010 Not for distribution--For students of Wisdom Academy CHAPTER VIII Two Reality Perfection Stage [203b.5–242b.1] [VI.B.3.b.ii.C´3´díi´ – How to learn the samadhis of the two realities] The second, the two reality perfection stage, has two parts: [A´´] The perfection stage of the two realities severally; and [B´´] The perfection stage of the two realities inseparably. [VI.B.3.b.ii.C´3´díiÁ´´ – The perfection stage of the two realities severally] The first has two parts: [1´´] The perfection stage of superficial magic; [2´´] The perfection stage of ultimate clear light. [VI.B.3.b.ii.C´3´díiÁ´´1´´ – The perfection stage of superficial magic] The first has two parts: [a´´] The actual instruction of the magic body; [b´´] The associated instructions. [VI.B.3.b.ii.C´3´díiÁ´´1´á´´ – The actual instruction of the magic body] The first has two parts: [i´´] What should what sort of disciple do; and [ii´´] The teacher’s teaching process. [204a] [VI.B.3.b.ii.C´3´díiÁ´´1´á´í´´ – What should what sort of disciple do] [Nāgārjuna says] in the Five Stages that, in order to obtain instruction in the magic body, a disciple with four qualifications should first praise the mentor and then petition him [or her]. The four qualifications are: [1] that one has obtained initiation suitable for the creation stage and has practiced it; [2] that one possesses the wisdom that knows the intention of the four kinds of Tantras, having the wisdom of experience of all four kinds of Tantras; [3] that one should be learned about the three isolations, having well practiced the path of the three vajras; and [4] that one should have intense aspiration for the two realities, with a very firm 397 Not for distribution--For students of Wisdom Academy 398 · Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp ambition for the separate and indivisibly combined two reality perfection stages. Such a person should first long propitiate a mentor, and after pleas- ing him [or her], should make host offerings and offer the mentor a sixteen year old consort. One then should praise, “There is no hollowness in your body!” and then petition, “Omniscient one with a wisdom body….” Here the Five Stages old translation says that, after obtaining the private teaching on the magic body, one gets the nine initiations such as garland initiation along with the secret initiation, and then one praises and petitions. Nevertheless, the Chag translation says that in order to attain magic body instruction one gets the secret initiation with the nine initiations [204b] and then one praises and so on; this translation is better, as the Lakṣhmī commentary is similar. The early [scholars] were greatly unreasonable in their claim that the ancient treatises taught that since one learned in the three isolations should receive the secret initiation, if one gets the vase initiation fully even without getting the higher initiations, it is alright to meditate the three isolations. [They are wrong] because, without getting the higher initiations to make one eligible for the perfection stage, one should not properly be taught the perfection stage secrets, and also because the treatise seems to mean that one learned in the three isolations should praise and petition in order to get the magic body instruction. Otherwise, to say that one learned in the three isolations would petition upon [only then] receiving the secret initiation along with the nine [vase] initiations has the fatal flaw of considering such a one eligible to meditate the three isolations without having received the rosary and so forth initiations. It is Nāropa’s explanation that one is eligible for magic body [instruction] once one has received the secret initiation; and this is this treatise’s meaning. Having already obtained initiations, when one requests this instruction, having pleased the mentor and so on, [having performed] the three things [mentioned above], one should praise and petition [again], as that is required in common for both initiation and request for instruction. Having thus petitioned, the procedure through which the disciple petitions the mentor for the magic body instruction should be understood according to [Āryadeva’s] explanation in the Lamp of Integrated Practices: Beginning from the creation stage [205a] up until the completion of the body isolation, one just aspires to the Not for distribution--For students of Wisdom Academy Chapter VIII—Two Reality Perfection Stage · 399 nature of the three vajras and so forth. Thus in the body isolation there is no form of the deity, as the body is only a mass of subtle atoms. The culmination of speech isolation also, by the process of entering and so forth, is acknowledged as just the vajra recitation, wherein there is no deity aspect either, as sounds are just like echoes. The culmination of mind isolation also amounts to just mere recognition of natural luminance, wherein one does not discover the actuality of the deity body supreme in all respects, since that mind is pure luminance. By this reasoning, relying on the superficial, one will not discover the abode. Therefore, one should seek to understand the creation of the deity from mere wisdom, [conveyed] from the presence of the mentor. As for this inquiry: from the time of the creation stage, within the experience of purging all ordinary concepts and percepts within clear light, while it seems to be explained that your mind must be generated within a deity’s body, when the discerning investigate, it must be [only] from a certain boundary on the path that there is [the actual] creation from pure wisdom in a deity body, and not just in [your] wishful imagination. There is a reason that from the start of the creation stage up to complete mind isolation it does not happen, or that by this [205b] process, one does not arrive at reliance on the superficial magic body and at abiding in that samadhi on those occasions. For that reason, [Āryadeva] said that for the actual creation—not mere imaginative deity body visualization—of the magic body from sheer wisdom, one must realize it from the live speech of the mentor. To prove the [three] reasonings [for why body, speech, and mind isolations are not the magic body] in order: from the beginning of the creation stage until one reaches the great secret single clan [body isolation], and the three body vajras etc.—“etc.” here including the merely imagined visualization creation of the five and hundred clan deity bodies —[there is no actual deity body]. Thus, in body isolation there is no magic body deity body, “because the body is a mere mass of atomic particles.” This means that, when the mind imagines one’s deity body, the measure of its objectively becoming such [a body]—the form which is imagined and about which one generates one’s deity-body pride—is no more than Not for distribution--For students of Wisdom Academy 400 · Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp just that former body of aggregates and elements which are [now visual- ized as deities infused in] the masses of subtle atoms. This also shows that mere visualization of that magic body deity body does not create the divinity, and that the yogī/nī needs a deity form other than the coarse body form as a basis for generating pride. Not only that, the magic body deity form is not a body even up to the culmination of the speech isolation, as the word “also” shows that there is no deity creation by the above “mere imagination.” Well then, what does the vajra recitation accomplish? By the process of entry, abiding, and exiting, [206a] words are just caused to be known as echo-like, by settling the wind-energy, the vajra recitation base, to become extremely serviceable. The Integrated Prac- tices explains in the procedure section that the vajra recitation causes one to recognize the life-energy wind; and the Vajra Rosary also says that it makes the wind-energies known. The word “just” in that context excludes any deity body creation other than mere imaginary visualization. Even up to mind isolation culmination one does not discover the magic body deity body endowed with all supreme aspects of signs and marks; the word “also,” as above, including the previous reasons. Well then, what does [mind isolation] accomplish? One must understand “natural luminance” as the name of luminance and the name of the natural instincts of the luminance [state], and so [mind isolation] amounts to knowing natural luminance as just the three voids; since on that occasion the yogī/nī comes to know his [or her] own mind as mere luminance devoid of instinctual constructs. Here a certain ancient Community practitioner,119 explaining the lack of a deity body as a lack of the communion deity body, does not understand the meaning in context and does not see the import of the explanation of the last three reasons as proof of the lack of a deity body in body, speech, and mind [isolations, and of the fact] that the superficial, artificial, conceptual mind does not reach the communion body relying on meditating on the three isolations.

Load more