Spontaneous Advice

Spontaneous Advice Connected with a Prayer

by Kyabje Chatral Rinpoche

How marvellous!
Primordial buddha, the essence,
and unceasing sambhogakāya, the nature,
are united, as compassion’s own radiance:
Three-kāya guru, please know me!

Embodiment of the nine yānas and four kāyas,
prophesied Sangye Dorje,
who perfectly accomplished the vast expanse of wisdom through lineages most blessed,
manifesting your great love from pure space:
watch over me, your most devoted child!

Bestow blessings and empowerments
of the wisdom, symbolic, and oral lineages right now,
and make me inseparable from you!
Please, I am praying.

In your compassionate vision
is my dharmakāya inheritance — empty awareness —
devoid of the husk of temporal meditative experiences,
and beyond view, meditation, conduct or result.

This self-emergent original nature
has always been free of conceptual mind;
the full extent of unaltered, fresh realization.
To have the confidence of recognizing and resolving this,
is to see with naked awareness – the great boon of self-liberation.

Right here and right now —
pray reveal this to me!

On the swift path of luminous Great Perfection,
with the force of fervent devotion as the cause
realization and liberation are actualized in a single lifetime.
This result, the bhūmis and paths perfect in the ground,
isn’t merely a future hope or prospect — how incredible!

Awakening previously accrued merit
and imbibing the nectar that ripens and liberates,
Ignorance, negativity, emotionality, confusion and its imprints
Are purified into unborn dharmakāya,
and, with effortless compassion,
the realms of suffering beings are emptied
from their very depths — such an extraordinary gift
can only come to a spoiled child like me
through the kindness of the guru, my true father.

Without hoping to know all while missing what’s most important,
I'll remain throughout my life
Within the understanding of the one thing that liberates all.
Glorious guru, please save me
from a journey full of mistakes and pitfalls!

Aside from fervent prayer,
relax in non-doing, letting go of even virtuous deeds,
and now whatever happens
is in our hands — be certain.

Guru, you know that within our environment and among beings,
upon us all, myself and others,
the arrows of negative forces rain down
in these impossibly dark times,
and having seen how they strike,
you embraced a yogic lifestyle of humble non-doing,
roaming in lonesome places and isolated retreats,
sustained without companions, alone,
and like a flowing stream, day and night,
thoughts and perceptions became unending wisdom,
with meditation and post-meditation equal and complete —
so I may savour everything as a single taste —
Beloved guru, please know me!

Since the noise of dry talk
carries the danger of self-deception
while living, dying and in the bardo,
please bless me to be ever mindful!

This prayer of calling out to the guru, the equivalent of spiritual advice, was requested by the young yogi Jigme Lodé, with an offering of a gold and silver maṇḍala. So as not to render meaningless his repeated urging at different times, the elder Buddha Vajra uttered this from his abode, the retreat centre Turquoise Dragon Land, and his daughter Saraswati wrote it down. Maṅgalam.

| Translated by Christina Monson with the assistance of the Venerable Sean Price, 2016.

Version: 1.2-20231105