The Precious Treasury of the Fundamental Nature

BUDDHA ŚĀKYAMUNI

GURU PADMASAMBHAVA

LONGCHEN RABJAM DRIMÉ ÖZER

The Padmakara Translation Group gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Tsadra Foundation in sponsoring the translation and preparation of this book.

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

2129 13th Street

Boulder, Colorado 80302

www.shambhala.com

© 2021 by the Padmakara Translation Group

Cover art: Longchenpa Drime Ozer (1308–1363)

Tibet; 19th century

Pigments on cloth

Rubin Museum of Art

Gift of Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation

F1998.9.2 (har 631)

Cover design: Kate E. White

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Klong-chen-pa Dri-med-’od-zer, 1308–1363, author. | Bstan-pa’i-dbaṅ-phyug, Khaṅ-sar Rin-po-che Dbon-sprul, 1938–writer of commentary. | Comité de traduction Padmakara, translator.

Title: The precious treasury of the fundamental nature / Longchenpa; with a commentary by Khangsar Tenpa’i Wangchuk; translated by the Padmakara Translation Group.

Description: Boulder: Shambhala, 2021. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020044701 | ISBN 9781611809336 (hardback)

eISBN 9780834844018

Subjects: LCSH: Rnying-ma-pa (Sect)—Doctrines. | Rdzogs-chen.

Classification: LCC BQ7662.4 .K567 2021 | DDC 294.3/42—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044701

a_prh_6.0_c0_r0

CONTENTS

Foreword by Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche

Translators’ Introduction

Part One

The Precious Treasury of the Fundamental Nature

Homage

1. Nonexistence

2. Evenness

3. Spontaneous Presence

4. Single Nature

5. Those to Whom This Teaching May Be Given

6. Conclusion

Part Two

An Offering to Please the Omniscient Lord

A Word Commentary on The Precious Treasury of the Fundamental Nature

Textual Outline

Preamble

1. Introduction to the Treatise

2. An Extensive Explanation of Longchenpa’s Treatise

3. An Instruction Concerning Those Who Are Able to Grasp This Teaching

4. The Conclusion of the Treatise as a Whole

Notes

Glossary

Texts Cited in Khangsar Tenpa’i Wangchuk’s Commentary

Bibliography

The Padmakara Translation Group Translations into English

Index

E-mail Sign-Up

FOREWORD

From the very first moment that I heard about Khangsar Tenpa’i Wangchuk Rinpoche and his commentary on Longchenpa’s Precious Treasury of the Dharmadhātu, I felt a deep yearning to receive his teaching and blessing. I mentioned this to my brother Pema Wangyal Rinpoche and was delighted to hear that a student of Tenpa’i Wangchuk Rinpoche had asked whether it would be possible for Padmakara to translate his writings into English and other Western languages.

Happily, as the situation unfolded, we had the tremendous good fortune to receive the precious reading transmission of the entire published collection of Tenpa’i Wangchuk’s works directly from the mouth of his own nephew and lineage holder, Khenpo Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche, who came to Dordogne in the autumn of 2019. This was in fulfillment of a prediction that his uncle’s teachings would be transmitted to the West. I am immensely grateful to him for his kindness in making the long journey to France in order to teach us—with such compassionate grace, such profound ease and simplicity. His visit to La Sonnerie in Dordogne was a truly wonderful and profoundly moving occasion.

The translation of Tenpa’i Wangchuk Rinpoche’s writings has now begun. We have started, in the present volume, with his commentary on The Precious Treasury of the Fundamental Nature. It is a direct introduction to the view of the Great Perfection, a point of entry into the profound teachings of Longchenpa.

We can read in the biography of Tenpa’i Wangchuk that he had direct visions of buddhas and bodhisattvas, ḍākas and ḍākinīs, as also wisdom Dharma protectors. We may thus be sure of the authenticity of his teachings. These, moreover, have the wonderful quality of expressing the most profound and intricate matters in clear and simple terms, in language that is very direct and accessible.

In this time of turmoil, it is an amazing good fortune even to hear the name of this book, let alone to be able to read, study, understand, and put it into practice. I am profoundly grateful not only to the inestimable author of these works but also to the kindness of his nephew Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche, to the translators, to our publishers, and to our most generous sponsors who have made this book possible. I pray that they will all live long and continue with their excellent work. On behalf of all the readers who will study and benefit from this book, I thank them with all my heart.

May the light of this text dispel the lies and falsehood of extremism, confusion, ignorance, and selfishness. May the truth be established and may beings flourish in the experience of it. May everyone be freed from suffering and from the virus not only of disease but of foolish opinions and beliefs.

Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche

TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION

This translation of Khangsar Tenpa’i Wangchuk’s commentary on Longchenpa’s Precious Treasury of the Fundamental Nature is the first step in a project to translate the collected works of this great modern Tibetan scholar. This ambitious task was entrusted to the Padmakara Translation Group by Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche, the abbot of Khangsar Taklung Monastery, and Yingrik Drubpa Rinpoche, both disciples of Tenpa’i Wangchuk (1938–2014) and trustees of his literary heritage. Aside from the autocommentary composed by Longchenpa himself in the fourteenth century, this is the first and only commentary ever to have been written on The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature.[1]

Unlike the general exposition, or meaning commentary, provided by Longchenpa as an explanation of his own root text, the commentary of Tenpa’i Wangchuk is a word commentary and as such is of inestimable value to students and translators. Whereas meaning commentaries focus exclusively on the ideas expressed in a text, word commentaries are more elementary and didactic in style. They examine in fine detail the language of the root verses, every syllable of which (often indicated by typographical devices) is traditionally incorporated into the text of the commentary itself. Difficult terms and obscure, antiquated, or dialectal expressions are glossed with more common and up-to-date equivalents, and it is only then that the meaning of the text is explained. The purpose of the word commentary is thus to ensure that the reader understands as clearly as possible the meaning of the root verses themselves, which, even when they are accompanied by an autocommentary, are regarded as the principal expression of the author’s message. The pedagogical advantages of such an approach are obvious, and it is hardly necessary to add that for translators, commentaries of this kind are invaluable and often indispensable tools.

It is perhaps too much to say that autocommentaries (that is, commentaries written by authors on their own root texts) are invariably meaning commentaries, but this seems certainly to be the case for Longchenpa. His usual practice is to cite sections of his own verses and then to enlarge on their meaning in general terms. His autocommentary, in other words, runs parallel to his root text, and he is rarely detained by simple considerations of vocabulary or the explanation of metaphor or other poetic devices. This is perhaps because he himself found the meaning of his text obvious and perhaps also because the poetry of his text resisted pedestrian analysis. Sometimes Longchenpa simply repeats in prose what he has already said more lyrically in the root text. At other times he expands on its meaning with more lengthy explanation, supporting it with voluminous citations from the scriptures. At yet other times he digresses into detailed and lengthy discussions of connected topics. On these occasions, it is as if the root text serves as a catalyst for the autocommentary, which then becomes the principal and often massive vehicle of his thought. So it is that whereas interesting ideas may well be picked up and elucidated, it quite often happens that difficult words and obscure poetic expressions in the root text are passed over in silence—much to the dismay of the translators, whose task it is, come what may, to discern the meaning of the root text and to render it intelligibly in another language.

When these and similar problems occur in the writings of other authors, students and readers are usually able to turn hopefully to the detailed word commentaries of third-party commentators. In the case of Longchenpa, however, it is here that we encounter a serious problem, for there are no third-party commentaries on his writings.[2] Perhaps because of their difficulty, perhaps because of the intense veneration with which they were and continue to be universally regarded, or perhaps out of diffidence and fear of censure, no one down the centuries has dared to produce written explanations of Longchenpa’s works—even though, of course, the oral lineage of explanation has been maintained unbroken.

In recent times, this extraordinary situation has begun to change. With the easing of the political situation in the eastern provinces of Tibet during the final decades of the twentieth century, many monasteries have been restored, new centers of learning have been founded, and great efforts have been made to recover and protect the ancient traditions of study and practice. In institutions belonging to the Nyingma school—for example, in Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok’s vast establishment at Serta Larung Gar or in the monasteries rebuilt by Khenpo Tenpa’i Wangchuk at Khangsar Taklung and Panak in Golok—this has led to the energetic revival of the teaching and practice of the Great Perfection and in particular to the study of the works of Longchenpa. As part of this wonderful initiative, Tenpa’i Wangchuk himself composed a large collection of writings. In response to enthusiastic interest and doubtless with the wish to preserve a tradition the fragility of which had been demonstrated all too clearly by the persecutions of the twentieth century, he produced several texts on the Great Perfection teachings of a kind, it is said, that had never been attempted before. It was his lot, so his biography tells us, to do what no other scholar had done before him: to express in writing something of the explanation lineage of Longchenpa’s thought. It is thus that, among other things, Khangsar Khenpo Tenpa’i Wangchuk composed unprecedented commentaries on two of Longchenpa’s Seven Treasuries: The Treasury of the Dharmadhātu and The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature. Furthermore, these two commentaries are, to our great good fortune, word commentaries: detailed explanations of Longchenpa’s actual text. Celebrated for their clarity and ease of expression, they have been specially devised to provide the aspiring student with a means of access to Longchenpa’s sublime teachings.

As Tenpa’i Wangchuk says in his preamble to the second of these commentaries, translated here, Longchenpa’s Treasury of the Fundamental Nature establishes the definitive view of the secret class of pith instructions of the Great Perfection. Correctly implemented, it has the power to bring those endowed with the necessary karmic fortune to the highest accomplishment in a single life. Happy indeed, Tenpa’i Wangchuk says, are those who even see, hear, recall, or touch this text.

THE SEVEN TREASURIES

Because of the similarity of their names, Longchenpa’s Seven Treasuries are often spoken of, for the sake of convenience, as if they were parts of a single integrated collection. A closer examination reveals, however, that there is little basis for this assumption and certainly no evidence to suggest that Longchenpa himself thought of them in this way. In the partial catalog drawn up at Tharpa Ling in Bhutan, Longchenpa mentions six of the Seven Treasuries—all except The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature—in a disconnected manner according to their subject matter without any indication of a significant relationship between them.

Only four of the Seven Treasuries clearly identify the place of their composition as Gangri Thökar, Longchenpa’s hermitage in the mountains above the valley of the Tsangpo River. None of the Seven Treasuries is dated, and but for sparse internal evidence,[3] it is impossible to establish conclusively the order in which they were composed. Given, however, that Longchenpa left for Bhutan in 1350 at the age of forty-two in order to evade the hostility of the then overlord of Tibet, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen, it is generally thought that all Seven Treasuries, with the probable exception of The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature, were composed while Longchenpa was still a young man—illustrating the fact that he was a prodigious scholar and master of high realization of an almost miraculous precocity.

An oral tradition states that all Seven Treasuries were composed in Bhutan but were lost in a catastrophic accident during Longchenpa’s return from exile in the early 1360s, when his library and many of his compositions were swept away in a river. The Seven Treasuries, so the story continues, had to be rewritten in Gangri Thökar. There are, however, several reasons for doubting the historicity of this legend, not least of them being that Longchenpa died in 1364, little more than three years—three intensely active years—after his return home. Barring the assistance of supernatural agencies, it is scarcely credible that they could have been composed anew in the time available. Even the ten years of Longchenpa’s sojourn in Bhutan seem all too brief a period for the composition of the Seven Treasuries, some of which are of considerable length and complexity, especially in view of all the other things that Longchenpa is said to have accomplished during that time.[4]

Of greater immediate interest in the present context is the fact that The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature is not mentioned in the Tharpa Ling catalog, which was compiled at some point during the seven years between the construction of this temple hermitage in 1353 and Longchenpa’s return to Tibet in 1360. And given that its colophon states that it was written at Gangri Thökar, it is not unreasonable to infer that the last of the Seven Treasuries was composed after Longchenpa’s return from exile and therefore figures among his final works.

In view of the apparently unconnected nature of the Seven Treasuries (but for the similarity of their titles) as well as our inability to date them and thus establish an order of composition, it is hard to imagine that they were envisaged as a single collection drawn up by their author according to some preconceived plan. This does not mean, however, that it is impossible to see any order at all in these extraordinary compositions.

Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, who regularly expounded the Seven Treasuries in an extended curriculum to thousands of students, discerned within them a natural teaching order irrespective of the dates of their composition.[5] For teaching purposes, he arranged them in a gradual order according to subject matter, beginning with the texts that deal principally with general sutra topics and progressing through to those that focus exclusively on the teachings of the Great Perfection. According to this scheme, he would first expound The Treasury of Wish-Fulfilling Jewels and The Treasury of Tenet Systems,[6] which are general and philosophical in character. These would be followed by a study of The Treasury of Essential Instructions,[7] which is a large collection of six-line aphorisms covering a wide range of doctrinal topics drawn from sutra, tantra, and Great Perfection teachings. A direct introduction to the Great Perfection would follow with an exposition of The Treasury of the Dharmadhātu and The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature,[8] two beautiful, poetic texts designed to bring students into direct and inspiring contact with the Great Perfection view of primordial purity and the practice of trekchö, or cutting through. Finally, the cursus of study would conclude with a reading of The Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle and The Treasury of Words and Meanings,[9] scholastic expositions of the theoretical basis of the Great Perfection that are among Longchenpa’s most difficult and demanding compositions.

THE TREASURY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE

In the early pages of his commentary on The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature, Tenpa’i Wangchuk mentions its close relationship with The Treasury of the Dharmadhātu. Both texts, he says, are distillations of the teachings of all three classes of the Great Perfection (the mind class, the space class, and the pith instruction class) and contain crucial points for the understanding of the view and practice of trekchö, the teaching on primordial purity.

These two works are said, moreover, to complement each other in terms of theory and practice. Theoretically, The Treasury of the Dharmadhātu establishes the nature of all phenomena of both samsara and nirvana not so much ontologically, in the sense of their being empty of real existence, but sapientially, as the creative expression of the vast expanse of the nature of the mind, "the great dharmadhātu, awareness alone." This is the characteristic note of the Great Perfection, where the ontological status of things as established in Madhyamaka is superseded by the vision of phenomena as being the display of awareness, primordially pure and spontaneously luminous. At the same time, however, Tenpa’i Wangchuk says that The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature differs from The Treasury of the Dharmadhātu in that it applies this understanding to the mind of the individual practitioner in a systematic exposition in successive stages. It describes how practitioners who have entered the path of the Great Perfection are to understand and relate to phenomenal appearances themselves—both the apparently extramental world and the inner subjective states that apprehend it. Phenomena are thus presented in terms of four vajra principles (rdo rje’i chings bzhi): that is, their nonexistence (med pa), their evenness (phyal ba), their spontaneous presence (lhun grub), and their single nature (gcig pu). If practitioners bring these same principles to bear on their own minds, the commentary goes on to say, it will be easy for them to implement this teaching in a gradual and systematic way.

It is not perhaps immediately obvious how these principles are to be applied to the mind of the practitioner. The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature is in no sense a manual of practical instructions. Nevertheless, its description of the way phenomenal appearance is to be understood and related to introduces the student quite directly to the view and practice of trekchö. The four vajra principles are in fact the four samayas of nothing to keep, the four ways that qualified practitioners of the Great Perfection are to experience and understand the phenomena of the outer world detected by the senses as well as the subjective mental and emotional states that apprehend them. The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature is a profound and detailed exploration of these four samayas.

It must be understood that the word samaya is used here in a special sense. Generally speaking, on the level of the tantras, samaya is understood as a pledge and refers to the attitudes and behavior to which masters and disciples commit themselves once empowerment has been bestowed and received. In the present context, however, the four samayas are in fact four principles, four ways of understanding phenomenal appearance, that flow from the realization cultivated by the practitioner of the Great Perfection. As Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche once remarked, in such a context, samaya refers to the unmoving primordial wisdom of the ultimate expanse. And since everything is the display of this wisdom, this samaya cannot be transgressed.[10]

The four samayas of nothing to keep are briefly referred to in Jigme Lingpa’s Treasury of Precious Qualities, and a summary of their meaning can be found in Kangyur Rinpoche’s brief but helpful commentary, which begins with a description of the kind of people to whom they apply—namely, those who are able to implement the Great Perfection teachings and for whom the four samayas are live issues. He says,

Those who have been perfectly introduced to the nature of the mind, and are able to abide in it, realize that outer appearances are groundless and that inner awareness is object-free. Such people settle in the state in which they do not discriminate between what is to be accepted and what is to be rejected.[11]

Later he remarks,

The samayas of nothing to keep refer to the way in which one remains in the fundamental nature of things, the vajra-like indestructible state, which is primordially free of defect, unsundered by duality. Mind and appearances are both overpowered by the primordial wisdom of the dharmakāya.[12]

These brief but loaded statements bring into focus the crucial point that the practice of the Great Perfection and specifically that of trekchö begins not with the intellectual understanding of a philosophical view, as is the case in the lower vehicles of Buddhist teaching, but with the recognition and stabilized experience of the nature of the mind—which in effect corresponds to the direct vision of the ultimate truth in itself. In other words, the starting point for the practice of the Great Perfection is not an intellectual understanding but a state of realization. Prior to the direct recognition of the nature of the mind, the intellectual study of the Great Perfection, the interest taken in it, and the practice itself all belong, strictly speaking, to the preliminary but crucially important path of aspiration.

The Treasury of the Fundamental Nature is an exhaustive presentation in which each of the four samayas of nothing to keep is explained in four successive stages. First, the meaning of the samaya in question (nonexistence, evenness, spontaneous presence, and single nature) is stated or revealed in a succession of key points. Second, phenomena are further explored and their nature is summarized or essentialized in terms of the samaya in question. Third, this same process is repeated but this time from the standpoint of the samaya itself, which is thus shown to include or subsume within itself the entire aggregate of phenomenal appearances. Finally, all these points are brought into focus so as to engender a state of decisive certainty.[13]

As a brief introduction of the four samayas, we tentatively suggest the following summary. We have indicated that the characteristic approach of the Great Perfection is not, as in Madhyamaka, to subject the phenomena of an apparently outer world to logical analysis as a means to undermine our clinging to it. Instead, the task is to recognize the nature of phenomenal appearance within the mind and to reach the understanding, or rather to see directly, that the phenomenal world is nothing but the display of awareness. To attain and rest in this recognition is liberation itself. For according to the teaching of the Great Perfection, it is precisely through the failure to recognize the nature of phenomena as the display of awareness, and through the belief instead that they are objectively existent, that beings wander through the hallucinatory experiences of samsara, deludedly thinking that they are real.

Longchenpa says that just as the universe, however vast it is, is contained within the abyss of space, so too the entire phenomenal field of both samsara and nirvana—everything that appears and is able to appear to the minds of beings—arises within the expanse of pure awareness. Phenomena have no existence outside awareness. And even within awareness itself, phenomena as mere appearances are without substantial reality. This is the samaya or principle of nonexistence (med pa’i dam tshig).

When the yogi settles in the recognition of the ultimate nature, in the understanding that phenomena are the unreal display of awareness, and when, in relation to these same phenomena, all sense perceptions are left open and free, without discrimination or qualitative assessment—when, in other words, phenomena are left just as they are without judgment, decisively settled in the vast spaciousness of the ultimate nature, they are said to be even. They all display the same seamless quality. This is the samaya of all-embracing evenness (phyal ba’i dam tshig).

When this evenness is taken a step further, we come to the samaya of spontaneous presence (lhun grub kyi dam tshig), which is perhaps the most difficult to grasp. In general, when things are said to be spontaneously present, it is understood that they do not arise through causes and conditions. They are simply there. To explain this characteristic of phenomenal appearance, Longchenpa uses the example of dreaming. Even though the things experienced in dreams are—to the dreamer—indistinguishable from the things encountered in waking life, the fact is that they do not arise from the conjunction of causes and conditions, as do the things we encounter while we are awake. Having no existence outside the mind of the dreamer, dream visions arise simply "through the creative power of the