Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche

Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche (sKyabs rJe dil mGo mKhyen brTse / སྐྱབས་རྗེ་དིལ་མགོ་མཁྱེན་བརྩེ་་/ 1910 – 1991) An extract from ‘Wisdom Eccentrics — The Memoirs of an English Lama’ by Ngak’chang Rinpoche — which gives unique insights into the mode in which teachings given in the unique ambience of the early 1970s — when access to the great Lamas of the Nyingma Tradition was unprecedented.

A personal teaching from Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche on the ‘Seven Line Song of Guru Rinpoche.’

Ngak’chang Rinpoche wrote:
‘During my time in Bodhanath, Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche asked me whether I recited the Seven Line Song of Guru Rinpoche. I replied that I did —quite often— and he asked me to chant it for him. I did so.

“Hung: Ögyen yul gyi nub chang tsam: / Pema ké-sar dong-po la: / Ya tsan chö-gi ngö-drüp nyé: / Pema Jung-né Shé-su drag: / Khordu khandro mang-pö khor:/ Khyé kyi jé-su dag drüb kyi: / Ching gyi lob chir shèg su sol: / Guru Pema Siddhi Hung:”
༄ ཧཱུྃ༔ ཨོ་རྒྱན་ཡུལ་གྱི་ནུབ་བྱང་མཚམས༔ པདྨ་གེ་སར་སྡོང་པོ་ལ༔ ཡ་མཚན་མཆོག་གི་དངོས་གྲུབ་བརྙེས༔ པདྨ་འབྱུང་གནས་ཞེས་སུ་གྲགས༔ འཁོར་དུ་མཁའ་འགྲོ་མང་པོས་བསྐོར༔ ཁྱེད་ཀྱི་རྗེས་སུ་བདག་བསྒྲུབ་ཀྱི༔ བྱིན་གྱིས་བརླབ་ཕྱིར་གཤེགས་སུ་གསོལ༔ གུ་རུ་པདྨ་སིདྡྷི་ཧཱུྃ༔ ༀ་ཨཱཿཧཱུྃ་བཛྲ་གུ་རུ་པདྨ་སི་དྡྷི་ཧཱུྃ༔

“Oh yah . . . ”
Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche grinned
“ . . . so maybe you should know the path of the hidden meaning – the path of liberation.”
He began then, to expound the root meaning

“The first word is the syllable Hung. This awakens the nature of self-arisen wisdom.
Then the first line: Ögyen yul-gyin nub chang tsam.”
Sem-nyid is the nature of Mind – but when sem, conceptual mind, is misunderstood as being divided from it; this is dualism.
Sem-nyid is identical with Ögyen yul.
This is the freedom—tsam—from the extremes of samsara nub and nirvana chang.
Samsara is cyclic experience and nirvana is the release form cyclic experience into emptiness.
These are known as extremes because although nirvana is the release form samsara – it abandons form.
The nature of Mind is not disturbed by the forms that arise because it is the nature of space to give rise to form.

“So, then – the next line coming?” at which Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche motioned me to recite.

“Pema ké-sar dongpo la.”

“This is meaning: the realisation of the union dongpo of the primordial sphere pema and intrinsic awareness ké-sar.”
Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche motioned me again.

“Ya-tsan chö-gi ngö-drüp nyé.”

“Dzogchen is the Great Completeness.
This is the marvellous ya-tsen attainment nyé of the supreme accomplishment chö-gi ngödrup.”

“Pema Jung-né shé-su drag.”

“This is the wisdom of the primordial nature, renowned as zhesu trag the ultimate ground jung-né of the Buddhahood Pema. This is the nondual ground of Being.”

“Khordu khandro mang-pö ’khor.”

“This wisdom ’khor is with its multiplistic power of manifestation mangpo emanating dro in the primordial sky kha as attributes of nondual realisation ’khordu.
This is the primordial purity of the phenomenal world.”

“Khyé kyi jé-su dag drüb kyi ,”

“I develop firm confidence dag drub kyi in the nature of nondual primordial wisdom khye kyi je su.”

“Ching gyi lob chir shèg su sol .”

“In order to purify chir all the attachments to appearances as the primordial wisdom ching-gyi lob, may I realise the ultimate nature shèg-su sol.”

“Guru Pema Siddhi Hung.”

“The essence of primordial wisdom is the emptiness of chö-ku Guru. The nature of primordial wisdom is the clarity of long-ku Pema.
The energy of primordial wisdom is the all-pervasive compassionate power of trülku Siddhi as manifested by the fivefold wisdom of the elements Hung.”

“Yah . . . and so . . . the verse begins with the seed syllable of the nature of Mind Hung, which awakens self-arisen primordial wisdom – which is the actual nature of samsara and nirvana.

The country of Ögyen—Oddhiyana—is a unique source of Vajrayana.
In relation to the path, your Mind—the nature of Mind—is the unique source of Vajrayana.
This is the meaning of Ögyen. The nature of Mind is free from descending samsara and ascending nirvana.
This descending and ascending are meaningless because the nature of Mind is not partial to the extremes. It has no addiction to either form or emptiness.

Pema is the lotus – and signifies chö-ying – the sphere creative space of phenomena.
This is the nature that must be realised. It doesn’t dwell anywhere. It’s beginninglessly pure - just as the lotus flower is unstained by the impurity of the mire in which it grows.

Ké-sar is the pistil – and signifies the vajra: the luminosity of intrinsic awareness – the method of realising the nature of Mind.
This is spontaneously-accomplished and realised as self-radiant intrinsic-awareness, primordial wisdom.
It blossoms with clarity – and for that reason it resembles the pistil of a lotus.
Dongpo is the stem which supports the pistil and the lotus petals.
This is the self-arisen primordial wisdom of unconstrained ebullience that resides as the union of the sphere of phenomenal reality and sphere of primordial wisdom, and it is the ultimate nature of the mind or the innate luminosity of the mind. Mind is the luminous spontaneously-born, Great Completion, the primordial wisdom of the absolute nature.
This is the meaning of the fourth empowerment of Inner Tantra – and it is this which is marvellous.

The nature of Mind is the ground of all Buddhas of the three times, who have blossomed like lotus flowers – so the nature of Mind is renowned as the basis of Pema: the Buddhas.
This recognition is known as Pema Jung-né—Padmasambhava—the absolute Buddha. In terms of this state or realisation, there are five spectral rays of primordial wisdom which naturally manifest.
To realise the nature of nondual primordial wisdom and to integrate it into everyday life with unchanging confidence, we say ‘I shall follow your practice.’

Guru: If you become experienced and discover the ultimate nature you will realise the view and complete this realisation through meditation.
Then you will transform all attachments into the pure appearances that radiate from the essential sphere.
Primordial wisdom is the emptiness essence of Bring.

Pema: The nature of primordial wisdom is luminosity. It is spontaneously accomplished as the sphere of realised appearances, which are a ceaseless display of power in being inseparable from the sphere of unconditioned potentiality.
So Pema, is the lotus which unstained by dualism.
The inseparability of the essence and nature is the empathetic appreciative activity display, which arises independent of samsara and nirvana.
Through this the needs of endless beings are fulfilled.
This is known as the attainment of siddhi.

Finally Hung is the self-arisen primordial wisdom – and the seed syllable of Mind which possesses the five primordial wisdoms.

Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche gave a series of teachings pertaining to the Seven Line Song of Padmasambhava and it took me a year to unpack what he taught. I took copious notes and studied them each day.
Kyabjé Düd’jom Rinpoche Jig’drèl Yeshé Dorje answered a great many questions which arose from the teachings I’d received from Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche – and by the time I left Nepal I felt as if I’d undergone a doctoral degree course in Vajrayana.

My head often swam with the density of the teachings and I realised that I had to move beyond the intellect if I was ever to understand what I had been taught.

To Düd’jom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche these teachings were self-explanatory because they were speaking form the point of view of realisation.
What they related to me was only difficult because I was having to grapple with intellect – where intellect was out of its depth.

I realised that much of what I was being taught had to be seen as transmission.
It occurred to me that this was material that would serve me later when I had the meditative experience to authentically comprehend what I had been taught.