Wylie:Gcod kyi tshogs las yon tan kun ldan gyi dmigs rim bla ma'i gsung rgyun gyi zin bris shel dkar me long
གཅོད་ཀྱི་ཚོགས་ལས་ཡོན་ཏན་ཀུན་ལྡན་གྱི་དམིགས་རིམ་བླ་མའི་གསུང་རྒྱུན་ ་ ་ ་
gcod kyi tshogs las yon tan kun ldan gyi dmigs rim bla ma'i gsung rgyun gyi zin bris shel dkar me long
White Crystal Mirror: Notes on the Guru’s Teaching Tradition of the Visualization Sequence for Severance Feast Activities “Endowed with all Qualities”
White Crystal Mirror is a detailed exposition on how to put into practice the Holy Dharma Severance of Evil Object, with instructions for the visualizations of both casting out the body as food and the feast activities, written down according to the oral tradition of the fourth Trungpa Rinpoche, Person:Trungpa, 4th. This is the first of the many texts in this collection that are particularly connected with the famous Zurmang tradition of Severance.
A sublineage of the Kagyu, the Zurmang tradition maintains a significant link to the source of that lineage, the Indian mahāsiddha Person:Tilopa. According to the Collected Histories of the Glorious Zurmang Kagyu, the lineage is held in common with the Karma Kagyu for thirteen generations, up through the Person:Karmapa, 5th, Person:Karmapa, 5th (1384–1415), before it branches off with the founder of Zurmang Monastery, Drung Mase (Drung rma se bLo gros rin chen, 1386–1423), posthumously identified as the first Garwang incarnation. But the history of the Severance transmission in particular is traced to the Person:Karmapa, 3rd, Person:Karmapa, 3rd (1284–1339), who had received it from Namtsowa Mikyö Dorje. From him, it passed eventually to the Person:Trungpa, 4th, the great Person:Trungpa, 4th (1567–1629), who received even more transmissions from his own father, Adro Chöpa Sangye Tashi.
It was Person:Trungpa, 4th who codified the special Severance tradition that has been practiced at the Zurmang monasteries in eastern Tibet ever since. The Record of Teachings Received lists sixty-eight separate practice texts of Zurmang, the first of which is called Brief Synopsis of Visualization Sequence for Severance Feast Activities “Endowed with All Qualities” (Tshogs las yon tan kun ldan gyi dmigs rim nyung ngur bsdus pa), clearly related to the text here. Endowed with All Qualities appears to be the basic Zurmang Severance practice that has been enhanced by the many liturgies and explanations that followed, such as those found in this collection. It should be noted, however, that the general title Endowed with All Qualities (yon tan kun ldan) is very close to other Severance texts called Source of All Qualities (yon tan kun ’byung), such as the one in this volume compiled by the Person:Karmapa, 14th, Person:Karmapa, 14th, and that even the current text is titled with the latter (kun ’byung) in the Dingri Volumes. It is not clear whether this is a mistake, or the terms endowed with (ldan) and source of (’byung) are interchangeable, or the two represent different sets of instruction. There is, however, a great deal of overlap between those two texts in this volume.
The lineage of instructions within Zurmang continues from Person:Trungpa, 4th through seven or eight masters down to the author of this text, Bengen Tenzin Namdak (Ban rgan bsTan ’dzin rnam dag). Though he signs this work as “Old Monk” (ban rgan), he was better known as the Realized One, Tokden Tenzin Namdak. He studied with many great masters of the eighteenth century, including his root guru, the Person:Karmapa, 13th, Sangye Dudul Dorje (1733–1797), and continued to practice and teach until his death as a not-so-old monk of sixty-two. Details of his realizations, though unfortunately not those concerning his literary production, are recorded in his biography, Festival of Fortunate Faith: The Life of the Hidden Buddha Tenzin Namdak.
Person:Namdak, Tenzin reports that the inspiration and in fact the command to write this version of the Severance practice Endowed with All Qualities was the “supreme Garwang incarnation.” In the various lineage lists, that appears to be the sixth in this important Zurmang incarnation line, named either Chökyong Namgyal or Chökyong Gyurme (or both!). After Person:Namdak, Tenzin, these instructions were passed to Lhalung Karma Desal and then to Karma Tekchok Tenpel, who was Person:'jam mgon kong sprul’s ordination preceptor as well as his source for this lineage.
All the instructions from this point on in this collection deal with the myriad specific details of visualization and liturgy for the practice of offering one’s corpse as food for various “guests”—in other words, what Person:'jam mgon kong sprul has called the subsidiary or postmeditation practice. It seems that the core practice of the meaning of the Mother, Perfection of Wisdom, and the blending of intrinsic awareness and space was eclipsed over time by this more exciting ritual now identified as Severance.
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- Translator's notes
- Note from Ringu Tulku
- The Meditation Instructions on the Tsok Offering of Chod Practice "Possessing All the Qualities", the Exact Words of the Lama Called "Crystal Mirror".
- Other notes
- BDRC Link
- VolumeI1CZ3976
- BDRC Content Information
- No note on contents
Information about Unicode Tibetan and the digitization of this text
As the only available unicode Tibetan text at the time, Nitartha International's version of the Gdams ngag mdzod Paro Edition of the gdams ngag mdzod is provided here. However, note that it has not been thoroughly edited and that there may also be mistakes introduced through the conversion process. Eventually we will provide a fully edited version of the entire Shechen Edition, entered and edited multiple times by Pulahari Monastery in Nepal, but as of fall 2017 that project has not been finished. Note that the folio numbers that appear throughout were added by Nitartha Input Center at the time of input.
Provided by Nitartha International Document Input Center. Many thanks to Person:Namdak, Tenzin and Person:Wiener, G. for help with fonts and conversion.
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