Light-Hearted Advice
Light-Hearted Advice[1]
by Khenchen Ngawang Palzang
In general, since we have this conditioned body caused by previous merit and non-merit, we experience the conditions of this life as happiness and suffering. It is just like the genesis of confused phenomena induced by datura extract.[2]
To understand the inexorability of action and consequence, it is helpful to read the life stories of Maudgalaputra[3] and the Little Hunchback.[4]
Once you gain confidence in exchanging well-being and suffering[5] and in the ineluctability of consequences from action, you will understand that suffering is an aid that spurs you to enlightenment and that suffering lacks true existence, like an illusion. If you then develop the habit of exchanging happiness for suffering, it is taught that a mere headache here in the world of Jambudvīpa can purify all the karma that would bring about a hellish existence in many future eons. This is understood from the vajra speech of the undeceiving Sugata teacher.
Indeed, you will resolve that suffering is like an illusion on the relative level and that, ultimately, its primordially unoriginated nature is great bliss free of conceptual elaborations.
Then, earnestly recite the Seven-Line Prayer and the siddhi heart mantra[6] while calling to mind master Guru Rinpoche’s enlightened qualities. If you do that, I can vouch that you will not become a hunchback!
| Translated by Joseph McClellan, 2024.
Bibliography
Source Texts
mKhan po ngag dgaʼ. gSung ʼbum ngag dbang dpal bzang, vol. 2, pp. 43–44. Khreng tuʼu, nd. BDRC W22946.
mKhan po ngag dgaʼ. gSung 'bum kun mkhyen ngag gi dbang po, vol. 1, pp. 120–121. sNga ʼgyur kaḥ thog bcu phrag rig mdzod chen moʼi dpe tshogs. Khreng tuʼu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2017. BDRC W4CZ364088.
Secondary Sources
Hecker, Hellmuth. “Maha-Moggallana.” AccesstoInsight.org, 1994. Accessed Sept. 19 2022. Accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/hecker/wheel263.html
Lozang Jamspal and Kaia Tara Fischer trans. The Hundred Deeds (Karmaśataka). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. Toh 340. 2022. https://read.84000.co/translation/toh340.html
Ray, Reginald A. Buddhist Saints of India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Version: 1.0-20240711
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The literal title is closer to "Advice Asked in Jest," which we find needlessly confusing. Note that in the older edition, rtsed mor (“playful”) is written as rtse mor (“on the peak”). ↩
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Latin Datura metel is here given in an Indic spelling dha dhu ra (sometimes da dhu ra or dattūra) is an extremely powerful hallucinogenic plant. In the 2017 edition, the spelling is rda rda ra. ↩
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Alias Maudgalyāyana—one of Buddha Śākyamuni’s most important disciples. He was best known for his mastery of miraculous powers. His biography recounts how he was first drawn to the Buddha and became a stream-enterer when he heard the dhāraṇī of “The Essence of Dependent Arising”: ye dharma hetuprabhavā teṣāṃ tathāgato hyavadat / teṣāṃ ca yo nirodha evaṃvādī mahāśramaṇo. “Of those things which arise from causes, those causes have been taught by the Tathāgata, and their cessation too—thus proclaims the Great Ascetic.” (See Hecker 1994). Other sources highlight Maudgalyāyana's reliance on the practice of devotion and offering to the buddhas (Ray 231). ↩
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Tib. sgur chung. “Small Person with a Curving Spine. “A certain monk of the Buddha’s order whose vile deeds committed against his mother in a previous life ripened into a series of hell births. When he finally attained a human birth, he had a curved spine and went hungry. Although he lived an uncomfortable life, he was able to take ordination and receive teachings before he eventually drank ash-gruel and passed into parinirvāṇa (Lozang Jamspal, 2.509–571, g.525) ↩
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Referring to the practice of Tonglen. ↩
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Oṃ āḥ hūṃ vajra guru padma siddhi hūṃ. ↩
