Wylie:Slob dpon nag po spyod pas mdzad pa'i gtum mo lam rdzogs
སློབ་དཔོན་ནག་པོ་སྤྱོད་པས་མཛད་པའི་གཏུམ་མོ་ལམ་རྫོགས་
slob dpon nag po spyod pas mdzad pa'i gtum mo lam rdzogs
Completing the Whole Path with Caṇḍālī Composed by Ācārya Kṛṣṇācārya
Two cycles among the eight ancillary path cycles derive from the famous Indian proponent of Cakrasaṃvara, Kṛṣṇācārya. These are Completing the Whole Path with Caṇḍālī, found in chapter 4 and the Instruction for Straightening the Crooked, found in chapter 5. The main tradition of Cakrasaṃvara practiced in the Sakya tradition belongs to a system of exegesis traced to Naropa, called “the ultimate secret” (gsang mtha’).2 The ultimate secret tradition of exegesis is exclusive to the Cakrasaṃvara cycles that were introduced to Tibet by Mal Lotsāwa Lodrö Drakpa (c. eleventh century to early twelfth century). Four separate cycles are associated with this tradition: the Cakrasaṃvara systems of the mahāsiddhas Luipa, Ghantapāda, and Kṛṣṇācārya, and the Vajrayoginī system of Mahāsiddha Naropa. The latter system is considered one of the “thirteen golden dharmas of Sakya” and is one of the four primary practices of the Sakya tradition. There are also numerous commentaries and instructions that the Sakya school associates with the ultimate secret tradition of Cakrasaṃvara.3 Chapter 4, Completing the Whole Path with Caṇḍālī, is such an instruction, which distills Kṛṣṇācārya’s six treatises, the core of his many works, into its most refined essence. The text is divided into five stages: the stage of tantra, the stage of mantra, the stage of gnosis, the stage of the secret, and the stage of nonduality. Amezhap’s Effortless Accomplishment of the Two Benefits explains that the practitioner of this instruction is to meditate on the Kṛṣṇācārya system of Cakrasaṃvara.4
Drakpa Gyaltsen’s text does not provide an account of the life of Kṛṣṇa, as the account of his career had already been composed by Kunga Nyingpo.5 Amezhap mentions that there are many siddhas named Kṛṣṇa, but of these, this is the one known specifically as Kṛṣṇācārya.
Kunga Nyingpo places Kṛṣṇa in Bengal during the reign of Śrīcandra, 930–975 c.e., the longest reigning monarch of the Candra dynasty.6 Kunga Nyingpo relates that Kṛṣṇācārya was named Karṇapa, either because he was originally from the southern region of India named Karṇada or because he had long earlobes. Since Kṛṣṇācārya was dark-skinned, he was also called Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa was a pupil of a guru named Jālandhara and gains slight power based on practicing his guru’s instructions, attracting a large entourage of yogins and yoginīs. As is the case with many of the stories of mahāsiddhas, Kṛṣṇa suffered a series of discouraging setbacks after his initial success in practice, including being refused instruction in tantric conduct by his guru due to pridefulness. Kṛṣṇa tells Jālandhara that he is leaving for Devīkoṭa in Bengal. His guru advises against this, observing that Kṛṣṇa will suffer from obstacles created by the ḍākinīs, but Kṛṣṇa disobeys and leads his entourage onward to Bengal.
On the way Kṛṣṇa has four encounters. He first encounters a woman suffering from leprosy. He brags to his entourage that he will cure this woman, yet fails. A beggar in his entourage succeeds in freeing her from the disease. As it turns out, these two were emanations of Heruka and Cakrasaṃvara. After a series of further misadventures—encountering a plowman with an endless flagon of beer (Heruka), a beautiful maiden running a juice stand who humiliates him (Vajravārāhī), and a man in a temple reading a copy of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, which Kṛṣṇa cannot read—Kṛṣṇa arrives in Bengal. Here he experiences difficulties consecrating a statue of Lokeśvara at the request of the minister Kuśalanātha, a Buddhist, and manages to get into trouble with the king, who according to this account was a devotee of Bhairava and Kālaratri and thus a non-Buddhist.
At this point in the story, Kṛṣṇa again encounters Heruka in the form of a blue man with Hindu religious markings bearing a skull. The blue man informs Kṛṣṇa that he is the leader of Kṛṣṇa’s group, to which Kṛṣṇa haughtily objects. The blue man transforms into Heruka and flies into the sky, leaving Kṛṣṇa begging to become his student. Heruka predicts that Kṛṣṇa will not achieve mahāmudrā siddhi during his life, but he will obtain supreme siddhi in the bardo. This event compels Kṛṣṇa to compose his famous six treatises, mentioned at the outset of Completing the Whole Path with Caṇḍālī. He converts Śrīcandra to Buddhism, who then decrees that his subjects are to be Buddhists. This account also records Kṛṣṇa’s death-bed request that his body not be burned for seven days.7 On the fifth day, the king ordered the whole kingdom to gather with the sound of drums. During the cremation, the body vanishes in the midst of the smoke offering substances such as parasols, banners, and a rain of flowers; the self-arisen sounds of many instruments such as ḍamarus, cymbals, and so on, are heard; and divine scent permeates everywhere.
- Translator's notes
- Note from Ringu Tulku
- The Inner-Heat (Tummo) Complete Path Written by Lopon Nagpo Chopa.
- Other notes
- Genre from Richard Barron's Catalog
- Instruction manual
- Genre from dkar chag
- grol byed khrid
- BDRC Link
- VolumeI1CZ3968
- BDRC Content Information
- No note on contents
- Commentary(s) of this Text in the DNZ
- Nag po pa'i gtum mo lam rdzogs kyi khrid yig bkra shis li khri'i thig le
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.
