Thursday, June 26, 2008

Reflections on The Melody of Wisdom : A Supplication to the Wisdom Dakini Niguma

Vajra queen, mother of all buddhas,
Dark-brown woman wearing bone ornaments who flies through space,
You bestow supreme accomplishment on your fortunate disciples:
Noble Niguma, to you I pray.

You were born in the wonderful land of Kashmir,
In a sublime city
Known as Incomparable in the Land of Jambu,
Emanated through Madhyantika's blessing; to you I pray.

In the family circle
Of the pure Brahmin, Shantivarma,
Narotapa and you, the wisdom dakini, were brother and sister
Your karma ripened together like sun and moon; to you I pray.

You are the feminine form of true emptiness,
Sublime among all appearances, giving birth to all victorious buddhas.
Although you manifest in a worldly form,
You renounced any connection to existence through craving and grasping;
to you I pray.

During incalculable past lives, you reached the far shore
Of awakening's stages and paths.
Thus, in this life, you gained the inconceivable, perfect freedom of
self-manifest accomplishment.
Innate dakini, to you I pray.

You did not have to rely on exhausting training
When some advice from accomplished masters entered your ears,
You understood all teachings.
Great bliss of natural liberation, to you I pray.

Knowledge of one subject - the tantras' subtle, profound meaning led to your total liberation
And the flowering of your two forms of knowledge.
You saw directly and without obscuration the truth of the nature of reality.
Illustrious woman of accomplishment, to you I pray.

You bound your mind, eyes, and circulating energy within the expanse of
emptiness,
Permitting you to see in the central channel the [empty] forms created
by the spring vital essence.
Vajra illusory reflections, such as smoke, developed together.
You completed the branch of familiarization; to you I pray.

You used your breath to block the dark circulating energies and made
them descend to your belly.
You joined the vitality and descending energies equally at the six
energy centers,
Blocking the movement of the six elements' sun and moon.
You completed the branch of proximate accomplishment; to you I pray.

You transcended the three seals to reach incomparable Great Seal (Mahamudra).
The innate light of its unchanging, coemergent bliss
Created your ten-faceted illusory body, replete with all powers.
You completed the branch of accomplishment - to you I pray.

You blocked the twenty-one thousand six hundred circulating energies and
attained that many forms of changeless bliss.
At the crown of your head, the mind of awakening became stable,
And you traversed awakening's stages in an instant.
You completed the branch of great accomplishment; to you I pray.

Through engaging in conduct that is enlightenment's direct cause,
You enjoyed many pleasures and were nurtured spiritually by Buddha Vajra
Bearer.
Your fortune equaled his - your body of training's integral union
Works for beings whose numbers equal space; to you I pray.

You saw directly all phenomena without obscuration
And opened inconceivable millions of gates to meditative states.
You master the secret treasury of all victorious ones.
Consort of all buddhas, to you I pray.

Body of great bliss, emptiness and compassion inseparable,
Manifestation of blissful buddhas, sovereign of common and supreme
accomplishment,
Powerful bodhisattva on awakening's tenth stage, glorious guide for beings,
Wearer of Bone Ornaments, to you I pray.

Sentient beings, our venerable mothers, wander along the wheel of life
In endless and fathomless seas of suffering.
With your universal great compassion,
Lead them to a pure land of flourishing, uncontaminated bliss, I pray.

Nurture fortunate persons who have entered the path;
Pacify all adversity, hindrances, and obstacles;
Continually enhance our experience and realization;
And bless us with the completion of awakening's five paths and ten stages.

(A Garland of Udumvara Flowers, pp. 3a-4a, by Jamgon Kongtrul)

Excerpted from /Timeless Rapture/, by Ngawang Zangpo.

Niguma
A second prayer of supplication to a Shangpa Kagyu lineage holder (prayer of supplication to Sukhasiddhi, this prayer to Niguma once again stirs a deep resonance in my heart. Though couched in deeply mythic language, unlocking the symbolism points directly into minds nature, and illuminates what is, simply is.

The lines:
"You are the feminine form of true emptiness,
Sublime among all appearances, giving birth to all victorious buddhas."
speaks a lot to meditation experience. So much seems encapsulated there. So much summarised so pithily (is that a word? .. it is now!). So much that can't really be said, just pointed to, by allusion, fingers pointing to the moon.

Once again:
"You did not have to rely on exhausting trainingó
When some advice from accomplished masters entered your ears,
You understood all teachings.
Great bliss of natural liberation, to you I pray."
How wonderful to read these lines, the ease of natural liberation, how different from the hard won struggle so often portrayed. Not that I want it easy, not that I want to project a notion that it *should* be easy ... just enjoying hearing of ease-won liberation, alongside the natural ease of the Mahamudra path of resting mind. How blessed I am to have found this path of no-struggle. How simple the path of self-liberating dharmas. One sees how unnecessary this creation of suffering or struggle is. How wonderful to find the path itself which is without struggle. Seeing the 'problem' of struggle, finding a path beyond that which itself doesn't involve 'struggle'. No longer at war with myself, trying to be something other that what I appeared to be. No longer trying to be somewhere else, not at peace with things. How deeply I pray that all beings find this ease, and allow the illusory chains of suffering to disappear like dew drops in the sun of awareness.

An extraordinary peon to accomplishments ... beyond my imagination, yet so very near.

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