Wylie:Slob dpon ngag dbang grags pas mdzad pa'i phyag rgya chen po yi ge med pa
སློབ་དཔོན་ངག་དབང་གྲགས་པས་མཛད་པའི་ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ཆེན་པོ་ཡི་གེ་མེད་པ་
slob dpon ngag dbang grags pas mdzad pa'i phyag rgya chen po yi ge med pa
Mahāmudrā without Syllables Composed by Ācārya Vāgīśvarakīrti
We have almost no details concerning the life of Vāgīśvarakīrti, other than his caste and reputed siddhis, his position as one of the gatekeepers of Vikramaśīla, and a short note in Miscellaneous Notes on Individual Sādhanas2 concerning an emanation of Mañjuśrī in the form of a child bestowing upon him The Intimate Instruction on Cheating Death. His association with White Tārā is well known.3 He was also one of Drokmi Lotsāwa’s direct teachers. In addition to the Hevajra Tantra, he is also associated with the Jñānapāda tradition of the Guhyasamāja Tantra.
Mahāmudrā without Syllables, according to Drakpa Gyaltsen, was a transmission received by Ācārya Vāgīśvarakīrti directly from Lady Tārā. The text begins with a blessing rite of Nairātmyā and then provides a comprehensive, albeit brief, overview of mahāmudrā, one of the two texts in the cycle specifically devoted to mahāmudrā. Vāgīśvarakīrti’s principal contribution to Vajrayāna theory in Tibetan Buddhism is found in the Seven Limbs, which provides a full exposition of “the seven limbs of the three kāyas,” also known as “the seven limbs of union (kha sbyor).” This doctrine is extremely important in the Sakya school, especially with respect to certain principles found in sādhana practice.
The ostensible source of the seven limbs of the three kāyas is the Compendium of the Gnosis Vajra:
- Because the three kāyas endowed with seven limbs are realized, one attains the sambhogakāya, union with gnosis, great bliss, the benefit of migrating beings produced because of great compassion, unceasing gnosis, uninterrupted mahāmudrā, and the naturally pure dhātu inseparable with gnosis.4
Vāgīśvarakīrti’s Seven Limbs introduces the seven limbs in the following way:
- The intelligent who are familiar with authoritative reasoning shall praise my assertions
- in this thesis about the seven limbs—
- complete enjoyment, union, great bliss, natureless,
- full of compassion, uninterrupted, and unceasing.5
To summarize Vāgīśvarakīrti’s explanation of the seven limbs is to do it an injustice. A more comprehensive account of his presentation will require more space than this introduction will allow. However, it would be remiss not to devote a few words to the Seven Limbs. The Seven Limbs is a polemical text meant to address a controversy over the four empowerments in the Jñānapāda system, a debate once current at Vikramaśīla and now resurrected by contemporary historians of Vajrayāna Buddhism.6 Vāgīśvarakīrti asserts the fourth empowerment is indeed “the fourth” referred to in the Ancillary Tantra of the Guhyasamāja:
- The vase empowerment is first.
- Second is the secret empowerment.
- The gnosis of the wisdom consort is the third.
- That fourth one is also suchness.7
Vāgīśvarakīrti states in the introduction to the ;;Seven Limbs;;:
- “In order to realize mahāmudrā” means that the empowerment
- into the nature of mahāmudrā is to be understood as the fourth.8
This point is most closely argued in chapter 3 of the Seven Limbs. Vāgīśvarakīrti ruthlessly mocks his opponents for failing to understand that the reference to “the fourth” in the Ancillary Tantra is in fact a reference to the fourth empowerment,9 and that the seven limbs of the three kāyas are solely the result of the fourth empowerment.10
- 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
- Ngag dbang grags pa'i phyag rgya chen po yi ge med pa'i khrid yig bkra shis dUrba'i myu gu
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 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 Lama Tenam and Gerry Wiener for help with fonts and conversion.
