A Liberating Reminder

A Liberating Reminder

by Khenpo Pema Vajra

I prostrate at the feet of the peerless guru!

Generally, the key points for taking the teachings of Buddha to heart are:
Motivated by renunciation and bodhicitta,
To avoid non-virtue and put your effort into virtuous deeds,
And to train your mind as much as you can in the paths of sūtra and mantra,
With the three noble principles, six pāramitās and phases of generation and perfection,
And to seal this with altruistic intention and prayers of aspiration.
Even if you were to die right now, what else is there to do but this?

The key points for the path of the supreme vehicle in particular are:
With a mind that sees the guru as an actual Buddha,
Pray, receive the four empowerments, and merge your mind with his or her wisdom mind.
Allow your body, speech and mind to settle, and, deeply relaxed both physically and mentally,
Let go of all deluded thoughts of past, present and future, and ordinary mind and mental events,
Recognizing how they lack basis and origin, and have never been real.
Allow them to vanish by themselves without trace.
The mind as such is clear light, the realm of awakening mind,
Unaltered by thinking, untainted by temporary experience,
Empty and clear, like space, without centre or periphery.
In a state of non-grasping, without fixation, this is spacious and open.
In a state of non-meditation, without distraction, the stronghold is secured.
Whatever thoughts arise as the expression of awareness, whether good or bad,
Do not block or indulge, accept or reject them, and do not entertain hope or fear.
But allow movement to settle by itself, liberated as dharmakāya,
Like writing on water or a snake uncoiling its own knots.
This is the training, the exercise of thought: natural self-arising and natural self-liberation.

When death arrives, all of a sudden,
Eject your consciousness into the unborn, sky-like space of awareness.
With the guru's wisdom mind and your own mind inseparably united,
Rest in an experience of space-like infinity.
This is the instruction for liberation into dharmakāya at the time of death.

In the bardo of dharmatā, no matter what sounds, colours or rays of light may occur,
Rest in a state of pure and open awareness,
Without grasping attachment, to gain liberation as sambhogakāya.
If you wander into the bardo of becoming,
Then, like an arrow shot by a great archer,
Proceed directly to a pureland, such as the five realms where the great spirit of liberation is rekindled.
This is the instruction for liberation in the bardos.

Be kind enough to keep these instructions in mind.

Spoken by Pema Vajra, who holds the name of khenpo. May it be virtuous!

Maṅgalam!

| Translated by Adam Pearcey, 2017. Updated 2019.

Bibliography

Tibetan Edition

mkhan chen padma badzra. “gdams ngag dran grol ma.” In rdzogs chen mkhan po padma ba dzra'i gsung thor bu. 1 vol. Chengdu: si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2001. 239–240

Version: 2.2-20220411