Wylie:Slob dpon in+dra b+hU ti'i mdzad pa'i phyag rgya'i lam skor
སློབ་དཔོན་ཨིནྡྲ་བྷཱུ་ཏིའི་མཛད་པའི་ཕྱག་རྒྱའི་ལམ་སྐོར་
slob dpon in+dra b+hU ti'i mdzad pa'i phyag rgya'i lam skor
The Path Cycle of the Mudra Composed by Ācārya Indrabhūti
Among the eight ancillary path cycles, The Path Cycle of the Mudra presents the most detailed and explicit explanation of mudra practice. While it is clear the text is written for practice with a consort, or karma mudra, Amezhap asserts that according to how it is presented in The Explanation of the Path with Its Result for Disciples, there are two ways this text has been explained: for practice with an actual mudra and with a gnosis mudra, or a visualized consort. In The Fortunate Right-Turning White Conch, chapter 17, Kongtrul comments that even if one is to rely on an actual mudra, training with a gnosis mudra is a necessary preparation.
One of the more interesting features of The Path Cycle of the Mudra is the detailed description of how one progresses on the bodhisattva stages to buddhahood through the dissolution of the vāyus that are in “cities”—that is, nāḍī locations that correspond to the thirty-two countries, the renowned pilgrimage sites on the Indian continent.
The text also provides two accounts of the three kāyas: the standard seven limbs of the three kāyas given in the other seven texts belonging to the eight ancillary path cycles and a presentation of the five limbs of three kāyas unique to Indrabhūti II’s Accomplishing Gnosis.
The text concludes with the account of the lineage, in which three Indrabhūtis are identified, and it is stated that there is both a long and a short lineage for this teaching. In Effortless Accomplishment of the Two Benefits, Amezhap states that Indrabhūti II is the author of this instruction.
- Notes on authorship
- Author information obtained from Cyrus Stearns' Luminous Lives. Neither Person:Ringu Tulku Contents of the gdams ngag mdzod, 1999. nor Martin, D.. A Catalog of the Gdams-ngag Mdzod, 1993. (nor the colophon, for that matter) agree with the author we've put down here from Cyrus Stearns' Luminous Lives.
- 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
- In+dra b+hU ti'i phyag rgya'i lam gyi khrid yig bkra shis dung dkar g.yas 'khyil
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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