The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: - A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise From Dunhuang

Journal of the
International Association
of Tibetan Studies
Issue 4 — December 2008
ISSN 1550-6363
An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)
www.jiats.org
Editors-in-Chief: José I. Cabezón and David Germano
Guest Editors: Ken Bauer, Geoff Childs, Andrew Fischer, and Daniel Winkler
Book Review Editor: Bryan J. Cuevas
Managing Editor: Steven Weinberger
Assistant Editors: Alison Melnick, William McGrath, and Arnoud Sekreve
Technical Director: Nathaniel Grove
Contents
Articles
• Demographics, Development, and the Environment in Tibetan Areas (8 pages)

– Kenneth Bauer and Geoff Childs
• Tibetan Fertility Transitions: Comparisons with Europe, China, and India (21 pages)
– Geoff Childs
• Conflict between Nomadic Herders and Brown Bears in the Byang thang Region
of Tibet (42 pages)
– Dawa Tsering and John D. Farrington
• Subsistence and Rural Livelihood Strategies in Tibet under Rapid Economic and
Social Transition (49 pages)
– Andrew M. Fischer
• Biodiversity Conservation and Pastoralism on the Northwest Tibetan Plateau (Byang
thang): Coexistence or Conflict? (21 pages)
– Joseph L. Fox, Ciren Yangzong, Kelsang Dhondup, Tsechoe Dorji and Camille
Richard
• Nomads without Pastures? Globalization, Regionalization, and Livelihood Security
of Nomads and Former Nomads in Northern Khams (40 pages)
– Andreas Gruschke
• Political Space and Socio-Economic Organization in the Lower Spiti Valley (Early
Nineteenth to Late Twentieth Century) (34 pages)
– Christian Jahoda
• South Indian Tibetans: Development Dynamics in the Early Stages of the Tibetan
Refugee Settlement Lugs zung bsam grub gling, Bylakuppe (31 pages)
– Jan Magnusson, Subramanya Nagarajarao and Geoff Childs
• Temporary Migrants in Lha sa in 2005 (42 pages)
– Ma Rong and Tanzen Lhundup
• Exclusiveness and Openness: A Study of Matrimonial Strategies in the Dga’ ldan
pho brang Aristocracy (1880-1959) (27 pages)
– Alice Travers
ii
• The Mushrooming Fungi Market in Tibet Exemplified by Cordyceps sinensis and
Tricholoma matsutake (47 pages)
– Daniel Winkler
• Interpreting Urbanization in Tibet: Administrative Scales and Discourses of
Modernization (44 pages)
– Emily T. Yeh and Mark Henderson
Text Translation, Critical Edition, and Analysis
• The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise from
Dunhuang (67 pages)
– Sam van Schaik
A Note from the Field
• Population, Pasture Pressure, and School Education: Case Studies from Nag chu,
TAR, PRC (21 pages)
– Beimatsho
Book Reviews
• Review of A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm before the Storm,
1951-55, by Melvyn C. Goldstein (10 pages)
– Matthew Akester
• Review of Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in
Medieval Tibet. A Study of Tshal Gung-thang, by Per K. Sørensen and Guntram
Hazod, with Tsering Gyalbo (7 pages)
– Bryan J. Cuevas
Abstracts
Contributors to this Issue
iii
The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: -
A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise from Dunhuang

Sam van Schaik
The British Library
Abstract: This article presents a previously unknown tantric treatise from the
Dunhuang collections. Dating to the ninth or tenth century, the treatise is an early
and important example of the Tibetan assimilation of Indic tantric Buddhism, in
particular the form known as Mahāyoga. The treatise is especially interesting for
showing how Mahāyoga and Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen) or Atiyoga were
closely associated with each other during this early stage in their development.
The treatise, which is based on the work of a previously unknown Indic teacher
called Madhusādhu, is translated here in full, along with an annotated transcription.
Tibetan Buddhism in the Tenth Century

Tibet’s Buddhist histories speak of a time of strife that falls between the initial
period in which Buddhist scriptures were systematically translated into Tibetan in
the eighth and ninth centuries and the later appropriation of Indic texts and teaching
lineages from the eleventh century onward. Often, western accounts of Tibet borrow
the term “dark age” from European history to characterize this period in Tibet.
Yet, while historical sources are indeed sparse for Tibet in the tenth century, this
age was not entirely dark. Although revolutions or civil wars were by all accounts
common during this time, careful attention to historical sources and manuscript
shows that there was in fact a great deal of political and religious activity in Tibet’s
small kingdoms and clan holdings. The traditional name for the era in Tibetan
histories, the “period of fragmentation” (sil bu’i dus), seems a more appropriate
appellation.1
1
For a discussion of traditional and modern strategies in the periodization of Tibetan history see
Bryan Cuevas, “Some Reflections on the Periodization of Tibetan History,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines,
no. 10 (2006): 44-55. It has been argued that the traditionally accepted assassination that brought about
the end of the early diffusion (snga dar) – King Glang dar ma’s persecution of Buddhism – may never
have occured; see Zuihō Yamaguchi, “The Fiction of King Dar-ma’s Persecution of Buddhism,” in Du
dunhuang au Japon: Études chinoises et bouddhiques offertes à Michel Soymié, ed. Jean-Pierre Drège
(Geneva: Droz, 1996), 231-58. There is an excellent overview of the age of fragmentation based on
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008): 1-67.
http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5564.
1550-6363/2008/4/T5564.
© 2008 by Sam van Schaik, Tibetan and Himalayan Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies.
Distributed under the THL Digital Text License.
van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 2
That the fragmentation of the previous political and religious establishments

did not stop the development of Buddhism in Tibet is shown by the strong evidence
for a vibrant Buddhist community in one of the fragmented segments of
tenth-century Tibetan culture: the Tibetans of the Hexi corridor. This region joins
the northeastern end of the Tibetan cultural area, now known as A mdo, with the
western limit of the Chinese cultural sphere. Passing through it were a number of
the trans-Asian trade routes popularly known today as the Silk Road.2
After the fall of the Tibetan Empire in the mid-ninth century, there was indeed
a fragmentation of Tibetan power in the Hexi corridor. Yet the small Tibetan
kingdoms and principalities that established themselves in the region were
surprisingly robust, establishing diplomatic relations with the short-lived Chinese
dynasties of the tenth century and subsequently with the Song dynasty. The
historical records also indicate the growing importance of Buddhist monks in the
political events of this period.3
From the hidden manuscript cache of the Dunhuang caves we have documentary
evidence of the Tibetan forms of Buddhism practiced in the Hexi corridor. The
Tibetan manuscripts that were found in the cave date from the ninth and tenth
centuries, with the majority of the tantric manuscripts dating from the latter end
Tibetan historical sources and recent research in Ronald Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric
Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 86-92. In
the Tibetan language, a recent and extensive study of this period is found in Nor brang o rgyan, Bod
sil bu’i byung ba brjod pa shel dkar phreng ba [The Garland of White Crystals] (Lha sa: Bod ljongs
mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1991).
2
The name “Silk Road” is of course the relatively recent coinage of Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen,
but remains a useful shorthand for the trade routes that passed through Central Asia.
3
See Tsutomu Iwasaki, “The Tibetan Tribes of Ho-hsi and Buddhism during the Northern Sung
Period,” Acta Asiatica, no. 64 (1993): 17-37. See also Luciano Petech, “Tibetan Relations with Sung
China and the Mongols,” in China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-14th
Centuries, ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 173-79;
Ruth Dunnell, “The Hsi Hsia,” in The Cambridge History of China 6, Alien Regimes and Border States,
ed. H. Franke & D. Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 173-76; and Davidson,
Tibetan Renaissance, 86-92. The Tibetans occasionally appear in the Chinese historical literature from
this period; see Ouyang Xiu and Richard L. Davis, Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 29, 59-62, 79, 97, 179, and 276. In addition, there is an
important Tibetan source on the Tibetans in this region that has not yet been properly studied. The
scroll IOL Tib J 754 contains a series of letters of passage for a Chinese monk passing through the
Tibetan regions of Tsong kha and Liangzhou on his way to India in the late 960s. The letters are evidence
of thriving Tibetan monastic communities during this period, as well as the merging of the roles of
temporal leader and spiritual teacher among those communities. A detailed monograph on this manuscript
by the present author and Imre Galambos will be published in the near future.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 3
of this period.4 The manuscripts show that here Tibetan forms of Buddhism were
not just subsisting, but actively flourishing throughout the tenth century.5
In fact, recent research has shown that it is during this very period that much
of what we think of as specifically Tibetan Buddhism was coming into being. The
Dunhuang manuscripts from the tenth century show us, for example, the developing
cultural importance of the deity Avalokiteśvara (spyan ras gzigs dbang po) and
the master Padmasambhava (padma ’byung gnas). The manuscripts also present
us with several organizational rubrics that came to characterize the Rnying ma
school of Tibetan Buddhism, including the nine-vehicle hierarchy of Buddhist
teachings and the group of twenty-eight tantric samaya vows.6
The specific focus of this article is the approach to tantric practice that became
fundamental to Tibetan Buddhism during this time (and later in the Rnying ma
lineages) under the name of Mahāyoga. During the ninth and tenth centuries
Mahāyoga came to signify for Tibetans a particular approach to tantric practice
based on a group of eighteen tantras, a group overlapping significantly with the
later Rnying ma lists of eighteen Mahāyoga tantras. We know this because we are
fortunate to have a number of texts which define Mahāyoga and the other tantric
vehicles from the Dunhuang manuscript cache.7
4
On the dating of many Tibetan tantric texts from Dunhuang to the latter part of the tenth century
see Tsuguhito Takeuchi, “Old Tibetan Buddhist Texts from the Post-Tibetan Imperial Period (mid-9
C. to late 10 C.),” in Proceedings of the 10th Conference of the International Association of Tibetan
Studies (forthcoming). On the dating of Dunhuang manuscripts by paleographic methods, see Jacob
Dalton, Tom Davis, and Sam van Schaik. “Beyond Anonymity: Paleographic Analyses of the Dunhuang
Manuscripts,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 3 (2007): 1-23,
http://www.thlib.org?tid=T3106.
5
For a full descriptive catalogue of the Tibetan tantric manuscripts from the Stein Collection of
Dunhuang manuscripts, see Jacob Dalton and Sam van Schaik, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from
Dunhuang: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Stein Collection at the British Library (Leiden: EJ Brill,
2006).
6
On the early cult of Avalokiteśvara see Sam van Schaik, “The Tibetan Avalokitesvara Cult in the
Tenth Century: Evidence from the Dunhuang Manuscripts,” in PIATS 2003 vol. 4, ed. Christian
Wedemeyer and Ronald Davidson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 55-74. On Padmasambhava in the Dunhuang
manuscripts, see Jacob Dalton, “The Early Development of Padmasambhava Legend in Tibet: A Study
of IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibétain 307.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 124, no. 4 (2004):
734-63. On the nine vehicles in the Dunhuang manuscripts see Samten Karmay, The Great Perfection:
A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 172-73 and Jacob
Dalton, “A Crisis of Doxography: How Tibetans Organized Tantra during the 8th-12th Centuries,”
Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28, no. 1 (2005): 115-82. On the twenty-eight
samaya (dam tshig) vows of Mahāyoga, see Sam van Schaik, “The Limits of Transgression: The Samaya
Vows of Mahāyoga,” in Aspects of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang: Rites and Teachings for This Life
and Beyond, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Sam van Schaik (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
7
I discuss the Dunhuang sources for a definition of Mahāyoga at length in Sam van Schaik, “A
Definition of Mahāyoga: Sources from the Dunhuang Manuscripts,” Tantric Studies, no. 1 (2008):
45-88. This article is a study of the most important text for understanding the way Mahāyoga was
defined in this period, A Summary of the View of Mahāyoga According to Scripture (IOL Tib J 436).
In addition the two doxographical texts IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibétain 656 briefly define the three
“inner” yogas of Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga. These are discussed and translated in Dalton, “A
Crisis of Doxography.” Among the longer Mahāyoga treatises from Dunhuang, the most important are
probably the one that is the subject of this article and The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva (Rdo
rje sems pa’i zhus lan). The latter is the subject of a study and translation by Kammie Takahashi
This material provides us with a clear view of the way Mahāyoga was understood
and practiced in the tenth century. I have discussed this in detail elsewhere, so a
brief summary will suffice here. Meditative practice included the different styles
of the development and perfection stages and the three absorptions (ting nge ’dzin),
as well as the transgressive practices of union and liberation (sbyor sgrol). The
philosophical basis or “view” (lta ba) behind these practices was expressed in
terms of nonduality and nonconceptualization, as the following passage from one
Dunhuang manuscript attests:
The view of Mahāyoga: Phenomena are neither existents nor non-existents. Having
renounced purity and impurity, “not renouncing” and “not obtaining” are one in
space. Whoever understands the true state of Vajrasattva (rdo rje sems dpa’)
becomes him. Since one’s own mind is the path to liberation, nothing will come
of seeking it anywhere else.8
This way of formulating the philosophical approach to Mahāyoga practice was

sometimes called “the mode (tshul) of the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen).”9 This
approach to tantric practice, which has clear precedents in Indic works like the
Guhyagarbha Tantra, was of great interest to the Tibetan interpreters of tantric
literature. We find the Great Perfection approach firmly embedded in Mahāyoga
treatises like The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva (Rdo rje sems pa’i zhus
lan), which includes the following explanation of the mode of Great Perfection:
When, as in the example of a king appointing a minister,

The accomplishments are granted from above, this is the exoteric mode.
When the kingdom is ruled having been offered by the people,
This is the mode of the unsurpassable, self-arisen Great Perfection.10
In addition to these works, the Great Perfection “mode” is also found in brief
instructional texts that completely reformulate the ritual framework of Mahāyoga,
permitting only a discourse on the spontaneously present state of enlightenment.
This approach can be seen in two Dunhuang manuscripts: Buddhagupta’s The
Secret Handful (Sbas pa’i rgum chung; IOL Tib J 594) and the unascribed
(forthcoming). Variant versions of The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva exist in the Bstan ’gyur
and in three different Dunhuang manuscripts. Of these three, Pelliot tibétain 837 and IOL Tib J 470
are almost identical, and the latter appears to be a copy of the former. The third, Pelliot tibétain 819,
which is not complete, differs from the other two, and is generally closer to the version found in the
Bstan ’gyur (Q.5082; Snar thang Rgyud ’grel vol. ru, ff.121a-27a).
8
IOL Tib J 508/8 v5.2-v6.1: / rnal ’byor chen po ’i lta ba la// dngos po dngos po myed pa’i chos// dag
cing ma dag rnams spang nas ma spangs ma blangs dby-ings su gcig// rdo rje sems dpa’i ngang nyid la gang
shig shes pa der ’gro ’o// bdag sems thar pa’i lam las ni gzhan las btsal bar myi ’byung ’o/.
9
For example, in The Rosary of Views we have the following triad (i) development stage (bskyed
rim), (ii) perfection stage (rdzogs rim), and (iii) Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen). Each of these are
described as modes in the view of esoteric yoga (rnal ’byor). See Karmay, The Great Perfection, 155,
165.
10
IOL Tib J 470, section 9: / dper na rgyal pos blon por bskos pa ltar na/ / grub pa gong nas byin ba
phyi’i tshul lo/ / ’bangs kyis rgyal ba’i srid phul nas dbang bsgyur ltar/ / rang ’byung rdzogs chen bla na med
pa’i tshul/.
commentary to the Cuckoo of Awareness (Rig pa’i khu byug; IOL Tib J 647).11
Some other dateable early texts in the same spirit can be found in the Tibetan
canon, in particular the Six Lamps (Sgron me rnam drug) of Gnyan dpal dbyangs,
and Mañjuśrīmitra’s Meditation on the Awakened Mind (Byang chub sems bsgom
pa).12 These are the forerunners of the later Great Perfection traditions. The rhetoric
of nonduality and nonactivity found in such texts might be taken to imply a rejection
of all practice, but treatises like The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva suggest
otherwise.
In short, we find both Mahāyoga and Great Perfection being interpreted by
Tibetans in the tenth century in very close association with each other. This close
relationship might surprise those who see the separation of these two as an earlier
or “original” state. This opinion is sometimes found in the history of the exegesis
of the Guhyagarbha Tantra, which is traditionally distinguished into the Zur
tradition (zur lugs) and the tradition of Rong zom pa and Klong chen pa (rong
klong lugs). The latter tradition employs the terminology of Great Perfection in
explicating the tantra, while the former tends to avoid such terminology, and is
presented as a “pure” Mahāyoga approach. For this reason the Zur commentaries
are sometimes characterized as more conservative or more authentic.13 On the
contrary, our Dunhuang manuscripts show that Mahāyoga was from an early stage
approached through the view of Great Perfection understood as a mode (tshul) of
Mahāyoga practice, and that the hardening of doxographical categories which
separated Anuyoga and Atiyoga from Mahāyoga as vehicles per se was not itself
generally accepted until at least the eleventh century.14
This paper presents a translation of a previously unknown Dunhuang treatise
which promises to contribute much to our understanding of Mahāyoga and Atiyoga
in ninth and tenth century Tibet. This is an extensive treatise based on the work of
an Indic master known as Madhusādhu, which (for reasons that will become clear
later) I will call The Four Yogas. This work is, I will argue, one of the most
important early Tibetan tantric treatises.15 The Four Yogas is pervaded by the
11
See Karmay, The Great Perfection, 43-78.
12
On Gnyan dpal dbyangs, see Karmay, The Great Perfection, 67-69 and Sam van Schaik, “The
Early Days of the Great Perfection,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 27,
no. 1 (2004): 190-95. Mañjuśrīmitra’s text (listed in the early 9th century Ldan dkar ma) is translated
in Namkhai Norbu and Kennard Lipman, Primordial Experience: An Introduction to Rdzogs-chen
Meditation (Boston: Shambhala, 2001).
13
I have come across statements to this effect in two recent unpublished doctoral dissertations. Rather
than criticising these otherwise excellent works specifically, I would like merely to indicate the presence
of an assumption that might otherwise go unchecked, and ought to be questioned in the light of our
increasing knowledge of the Dunhuang material.
14
I return to this issue in Section 4.
15
Also worthy of note here are two commentarial works attributed to Padmasambhava. The first is
The Rosary of Views, a commentary on the thirteenth chapter of the Guhyagarbha Tantra (see Karmay,
The Great Perfection, 137-74). The attribution to Padmasambhava is not certain but seems entirely
possible. The second is a commentary on the Upāyapāśa Tantra, which is preserved in the Dunhuang
manuscript IOL Tib J 321, as well as in the Bstan ’gyur (Q.4717). It is not clear in either case whether
themes of nonduality (gnyis su med) and spontaneous presence (lhun gyis grub),
while at the same time displaying a distinctly philosophical agenda, which may
be briefly characterized as the attempt to resolve apparent contradictions arising
from the application of tantric practices in the content of normative Mahāyāna
doctrines. For example, in the context of deity meditation, the text attempts to
resolve the question of how phenomena can be produced from the ultimate state
of reality (the dharmadhātu); a long section grapples with the relationship between
the mind and the appearances it perceives; and the text ends with a detailed
discussion of the three Buddha bodies (sku; kāya) and their relationship to each
other.16
The Four Yogas is situated at a pivotal point in the development of Tibetan
Buddhism. Drawing the central theme of nonduality, it is an expression of an Indic
tantric tradition based on the Mahāyoga tantras in general and the Guhyagarbha
Tantra in particular, that flourished from the mid-eighth to mid-ninth centuries.
At the same time The Four Yogas contains a complex of themes that would be
picked up and developed much further in the evolving Tibetan literature of Great
Perfection. Thus The Four Yogas is situated at the end of an Indic tradition – since
the Guhyagarbha Tantra and its related texts seem to have been largely forgotten
in India by the time Tibetan translators returned at the end of the tenth century –
and at the beginning of the specifically Tibetan tantric traditions that came to be
called Rnying ma and were expounded within the three vehicles of Mahāyoga,
Anuyoga, and Atiyoga.
The Four Yogas and Madhusādhu

The Four Yogas is found in a scroll in the British Library’s Stein Collection: IOL
Tib J 454. For the reasons outlined above, the text promises to contribute much to
our understanding of the way Tibetans interpreted the Mahāyoga tantras and
sādhanas and put them into practice in the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet there are
frustratingly few clues to its identity. It lacks a title or colophon (breaking off rather
abruptly at the end), although the scroll on which it is written appears to be
complete. Yet it seems to have been considered of some importance by the scribe
or patron who is responsible for this copy, for it is written in clear headed script
(dbu can) on a new scroll. The scribe himself was Chinese and held an official
rank (see below). This single scroll contains the only extant copy of The Four
Yogas, which was not preserved in any of the Tibetan canonical collections.
The authorship of The Four Yogas seems a mystery, but thanks to a couple of
clues, it is perhaps a solvable one. The first clue comes from another Dunhuang
manuscript, IOL Tib J 508. This fragment of a scroll contains a series of scribbled
notes discussing different Vajrayāna themes. The only tantra mentioned as a subject
of these discussions is the Guhyasamāja Tantra. Manuscripts like IOL Tib J 508
these texts were translated into Tibetan or composed in Tibetan. In either case, if we accept the attribution
to Padmasambhava these are not yet the first truly Tibetan treatises on Mahāyoga.
16
See ll.40ff, 72ff and 160ff, respectively.
may be notes taken down from oral teachings, and this particular one may be notes
from a series of discussions of the Guhyasamāja Tantra.17 The fifth passage in this
series of scribbled notes discusses the interpretations of a master called Ma du san
du. The text is frustratingly incomplete but there is enough here to show that these
notes deal with exactly the same topics, and in the same order, as The Four Yogas.
Perhaps IOL Tib J 508 represents notes taken during a teaching of The Four Yogas,
or an attempted summary of its contents.
The second clue comes from A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation (Bsam
gtan mig sgron) by Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes, the most important treatise
to come out of Tibet’s dark age. Written in the late ninth or early tenth century, it
presents a fourfold doxography of Buddhism: (i) the approaches of the gradual
path of Indic scholastic Buddhism, (ii) the Chinese system of Chan, (iii) Mahāyoga,
and (iv) the Great Perfection.18 At the very beginning of the section on Mahāyoga,
Gnubs chen cites a certain master called Ma du sa du. This citation defines the
word inside as meaning “assembled inside the circle of reality.”19 The very same
line appears in The Four Yogas, where it is subjected to several different
interpretations.
Thus it seems that in this Ma du sa(n) du we have a possible author for The
Four Yogas. The name itself may be a rendition of the Sanskrit name Madhusādhu,
the extra n being a plausible Prakrit transformation of the long vowel.20 The name
appears in this very form (Madhusādhu) in Lo chen dharma shrī’s commentary to
the Guhyagarbha Tantra called The Oral Teaching of the Lord of Secrets (Gsang
bdag zhal lung). In this work Lo chen dharma shrī took the line “assembled inside
the circle of reality” along with its attribution to Madhusādhu from A Lamp for
the Eyes of Contemplation.21 Thus we have a plausible Indic name meaning sweet
or pleasant (madhu) sage (sādhu), not a specifically Buddhist name, but that in
17
I have discussed the issue of manuscripts written from oral sources in Sam van Schaik, “Oral
Teachings and Written Texts: Transmission and Transformation in Dunhuang,” in Contributions to the
Cultural History of Tibet, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Brandon Dotson (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 183-210.
18
Traditional sources usually ascribe a very long lifetime to Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes (9th-10th
century), no doubt the result of a need to place him in the reign of Khri srong lde btsan. In fact, as
Roberto Vitali has shown, he was probably born in the year 844, and was involved in the revolution
(kheng log) of 904. Four of Gnubs chen’s sons are said to have died in the revolution. See Roberto
Vitali, The Kingdoms of Gu.ge Pu.hrang. (Dharamsala: Tho.ling gtsug.lag.khang lo.gcig.stong ’khor.ba’i
rjes.dran.mdzad sgo’i go.sgrig tshogs.chung, 1996).
19
A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: 187.5: de yang slob dpon ma du sa dus su bshad pa las/ nang
zhes bya ba ni chos nyid kyi ’khor lo kha nang du ’dus pa’o/ zhes ’byung.
20
My thanks to Ronald Davidson for confirming this.
21
The context is a discussion of the Sugātagarbha (Bde gshegs snying po). The complete passage
is as follows: de yang snying po’i don nang rig ’gyur med la bzhed pa’i phyogs legs te/ mgon po byams pas/
rigs khams sbrang rtsi ’dra ba ’di gzigs nas/ / zhes dang / slob dpon dur khrod bde bas kyang / / bde gshegs
snying po rang rig la/ / zhes dang / slob dpon ma dhu sā dhus/ nang zhes bya ba ni chos nyid kyi ’khor lo kha
nang du ’dus pa’o/ zhes mig sgron du drangs pa dang / sngar gyi/ gdod nas dag pa’i rig pa ni/ / zhes sogs
kyis kyang ston pa’i phyir ro/. An electronic file was created by the Shechen Input Project; contact THL
for details.
itself was not unusual in Indic Buddhist tantrikas.22 Therefore this Madhusādhu
would probably have been an Indic, rather than Tibetan, teacher.
A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation gives us one more clue about
Madhusādhu. He is mentioned in the enumeration of different ways of presenting
the Mahāyoga view. According to the interlinear notes, the view of sameness
(mnyam nyid) was the speciality of Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu:23
According to some spiritual guides (the masters Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu)

the view of Mahāyoga is sameness. They (the arguments, scriptural sources, and
esoteric instructions on sameness) say that there is sameness in ultimate, in
conventional, in the nonduality of the truths, that the five great elements are the
same as the five tathāgatas, and that the eight consciousnesses are the same as
the five wisdoms. To go into the arguments for these at length would exhaust
beings with a multitude of words.24
It is indeed the case that The Four Yogas makes extensive use of the idea of
sameness (mnyam nyid), along with synonymous terms like nonduality (gnyis su
med), inseparability (dbyer med), and single taste (ro gcig pa). More importantly,
we have an exact correlate to Gnubs chen’s description in one passage of The Four
Yogas which is attributed merely to “the commentary”:
Ultimate and conventional truth are inseparable and of one taste. Ultimate truth
is one because it is uncreated. Conventional truth is one because it is illusory.
Furthermore, ultimate and conventional truth are one because they are inseparable.
It is like the rosary having a single string.25
This passage looks like it could well have been exactly the one that Gnubs chen
had in mind when writing of the “sameness in ultimate, in conventional, in the
nonduality of the truths.” There are frequent citations throughout The Four Yogas
from this unnamed commentary. In all likelihood the unnamed commentary is the
work of Madhusādhu, with The Four Yogas being a treatise based on the
commentary.
22
For example, the Bstan ’gyur contains Kālacakra texts authored by a Sādhuputra (Q.2069, 2075
and 2076) and a Sādhukīrti (Q.2096).
23
Gnubs chen is probably responsible for the interlinear notes in his own text; in both the main text
and interlinear notes, the writer refers to himself with the same epithet: ban chung. This note raises the
intriguing possibility of a historical connection between Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu, but in the
absence of any other evidence to substantiate such a connection, and it may just be that Gnubs chen
had noticed this similarity in their approaches.
24
A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: 210.5-211.1: dge bshes (slob dpon padma dang ma du sa
du’i bzhed) kha cig ni mahā yo ga’i lta ba ni mnyam pa nyid du bzhed de/ de (mnyam pa’i gtan tshigs pa lung
man ngag gsum) yang don dam par mnyam pa dang / kun rdzob du mnyam pa dang / bden pa gnyis su med
par mnyam pa dang / chen po lnga de bzhin gshegs pa lngar mnyam pa dang rnam par shes pa brgyad ye
shes lngar mnyam pa dang lngar gsungs na/ de dag gi gtan tshigs rgyas par ni yi ge mangs te ’gro bas ma
bgod do/.
25
IOL Tib J 454, l.132: / ’grel las don dam pa dang kun rdzob du dbyer myed par ro gcig pa dang zhes
pa ni/ [133] don dam par ma skyes pas gcig/ kun rdzob du sgyu mar gcig/ don dam pa dang kun rdzob du
yang dbyer myed par gcig pa [134] ni/ lha’i ’phreng ba rgyu gcig pa lta bu lags/.
The Four Yogas itself could only have been written by Madhusādhu if he was
writing in Tibetan, for the text contains etymological discussion of yoga (rnal
’byor) and maṇḍala (dkyil ’khor) that rely on the Tibetan syllables, and could not
have been composed in any other language. Though it is not impossible that an
Indic master could have written a treatise on Mahāyoga in Tibetan, it is more likely
that The Four Yogas is a Tibetan treatise making extensive use of a translated Indic
commentary by Madhusādhu. The author of The Four Yogas remains unknown,
but considering Gnubs chen’s familiarity with the work of Madhusādhu, we should
at least consider him among the plausible authors.
Any date for Madhusādhu must be based on the fact of his appearance in A
Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, which, as we have already said, was written
in the late ninth or early tenth century. It is possible that Madhusādhu’s work had
passed directly to Gnubs chen, perhaps in a master-disciple relationship, although
no extant sources mention Madhusādhu among Gnubs chen’s teachers. This would
place Madhusādhu in the second half of the ninth century. If there were intervening
figures in the lineage between Gnubs chen and Madhusādhu, this date could be
moved back. On purely doctrinal evidence, however, it seems unlikely that his
works were written before the ninth century. Thus the period around the mid-ninth
century seems the most likely for the transmission of Madhusādhu’s teachings to
Tibet.26 This would also place him in the same period as Gnyan dpal dbyangs,
whose works have a very similar doctrinal content. Furthermore, a later date may
be considered less likely when we consider the absence (with a few minor
exceptions) among the Dunhuang manuscripts of Indic tantras or commentaries
post-dating the mid-ninth century.27
If, as I have suggested, The Four Yogas is a Tibetan work based on a
commentary by Madhusādhu, then it could be later than the dates for Madhusādhu
himself which we have been discussing, as late as the closure of the Dunhuang
library cave at the beginning of the eleventh century. However, since it is likely
that The Four Yogas, like Gnyan dpal dbyangs’s The Questions and Answers on
Vajrasattva, was composed and became popular in more central Tibetan regions
before arriving in Dunhuang, the date for its composition should be somewhat
earlier – between the mid-ninth and mid-tenth centuries seeming most likely.
Along with the citations from an unnamed commentary that may have been the
work of Madhusādhu, The Four Yogas cites an unattributed root text at several
26
As David Germano has pointed out, other Indic figures whose tantric lineages came to Tibet in
this period (such as Prajñāvārman and Dānaśīla) remained obscure compared to earlier figures like
Vimalamitra, even though their lineages survived. He also mentions the almost completely forgotten
mid-ninth century figure Guhyeśvara (David Germano, “The Seven Descents and the Early History of
rNying ma transmissions,” in The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Helmut Eimer and David
Germano [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 225-59).
27
Adelheid Herrmann-Pfant has written: “So we can expect, and that expectation is fulfilled in
practice at least concerning the tantra texts, that Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts containing translations
from Sanskrit as a rule were not made later than in the 8th/9th centuries” (Adelheid Herrman-Pfant,
“The Lhan kar ma as a Source for the History of Tibetan Buddhism,” in PIATS 2000, ed. Henk Blezer
[Leiden: Brill, 2002], 134; her italics).
points, presumably a tantra. The identity of this root text is unknown. The
references in IOL Tib J 508 to the Guhyasamāja Tantra suggest that Madhusādhu
and The Four Yogas might be connected with a lineage of Guhyasamāja Tantra
exegesis, and The Four Yogas does cite the Guhyasamāja at one point. However,
as the root text cited throughout The Four Yogas is always unattributed, so the fact
that the Guhyasamāja Tantra is cited by name indicates that it is not the root text.
Confirming this, I have not found any of the unascribed citations in the
Guhyasamāja Tantra.
A credible alternative is that our text is based on the Māyājāla teachings. This
seems plausible considering the coalescence of Great Perfection discourse around
the Guhyagarbha Tantra and other tantras of the Māyājāla cycle. There is certainly
an overlap of terminology between The Four Yogas and various Māyājāla tantras,
as I will discuss in the following section. We also have the fact (noted earlier) that
the line, “assembled inside the circle of reality,” is quoted in Lo chen dharma shrī’s
Guhyagarbha Tantra commentary. Furthermore, when it appears in Gnubs chen’s
A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation it is immediately followed by a similar line
from the Guhyagarbha itself: “Totally internalized, without inner or outer.”28
However, I have not found the unascribed citations in The Four Yogas in any of
the extant Māyājāla tantras, and if there is a lineage of a particular tantra behind
The Four Yogas it remains obscure.29
Let us turn then to the names of the named tantras which are cited by the author
of The Four Yogas. They are:
1. The Tantra of the Union with All Buddhas (Sangs rgyas thams cad dang
mnyam par sbyor ba’i tan tra; Sarvabuddhasamāyoga Tantra).30
2. The Tantra Encompassing the Great Empowerments (Dbang chen bsdus
pa’i tan tra).31
3. The Tantra of the Primal Supreme Glorious One (Dpal mchog dang po’i
tan tra; Śrīparamādya Tantra).32
4. The Tantra of the Secret Assembly (Gsang ba ’dus pa’i tan tra;
Guhyasamāja Tantra).33
5. The Tantra of the Mountain Peak (Ri bo’i [rtsegs pa’i] tan tra).34
28
Tb.417: 154.1: phyi dang nang med pa/ kun tu yang nang du gyur pa/. This line is commented upon
by Vilāsavajra (Q.4718: 137a.3) and Sūryasiṃhaprabha (Q.4719: 226a.1) in their Guhyagarbha
commentaries, but neither uses the same terms as The Four Yogas.
29
I would like to give heartfelt thanks to Márta Matkó who painstakingly checked many tantras for
the root text and, more fruitfully, located most of the citations found in The Four Yogas.
30
The citation appears in Tb.404.
31
Though this name could refer to Tb.445, 462, 557 or 595, the citation is not found in any of these
texts.
32
Tb.412.
33
Tb.409, Q.81.
34
This should be Tb.411, but the citation is not found there.
6. The Tantra Proceeding from the One (Gcig las phros pa’i tan tra).35
7. The Noose of Method (U pa ya pa sha; Upāyapāśapadmamālā Tantra).36
All seven cited titles appear in at least one of the various lists of eighteen
Mahāyoga tantras enumerated in the Rnying ma tradition.37 It is significant that
no tantras outside of this group are cited, even The Symposium of Truth (
Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha), which was well-known and influential among
Tibetan tantrikas of this period. Thus the textual affiliations of The Four Yogas
may be considered sufficient to place it in the context of Mahāyoga, as it was
known to the later Tibetan tradition.
Another approach to the question of the doxographical orientation of our text
is its ritual and doctrinal content. The Four Yogas does not discuss the ritual
practices particularly associated with Mahāyoga, like the practices of union and
liberation, nor is there any discussion of specific ritual practice. In this it is similar
to A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, which discusses Mahāyoga mainly in
terms of philosophical doctrine rather than ritual practice. It is to these doctrines
we now turn.
Themes in The Four Yogas
The Four Yogas Themselves

The Four Yogas begins with the explication of four kinds of yoga from which I
have taken the name of the text as a whole. They are:
(i) The yoga of the nature
(ii) The yoga of accomplishment
(iii) The yoga of abiding by the oaths
(iv) The yoga subsequent to accomplishing the samaya.
I have not seen this enumeration of yogas anywhere except for IOL Tib J 508,
which, as mentioned above, is either based on this text or has a common source.38
The yoga of the nature (rang bzhin gyi rnal ’byor) is mentioned alone in Pelliot
tibétain 283,39 and also appears alone in the title to the first chapter of one of the
35
A Gcig las ’phros pa’i rgyud is mentioned in some later lists of eighteen tantras, but I have not
located an extant version of this tantra.
36
Tb.416, Q.458.
37
See the discussion of these in Dan Martin, “Illusion Web—Locating the Guhyagarbha Tantra in
Buddhist Intellectual History,” in Silver on Lapis: Tibetan Literary Culture and History, ed. C. I.
Beckwith (Bloomington: The Tibet Society, 1987), 175-220. On the overlap between the lists of eighteen
tantras in the Rnying ma sources and the tantras attested in the Dunhuang manuscripts, see van Schaik,
“A Definition of Mahāyoga.”
38
There are two texts in the Bstan ’gyur dedicated to the topic of four yogas (Q.2881 and 3222) but
they bear no relation to the set of four yogas discussed in our text.
39
Final panel, ll.19-20: rang bzhin gyi rnal ’byor gi dbang phyug che [sic] po la/ sngags gyi yig ’bru bkod
de/.
later Māyājāla tantras.40 The content of this yoga is analogous to Great Perfection
meditation instructions, especially those of the Mind Series (Sems sde):
It does not matter whether all of the phenomena of mind and mental appearances,
or affliction and enlightenment, are understood or not. At this very moment you
should remain in the spontaneous presence of the body, speech, and mind of
primordial buddhahood, without achieving it through a path or fabricating it with
antidotes.41
Here we have the first appearance of the term spontaneous presence (lhun gyis
grub), an important theme in The Four Yogas. As we see here, “spontaneous
presence” refers to the presence of the enlightened state (expressed as the Buddha’s
body, speech, and mind) prior to, and independent of, any attempt to reach that
state. Elsewhere in the text it is explicitly defined as the absence of effort (brtsal).42
While the term “spontaneous presence” appears in several sūtras (such as the
Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra) and many tantras, it is probably used most extensively in the
Māyājāla tantra group. In later Tibetan literature even that context was
overshadowed by the popularity of the term in Great Perfection literature where,
as here, it was specifically associated with the absence of effort.43
The remaining three yogas concern maintaining the state of realization expressed
in the first yoga, binding spririts by oath, and keeping the samaya vows. The author
of The Four Yogas seems to want to dissociate this presentation of four yogas from
any kind of graduated practice. He cites from an unnamed commentary a discussion
of a meditation called the unsurpassed concentration (bla ma’i ting nge ’dzin),
which entails the simultaneous accomplishment of all four stages of absorption.
This unsurpassed concentration appears in another Māyājāla tantra and is linked
to the maṇḍala of spontaneously present body, speech, and mind (sku gsung thugs
lhun kyis grub pa’i dkyil ’khor); such spontaneously present maṇḍalas appear in
most Māyājāla tantras, including the Guhyagarbha.44
40
The Guhyagarbha Tantra in One Hundred Chapters known as the Gsang ba’i snying po de kho
na nyid nges pa sgyu ’phrul brgya pa (Tb.421). The first chapter is entitled: “Rdzogs pa chen po’i tshul
rang bzhin gyi rnal ’byor.”
41
IOL Tib J 454, l.1: rang bzhin gyi rnal ’byor ni/ / sems dang sems snang ba’i chos thams cad dam/ /
kun nas [2] nyon mongs pa dang / rnam par byang ba’i chos thams cad rtogs kyang rung ma rtogs kyang
rung / ’phral la lam [3] gy-is ma bsgrub gnyen po ma bcos te/ ye nas sangs rgyas pa sku gsung thugs lhun
kyis grub par gnas pa la bya/.
42
IOL Tib J 454, l.179: de brtsal ba myed par [180] lhun kyis grub/.
43
Here I would disagree with Samten Karmay’s statement that spontaneous presence (lhun gyis
grub) “may be considered as rDzogs chen’s own terminology” rather than “conveying tantric notions.”
(Karmay, The Great Perfection, 119). This is, however, often the impression conveyed by the later
Tibetan tradition.
44
This is The Guhyagarbha Tantra in Thirteen Chapters known as the Gsang ba’i snying po de kho
na nyid nges pa sgyu ’phrul dra ba bla ma chen po (Tb.419: 365.5). For the spontaneously present
maṇḍala see Tb.417, 193.2 and throughout chapter 6.
The Superiority of the Secret Vehicle

After these four yogas have been discussed, our text moves on to another fourfold
set, the four greatnesses. The greatness in question is that of the Vajrayāna (or as
it is known here, Guhyayāna, the secret vehicle) over the other methods of Buddhist
practice. This is a theme that was popular in Indic tantric treatises, and was later
revived by Tibetan exegetes, a well-known example being the Sa skya patriarch
Bsod nams rtse mo’s General Presentation of the Tantric Canon (Rgyud sde rnam
gzhag).45 In any case, the four greatnesses are:
(i) The great result: this is a discussion of the differences between the result of
practicing the causal vehicle, that is, the ordinary Mahāyāna, and the secret vehicle,
or Vajrayāna.
(ii) The great accomplishment: under this heading the causal and secret vehicles,
are distinguished in terms of their methods. The causal vehicle rejects the five
desirable objects, while the secret vehicle utilizes them.
(iii) The great merit: an assertion that the meditation practice of the secret vehicle
is the most meritorious activity.
(iv) The great wisdom: under this heading we find an argument for the
superiority of the secret mantra (gsang sngags) path, based on the assertion that
the spontaneously present wisdom is greater than the wisdom of non-self realized
by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas and the non-self of phenomena realized by
bodhisattvas.
The Nature of Buddhas and Yi dams

The author of The Four Yogas takes some trouble to explain the relationship
between the unproduced realm of the deities and the experience of phenomena
with perceptual characteristics (mtshan ma; nimitta). The question is how
something existent (dngos po; vastu, bhavanā) can be produced from something
nonexistent. The answer is by analogy: it is like the way a baby lacks distinct sense
faculties while inside the mother, but possesses them after birth.
The background to this issue is the practice of seeing all phenomena as the
display of the yi dam deity. The author goes on to advise that it is not necessary
to meditate on the identity of each and every existent with the deity – rather the
meditation on a single deity accomplishes this automatically. The reason for this
is that one’s own deity is no more or less than the true nature of one’s mind.
45
Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance, 339-40, characterizes Bsod nams rtse mo’s defenses of the tantric
tradition to his experience of the reformist ideals of the Bka’ gdams pas at Gsang phu. He writes: “...the
extraordinary emphasis on the hermeneutics of esoterism (bshad thabs) found throughout Sönam
Tsémo’s esoteric works, particularly in the chapter in his General Principles of the Tantric Canon
devoted to the topic, was derived in part from his need to explain esoterism to monks devoted to
Buddhist philosophical exegesis and scandalized by the tantric vocabulary.” It is interesting to note the
same tendencies in The Four Yogas, although whether the same motivations lie behind them must
remain an open question.
Mind and Appearances

After explaining these four, The Four Yogas goes on to discuss at length the topic
of meditation on the nature of mind (sems), and the distinction between the mind
and appearancess (snang ba). This section begins with the line, “Assembled inside
the circle of reality,” which was quoted in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation.
The commentary on this line contains a pseudo-etymology of the word maṇḍala,
in which the two elements of the Tibetan term dkyil ’khor are explained as wisdom’s
awareness encircling (’khor) a center (dkyil) of non-elaboration. This section
contains the strongest statement that the Buddhas and buddhahood are identical
with the mind:
It is this very realization that the reality of your own mind is completely pure that
is known as “the Buddha.” Your own mind is primordial purity and buddhahood,
and to comprehend that mind is primordial purity and buddhahood is to be
accomplished as a Buddha, to see the face of a Buddha, and to hold a Buddha in
your hand. Therefore, it is sufficient to realize mind’s reality. It is not necessary
to seek buddhahood anywhere other than in the mind.46
A close scriptural parallel is found in the Guhyagarbha Tantra, where we have

the lines:
The mind itself is the perfect Buddha;

Do not search for the Buddha anywhere else.47
The discussion in The Four Yogas then turns to the question of whether the
mind (sems) and mind’s appearance as phenomena (sems snang ba’i chos thams
cad) can be distinguished or not. The conclusion is that they are nondual in that
both are empty.
Awareness and Wisdom

The author of The Four Yogas relies heavily on the concept of an inherently
enlightened mind, which is mind’s true nature. This true nature of mind is most
commonly referred to in the text as “mind’s reality” (sems kyi chos nyid). It is also
called “mind itself” (sems nyid) and “the awakened mind” (byang cub kyi sems;
bodhicitta); these terms became popular in the Great Perfection tradition, especially
in the Mind Series literature, but they are also very well-attested in the Mahāyoga
sādhanas that we find among the Dunhuang manuscripts.48
46
IOL Tib J 454, l.53ff: rang gyi sems kyi chos nyid rnam par dag par rtogs pa de nyid sangs rgyas yin
pas zhes bya ba ’am/ yang na rang gy-i sems ye nas rnam par dag cing sangs rgyas pa yin dang / sems ye
nas rnam par dag cing sangs rgyas pa yin pa’i don rtogs pa ni sangs rgyas su grub pa ’am/ sangs rgyas kyi
zhal mthong ba ’am/ sangs rgyas lag tu ’ongs zin pa yin pas/ sems kyi chos nyid rtogs pa kho nas chog/ sems
la gzhan du sangs rgyas btsal myi dgos/.
47
Tb.417, 191.4-5: / sems nyid rdzogs pa’i sangs rgyas te// sangs rgyas gzhan du ma tshol cig//.
48
For mind itself see for example the sādhana (sgrub thabs) IOL Tib J 331/1 (1r.3) which is attributed
to Mañjuśrīmitra; the awakened mind (byang chub kyi sems) appears in most Mahāyoga sādhanas,
The most frequently used term for the enlightened mind in The Four Yogas is
none of the above however; it is awareness (rig pa). “Awareness” here embraces
all the manifestations of buddhahood, as the following passage makes clear:
Accordingly, the dharmakāya (chos sku) without characteristics and the rūpakāya
which is the manifestation of characteristics are nondual within awareness.49
Interestingly, a passage making exactly the same point appears in the influential
Seminal Heart (Snying thig) scripture titled the Tantra of Self-Arisen Awareness
(Rig pa rang shar gi rgyud), which appeared in Tibet in the eleventh century.
Ronald Davidson has argued that the use of the term “awareness” (rig pa) in the
Tantra of Self-Arisen Awareness represents a new reworking of Indic materials by
Tibetans, so that awareness as the primordially enlightened mind is stripped of its
previous perceptual baggage represented by the philosophical term “self-referential
awareness” (rang gi rig pa; svasaṃvedana).50
In fact, this way of understanding awareness seems already to be present in The
Four Yogas, where the term “self-referential awareness” does not occur at all. Here
awareness is freed of any association with ordinary mental functioning, and
represents the enlightened nature of one’s mind. In fact, the simple term “awareness”
in The Four Yogas seems to be the short form of another term, “bodhicitta
awareness” (byang chub kyi sems kyi rig pa). The latter appears frequently in The
Four Yogas as a synonym for the true nature of reality (chos nyid) of one’s own
mind; for example:
Your own deity means the reality of your own mind, the very being of the
dharmakāya endowed with the bodhicitta awareness.51
And:
When you do not err from the reality of your own mind, your mind is the bodhicitta
awareness.52
These passages suggest that it might be fruitful to look for a different source
for the use of “awareness” in the Great Perfection texts. Some of the earliest Great
Perfection texts use “bodhicitta” as a synonym for the primordially enlightened
mind, and the exact phrase “bodhicitta awareness” itself appears in Great Perfection
where it can indicate both the drop of sexual fluids used in the higher initiations, and the enlightened
nature of mind itself.
49
IOL Tib J 454, l.193ff: de ltar chos kyi sku mtshan ma myed pa dang/ gzugs kyi mtshan mar snang ba
nyid gnyis su myed par r-ig pa.
50
Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance, 236-39. The usual Sanskrit forms are svasaṃvedana and
svasaṃvitti. Davidson locates the original source for these terms in the works of Dignāga.
51
IOL Tib J 454, l.53ff: rang gyi lhar ni/ rang gy-i sems gyi chos nyid nyid chos kyi sku’i bdag nyid byang
chub kyi sems kyi rig pa dang ldan pa.
52
IOL Tib J 454, l.219ff: rang gyi sems kyi chos nyid ma nor par/ rig pa’i byang cub kyi sems dang ldan
pas/ bdag mchod pa yin la/.
texts.53 Indeed, the source of much early Great Perfection terminology can be found
in the perfection stage sādhanas of Mahāyoga where, as I have previously
suggested, the term “great perfection” itself probably originates.54 In these sādhanas
bodhicitta is a multivalent term that includes the pure aspect of mind.55 For example,
the sādhana in Pelliot tibétain 245, closely based on the Guhyagarbha Tantra,
invokes the bodhicitta as the mental state at the end of the perfection stage practice
of union:
Having practiced union in nonduality, consciousness is the bodhicitta of the

nondual father and mother.56
Since, then, the term “bodhicitta” bridges the gap between the Mahāyoga
sādhanas and the early Great Perfection texts of the Mind Series, we should
seriously consider the term “bodhicitta awareness” as a source of the Great
Perfection’s “awareness.”57
Sameness
The final thematic section of The Four Yogas is a discussion of the result of the
practice (or non-practice), which is explained in terms of sameness (mnyam pa
nyid) with the Buddhas. As we saw in Section two above, Madhusādhu seems to
have been known for his position that the view of Mahāyoga is characterized as
sameness, as that view is associated with him (along with Padmasambhava) in A
Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation. Sameness is undoubtedly the central theme
of The Four Yogas, along with numerous synonyms including nonduality (gnyis
53
The early Great Perfection text Meditation on Bodhicitta (Byang chub sems bsgom pa, Q.3418)
appears in the Ldan dkar ma, where it is attributed to Mañjuśrīmitra. The Dunhuang Great Perfection
text IOL Tib J 594, attributed to Buddhagupta, is categorized as “The Transmitted Precepts of bodhicitta”
(1r.1: Byang chub sems kyi lung). An example of the specific phrase “bodhicitta awareness” (byang
chub sems kyi rig pa) can be found in the Great Perfection tantra, The Great Perfection of All Phenomena
Equal to the Ends of the Sky (Tb.83: Chos thams cad rdzogs pa chen po nam mkha’i mtha’ dang mnyam
pa’i rgyud chen po), in the title of chapter 22. In addition, the appearance of this phrase in Bon po Great
Perfection sources is discussed in Karmay, The Great Perfection, 44-45.
54
Great Perfection is here the culmination of the perfection stage (rdzogs rim). See van Schaik, “The
Early Days of the Great Perfection,” 167-69.
55
Of course, one of the most important sources of the meaning of bodhicitta here is the “ultimate
bodhicitta” of the Mahāyāna commentarial tradition, which is essentially the realization of emptiness.
However, this concept may have also come to The Four Yogas and the Great Perfection texts via the
Guhyagarbha Tantra, the second chapter of which is dedicated to a discussion of the two types of
bodhicitta as a context for the whole of the tantra.
56
Pelliot tibétain 245, 12r.4ff: gnyis su myed par sbyor ba mdzad nas/ rnam par shes par ni yab yum
gnyis su myed pa’i byang chub gyi sems te//.
57
Note that the term “bodhicitta awareness” does not appear in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation,
where Gnubs chen seems to use “awareness” and “self-referential awareness” interchangeably. Such
is also the case in many later Great Perfection texts (for example the hidden treasure [gter ma] of ’Jigs
med gling pa — see Sam van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection: Simultaneous and Gradual
Approaches to Dzogchen Practice in the Longchen Nyingtig [Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004]).
Since a multitude of sources and allusions are the norm in Great Perfection literature, trying to find a
single definitive source for any Great Perfection terminology is probably a fruitless task.
su myed), oneness (gcig pa), inseparability (dbyer med), and single taste (ro gcig
pa). An important passage defines the nature of nonduality thus:
Because the phenomena of nirvāṇa (mya ngan las ’das pa) and saṃsāra (’khor
ba) manifest depending on whether there is realization or non-realization, they
are nondual. Therefore they are called the single basis (gzhi gcig) or the single
truth.58
The concept of a basis (gzhi) as the source of either nirvāṇa or saṃsāra

depending on whether the nature of mind is realized or not, became very important
in the later Great Perfection tradition, especially as it was developed in the Seminal
Heart texts.59 As for the specific phrase “single basis,” though it appears in A Lamp
for the Eyes of Contemplation, it is in the context of the Mahāyoga chapter, and
not the Atiyoga chapter.60 Later, by the time we reach the earliest Seminal Heart
texts, the so-called Seventeen Tantras (Rgyud bcu bdun), the term “single basis”
is being used in the context of the Great Perfection.61
The nonduality of nirvāṇa or saṃsāra is also expressed as the identity of the
practitioner and the Buddhas. This state of being is called “great sameness” (mnyam
nyid chen po):
This is different from renunciation of the three realms or three worlds. In the pure
land there is no distinction between an object and its antidote, for the three worlds
are themselves the Buddha realms. This is the state of great sameness which was
discussed earlier. It is the state of the yogin (rnal ’byor pa) who is the
personification of all the Buddhas, which is to be the same as all the Buddhas.62
“Sameness” and “great sameness” are important concepts in the Guhyagarbha

Tantra and most other Māyājāla tantras.63 In fact, the entire discussion of the three
Buddha bodies in The Four Yogas seems to be indebted to the Guhyagarbha Tantra.
According to the author of The Four Yogas, the dharmakāya is the nonduality of
space and wisdom, the saṃbhogakāya is the mantra (sngags) and the nirmāṇakāya
58
IOL Tib J 454, l.103: rtogs ma rtogs kyi khyad par gyis [104] ’khor ba dang mya ngan las ’das pa’i
chos su snang bas gnyis myed de/ gzhi gcig pa ’am don gcig pa zhes bya/.
59
On the basis as presented in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, see Karmay, The Great
Perfection: 107-20. On the presentation of the basis in the Seminal Heart tradition, see David Germano,
“Architecture and Absence in the Secret Tantric History of the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen),” Journal
of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 17, no. 2 (1994): 203-335 and Jean-Luc Achard,
“La base et ses sept interpretations dans la tradition rDzogs chen,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 1
(2002): 44-60.
60
A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, 194.3.
61
The “single basis” is discussed in the Six Spaces Tantra (Seventeen Tantras vol. 2, 166), The
Tantra of the Lion’s Perfect Dynamism (Seventeen Tantras vol. 2, 268) and The Garland of Precious
Pearls Tantra (Seventeen Tantras vol. 2, 520, 525, 529).
62
IOL Tib J 454 l.145: khams gsum ’am/ srid pa gsum po ’di spangs pa’i pha rol [146] na/ zhing dag pa
bya ba zhig gnyen ris su bcad pa myed de/ srid pa gsum nyid zhing dag pa yin/ mnyam nyid sbyor nyid che
ba’-i zhe ba [147] gong du bstan pa’i gnas de nyid/ sangs rgyas thams cad mnyam sbyor ba’i/ sangs rgyas
thams cad kyi bdag nyid chen po’i [148] rnal ’byor pa’i/ gnas yin pa ’am/.
63
Tb.417, 163.3, 168.5, and elsewhere.
is the mudrā (phyag rgya). The discussion of the last of these is closely based on
the discussion of mudrās in the Guhyagarbha Tantra, distinguishing between the
nonexistent (dngos med) mudrā and the existent (dngos po) mudrās that are derived
from it.64
The Result: Lions and Garuḍas

The other important aspect of the way the result is presented in The Four Yogas
is the simile of the lion and the garuḍa, which is used to explain the way in which
the qualities of buddhahood appear when the realized yogin passes away.65
According to the simile, these powerful creatures do not display their qualities
when in the womb or the egg, but embody those qualities as potentials. It is the
same for the yogin who has realized sameness; his qualities are present but will
only fully manifest when he attains buddhahood. One early source for this simile
appears in a passage from an unidentified Māyājāla tantra cited in A Lamp for the
Eyes of Contemplation.66 The simile played an important role in later Tibetan
intellectual history, being prominent in the polemics between the Bka’ brgyud and
Sa skya schools.67 Within the Rnying ma tradition it appears in at least one Great
Perfection tantra, and was utilized in Great Perfection apologetics.68
Mahāyoga and Atiyoga in The Four Yogas and Beyond

As we have seen, The Four Yogas is based on the themes developed in the
Mahāyoga tantras, especially the Māyājāla group. At the same time, the text’s
particular focus on the themes of nonduality and spontaneous presence is quite
consistent with the early Great Perfection literature. This confluence of Mahāyoga
and Atiyoga should not be surprising, first because most aspects of the early Great
Perfection are all present to a greater or lesser extent in the Mahāyoga tantras in
general, and the Guhyagarbha Tantra in particular, and secondly because Mahāyoga
literature from the ninth century, such as Padmasambhava’s Garland of Views
(Man ngag lta ba’i phreng ba) and Gnyan dpal dbyangs’ The Questions and
Answers on Vajrasattva, makes it clear that the Great Perfection was considered
at that time to be a “mode” (tshul) of approaching the meditative techniques of the
Mahāyoga sādhanas.
64
This discussion appears in Chapter 5 of the Guhyagarbha Tantra (Tb.417).
65
I have translated the Tibetan khyung as garuḍa here, although it is not clear that there is an exact
match with the Indic mythological bird. See the discussion of this in David Jackson, “Birds in the Egg
and Newborn Lion Cubs: Metaphors for the Potentialities and Limitations of ‘All-at-once’
Enlightenment,” in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Associaton
for Tibetan Studies (Narita 1989), ed. Ihara Shoren (Tokyo: Naritasan Shinshoji, 1992), 95-114.
66
A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: 40.5ff.
67
See David Jackson, “Birds in the Egg,” 104-110.
68
See Sam van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection, 124-27, where I discuss the simile in the
context of the works of Klong chen pa and ’Jigs med gling pa.
Another quotation from The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva might help
to make this point. In answer to the question of how one should perform ritual
service (bsnyen pa) to the deity:
In ultimate service no subject or object is perceived,

Because there is no toil or effort this is the supreme service.69
Here again we see the rhetoric of non-effort, and in the manuscript copy written
by the same scribe who copied out The Four Yogas we find the following note
written underneath the words no toil or effort: “This is considered the view of
Atiyoga.”70 Elsewhere in The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva Gnyan dpal
dbyangs specifically addresses the issue of how to apply the mode of non-activity
to Mahāyoga practices, writing:
With effort, one meditates over and over again,

By cultivating this gradually, entering the expanse,
Till it arises spontaneously without effort.71
And here again the words without effort are glossed in the interlinear notes as
“the meaning of Atiyoga.”72 Although the author of The Four Yogas does not
mention Atiyoga or the Great Perfection, we have seen that the text, with its
emphasis on sameness and spontaneous accomplishment belongs to the same milieu
of Mahāyoga exegesis as The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, and can be
taken as another example of what was meant by the application of the Atiyoga
view to Mahāyoga practices.
Even the early doxographical texts found in the Dunhuang manuscripts, which
seem to reflect developments from the tenth century standardizing the distinctions
between the esoteric tantric frameworks of Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga, do
not designate these three as “vehicles” per se. Rather they continue to present
Anuyoga and Atiyoga as modes of approach to deity practice, without any
meditative content of their own. Thus it appears that Anuyoga and Atiyoga were
not, until the eleventh century, widely considered to be independent vehicles with
their own distinctive practices.
The early Great Perfection texts clearly fulfill the role of being an interpretative
framework for Mahāyoga practices, reformulating the key themes of the Mahāyoga
tantras – including the deity, the experience of bliss, and transgressive activity –
69
IOL Tib J 470, question 13: / bsnyen pa don dam par bya ba dang byed pa myi dmyi[g]s na/ / tshegs
dang ’bad pa myed pas bsnyen pa’i mchog go/.
70
IOL Tib J 470, question 13, interlinear note: a ti yo ga’i lta ba’i bzhed.
71
IOL Tib J 470, question 31: / rtsol bas yang nas yang du mnyam bzhag ste// goms pas klung du gyur
pas khad gyis ni// rtsol ba myed pas lhun kyis grub par ’gyur/.
72
IOL Tib J 470, question 31, interlinear note: a ti yo ga’i don. Note that the root text does not use
the term Atiyoga, but refers to the mode of the Great Perfection (see the citation in Section 1 of the
present article). I have suggested elsewhere that the appearance of Atiyoga as a correlate for the Great
Perfection seems dates from the time of Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes (late ninth and early tenth
centuries). See van Sam van Schaik, “The Early Days of the Great Perfection,” 188-89.
in terms of nonduality and spontaneous presence.73 There are essentially two

different ways in which this approach is applied to Mahāyoga. At one end of the
scale we have texts like Padmasambhava’s Garland of Views and
Sūryasiṃhaprabha’s commentary on the Guhyagarbha Tantra, which address the
issues arising out of deity yoga in Great Perfection terms. At the other end we have
brief poetic texts, like Mañjuśrīmitra’s Meditation on the Awakened Mind and
Buddhagupta’s Secret Handful, which communicate the Great Perfection approach
without explicit ritual or meditative instruction.74 The latter are of the type that
came to be classified under the Great Perfection’s Mind Series. At an early stage
most of them were classed as transmitted precepts (lung) and esoteric instructions
(man ngag) and seem to have lost their authorial associations in the process of
transmission, yet the authors who did remain associated with such texts, like the
two above, were generally also authors of Mahāyoga commentarial and sādhana
literature.75
Furthermore, if we consider these two texts in the wider context of the Dunhuang
manuscript collection, they must be understood alongside the much greater number
of sādhanas and other ritual material in the collection dating to around the same
period. Given this context, it is difficult to justify a position that the reformulation
of Mahāyoga terminology in these Great Perfection texts entails a rejection of
meditative and ritual practice. Rather, the milieu in which we find these early Great
Perfection texts, and the use they make of Mahāyoga terminology, indicates a role
as instructional works that contextualize Mahāyoga practice.
For all the above reasons I think we should be wary of the characterization of
the earliest phase of Great Perfection texts as “pristine Great Perfection” as opposed
to later developments of “tantric Great Perfection.”76 The Great Perfection is
73
See especially Mañjuśrīmitra’s Meditation on the Awakened Mind and Buddhagupta’s Secret
Handful.
74
It is possible that these short texts entail a kind of technique-free meditation technique. The earliest
description of such practices that I am aware of is in Gnubs chen’s Armor against Darkness, the Sun
of Yoga that Clears the Eyes: A Commentary on the Sūtra of the Enlightened Intention of All Buddhas
(Sangs rgyas thams cad kyi dgongs pa ’dus pa mdo’i dka’ ’grel mun pa’i go cha lde mig gsal byed rnal
’byor nyi ma; vol. 1, 511-12, vol. 2, 25-26, 34), a commentary on the Sūtra Gathering All Intentions
(Dgongs pa ’dus pa’i mdo), probably written toward the end of the ninth century. Here these practices
are characterized as the “gradual” aspect of the mode of Great Perfection. Note however that these
practices are not really free of technique, and resemble more Chan meditation techniques to identify
and settle in the genuine nature of the mind. It is conceivable that the appearance of these techniques
represents Chan-based practices appearing under the banner of Atiyoga. Gnubs chen distinguished
Chan from Atiyoga (and Mahāyoga) at length in his A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, but this in
in terms of view rather than technique, and the treatment also shows that Gnubs chen’s knowledge of
Chan was extensive. I would like to thank Jacob Dalton for making available to me his unpublished
dissertation on the Sūtra Gathering All Intentions and Gnubs chen’s commentary.
75
van Schaik, “The Early Days of the Great Perfection,” 173, and for a complete translation of The
Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, see Kammie Takahashi, “Ritual and Philosophical Speculation
in The Rdo rje sems dpa’i zhus lan,” in Aspects of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang: Rites and Teachings
for This Life and Beyond, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Sam van Schaik (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
76
Germano, “Architecture and Absence,” 13. I would like to make it clear that this article is a
groundbreaking investigation into the historical analysis of the Great Perfection traditions, and my
comments here relate only to this specific point of terminology and its potential misinterpretation.
fundamentally “tantric” in the earliest texts known to us, in that it arose from, and
served to contextualize, the discourses and practices of Mahāyoga. David Germano,
who coined the term “pristine Great Perfection,” was careful to define it as a literary
characterization, leaving aside the question of what was actually practiced.77
The sources we have been examining call into question the idea of an early
Great Perfection “pristine” in practice as well as rhetoric. Nevertheless, we might
be led to such an idea through two factors: (i) the fact that the rhetoric of
nonconceptuality, nonduality and the spontaneous presence in the early Great
Perfection texts could be interpreted as an injunction to forgo any kind of practice,
and (ii) the development of Atiyoga as an independent vehicle from the tenth
century onward. When the idea that Atiyoga comprises an independent vehicle is
projected back upon the early stratum of Great Perfection literature, the idea of a
tradition eschewing all ritual and meditative practices arises. But such an idea is,
I would suggest, anachronistic.
I have examined elsewhere the historical process behind the separation of the
Great Perfection from Mahāyoga (in the form of the vehicle of Atiyoga), and argued
that Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes (a strong influence on the Zur tradition) was
instrumental in this movement.78 The earliest reliable source for the idea that
Mahāyoga and Atiyoga are each independent vehicles with their own scriptures
and their own formulations of the view is Gnubs chen’s A Lamp for the Eyes of
Contemplation.79 Gnubs chen, as I have previously suggested, presented in this
work a somewhat artificial corpus of Atiyoga scripture, both describing and perhaps
creating an emergent scriptural category. Gnubs chen’s use of the term “vehicle”
in rather haphazard in this work, and it is interesting that in his other extant major
work, Armor against Darkness (Mun pa’i go cha), Gnubs chen treats Mahāyoga,
Anuyoga, and Atiyoga as “modes” within a single vehicle, intended for trainees
of low, middle, and high capacities respectively.80
77
Germano, “Architecture and Absence,” 3, 12.
78
See van Schaik, “The Early Days of the Great Perfection.”
79
There is one ostensibly early source defining Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga as vehicles per
se in the manner of the later Rnying ma tradition. This is the Esoteric Instructions on the Stages of the
View (Lta ba’i khyad pa’i man ngag), attributed to the eighth-century translator Ska ba dpal brtsegs.
However, there are many reasons for doubting the authorial attribution and early date of this text.
Samten Karmay has discussed Bu ston’s questioning of the authorship (Karmay, The Great Perfection,
149), and elsewhere I have noted the text’s absence from Gnubs chen’s A Lamp for the Eyes of
Contemplation, despite the inclusion of other works by Dpal brtsegs (van Schaik, “The Early Days of
the Great Perfection,” 188). Furthermore, Matthew Kapstein has noted that this text contains
developments in doctrinal matters that bear comparison with works produced in the early second
millennium transmitted scripture (Bka’ ma) lineages, notably the Definition of the Vehicles (Theg pa
spyi bcings kyi dbu phyogs) of Kaḥ thog dam pa bde gshegs (personal communication).
80
Armor against Darkness, the Sun of Yoga that Clears the Eyes: A Commentary on the Sūtra of
the Enlightened Intention of All Buddhas (Sangs rgyas thams cad kyi dgongs pa ’dus pa mdo’i dka’
’grel mun pa’i go cha lde mig gsal byed rnal ’byor nyi ma), vol. 1, 509. Note that the root text of which
Armor against Darkness, the Sun of Yoga that Clears the Eyes: A Commentary on the Sūtra of the
Enlightened Intention of All Buddhas is a commentary, the Sūtra Gathering All Intentions characterizes
these three not as mahā, anu, and ati but as development (bskyed pa), perfection (rdzogs pa), and total
perfection (yongs su rdzogs pa).
By the later tenth century we see the ninefold doxographical system becoming
increasingly popular, although as the Dunhuang manuscripts show, there were still
several variants of this scheme, and the members of the esoteric class of tantra
(Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga) were not generally known as “vehicles.” Thus
the fully developed nine-vehicle system does not seem to have become widespread
before the eleventh century.81 It is this development, I would argue, that led to
Atiyoga (and thus Great Perfection) finally being cut loose from its original
grounding in Mahāyoga.
Now, it is very interesting that this very same period sees the appearance of the
earliest Seminal Heart texts, found among the Seventeen Tantras. These texts bring
Mahāyoga practices and deities (especially the peaceful and wrathful deities of the
Guhyagarbha Tantra) back into the new vehicle of Atiyoga. It seems that the space
created by the eventual separation of Atiyoga from Mahāyoga was filled, almost
instantly, by elements drawn from Mahāyoga sources, but now recategorized as
Atiyoga.82
Thus the existence of a Great Perfection tradition with no ritual content seems
to have been untenable. In fact, we have some evidence of an unsuccessful attempt
to create such a tradition. The Crown Pith (Spyi ti) texts of the twelfth-century
treasure revealer Nyang ral nyi ma ’od zer rejected the Seminal Heart developments
in Atiyoga that had been becoming popular in the previous century, in favor of a
rhetoric of nonduality and original purity. The difference from the earlier stratum
of Great Perfection (which was a mode of deity yoga practice) is that with Atiyoga’s
new status as an indepedent vehicle, the Crown Pith texts had no ritual context at
all. In this they were anomalies, and they seem to have had little success or influence
on the later development of Great Perfection.83 Certain collections of early material,
especially the Collected Tantras of Vairocana (Bai ro’i rgyud ’bum), may derive
from a similar motivation, probably among the Zur lineage, of creating an Atiyoga
81
Further research to identify the source of this doctrinal development should probably be focused
on the activities of the Zur and Kaḥ thog lineages during the eleventh and twelfth centries. For example,
an important early text on the nine vehicles is the Definition of the Vehicles of Kaḥ thog dam pa bde
gshegs mentioned earlier.
82
The simultaneity of the widespread categorization of Atiyoga as an independent vehicle and the
appearance within this new vehicle of meditative practices drawn from Mahāyoga and “new” (gsar
ma) tantric traditions may go some way to answering the questions posed at the end of Germano, “The
Funerary Transformation of the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen),” Journal of the International Association
of Tibetan Studies, no. 1 (October 2005): 28, http://www.thlib.org?tid=T1219: “Why did the Great
Perfection prove to be such a popular category of indigenous literary production in Tibet among the
groups that gradually evolved into the Ancients and Bon po movements in the ninth and tenth centuries?
Assuming that one of the chief sources of later transformations of the Great Perfection is the dominant
tantric movements of those times, why did the Great Perfection prove to be such a popular category of
literature among Ancients and Bon po groups for the creative assimilation of new Indian and Tibetan
developments under the guise of treasure revelation in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries?”
83
Germano, “Funerary Transformation,” 27. However, I would disagree to some extent with the
statement that “the Crown Pith’s reactionary orientation failed ultimately because the incorporation of
tantra into Great Perfection was too popular and powerful,” because it implies the existence of an
earlier form of Great Perfection that was independent of tantra.
vehicle entirely free of Mahāyoga, but again, these collections were of little
significance to the later tradition compared with the Seminal Heart material.
In effect, even the old role of Great Perfection as an approach to Mahāyoga,
which we have seen here in The Four Yogas, was not abandoned, but flourished
in the Guhyagarbha commentarial tradition of Rong zom pa, Klong chen pa, and
those who followed their examples. This again may be contrasted to the
commentarial approach of the Zur lineage, which strenuously avoided the
application of Great Perfection language to Mahāyoga material. In this way, The
Four Yogas is a vital context for the work of the scholars who shaped the Rnying
ma tradition, suggesting how they may have drawn on early currents of exegesis
as they formed a distinctive interpretation of the Vajrayāna.
The Manuscript (IOL Tib J 454)

The Four Yogas is written in a carbon-based ink on a good quality scroll. Unusually
for a Tibetan tantric work from Dunhuang, the scroll appears to have been made
specifically for this text. Many of the tantric texts from Dunhuang are written on
the versos of Chinese scrolls, or on small Tibetan po ti pages, indicating a scarcity
of paper. In this case, somebody was able to obtain, or willing to pay for a fine
copy of the text. Thus its incompleteness is rather mysterious. Perhaps the complete
text was written in several scrolls, the rest of which were lost, or perhaps the text
was considered important despite not being available in full.
The handwriting is a neat and fluid headed script that will be familiar to anyone
who has looked at the Aparamitāyurnāma-mahāyāna-sūtra (tshe dpag tu med pa
zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo) and Śatasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā (shes rab
kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stong phrag brgya pa) manuscripts mass-produced in
Dunhuang. The scribe made only a few mistakes, and most of these were noticed
and corrected at the time. The scroll does not contain the scribe’s name, but
fortunately we have another scroll in the same hand that does give a name.
Interestingly enough, this other scroll is one of the three copies of The Questions
and Answers on Vajrasattva, IOL Tib J 470. The paper of the two scrolls IOL Tib
J 454 and 470 is very similar to that used in the hundreds of sūtra scrolls produced
in the mid-ninth century in Dunhuang. This is a strong, buff-coloured paper that
was produced locally at Dunhuang during and after the period of Tibetan rule in
Dunhuang. Perhaps the availability of this kind of paper may be in some way linked
to the scribe’s official status.84
84
Regarding this type of paper, a recent project by Agnieszka Helman-Wazny has found these
manuscripts to be primarily composed of mulberry fibers, a locally available source of pulp. All such
scrolls were made on a paper mould with a moveable bamboo mesh, allowing paper to be removed
before drying. In contrast, papermaking technique in Tibet and other Himalayan countries did not
develop the removeable mesh, so that paper was always dried in its frame. The measurements of the
IOL Tib J 454 and 470 are identical. Both have a panel height of 30.5 centimeters and length of 33.5
centimeters. Both have laid lines at 11-12 / 3 centimeters and 7.5 / panel. As such, they are likely to
have come from the same papermaking apparatus. The height of the scrolls matches that of Akira
Fujieda’s Type D, dating from the early ninth century onwards (see Akira Fujieda, “Chronological
IOL Tib J 470 (The Questions and Answers on

Vajrasattva).
IOL Tib J 454 (The Four Yogas). All images
reproduced by kind permission of The British
Library.
I have identified these of the two hands based on the forensic method of
handwriting analysis adapted to the conventions of Tibetan manuscripts, which I
have discussed elsewhere.85 In brief, the method involves breaking down the
handwritings into units of individual graphs (the written letters that appear on the
page) and identifying sufficient similarities at the graph level to produce a
convincing identification. The identification of such similarities is experience-based
in that the examiner must know which graphic forms are likely to be idiographic,
and which allographic. While allographic forms are learnt variations in writing
styles, idiographic forms are those that are specific to a given writer, and not under
his or her conscious control. A series of benchmarks may then be established as a
basis for comparing one example of handwriting with another.86
In IOL Tib J 470 the scribe has
signed his name as Phu shi meng hwe’i
’gyog. This is clearly a Chinese name.
The scribal colophon in IOL Tib J 470.
The first part of the name (phu shi) is
an official rank (fu shi, 副使), the name for the third highest ranking official in a
district called a zhen (鎮).87 This is very interesting. Firstly, since this is a Chinese
Classification of Dunhuang Buddhist Manuscripts,” in Dunhuang Manuscript Forgeries, ed. Susan

Whitfield [London: The British Library, 2002], 103-14).
85
See Dalton, Davis, and van Schaik, “Beyond Anonymity,” 1-23.
86
The benchmarks shared by both IOL Tib J 454 and 470 include: (i) the reverse curl at the beginning
of the text; (ii) two forms of the shad, one curving slightly to the left, and a less common variant with
a slight “s” shape curving to the right; (iii) two forms of the zhabs kyu vowel, one a simple curve and
the other ending in an extended horizontal line; (iv) a marked tendency not to connect the ra btags
stroke to the bottom of the root letter; (v) an unusual form of the graph mya, where the ya btags and
the right side of the ma are not joined to the left side of the graph.
87
This rank, as it appears in another Tibetan Dunhuang document (Pelliot tibétain 1124), is discussed
in Akihiro Sakajiri, “Kigigun jidai no Chibetto bun bokuchiku kankei monjo” [A Post-Tibetan Period
Tibetan Document on Stock-Breeding from Dunhuang], Shigaku zasshi 111, no. 11 (2002): 69-71.
Géza Uray has a different interpretation of phu shi, but Sakajiri has convincingly argued for fu shi (副
使). See Uray, Géza, “New Contributions to Tibetan Documents from the post-Tibetan Tun-huang,”
in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 4th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies
official title not in use during the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang (or Shazhou,
as the town was then known), we can be sure that the manuscript was written after
the occupation, which ended in 848. The use of Tibetan by Chinese officials after
the Tibetan occupation is a well-documented fact.88 Secondly, the scribe’s rank
suggests an interest in Tibetan Mahāyoga among the Chinese officialdom of
Shazhou. The title is followed by the scribe’s family name, Meng (孟), a common
family name in the Dunhuang documents. The last part, the personal name, can be
tentatively reconstructed as Huai Yu (壞玉), though a search through the colophons
of the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts yields no other instances of this particular
name.89
As mentioned above, the IOL Tib J 454 and 470 scrolls appear very similar to
those containing the Aparamitāyurjñāna Sūtra, which are usually dated to the end
of the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang, the mid-ninth century. It would be unusual,
though not impossible, for a Dunhuang Mahāyoga text to date from as early as the
mid-ninth century. Since, as we have seen, the scribe’s Chinese official rank dates
him after the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang, the manuscripts should be dated
to somewhere between the mid-ninth century and the end of the tenth century. A
date toward the later part of that period is suggested by the cursive interlinear notes
in IOL Tib J 470, and a few interlinear corrections in IOL Tib J 454. These were
certainly written at the same time as the main text.90 The cursive style in the
interlinear notes is similar (though not, I think, in the same hand) to that found in
the scroll Pelliot tibétain 849, which can be dated with certainty to the late tenth
or early eleventh century.91
Schloss Hohenkammer – Munich 1985, ed. Helga Uebach and Jampa Panglung (Munich: Kommission
für Zentralasiatische Studien Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988), 522.
88
See Uray, “New Contributions,” and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, “A Group of Old Tibetan Letters Written
Under Kuei-I-Chün: A Preliminary Study for the Classification of Old Tibetan Letters,” Acta Orientalia
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 44, nos. 1-2 (1990): 175-90.
89
We do have a Meng hwa’i kyim, whose signature appears in three manuscripts: IOL Tib J 109.21
(a copy of the Śatasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā Sūtra), IOL Tib J 548 (an Uṣniṣasitātapātra Dhāraṇī)
and Pelliot tibétain 982 (a letter). The hand seems to differ somewhat however from the hand in our
two scrolls. Additionally, we have a Hwa’i ’gog who worked as a proofreader in the scriptorium which
produced copies of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, probably in the first half of the eighth century: IOL Tib
J 107.1, Pelliot tibétain 1382, 1452. A variant of the name appears in the Chinese manuscripts as well;
for example in Or.8210/S.1067 (a copy of the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya Sūtra) somebody, either the
scribe or the owner, has written the name: Meng Huai (孟壞 / 懷玉). I would like to thank Kazushi
Iwao for help with the Tibetan transcription of Chinese names, although the reconstructions offered
here are entirely my own responsibility.
90
In IOL Tib J 470 long interlinear notes sometimes take up a line where the main text should be,
and the main text carries on on the line below. The image here is an example of this. This indicates
that the scribe was writing the interlinear notes at the same time as the root text, based on the exemplar
for this manuscript, Pelliot tibétain 837.
91
Pelliot tibétain 849 was apparently written by a Tibetan scribe; it is signed by a ’Bro dkon mchog
dpal. See Joseph Hackin, Formulaire Sanskrit-Tibétain du Xe siécle (Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul
Geuthener, 1924), and Matthew Kapstein, “New Light on an Old Friend: PT 849 Reconsidered,” in
Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis, ed. Christian Wedemeyer and Ronald Davidson (Proceedings
of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, Oxford 2003), vol. 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 9-30.
Cursive interlinear notes in IOL Tib J 470.

Cursive corrections in IOL Tib J 454.
Translation
The beginning of a panel in the original scroll is indicated in square brackets, for
example, [panel 2] and so on. The occasional interpolations which I have thought
necessary appear in square brackets. I have also added a few general headings
which appear here as an aid to reading the text, but they are not in the original,
which has no architectural scheme. Some parts of the text are difficult to decipher,
and this may be in part due to textual corruption. The text often lacks the usual
signs that close a citation (zhes or ces), so in some cases it is a matter of guesswork
where the citation ends and the treatise picks up again.
The Four Yogas

[i] The yoga of the nature.
It does not matter whether all of the phenomena of mind and mental appearances,
or affliction and enlightenment, are understood or not. At this very moment you
should remain in the spontaneous presence of the body, speech, and mind of
primordial buddhahood, without achieving it through a path or fabricating it with
antidotes.
[ii] The yoga of accomplishment.
Having unerringly realized what the nature is, you become accustomed to that
state. This brings together all of the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and vidyādharas. It is
also known as arising naturally.
[iii] The yoga of abiding by the oaths.
This concerns the lords and mistresses of the spirits who have previously been
tamed by the Bhagavan and entrusted with the samaya. You should make them
obey your orders to do this or that activity, and make sure that they do not transgress
their oaths and promises.
[iv] The yoga for accomplishing the samaya.
Even if you are not endowed with the higher qualities of our forefathers, you
should maintain [the samaya] and achieve [the results] in the same way that they
did.
The unsurpassed concentration means not gradually developing the four stages
of absorption, but practicing absorption in total perfection.92 Meditation on all
phenomena as the maṇḍala of spontaneously present body, speech, and mind is
called resting (rnal), and means resting in the space of reality.
We call it space because space is the condition for the arising of all phenomena.
It has no center or periphery. According to the causal Mahāyāna this is a mere
nothingness. The space of reality is beyond existence and nonexistence and all of
the limits of nihilism; therefore it is limitless. At the center of the limitless there
is no center. Yet the essence of that lack is not perceived as non-accomplishment
or nothingness. Therefore resting is not created by wise Buddhas or fabricated by
clever sentient beings.
In its profound sense, resting means resting in the space of reality. Being without
center or periphery means that [resting] is beyond the limit of being truly existent
because it is not present in any of the three times, and that it is free from the limit
of nonexistence because it manifests as various characteristics, and different aspects
of it can be distinguished. Therefore it is limitless.
Not fixating means nonduality. The space of reality, not being present in any
of the three times, is unwavering. Its various characteristics manifest without
obstruction. Mere manifestation itself is without characteristics, and does not move
away from the space of reality. Having characteristics and being without
characteristics are nondual. Seeing the nonduality of existence and non-existence
is what is meant by resting. This nonduality, not created by wise Buddhas nor
fabricated by clever sentient beings, is what is meant by resting.
Union (’byor) is a nondual realization without characteristics. When all internal
and external phenomena endowed with the causes and effects of saṃsāra and
nirvāṇa are of one taste in the space of reality or of one taste in nonduality, this is
resting in union (rnal ’byor). [panel 2]
The Fourfold Greatness

The realization of [i] the great result according to the non-secret vehicle is as
follows. According to the scriptures of this vehicle, the great result is to become
an unsurpassed Buddha, not a śrāvaka or a pratyekabuddha. Indeed, if these
followers of the causal Mahāyāna wish to achieve buddhahood, they will not fail
to attain it. However, despite spending a long time purifying and purifying,
accomplishing and accomplishing, the followers of the causal vehicle will not
realize the truth of this secret vehicle. Therefore they will not attain buddhahood
in a lifetime. There is nothing greater than the result which comes from having
achieved primordial buddhahood through realizing the truth of this [secret vehicle].
92
Note that “total perfection” (yongs su rdzogs pa) is the third element of triad of development,
perfection, and total perfection in Sūtra Gathering All Intentions, where it is explained as the “space
of wisdom” (ye shes dbyings). In his commentary, Gnubs chen treats it as a synomym for Atiyoga (see
Armor against Darkness, vol. 1, 511).
Regarding [ii] the great accomplishment: The followers of the Mahāyāna use
great effort, yet they achieve buddhahood only after three uncountable eons. This
is the lesser accomplishment. One attains what is known as the great
accomplishment by achieving unsurpassable buddhahood in one lifetime, or in this
very lifetime, when the meaning of sameness and nonduality is realized.
It is also [known as the great accomplishment] because [the secret vehicle] is
not like the causal vehicle, in which the factors of enlightenment and the perfections
are accomplished with difficulty and suffering. When one understands the five
types of sensual pleasure as ornaments of reality, one becomes accomplished
through the experiences of joy and pleasure.
It is also [known as the great accomplishment] because, according to the causal
vehicle, the five afflictions and the five desirable objects are the causes of saṃsāra,
and there is nothing greater than the accomplishment which comes from examining
faults and abandoning them based on antidotes. In the latter [the secret vehicle]
one does not abide in duality and never wavers from the space of reality. It is taught
that out of this nondual meditation Conquerors are created and arise, or are born.
Alternatively, [in the phrase] created by the Conquerors, the various
characteristics are taught to be created or to arise from the unproduced space of
reality. “Who taught this?” It was taught by the Conquerors themselves. The
condition of all phenomena is like the birth of a baby from inside the mother.93
“But is it not contradictory to teach that various existents come forth from something
non-existent? Where is there an example analogous to this?” It is like the way that
the baby lacks of distinct sense faculties while inside the mother, but afterwards
the distinct sense faculties come forth.
From the commentary on this text:
The blessings of wisdom... The blessings are the maṇḍala of the mudrās and the
emanations. Meditation refers to nondual meditation. If you ask where is there
an example of this means, “Is there any example in harmony with this?” [panel
3] It is like the development of a baby’s distinct sense faculties coming after the
baby’s lack of distinct sense faculties while inside the mother. In exactly that way
the various existent things come forth from reality without existence; there is no
contradiction.
“Accepting this analogy of non-contradiction, should we practice this by

meditating to establish all the various existents as the deity, or is everything
accomplished by meditating on the single deity of our practice?” It is not necessary
to meditate that each and every existent thing is the display of a deity. By meditating
on the single deity that is your practice, you meditate on everything.
“Where is this said?” It is taught in the Tantra of the Union with All Buddhas,
in verses such as:
93
Note that the Tibetan text here has bu mo and later bo mo. Both words usually mean “daughter”
or “young woman,” but here the required meaning is clearly “mother.”
If you unify yourself with your own deity...94
Your own deity means the reality of your own mind, the very being of the
dharmakāya endowed with the bodhicitta awareness. This is the nature of the deity,
which we call your own deity. Realizing awareness in this way is known as unifying
yourself [with the deity]. It is known as entry into all maṇḍalas. If you have realized
reality of the mind in this way, and you possess the bodhicitta awareness, you have
entered into the maṇḍalas of the three empowerments, of vajra space, of taming
beings and of accomplishing all truths, and all the rest.95
“How is this so?” Bodhicitta is the root of all maṇḍalas. It is the nature. It is
the entry into the middle (dkyil). Therefore bodhicitta is the means to realization.
This is not about trying to attain anything. It is known as utter immediacy.
Unification means to comprehend bodhicitta, the reality of mind.
By perfecting means that in comprehending the reality of the mind, the great
qualities such as the accumulation of merit and wisdom are purified and perfected.
This not like the lesser merit gained little by little through discipline and difficulty.
Buddhahood is achieved without the need for benefit and assistence by such
[methods]. If you unify symbolically [with the deity], then in this context the
experience [indicated by] the words if you unify yourself with your own deity is
explained as a joyful dance.
Regarding [iii] great merit: The pure roots of virtue such as the factors of
enlightenment and the perfections are vastly meritorious. How much more so when
you meditate on the body, speech, and mind of all appearances as the mudrā; all
causes and effects are then meritorious. At this time there is nothing greater than
the merit of perfecting [this meditation].
Regarding [iv] great wisdom: The śrāvaka comprehends non-self. The
pratyekabuddha comprehends non-self and on top of this comprehends phenomena
one-sidedly as a self, the aggregate of form. The bodhisattva comprehends the
non-self of the person and phenomena. [panel 4] If these [kinds of comprehension]
are vast wisdom, how much more so is the comprehension of spontaneously present
wisdom which is a realization without characteristics or duality? There is no wisdom
greater than this.
Meditation on the Nature of Mind

Assembled inside the circle of reality...96
94
Tb.404: 118.5. The lines that follow the above citation in this edition are as follows: / rang gi lhar
ni bdag sbyor na’ang / / bsod nams chung yang ’grub par ’gyur/ / de nyid rnal ’byor ’dis yis ni/ / thams cad
’grub par byed pas na/ / ngan ’gro ngan sbyong thams cad kyis/ / nyes pa dag tu yongs mi ’gyur/ / bskal pa
bye bar mi thob pa’i/ / sangs rgyas dam pa thams cad de/.
95
These are the four main maṇḍalas of the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha Tantra.
96
See A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: 187.5.
Reality, mind itself and space become one. This is the reality of mind. The circle
(’khor) means the center (dkyil). If you comprehend the mind’s reality, then the
unelaborated center is surrounded by the circle of the wisdom’s awareness.
Therefore this is known as encircling the center (dkyil ’khor). If you do not
comprehend [the mind’s reality], then the ignorant center is surrounded by a circle
of misapprehension. This is also encircling the center.
The phrase assembled inside indicates the sentient beings who are outside. They
are those who understand that all appearances are the appearances of mind, but do
not understand that [mind] is nonexistent. This is an indication of being outside.
The phrase assembled inside also means that the ones said to be assembled inside
are those who understand that all appearances are the appearances of mind, and
also comprehend that the fundamental mind and the appearances contained within
it are not existent phenomena.
The phrase assembled inside also means that when the mind’s reality is
comprehended, it is like swallowing after having chewed the food in one’s mouth.97
Characteristics and existents are like the food. The mouth that swallows is the
realization of the reality of mind, and because that is the gate to complete purity,
it is called a gate. Because one enters into nonabiding nirvāṇa this is known as
entering. Thus entering the gate of the mouth indicates that all activities are
encompassed by the qualities inside of the unerring realization of mind’s reality.
“Should yogins accomplish and pursue [this realization]? Should they attain it
or find it? If this is true buddhahood, then where is this buddhahood found?” It
will not be encountered in any of the ten directions through being summoned, or
found, or arising of itself. It is to be sought and found in the mind.
“Where this is said?” As it is said in The Tantra Encompassing the Great
Empowerments:
Know that the realization of mind itself is the Buddha.98
It is this very realization that the reality of your own mind is completely pure
that is known as “the Buddha.” Your own mind is primordial purity and
buddhahood, and to comprehend that mind is primordial purity and buddahood is
to be accomplished as a Buddha, to see the face of a Buddha, and to hold a Buddha
in your hand. Therefore, it is sufficient to realize mind’s reality. It is not necessary
to seek buddhahood anywhere other than in the mind.
“If buddhahood is to be found in the mind, what about [the distinction between]
the mind and all of the phenomena that are mind’s manifestation – are they a
singularity or are they different?” They are taught as [non]dual. Where is this said?
In The Tantra of the Primal Supreme Glorious One:
97
This passage employs a Tibetan pun. “Inside” (kha nang) can also be read as within (nang) the
mouth (kha). A reference to the ritual consumption of sacred substances is probably intended here.
98
Not found in Tb.595, or in the following tantras with similar titles: Tb.445, 462, 557 and 595.
All dharmas have the characteristic of the sky

However the sky has no characteristics.99
Basic mind and all phenomena which are mind’s manifestation have the
charactistic of being empty and without a self, like the empty sky. [panel 5] The
sky has the characteristic of being without characteristics. Thus this mind exists
only insofar as it is a sky-like emptiness. But the sky is not to be defined as a lack
of characteristics; it is to be defined as that itself, meaning mind’s reality itself.
That itself is the world’s variety.
When mind’s reality itself is meditated upon with the methods of nescience,
there will be no realization. In this case all of the phenomena of saṃsāra, the
internal and external worlds, manifest. On the other hand, if you do comprehend
mind’s reality then all of the phenomena of nirvāṇa, such as the great accumulations
of the mudrās of body, speech, and mind, will manifest. When you comprehend
mind’s reality, that itself will manifest.
The meaning of this is that when you have no realization, all the appearances
of saṃsāra, such as the ordinary body and the afflictions, manifest like illusory
horses, elephants, and so on appearing one after the other. On the other hand, when
you have realization then you have all the phenomena of nirvāṇa, such as the
Buddha bodies, wisdoms, and pure lands. Because the phenomena of nirvāṇa and
saṃsāra manifest depending on whether there is realization or non-realization,
they are nondual. Therefore they are called the single ground or the single truth.
From the commentary on the previous text:
In that very lack of characteristics there is manifestation.
As explained earlier, depending on whether mind and phenomena are realized

as being without characteristics, phenomena manifest as either saṃsāra or nirvāṇa.
It is taught that all of these [phenomena] are a multitude of illusions, or a single
illusion. But it is also taught that they are ultimately the same.
“If thusness is manifest everywhere, what is the difference between achieving
and not achieving? And is achievement involved with characteristics or not?”
When that which is formless manifests as appearance with characteristics, the
characteristics are themselves uncreated and nondual.
Where is this said? In Guhyasamāja Tantra:
99
Tb.412: 477.1-478.1: / thams cad nam mkha’i mtshan nyid de/ / nam mkha’ la yang mtshan nyid med/
/ nam mkha’ dang mnyam sbyor ba yis/ / kun mchog mnyam pa nyid du gsal/ / zhes bya ba’i shes rab kyi pha
rol to phyin pa’o/. The tantra attributes these lines to the Prajñāpāramitā, and they are indeed to be found
(with minor variations) in the Prajñāpāramitānaya-adhyardhaśatika, but not in the canonical version
(Q.121). They appear in the Dunhuang version IOL Tib J 97: 53v.2-54r.1: / thams cad nam mkha’-i
mtshan nyīd de/ / nam mkha’ la n-i mtshan ny-id myed/ / nam mkhar mtshan nyid sbyor bas na/ / kun mchog
mnyam ba nyid rdzogs ’gyur/.
Uncreated phenomena...100
Without moving from the space of reality in which all phenomena are uncreated,
the mudrā of body, speech, and mind manifests as the various characteristics.
Within mere manifestation itself, the characteristics are already accomplished as
oneness. This is known as a rain of flowers upon the deity to be accomplished.
And becoming the deity to be accomplished, which has been prophesied in visions
or dreams, is known as the intrinsic deity. Once you have realized the equality and
unreality in body, speech, and mind between the deity and the practitioner, and
attained union [with the deity] in meditation, then the maṇḍala will be displayed
everywhere.
“How is this so?” Because whether [you meditate upon] a single deity or all
deities, they have a single nature. When you meditate only on the deity to be
accomplished, the maṇḍala is everywhere. Totally means in one lifetime. By
extension, the sameness discussed above also applies to unifying lesser objects of
contemplation with the truth.
“What about the perceptions of the senses and their objects?” The five senses
are the five Buddha-families, and each one of them is distinctly pure. Distinctly
means separate and without similarity. The sense-faculties are not similar to their
objects. Furthermore, the sense-faculties are not similar to each other, and the
different kinds of objects are not similar with each other.
With total equanimity
[panel 6] Total means fully manifest. Equanimity means that the five
sense-faculties are the Buddhas of the five families, and the five sense-objects are
the five consorts. The maṇḍala of the Buddhas and consorts of the five families is
primordial equanimity. When this is where you abide, you attain absorption in
sameness through your own power. When this is where you abide, you rest at this
site without mental activity. In the maṇḍala of the deities, you are blessed so that
the means remain the means and the forms remain the forms. Meditation is a
permanent state. This is also known as total one-pointedness.
Resting in equanimity
Having comprehended that the body, speech, and mind of the deity to be
accomplished, and the body, speech, and mind of the yogin are inseparably the
same, you should meditate. When you settle in equanimity in the mudrā of the
body, speech, and mind of the deity, this comprises the five empowerments, the
five Buddha families, the five objects, and the five consorts. You are always in
meditation in the maṇḍala of the deities and consorts of the five families.
From the commentary:
100
Tb.409: 823.4: / ma skyes pa yi chos rnams ni/ / ngo bo nyid kyis khyad par can/ / rnam par mi rtog
yang dag las/ / ye shes ’byung bar rab tu bsgrags/.
In brief, do not become distracted from the nature of the Noble Ones by other
forms of mind itself. To sum up, whatever appears in the objective aspect and
whatever mental concepts arise, do not let them distract you from the Noble Ones:
the Buddhas and consorts of the five Buddha-families.
“Is the achievement of this non-distraction by objects other than the nature of
the Noble Ones an incidental benefit, or the result itself?” This is the bursting forth
of the result, buddhahood itself.
“Where is this said?” The Tantra of the Union with All Buddhas says:
It is not easy to write about the source. Through causes and conditions the result
is accomplished as buddhahood.101
Sameness with the Buddhas

Ultimate and conventional truth are inseparable and of one taste. Ultimate truth
is one because it is uncreated. Conventional truth is one because it is illusory.
Furthermore, ultimate and conventional truth are one because they are inseparable.
It is like the rosary having a single string.
Eventually the nature of the tathāgatas is realized. “Where is this oneness?” In

buddhahood, you merge with oneness. “If body, speech, and mind are possessed
by the Buddha, then how are body, speech [and mind] revealed?” They are revealed
by wisdom. Ultimate truth is speech: the uncreated a. The illusory manifestations
of conventional truth are the body: o. The nonduality of these two is the mind: ō.
This is how to merge with realization through the method of the syllables.
“Where is the abode of these yogins?” Wherever the tathāgatas abide, that is
also the place for the yogin. The abode of the tathāgatas is where, having fully
comprehend the space of reality with their great wisdom, they reside in a state of
sameness within the space of reality, where the accumulations of merit are gathered
without limit, in the celestial palace of manifold jewels created by the power of
spontaneously present merit. This is also the yogi’s abode.
Where is this said? It is taught in [scriptures] like Tantra of the Mountain Peak:
In essence, the three worlds are the Buddha realms, space itself.102
This transcends renunciation of the three worlds. In the space of reality there
is no such thing as a bad deed. There is no need to accomplish the three worlds as
the genuine essence, for the three worlds are themselves the space of reality. [panel
7] They are not to be transformed into purity, for the vision of pure objects is itself
101
This passage was not found in any of the relevant texts in the Rnying ma rgyud ’bum and Bka’
’gyur.
102
Not found in Tb.411 or Bg.188.
pure. Because the vision of a Buddha is pure, the Buddha realms are also totally
pure.
This is different from renunciation of the three realms or three worlds. In the
pure land there is no distinction between an object and its antidote, for the three
worlds are themselves the Buddha realms. This is the state of peace in great
sameness which was discussed earlier. It is the state of the yogin who is the
personification of all the Buddhas, which is to be the same as all the Buddhas. The
Buddhas also manifest as the pure lands, the Buddha bodies, gestures, mansions,
celestial palaces, ornaments, music, and thrones. Thus the wisdom of the Buddhas
manifests in this way: nothing is bad, for whatever manifests, manifests with
wisdom. This very place is the abode of the great personification of sameness and
nonduality with the Buddhas.
By the power of aspiration. Due to having made aspirational prayers for the pure
realm of a Buddha, you arrive at the place to which you have aspired. Due to the
spontaneously present power of aspirational prayer, the pure realm has features
such as a ground of manifold jewels.
The palace comes first. To take a worldly example: when holding a party, it is
first necessary to prepare the venue. Similarly, when meditating on the deity’s
maṇḍala, it is first necessary to prepare the celestial palace. Thus the palace comes
first.
“What are the enlightened activities of these yogins?” Whatever the enlightened
activities of the tathāgatas may be, these are also the enlightened activities of the
yogins.
“Where is this said?” It is in the Tantra Proceeding from the One:
In as many worlds as there are grains of sand.103
The worldly realms above and below us are layered as in the golden astrological
diagrams, like a tent and its carpet. At the moment that noble Vajrapāṇi first
developed bodhicitta, he threw one of the two vajra boulders upwards, and the
other one downwards. In a moment, quick as a snap of the fingers, he stretched
out and held them. When Vajrapāṇi achieved the perfect buddhahood of a thousand
Buddhas, with his distant reach he perfected enlightened activites and the acts of
taming and wrathful subjugation. The fully enlightened Vajrapāṇi is known as
Vajraviśkambhana. When he gazes with his eyes of wisdom, then vajra boulders
103
The Gcig las ’phros pa’i rgyud is mentioned in some lists of the eighteen Mahāyoga tantras, but
I have not located an extant version of the tantra.
shake, and he acts for the benefit of beings in the multiplicity of worlds through
various enlightened activities.104
How do the saṃbhogakāya-like forms of these yogins manifest? However the
saṃbhogakāyas of the tathāgatas manifest, the saṃbhogakāya of yogin manifests
in the same way. [panel 8] The saṃbhogakāya of the tathāgatas is the experience
of the spontaneous presence of body, speech, and mind. It is also the experience
of the yogin.
As for the dharmakāya of the Buddhas, the dharmakāya is the nonduality of
space and wisdom. The dharmakāya is not limited to a single Buddha; however,
it is not [to be identified with] the bodhisattvas residing on the bhūmis, nor to the
śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and all of the worldly deities. According to the division
of buddhahood into the different Buddha bodies, the dharmakāya is called Buddha,
and because of the blessings of the dharmakāya, or because it possesses infinite
saṃbhogakāyas, it performs the activites of the saṃbhogakāyas.
The power of mantras.
The saṃbhogakāya is the mantra. The [Sanskrit] term is man tra. The meaning
of ma is as follows. Not moving from the dharmakāya without characteristics, the
dharmakāya without characteristics itself manifests as the Buddha body with
particular characteristics, the manifest saṃbhogakāya. The characteristics are mere
manifestation in itself, yet they do not move a particle away from the dharmakāya
without characteristics. They should be understood as nondual. The meaning of
the syllable tra is protection. Because it protects you from falling into the two
extremes, the mantra is the saṃbhogakāya. It has the power of being endowed
with two aspects: worldy and transworldly; and it creates wealth (saṃbhoga)
because it is endowed with infinite wealth.
The nirmāṇakāya is the mudrā. It has the power of the mudrās of method, and
creates wealth because it is endowed with infinite blessings. “When the benefit of
beings is accomplished by the nirmāṇakāya, how is it done?” [The nirmāṇakāyas]
104
This dense passage characterizes Vajrapāṇi (phyag na rdo rje) as the axis mundi that holds the
upper realms and lower realms in place. There seems to be a symbolic reading of this onto the structure
of the stūpa (mchod rten), with its base, dome, and central pillar. These elements in turn derive from
Indic architectural symbolism. The cosmological meaning of viśkambhana in Vedic literature is translated
by Coomaraswamy as a “pillaring apart” of the two realms, a symbolic function of the central pillar of
Indian domed constructions, including the dome of the stūpa; see A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Door in
the Sky: Coomaraswamy on Myth and Meaning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 204-9.
In Purāṇic cosmologies it is Indra who takes the role of separating and stablizing the two realms. Among
Tibetan sources, the term “vajra boulder” (rdo rje pha bong) also appears, in an entirely different
context, in the Testament of Ba (Dba’ bzhed); see Pasang Wangdu and Hildegard Diemberger, dBa’
bzhed: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet (Wien: Verlag
der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 100/28b. Note also that another Dunhuang
manuscript, IOL Tib J 338, provides an extensive discussion of the stūpa, including a different
cosmological reading of much greater complexity than the one found here (see Jacob Dalton and Sam
van Schaik, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Stein
Collection at the British Library [Leiden: EJ Brill, 2006], 67-68).
are endowed with provisions in proportion to their pure aspirations. This is

spontaneously present without effort.
The dharmakāya too is essentially unaccomplished.
The dharmakāya is without characteristics. Essentially unaccomplished means

the same as empty or without characteristics. It is because it is unaccomplished
that [the dharmakāya] can bring about infinite saṃbhogakāyas. The saṃbhogakāyas
bring about the wondrous benefit of self and others. The nirmāṇakāyas are endowed
with the qualities necessary for the training of beings. Furthermore, although it
may emanate for sentient beings in the form of a Noble One, its qualities set it
apart from other beings such as gods and kings. The accomplishment of the benefit
of beings is its wealth.
There are three kinds of training. [i] The training of the śrāvaka refers to the
tathāgatas teaching Lord Śākyamuni renunciation and ascetic discipline. [ii] The
training of the Mahāyāna refers to their teaching meditative absorption to the
saṃbhogakāya Vairocana on the tenth bhūmi. [iii] The training of the secret vehicle
was taught to Vajrapāṇi, who then remained on the peak of Mount Sumeru carrying
out the activities of vanquishing and subduing. Furthermore, [the nirmāṇakāyas]
are magical emanations of merit and awareness which bring together the four
activities.
Whatever the entourage of the tathāgatas may be, that is the entourage of the
yogin as well. [panel 9] The entourage of the tathāgatas comprises all the worldly
and trans-worldly [beings]. Therefore this is also the entourage of the yogin. Even
though all phenomena are inseparable, awareness is the greatest of them all. Because
awareness manifests as everything yet it is not an agent, it is taught to be the
entourage.
The mudrā’s characteristics refers to the mudrā without characteristics and the
existent mudrās that derive from it. The mudrā without characteristics is the
dharmakāya, and existent [mudrās] are the rūpakāya. Accordingly, in awareness
the dharmakāya without characteristics and the rūpakāya as the manifestation of
characteristics are nondual. This is known as holding the victory banner aloft.
[From] the commentary:
Methods means the existent mudrās. The insight of the two kinds of rūpakāya
has its cause in the space of the dharmakāya.
Not fixating means the dharmakāya. The space of reality pervades all
phenomena, and in that they are pervaded by space, they are nondual with the
wisdom of awareness. Not fixating on existents and characteristics is to be
pervaded by the dharmakāya.
Sameness means not being distinct from the dharmakāya. The manifestation
of the dharmakāya is the saṃbhogakāya, which does not move away from the
dharmakāya without characteristics. Although the different kinds of characteristics
of the saṃbhogakāya come forth and manifest, they are empty in their very
manifestation. They do not move away from being without characteristics. This
nonduality is the meaning of sameness.
In its pervasion of everything, the dharmakāya also pervades the saṃbhogakāya

endowed with worldly and transworldly wealth. All pervading refers to the radiant
Buddha bodies. The nirmāṇakāya is also all-pervading, or to put it another way,
it is generally pervaded: it is pervaded by the dharmakāya without fixation, and it
is also pervaded by the saṃbhogakāya. Thus the nirmāṇakāya is also pervasive.
“When the realized yogin attains full buddhahood, how does his accomplishment
of buddhahood manifest?” The difference between a yogin and a Buddha is the
same as the difference between the fully-formed garuḍa and the baby garuḍa in
the egg, or between the lioness and the lion in the womb.
“Then where is this said?” See the following:
The power to become the adversary. The baby garuḍa has the power to become
the adversary which conquers the serpent demons; this is its nature. The baby lion
has the power to become the adversary which defeats the elephants. The two are
to be understood causally. The baby garuḍa which has not yet emerged from the
egg will not be born as a crow or a magpie; it will definitely be born as a true
garuḍa. Once it is born it will become the adversary which conquers the serpent
demons. Likewise the baby lion which has not yet come forth from the womb
will not be born as a fox, weasel, or badger; it will be born as a true lion. Once it
is born it will definitely become the adversary which defeats the elephants.
In a similar way, the yogin who has realized sameness – if he has spontaneously
accomplished the activities of a genuine Buddha and has realized the sameness
of all phenomena – will not be born as a śrāvaka or a pratyekabuddha. He will
become a Buddha. After he has become a Buddha, he will conquer Māra and the
heretics, turn the wheel of the dharma, and so on. [panel 10]. His perfect grasp
of the enlightened mind of a Buddha will never falter. This is illustrated by the
teachings above.
“What is the correct way for these yogins to make offerings?” Having realized
that the object of the offering and the offerings made according to the different
ways of offering are inseparable, they offer self to self. “How is this offering
made?” When self is offered to self, all of the Noble Ones are pleased, and all
sentient beings are guided [to liberation] and satisfied. “Where this is said?” In the
Upāyapāśapadmamālā Tantra.
Offering to oneself...105
When you do not err from the reality of your own mind, your mind is the
bodhicitta awareness. This is offering to oneself. This is an activity which pleases
the tathāgatas. “Why?” Because the tathāgatas are the reality of the minds of
sentient beings. Or alternatively they are the act of comprehending sameness. The
105
Tb.416: 126.1: / bdag mchod kun mnyes thams cad bgrang /
realization of nondual sameness by an unerring yogin is also known as the

bodhicitta awareness.
Transcription
The text is quite clean, and most mistakes have already been corrected. I have
marked these corrections with light blue text with underline for interlinear
additions and red text between dashed lines for deletions. For the few obvious
mistakes I have made my own suggestions for correct readings in the footnotes.
I have not corrected the differences from Classical Tibetan that are common in
the Dunhuang manuscripts, such as las bstsogs for Classical Tibetan la sogs,
byang cub sems for byang chub sems, or lhun kyis grub for lhun gyis grub. The
ya btags appended to the syllable ma (in myed for example) has been retained,
and I have transcribed the reverse gi gu with a lower case -i.106
-
Transcription
[panel 1][line 1]༆། །རང་བཞན་ག་རལ་འབར་ན། །སམས་དང་སམས་སང་བའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་དམ། །ཀན་ནས་
[line 2]ཉན་མངས་པ་དང། རམ་པར་བང་བའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་རགས་ཀང་རང་མ་རགས་ཀང་རང། འཕལ་ལ་ལམ་
[line 3]གས་མ་བསབ་གཉན་པ་མ་བཅས་ཏ། ཡ་ནས་|ང|སངས་རས་པ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ལན་ཀས་གབ་པར་གནས་པ་ལ་བ།
[line 4]།གབ་པའ་ར|མ|ལ་འབར་ན། །རང་བཞན་ད་ཇ་ལ་བཞན་མ་ནར་པར་རགས་ནས། དའ་ངང་ད་གམས་པར་གར་
བ་ན། སངས་
[line 5]རས་དང་བང་ཆབ་སམས་པ་དང། རགས་འཛན་ལས་བསགས་ཏ། ད་ན་རང་བཞན་ད་བང་བ་ཞས་ཀང་བ། །སད། །དམ་ལ་
[line 6]གནས་པའ་རལ་འབར་ན། སན་བཅམ་ལན་འདས་ཀས། དབང་ཕག་དང་མ་ལས་བསགས་པ་དབང་ད་བསས་ཤང་
བཏལ་ནས།
[line 7]དམ་ཚག་ཕག་ས། ལས་འད་དང་འད་བས་ཤག་ཅས་བཀས་བསས་པ་བཞན་ད་བག་བར་སན་ཁས་བངས་དམ་བཅས་པ་
[line 8]ལས་མ་འདའ་བར་བད་པ་ལ་བ། །དམ་ཚག་རས་ས་བསབ་པའ་རལ་འབར་ན། གང་མའ་ཡན་ཏན་དང་མ་ལན་ན་ཡང།
[line 9]ད་དང་ཅ་མཐན་ད་སང་ཤང་སབ་པ་ལ་བ། །བ་མའ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་ཏ་ཞས་བ་|བ་|ན། ཏང་ང་འཛན་རམ་བཞ་རམ་
པས་བསད་པ་
[line 10]ལ་མ་བགའ། །ཡངས་ས་རགས་པའ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་ལ་བག། །ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ལན་ཀས་གབ་པའ་
[line 11]དཀལ་འཁར་ད་བསམ་པ་རལ་ཞས་པ་ན། ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ལ་རལ་ཞས་བ་ས། །དབངས་ལས་ཡན་ཏན་ཐམས་ཅད་
[line 12]འབང་བའ་རར་གར་བས། དབངས་ས། དབས་དང་མཐའ་མད་པ་མ་དམགས་པ། མཚན་ཉད་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པ་དང་མཐན་པ་
106 In accordance with THL and JIATS protocols, the reverse gi gu, which is commonly
transliterated as a capital “I,” is rendered as a lower case “i” preceded by a dash, that is, “-i.”
[line 13]ལར་ཕང་གཅད་ན། ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ཡད་མད་དང། རག་ཆད་ཀ་མཐའ་ཐམས་ཅད་དང་བལ་བས་མཐའ་མད། མཐའ་
[line 14]མད་སའ་དབས་ཏ་དབས་ཀང་མད། །མད་ད་གང་ག་ང་བར་ཡང་མ་གབ་ཅང་མ་དམགས་པས། །སངས་རས་བསམས་
[line 15]པས་མ་མཛད། སམས་ཅན་སOན་པས་མ་བཅས་ཅ་བཞན་བ་ལ་རལ་ཞས་བ། ཟབ་མ་ལར་ན་རལ་ཞས་བ་བ་ན། ཆས་
[line 16]ཀ་དབངས་ལ་རལ་ཞས་བ་ས། དབས་དང་མཐའ་མད་ཅས་པ། ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་དས་གསམ་ད་འདས་མ་བས་པས་ཡད་
[line 17]ཡད་པའ་མཐའ་དང་ཡང་བལ་ལ། མཚན་མ་ས་ཚགས་པར་སང་ཞང་ས་སར་བ་བ་བད་པས་ན། མད་པའ་མཐའ་དང་ཡང་
[line 18]བལ་བས་མཐའ་ཡང་མད། མ་དམགས་ཞས་པ་ན། གཉOས་ས་མད་པ་ལ་བ་ས། །ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་དས་གསམ་ད་འདས་མ་
[line 19]|མ|བས་པ་ལས་མ་གཡས་བཞན། །མཚན་མ་ས་ཚགས་པར་མ་འགགས་པར་སང་ལ། སང་ཙམ་ཉད་ན་མཚན་མ་
[line 20]མད་པ་ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ཀང་མ་གཡས། ཏ། །མཚན་མ་དང་མཚན་མ་མད་པ་གཉས་མད། པས། །ཡད་
[line 21]མད་གཉས་ས་མགས་པ་ལ་རལ་ཞས་བ་ས། གཉས་ས་མད་པ་ད་ན་སངས་རས་བསམ་པས་མ་མཛད།
[line 22]སམས་ཅན་སན་པས་མ་བཅས་པ་ལ་རལ་ཞས་བ་ས། །འབར་ཅས་བ་བ་ན། མཚན་མ་མད་པ་དང་གཉས་ས་
[line 23]མད་པར་རགས་པ་ལ་འབར་|པ་|ཅས་བ་བ་འམ། ཡང་ན་ཕ་ནང་ག་ཆས་འཇག་རན་དང་འཇOག་རན་ལས་
[panel 2][line 24]འདས་པའ་ར་དང་འབས་བར་བཅས་པའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་མཚན་མ་མད་པ་ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ས་ར་གཅག་པ་
[line 25]འམ། །གཉས་ས་མད་པར་ར་གཅག་པ་ལ་རལ་འབར་ཞས་བ། འབས་བ་ཆན་པ་ན་གསང་བའ་ཐག་པ་
[line 26]འདའ་དན་རགས་ཏ། འདOའ་གཞང་ལས་|འ|བང་བ་བཞན་བསབས་ན། ཉན107་ཐས་དང་རང་སང་རས་ས་མ་འགར་ག།
[line 27]བ་ན་མད་པའ་སངས་རས་ཉད་ད་འགར་བས་འབས་བ་ཆ་བ་འ། །སངས་རས་ས་|ཆ་|ན་མཚན་ཉད་ཀ་ཐག་
[line 28]པ་ཆན་པའ་ས་ནས་ཞགས་པ་རམས་ཀང་འགབ་པར་འདད་ན། ད་དག་ཀས་སངས་རས་གཏ་མ་ར་བ་ན་
[line 29]མ་ཡན་ན། ཡན་རང་པར་སང་སང་བསབ་བསབ་ནས་གསང་བའ་ཐག་པ་འདའ་དན་མ་རགས་པར་མཚན་ཉད་
[line 30]ཀ་ཐག་པ་ཉད་ཚས་སངས་རས་མ་ར། འདOའ་དན་རགས་ནས་གདད་སངས་རས་པར་འགར་བས་འབས་བ་
[line 31]ཡང་འད་ལས་ཆ་བ་མད། གབ་པ་ཆན་པ་ན། །མཚན་ཉད་ཀ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་ས་ནས་ཞགས་པ་བརན་པ་རབ་དང།
[line 32]ལན་བས་ཀང་སལ་པ་གངས་མད་པ་གསམ་ཀས་སང་ར་|བ་|ད་ཡང་གབ་པ་ཆང་བ་ན་མ་ཡན་ཏ་ཆ་ན། ད་བས་ཀང་
[line 33]འདO་དན་མཉམ་པ་ཉད་གཉས་མད་པར་རགས་ན། ཚ་གཅག་གམ། ཚ་འད་ཉད་ཀས་བ་ན་མད་པའ་སངས་རས་ས་
[line 34]འགབ་པས་གབ་པ་ཆན་པ་ཞས་བ་བ་འམ། ཡང་ན་མཚན་ཉད་ཀ་ཐག་པ་ལར། ཕགས་དང་ཕ་རལ་ཏ་ཕན་
[line 35]དཀའ་ཐབ་དང་སག་བསལ་གས་འགབ་པ་ལ་བ་མ་ཡན་ག། འདད་སད་པ་རམ་ལ་ཆས་ཉད་ཀ་རན་ད་
107 read ཉན་.

[line 36]རག་ནས། དགའ་བད་བའO་ལངས་སད་དང་ལན་བས་གབ་པ་འམ། ཡང་ན་མཚན་ཉད་ཀ་ཐག་པ་ལར། ཉན་
[line 37]མངས་པ་ལ་དང་འདད་པའ་ཡན་ཏན་ལ་འཁར་བའO་ར་འམ། །སན་བལས་ནས་གཉན་པ་བསན་ནས་|ས|།
[line 38]|གཉན་པ་|སངས་ནས་འགབ་པས་གབ་པ་ཡང་དའ་ལས་ཆ་བ་མད་ཅས་ཕ་མ་གཉས་གནས་མ་མད་པ་ཆས་
[line 39]ཀ་དབངས་ལས་ཀང་མ་གཡས་ཏ། གཉས་ས་མད་པར་བསམས་པ་ལས་རལ་བ་རམས་སས་ཤང་འབང་
[line 40]བ་འམ། འཁངས་པར་བསན། ཡང་ན་རལ་བ་རམས་ཀས་ས་བར་པ་ཞས་བ་ས། མ་སས་པ་ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ལས་
[line 41]མཚན་ས་ཚགས་པ་སས་ཤང་བང་བར་བསན། སས་བསན་ཞ་ན་རལ་བ་རམས་ཀས་བསན། ཆས་ས་ཆག་ག་ངང་
[line 42]བཞན་ན་བ་མའ་ནང་ནས་ཁའ་སས་བཞན། ཤས་པ་ལ་རལ་ཚག་ཞག་འབང་ས། དངས་པ་མད་པ་ལས་དངས་
[line 43]པ་ས་ཚགས་འབང་བར་བསན་པ་|ལ་|མ་འགལ་འམ། མཐན་པའO་དཔ་ཅ་ཡད་ཅ་ན། བ་མ་ལ་ཁའ་ག་དབང་པ་
[line 44]མད་ད་མ་འད་བ་ལས། ཁའ་ག་དབང་པ་ཡད་པ་མ་འད་བ་འབང་བ་བཞན་ན། ད་ཉད་ཀ་འགལ་ལས་ཡ་ཤས་
[line 45]ཀ་བན་རབས་ཤས ་པ་ལ། བན་རབས་ན། ཕག་རའ་དཀལ་འཁར་འམ་སལ་པ་ལ་བ། བསམ་མ་ཞས་པ་

108
[line 46]ན་། གཉས་མད་པར་བསམ་ཞས་བ། དཔ་ཅ་ལ་བ་ཞ་ན་ཞས་བ་བ་ན། མཐན་བའ་དཔ་ཅ་ཡང་ཡད་ཅ་ན་ཞས་
[panel 3][line 47]བའ། བ་མ་ལ་ཁའ་ག་དབང་པ་མད་པ་ལས། ཁའ་ག་དབང་པ་ཡད་པ་མO་འད་བ་འབང་བར་གར་པ་དང་འད་
[line 48]བར། དངས་པ་མད་པའ་ཆས་ཉད་ལས། དངས་པ་ས་ཚགས་པར་འབང་བ་མO་འགལ་ཏ། མ་འགལ་བའ་དཔའ་
[line 49]གཏན་ཚགས་ཀས་གབ་ན། ད109་བསབ་ན་དངས་ས་ཚགས་ད། ད་ནས་ལར་བཀད་ད་བསམ་པ་འམ། བསབ་པར་བ་བའ་
[line 50]ལ་གཅག་བསམས་པས་ཀན་འགབ་ཅ་ན། དངས་པ་ར་ར་ནས་ལར་བཀད་ནས་བསམས་མ་དགས། བསབ་པར་བ་བའ་
[line 51]ལ་གཅག་བསམས་པས། ཀན་བསམས་པར་འགར་ར། ད་ལར་ཡང་ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། སངས་རས་ཐམས་ཅད་
[line 52]དང། མཉམ་པར་སར་བའ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས། རང་ག་ལར་ན་བདག་སར་ན། ཤས་པ་ལས་བསགས་པས་བསན་ཏ།
[line 53]རང་ག་ལར་ན་ཤས་པ་ལས་བསགས་པ། དན་དང་རགས་གཉOས་ས་སར། དན་ནO་རང་ག་ལར་ན། རང་གO་སམས་
[line 54]ག་ཆས་ཉད་ཉད་ཆས་ཀ་སའ་བདག་ཉད་བང་ཆབ་ཀ་སམས་ཀ་རག་པ་དང་ལན་བ། ལའ་རང་བཞན་ཡOན་པ་ལ་
[line 55]རང་ག་ལ་ཞས་བ། རག་པས་ད་ལར་རགས་པ་ལ|ས|་བདག་སར་བ་ཞས་བ། དཀOལ་འཁར་ཀན་ད་ཞགས་པ་ཡOན་
[line 56]ཞས་བ་བ། ད་ལར་སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་ཏ། བང་ཆབ་ཀ་སམས་ཀ་རག་པ་དང་ལན་|བ་|ན། དབང་ཆད་གསམ་
[line 57]པ་དང། ར་ར་དབངས་དང། འག་བ་འདལ་བ་དང། དན་ཐམས་ཅད་གབ་པ་ལས་བསགས་པའ་དཀལ་འཁར་|ལ་|ད་
[line 58]འཇག་པ་ཡན་ཏ། ཅOའ་ཕར་ཞས་ན། བང་ཆབ་ཀ་སམས་ན་དཀལ་འཁར་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀ་ར་བ་ཡང་ཡན། རང་
108 read ཞས་.

109 read ད་.
[line 59]བཞན་ཡང་ཡན། དཀལ་ཏ་ཞགས་པ་ཡང། བང་ཅབ་ཀO་སམས་ཏ་རགས་པར་བ་བའ་ཐབས་ཀང་ཡOན་པའ་
[line 60]ཕར་ར། ད་ཡང་ཡག་ག་ཡག་ག་སག་ག་སག་ག་ལ་བ་མ་ཡན་ག། མངན་ད་གར་པ་ལ་ཤན་ཏ་ཞས་བ། མཉམ་
[line 61]སར་ག་ཤས་ པ་ན། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་བང་ཅབ་སམས་རགས་པ་ལ་བ། རགས་པས་ན་ཞས་པ་ན། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་

110
[line 62]ཉད་རགས་པ་ལ་བསད་ནམས་དང་ཡ་ཤས་ཀ་ཚགས་ལས་བསགས་པ་ཆ་བའ་ཡན་ཏན་ཐམས་ཅད་ཚང་ཞང་
[line 63]རགས་པས་ན། ད་ལ་བརལ་ཞགས་དང་དཀའ་ཐབ་བསད་ནམས་ཆང་ཆང་འད་ཡང་མ་ཆང་ས། ད་དག་ཀས་བསང་
[line 64]ཞང་གགས་བ་མ་དགས། པར། སངས་རས་ས་གབ། རགས་ས་སར་ན། རང་ག་ལར་ན་བདག་སར་ན་ཞས་
[line 65]པ་སབས་ཀས་ཉམས་ལ་གར་བདར་བཤད། བསད་ནམས་ཆན་པ་ན་བང་ཆབ་ཀ་ཕགས་དང་ཕ་རལ་ཕན་
[line 66]པ་ལས་བསགས་པ་དག་བའ་ར་བ་རམ་པར་དཀར་བའ་ཕགས་ཀང་བསད་ནམས་ཆ་ན། ད་བས་ཀང་ཇO་
[line 67]ལར་སང་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་ལའ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ཀང་ཕག་རར་བསམས་ན་ར་དང་འབས་བ་ བསད་ནམས་

111
[line 68]ས་བ་བ་ཐམས་ཅད། དང་ཚང་རགས་པས། བསད་ནམས་ཀང་ད་ལས་ཆ་བ་མད། ཡ་ཤས་ཆན་པ་ན། ཉན་
[line 69]ཐས་གང་ཟག་ལ་བདག་མད་པར་རགས་པ་དང། རང་སངས་རས་ཀས་གང་ཟག་ལ་བདག་མད་པར་རགས་
[line 70]པའ་སང་ད་ཆས་ལ་ཆས་ཀ་ཕགས་གཅག་ཏ་གཟངས་ག་ཕང་པ་བདག་པར་རགས་པ་དང། བང་ཅབ་སམས
[panel 4][line 71]པས་གང་ཟག་དང་ཆས་གཉས་ཀ་ལ་བདག་མད་པར་རགས་པ་ཡང་ཡ་ཤས་ཆ་ན། ད་བས་ཀང་མཚན་མ་མད་
[line 72]པ་གཉས་མད་པར་རགས་པའ་ཡ་ཤས་ལན་ཀས་གབ་པར་རགས་པ་འད་ལས་ཡ་ཤས་ཆ་བ་མད། ཆས་
[line 73]ཉད་ཀ་འཁར་ལ་ཁ་ནང་ད་འདས་པ་ཞས་བ་བ་ན་ཆས་ཉད་དང་སམས་ཉད་དང་དབངས་བ་བ་ཀན་གཅOག་
[line 74]ས། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་ལ་བ། འཁར་ལ་ན་དཀལ་བ་ས། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་ན་ན། སས་པ་མད་
[line 75]པའ་དཀལ་ལ་རག་པའ་ཡ་ཤས་ག་འཁར་གས་བསར་པས་དཀལ་འཁར་ཞས་བ། མ་རགས་ན་ན་མ་རག་པའ་
[line 76]དཀལ་|བ|། ལ། །ཕན་ཅ་ལག་ག་འཁར་དང་ལན་པས་དཀལ་འཁར་ར། ཁ་ནང་ད་འདས་ཞས་པ་ན། སམས་
[line 77]ཅན་ག་ཁ་ཕར་ལས་པ་ཡན་ཏ། སང་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་སམ་སང་བར་ཤས་བ་ཡན་བ་ལས། དངས་པ་མད་པར་ཡང་མ་ཤས་པ་
[line 78]ན། ཁ་ཕར་ལས་པ་ཡན། ཁ་ནང་ད་འདས་ཞས་བ་བ་ན། སང་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་སམས་སང་བར་ཤས་ལ། །ར་བ་སམས་
[line 79]དང་སམས་སང་བས་འདས་པས་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་དངས་པ་མད་པར་ཤས་ཤང་རགས་པ་ན་ཁ་ནང་ད་འདས་པ་འ། །་
[line 80]ཁའ་ནང་ད་འདས་པ་ཞས་ཀང་བ་ས། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་པའ་འདས་ན། དཔར་ན་ཁར་ར་ཟས་ཟས་ནས་མད་པར་
[line 81]གར་པ་དང་འད་བར། དངས་པ་དང་མཚན་མ་ཐམས་ཅད་ཟས་པ་དང་འད་བར། མད་གར་པར་ཁ་ཞས་ཀང་བ། སམས་
110 read ཞས་.

111 read བ་.
[line 82]ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་པ་ད་རམ་པར་བང་བའ་སར་གར་པས་ས་ཞས་ཀང་བ། མ་གནས་པའ་མ་ངན་ལས་འདས་པ|འ|ར་
[line 83]འཇག་པས་ཇག་པ་ཞས་ཀང་བ། ད་ལར་ཁ་སར་འཇག་པ་ས། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་མ་ནར་བར་རགས་པའ་ནང་
[line 84]ད་ཡན་ཏན་ད་བ་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་འདས་འ། རལ་འབར་པ་རམས་ཀས་བསབ་ཅང་དན་ད་གཉར་བར་བ་བ་འམ། ཐབ་པར་
[line 85]བ་བ་འམ་བཙལ་བར་བ་བ་ན། སངས་རས་ཉད་ན། སངས་རས་ད་གང་ནས་བཙལ་ཞ་ན། ཕགས་བཅ་གང་ནས་བས་པ་
[line 86]འམ། བཙལ་བ་འམ། རང་འབང་ད་ད་བས་རད་པར་མ་གར་ག། སམས་ལ་བཙལ་དང་རད་པར་གར་ཏ། ད་ལར་ཡང་
[line 87]ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། དབང་ཆན་བསས་པའ་ཏན་ཏས་ལས་ཞས་པའ་སམས་ཉད་རགས་པ་སངས་རས་ཏ་ཤས་པ། །རང་
ག་སམས་
[line 88]ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རམ་པར་དག་པར་རགས་པ་ད་ཉད་སངས་རས་ཡན་པས་ཞས་བ་བ་འམ། ཡང་ན་རང་གO་སམས་ཡ་ནས་
[line 89]རམ་པར་དག་ཅང་སངས་རས་པ་ཡན་དང། སམས་ཡ་ནས་རམ་པར་དག་ཅང། སངས་རས་པ་ཡན་པའ་དན་རགས་པ་
[line 90]ན་སངས་རས་ས་གབ་པ་འམ། སངས་རས་ཀ་ཞལ་མཐང་བ་འམ། སངས་རས་ལག་ཏ་འངས་ཟན་པ་ཡན་པས། སམས་
[line 91]ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་པ་ཁ་ནས་ཆག། སམས་ལ་གཞན་ད་སངས་རས་བཙལ་མ་དགས། སངས་རས་སམས་ལས་
[line 92]བཙལ་ན། སམས་དང་སམས་སང་བའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཅ་ལ་བ་ཡན། གཅག་པ་ཞག་ཡན་ནམ། འན་ཏ་ཐ་དད་པ་ཞག་
[line 93]ཡན་ནམ་ཞ་ན། གཉས་པ་ཡན་པར་བསན་ཏ། ད་ལར་ཡང་ཅ་མངན། དཔལ་མཆག་དང་པའ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས།
ཆས་ཀན་ནམ་
[line 94]ཀའ་མཚན་ཉད་ད། ནམ་ཀ་ལ་ཡང་མཚན་ཉད་མད་ཅས་པ། ར་བ་སམས་དང་སམས་སང་བའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་སང་
[line 95]ཞང། བདག་མད་པ་ནམ་ཀ་སང་པ་ལ་བའ་མཚན་ཉད་ཡན་ཏ། ནམ་ཀ་ན་མཚན་ཉད་མད་པའ་|མད་|མཚན་ཉད་ཅན་
[panel 5][line 96]ཡན་བས། སམས་ད་ན་ནམ་ཀ་སང་པ་བ་བ་ཙམ་ད་ཡང་གབ་པས། ནམ་ཀ་ལ་ཡང་མཚན་ཉད་མད་
མད་ཅས་བ། །
[line 97]ད་ཉད་ཆས ་བ་བ་ན་སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་ད་ཉད་ཅས་བ། བ། །ད་ཉད་འཇག་རན་ས་ཚགས་ས་ཞས་པ། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་

112
[line 98]ད་ཉད་མ་རག་པའO་བང་ཐབས་ཀས་བསམས་ས་མ་རགས་པ་ནO། སད་བཅག113་ག་འཇག་རན་འཁར་བའ་ཆས་
ཐམས་ཅད་ད་སང་
[line 99]ལ། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་ན། ཕག་རའ་ཚགས་ཆན་ཞས་མད་ལས་འབང་ས། ས་གསང་ཐགས་ག་ཕག་རའ་ཚགས་
[line 100]ཆན་པ་ལས་བསགས་པ་མ་ངན་ལས་འདས་པའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ད་སང་བ་ཡང། སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་རགས་པ་ད་ཉOད་
112 read ཅས་.

113 read བཅད་.
སང་ང།
[line 101]དན་ཤས་པ་ན། དཔར་ས་མའ་ར་དང་གང་པ་ཆ་ལས་བསགས་པ་གཅག་ལ་གཅག་ཚང་བ་དང་འད་བར། མ་
རགས་པའ་དས་ན།
[line 102]ལས་དང། སག་བསལ་ལས་བསགས་པ་འཁར་བའ་ཆས་ས་སང་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་རགས་པའ་ཚ། ས་དང་ཡ་ཤས་དང་ཞང་
[line 103]ཁམས་དག་པ་ལས་བསགས་པ་མ་ངན་ལས་འདས་པའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ད་ཡང་བས། རགས་མ་རགས་ཀ་ཁད་པར་གས་
[line 104]འཁར་བ་དང་མ་ངན་ལས་འདས་པའ་ཆས་ས་སང་བས་གཉས་མད་ད། གཞ་གཅག་པ་འམ་དན་གཅག་པ་ཞས་བ། ད་ཉད་ཀ་
[line 105]འགལ་འཇག་ནས་མཚན་ཉད་མད་པ་ད་ལར་སང་བ་ཡན་ཏ། ཤས114་པ། སམས་དང་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད། མཚན་
ཉད་མད་པར་
[line 106]རགས་མ་རགས་ཀ་ཁད་པར་གས། འཁར་བ་དང་མ་ངན་ལས་འདས་པའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་གང་ད་བསན115་པ་ད་
ལར་སང་བ་ཡOན་
[line 107]ན། ད་དག་ཀན་ཡང་ས་མང་ང་གཅག་ག་ཞས་པ་ཡང་ར་བ་ལས་དན་ཞས་འབང་བ་ལར་བཤད། ད་བཞན་ཉད་ཅང་ཡང་སང་
[line 108]ཡན་ན། ད་བསབ་མ་ཅ་ལར་བསབ། མཚན་མ་མད་པ་བསབ་པ་འམ། མཚན་མ་བསབ་ཅ་ན། ནམ་མད་པ་ཉད་མཚན་མས་
[line 109]སང་ལ་སང་ན། མཚན་མ་ཉ|ད|ས་116་མ་སས་ཏ་གཉས་མད་ད། ད་ལར་ཡང་ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། གསང་བ་
འདས་པའ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས་མ་
[line 110]སས་པའ་ཆས་རམས་ལས་བསགས་པས་བསན་ཏ། ལས་ཤས་པ། ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་མ་སས་པའ་ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ལས་
[line 111]མ་གཡས་བཞན་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ཀ་ཕག་ར་མཚན་མ་སང ་ཚགས་པར་སང་ལ། སང་ཙམ་ཉད་ན་མཚན་རམ་གཅག་ཏ་

117
[line 112]སན་བསབ་བསབ་པའ་ལ་ལ་མ་ཏག་བབ་པ་འམ། ཡད་ད་འང་བ་དང། ར་ལས་ས་བསན་པའ་བསབ་པའO་
[line 113]ལར་གར་པ་ལ་ངང་ག་ལ་ཞས་བ། ལའ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་དང་བསབ་པ་པ་ལས་ངན་ཡད་གསམ་མཉམ་
[line 114]ཞང་དབན ་མད་པར་རགས་ནས་བསམ་པ་ལ་བདག་སར་ན། དཀལ་འཁར་གང་ད་བསན་པ་ལ་བསགས་པ་ཀན་ཏ་

118
[line 115]ཞགས་པ་ཡན་ན། ཅ་ས་ཞ་ན། ལ་གཅOག་ལ་ཐམས119་ཀང་གཅག་ཀ་རང་བཞན་ནས་བསབ་པའ་ལའ་ཕག་རར་མཉམ་
[line 116]བར་བཞག་པ་ཁ་ནས། དཀOལ་འཁར་ཀན་ཏ་ཞགས་པ་ཡན་ན། ཤན་ཏ་ནO་ཚ་གཅག་པ་ལ་བ། མཉམ་སར་གང་མས་འག།
114 read ཞས་.

115 read བསན?
116 read གཉས་.
117 read ས་.
118 read བདན་.
119 read ཐམས་ཅད་.
[line 117]རགས་བ་བ་མན་ཅད་ཀང་དན་ལ་སར་བ་དས་འག། དབང་པ་དང་ཡལ་ག་དམགས་པ་ཅ་ལ་བ་ཞ་ན། དབང་པ་ལ་ན་རགས་
[line 118]ལ། ད་དང་དའ་རམ་པར་དག་ཅས་ན། རམ་པ་ཞས་པ་ན་བ་བག་མ་མཐན་པ་ལ་བ་ས། དབང་པ་དང་ཡལ་ཡང་མ་མཐན།
[line 119]དབང་པ་ཡང་ནང་མ་མཐན། ཡལ་ག་རམ་པའ་བ་བག་ཀང་ནང་མ་མཐན་བ་ལ་བ། ཤན་ཏ་མཉམ་པར་བཞག་པས་
[panel 6][line 120]ཞས་པ་ལ། ཤན་ཏ་ནO་མངན་ད་གར་པ་ཞས་བ། མཉམ་པར་བཞག་པས་ན་ཞས་བ་བ་ནO། དབང་པ་ལ་
ན་རགས་ལའ་
[line 121]སངས་རས། ཡལ་ལ་ན་ཡལ120་ལ་ས། རགས་ལ་ཡབ་ཡམ་ག་དཀལ་འཁར་ཡ་ནས་མཉམ་པར་བཞག་ས། གནས་པ་
[line 122]ཡན་བས་ནས་རང་ཤགས་|པ་|ཀས་མཉམ་པར་བཞག་ས། གནས་པ་ཡན་པས་ན། ད་ཡང་ཡན་ན་བའ་སར་མ་སམས་
[line 123]བཞན། གཞག་པར་|ལ་|ལའ་དཀལ་འཁར་ད་ཐབས་ལས་ཐབས་ས་གར་ར། གཟགས་ལས་གཟགས་ས་
གར་པར་བན་
[line 124]གས་བརབས་ཏ། དས་རག་པར་བསམ་མ། །ཡང་ན་ཤན་ཏ་ར་གཅག་ཞས་བ། མཉམ་པར་བཞག་པས་ན་ཞས་པ་ན་
[line 125]བསབ་པར་བ་བའ་ལའ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་དང། རལ་འབར་པའ་ལས་ངག་ཡད་གསམ་མཉམ་ཞང་དབར་མད་པར་
རགས་ནས།
[line 126]བསམ་བ་ལ་བ་ས། ལའ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ག་ཕག་རར་མཉམ་པར་བཞག་པས་ན། དབང་པ་ལ་རགས་ལ་ཡལ་ལ་
ཡམ་ལ་ས། རགས་
[line 127]ལ་ཡབ་ཡམ་ཀ་དཀལ་འཁར་ད་དས་རག་པར་བསམ་མ། འགལ་ལས་མདར་ན། འཕགས་པའ་རང་བཞན་ལས་སམས་ཉད་
[line 128]གཞན་ད་མ་གཡང་བའ་ཞས་པ་ན། མདར་འབ་ཀས་བསས་ན་ཡལ་ག་རམ་པར་གང་ད་སང། སམས་ཀ་རག|ས|་པ་ཅ་
ས་|བ་|ཡང་
[line 129]འཕགས་པ་རགས་ལའ་སངས་རས་རགས་ལའ་ཡབ་ཡམ་ད་མ་ཡངས་པར་བསམ་མ། འཕགས་པའO་རང་བཞན་ལས་ཡལ་
[line 130]གཞན་ད་མ་གཡང་བར་བསབས་ན། ཕན་ཡན་ནམ་འབས་བ་ཅ་ཡད་ཅ་ན། འབས་བ་སངས་རས་ཉད་འབབ121་
པའ་ཕར་ར། ད་ལར་
[line 131]ཡང་ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། སངས་རས་ཐམས་ཅད་དང་མཉམ་པར་སར་བསར་122བའ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས། འབང་ར་བ་ན་ག་
ས་བས་མ་བས་ཏ་ར་
120 read ཡམ་.

121 read འགབ་.
122 read སར་.
[line 132]རན་ཀས་འབས་བ་སངས་རས་ས་འགབ། འགལ་ལས་དན་དམ་པ་དང་ཀན་རབ་ད་དབར་མད་པར་ར་གཅག་པ་
དང་ཞས་པ་ན།
[line 133]དན་དམ་པར་མ་སས་པས་གཅག། ཀན་རབ་ད་ས་མར་གཅག། དན་དམ་པ་དང་ཀན་རབ་ད་ཡང་དབར་མད་པར་གཅག་པ་
[line 134]ན། ལའ་འཕང་བ་ར་གཅག་པ་ལ་བ་ལགས། དཀས་ལས་ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པའ་རང་བཞན་ད་རགས་པས་ཞས་པས་ན།
[line 135]གཅག་ན་གང་གཅOག་ཅ་ན། སངས་རས་པར་གཅག་ཅས་པ་དང་སར། སངས་རས་ལ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་མངའ་
ལ། ས་གསང་
[line 136]གང་གས་སན་ཞ་ན། ཡ་ཤས་སན་ཏ། དན་དམ་པར་ན། མ་སས་པ་ན་ཨ་ས་གསང་གསང123་། ཀན་རབ་ད་ས་
མར་སང་བ་ན་ཨ་ས་
[line 137]ས གཉས་མད་པས་ན་ཨ་ས་ཐགས། ད་ན་ཡ་ག་འབའ་ཚལ་ད་རགས་པ་དང། སར། །རལ་འབར་པ་ད་དག་ག་
གནས་ཇ་ལ་བ་
[line 138]ཞ་ན། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པའ་བཞགས་གནས་གང་ཡན་པ། །རལ་འབར་པའ་གནས་ཀང་ད་ཡན་ཏ། ད་བཞན་
གཤགས་པའ་
[line 139]བཞགས་གནས་ན། ཡ་ཤས་ཆན་པས་ཆས་ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ཐགས་ས་ཆད་ནས། ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་མཉམ་པ་ཉད་
ཀ་ངང་ལ་བཞགས་
[line 140]པ་དང། བསད་ནམས་ཀ་ཚགས་དཔག་ཏ་མད་པས་བསགས་པ་དང། བསད་ནམས་ལན་གས་གབ་པའ་དབང་
གས་རན་པ་ཆ་ས་
[line 141]ཚགས་ལས་གབ་པའ་གཞལ་ཡས་ཁང་བཞགས་གནས་ཡན་ནང། རལ་འབར་པའ་གནས་ཀང་ད་ཡན་ན། ད་ལར་ཡང་ཅ་
[line 142]མངན་ཞ་ན། ར་བའ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས། སད་གསམ་ང་བར་དབངས་ཉད་ཞང་ཞས་པ་ལ་བསགས་པས་བསན། སད་པ་གསམ་
[line 143]སངས་པའO་ཕ་རལ་ན། ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་བ་བ་ལག་ཤག་ན་མད་ད། སད་པ་གསམ་ཉད་ཡང་དག་པའ་ང་བར་མ་འགབ་ས།
[panel 7][line 144]སད་པ་གསམ་ཉད་ཆས་དབངས་ཡན། ད་ན་དག་པར་མ་གར་ཀང། དག་པ་རམས་ཀO་མཐང་པ་དག།
སངས་རས་གཟགས་པ་རམ|ས|།
[line 145]དག་ཕར། སངས་རས་ཞང་ཡང་རམ་པར་དག་ཅས་འབང་ས། ཁམས་གསམ་འམ། སད་པ་གསམ་པ་འད་
སངས་པའ་ཕ་རལ་
[line 146]ན། ཞང་དག་པ་བ་བ་ཞག་གཉན་རས་ས་བཅད་པ་མད་ད། སད་པ་གསམ་ཉད་ཞང་དག་པ་ཡན། མཉམ་
123 Scribal error.

|ཉ་|སར་ཉད་ཆ་བའO་ཞ་བ་
[line 147]གང་ད་བསན་པའ་གནས་ད་ཉད། སངས་རས་ཐམས་ཅད་མཉམ་སར་བའO། སངས་རས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀ་བདག་
ཉད་ཆན་པའ124་
[line 148]རལ་འབར་པའ། གནས་ཡན་པ་འམ། ཡང་ན་སངས་རས་ན་ཞང་ཁམས་དག་པ་དང། ས་དང་ཕག་ར་དང་ཕ་
བང་དང་གཞལ་མད་ཁང་དང།
[line 149]རན་དང་རལ་མ་དང་གདན་ཁད་ལས་བསགས་པར་སང་བས། ཡང། །སངས་རས་ཀ་ཡ་ཤས་ཉད་ད་ལར་སང་
ས། ལག་ཤOག་ན་མད་ད།
[line 150]ཅར་སང་ཡང། ཡ་ཤས་དང་སང་བས། གནས་ད་ཉད་སངས་རས་དང་མཉམ་པར་སར་བ་སངས་རས་དང་
གཉས་ས་མད་པའ་བདག་ཉད་ཆན་
[line 151]པའ་གནས་ཡན། འགལ་ལས་སན་ལམ་ག་དབང་གས་ཞས་པ་ན། སངས་རས་ཀ་ཞང་དག་པར་སན་ལམ་བཏབ་པས།
[line 152]སན ་ལམ་གནས་མཐར་ཕན་ཅང། སན་ལམ་ལན་གས་གབ་དབང་གས། རན་པ་ཆ་ས་ཚགས་གཞ་ལ་

125
བརགས་པའ་ཞང་
[line 153]དག་པར་འགར་ར། འགལ་ལས་དང་པའ་ཕ་བང་ཞས་པ། དཔར་འཇག་རན་ན་སན་མ་ཞག་བ་ས། མགན་
བསགས་ན་
[line 154]དང་པར་བཀད་ས་བཤམ་དགས་པ་དང་འད་བས། ལའ་དཀལ་འཁར་བསམ་ན། དང་པར་གཞལ་ཡས་ཁང་
བསད་དགས་
[line 155]པས། དང་པའ་ཕ་བང་ཞས་བ། རལ་འབར་པ་ད་དག་ག་ཕན་ལས་ཅ་ལ་ཞ་ན། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པའ་ཕན་ལས་གང་
[line 156]ཡན་བ། རལ་འབར་པའ་ཕན་ལས་ཀང་ད་ཡན་ན། ད་ལ་ཡང་ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། གཅOག་ལས་ཕས126་པའ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས་
[line 157]འཇག་རན་ག་ཁམས་མང་པ་རལ་རད་ད་ཞས་བ། འཇག་རན་ག་ཁམས་ཡན་མན་ད་ན་གསར་གབ་ཙ་བར|ཨ|གས་
[line 158]པ་འད་ལ། ཕན་ཚན་ད་ན། གར་བཏང་བ་འད་ས། ད་ཡང་དཔལ་ཕག་ན་ར་ར་དང་པ་བང་ཆབ་ཀO་སམས་བསད་ཙམ་ན།
[line 159]ར་ར་ཕ་བང་གཉས་ལས་གཅག་ཡར་ཕངས། གཅག་མར་ཕངས་པ་ད། ས་གལ་གཏགས་པའ་ཡད་ཙམ་ལ། བརང་
[line 160]གགས་གཅག་ཙམ་ད་ཕOད་པ་ད། ཕག་ན་ར་ར་སངས་རས་སང་མངན་པར་རགས་པར་སངས་རས་པ་རངས་པར་
[line 161]ག་གཏགས་འདལ་བ་དང། དགས་པ་འཇམས་པ་ལ་བསགས་པའ་མཛད་སད་དང། ཕOན་ལས་རགས་པར་མཛད།
124 Manuscript has one blank line after this syllable.

125 read སན་.
126 read ཕས་.
[line 162]ནས། །གདད་ཕག་ན་ར་ར་མངན་པར་སངས་རས་ས། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པ་ར་ར་རམ་པར་གནན་པ་ཞས་བ་བར་གར་
[line 163]པའO་ཡ་ཤས་ཀ་སན་གས ་གཟགས་ནས། ད་དང་ར་ར་ཕ་བང་པO་ལ་ལ།128་འག་བ་ལ་མཐའ་ཐག་པ་ད་སད་ཀ་འཇOག

127
[line 164]རན་ག་ཁམས་མང་པ་རལ་སད་ད་ཕOན་ལས་ས་ཚགས་|ཆ་|ཀས་འག་བའ་དན་མཛད། རལ་འབར་པ་ད་དག་ཀO་ལངས་
[line 165]སད་ལ་བ་དག་འབང་ཞ་ན། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པའ་ལང་སད་གང་ཡན་པ། རལ་འབར་པའ་ལང་སད་ཀང་ད་
[panel 8][line 166]ཡན་ན། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པའO་ལངས་སད་ན་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ལན་གས་གབ་པ་ལ། ལངས་སད་
དང་རལ་འབར་
[line 167]པའ་ལངས་སད་ཀང་ད་ཡན་ན།སངས་རས་པ་ཆས་ཀ་ས་ས། ཆས་ཀ་ས་ན་དབངས་དང་ཡ་ཤས་གཉས་མད་པ་ལ་
[line 168]བ་བ་དང། ཆས་ཀ་ས་ན་སངས་རས་ཉག་ཅག་ལ་མཐའ་བ་མ་གཏགས་པ། ས་ལ་གནས་པའ་བང་ཅབ་སམས་པ་
[line 169]མན་ཅད་ནས། ཉན་ཐས་དང་རང་རལ་བ་དང། ལ་དང་བཅས་པའ་འཇག་རན་གང་ལ་ཡང་མད་ད། སངས་རས་
[line 170]ན་སས་ཕ་བས། ཆས་ཀ་ས་ལ་སངས་རས་ཞས་བ། ཆས་ཀ་སའ་བན་རབས་སམ། ལང་སད་བསམ་གཉOས་གOས་མ་
[line 171]ཁབ་པ་དང་ལན་པས། ད་ལ་ལང་སད་པར་མཛད་ད། སགས་ཀ་མཐ་ཡང་ཞས་པ་ན། ལང་སད་རགས་པའ་ས་ས།
[line 172]སགས་ཀ་ས་ན་མན་ཏ་ས། མ་མ་ན་ས་ལས་དངས་ན་ཤས་པ་ས། ཆས་ཀ་ས་མཚན་མ་མད་པ་ལས་མ་གཡས་བཞན་
[line 173]ཆས་ཀ་ས་མཚན་མ་མད་པ་ཉད། སང་བའ་ལང་སད་རགས་པའ་ས་མཚན་མའ་བ་བག་འགགས་པར་སང་ལ།
[line 174]མཚན་མར་ན|ཨ་|སང་ཙམ་ཉད་ན། མཚན་མ་མད་པ་ཆས་ཀ་ས་ལས་རལ་ཙམ་ཡང་མ་གཡས་ཏ། གཉས་
ས་མད་པ་ཤས་
[line 175]པས། ཏ་ཏ་ནO་ས་ལས་དངས་ན། སབ་པ་ས། མཐའ་གཉས་ས་མ་ལང་བས་སབ་པས། སགས་ན་ལངས་སད་རགས་
[line 176]པ་ས། འཇགས་རན་དང་འཇག་རན་ལམ129་འདས་པའ་ལང་སད་རམ་གཉས་དང་ལན་པའO་མཐ་འམ་ལང་སད་བསམ་
[line 177]གས་མ་ཁབ་པ་དང་ལན་པ་ལ་ལངས་སད་པར་མཛད་ད། ཕག་རའO་ཞས་པ་ན་སལ་པའ་ས་ས། ཐབས་ཀ་ཕག་རའ་
[line 178]མཐ་འམ། བན་ཀ130་རབས་ཀང་བསམ་གས་མ་ཁབ་པ་དང་ལན་པ་ལ་ལངས་སད་པར་མཛད་ད། སལ་པའ་
སས་འག་བའ་
127 read གཉས་.

128 པ་ལ་ལ་ (pri li li) here belongs to a family of poetic sound-phrases characteristic of Old Tibetan poetry, and is
particularly reminiscent of the syllables ས་ལ་ལ་ (si li li) repeated several times in the Old Tibetan Chronicle
(Pelliot tibétain 1287, ll.420–422). On these syllable groups, see Géza Uray, “Queen Sad-mar-kar’s Songs in
the Old Tibetan Chronicle,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, no. 25: 31–32. Although the
exact phrase པ་ལ་ལ་ has not been found elsewhere, other syllable groups ending ལ་ལ་ (li li) generally seem to
indicate the visual and aural imagery of the thunderstorm: rumbling, rattling, rolling, flickering, or flashing.
129 read ལས་.
130 read གས་.
[line 179]དན་མཛད་པ་ཡང། འག་བ་ཅ་ལར་འདལ་བ་འམ། ཇO་ལར་དག་པ་ཡད་བཞན་ད་འབར་ལན་ཏ། ད་བརལ་བ་མད་པར་
[line 180]ལན་ཀས་གབ། ཆས་ཀ་སའ་རང་ཀ་ར131་བར་ཡང། མ་གབ་ཅས་པ། ཆས་ཀ་ས་མཚན་མ་མད་པ་ཡན་དང།
རང་ག་ང་བར་
[line 181]མ་གབ་ཅས་པ། མཚན་མ་མད་ཅས་བ་བ་འམ། སང་བ་བ་བ་ཙམ་ད་ཡང་མ་གབ་པའ་ཕར། བསམ་གས་མ་ཁབ་
[line 182]པ་དང་ལན་བ་ལ་ལངས་སད་པར་མཛད་ད། ལང་སད་རགས་པའ་ས་ན། བདག་དང་གཞན་ག་དན་ཕན་སམ་ཚགས་
[line 183]པར་མཛད་ད། སལ་པའ་ས་ན་འག་བ་འདལ་བའO་ཡན་ཏན་དང་ལན་པ་འམ། ཡང་ན་ཕགས་པའ་ས་དང།
སམས་ཅན་
[line 184]ད་སལ་ན་ཡང་ལ་དང་མOའ་རལ་པར་ལས་བསགས་པ་གཞན་ལས་ཁད་པར་ད་གར་པའ་ཡན་ཏན་དང་ལན་པས། འག་བའ་
[line 185]དན་མཛད་པ་ཉད་ལངས་སད་པ་ཡན། འདལ་བ་རམ་གསམ་ན། ཉན་ཐས་ཀས་འདལ་བ་ལ་བཅམ་ལན་འདས་
ཤག་ཀ་ཐབ་
[line 186]པ་རབ་ཏ་བང་བ། དཀའ་ཐབ་མཛད་པར་སན། ཐག་པ་ཆན་པས་འདལ་བ་ལ། རམ་པར་སང་བ་མཛད་ལངས་
སད་རགས་པའ་
[line 187]ས་ས་བཅ་པ་ད་ལ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་ཀ་ཆས་སན་པར་མཛད། གསང་བའ་ཐག་པས་འདལ་བ་ལ། དཔལ་ཕག་ན་ར་རར་བསན་
[line 188]ནས། ར་རབ་ཀ་ཟམ་ལ་བཞགས་ས། བདད་འདལ་ཞང་དགས་པར་འཇམས་པར་མཛད་ད། ཡང་ན་རག་པ་
བསད་ནམས། ར་ཕལ་
[line 189]མངན་སམ་སད་པ་བཞར་སར་ད་རང། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པའ་འཁར་གང་ཡན་བ། རལ་འབར་པའ་འཁར་ཡང་
ད་ཡན་ཏ། ད་བཞན་
[panel 9][line 190]གཤགས་པའ་འཁར་ན་འཇག་རན་དང་འཇག་རན་ལས་འདས་པ་ཐམས་ཅད་ཡན་པས། རལ་འབར་
བའ་འགར132་ཡང་
[line 191]ད་ཡན་ན། ད་ཡང་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་དབར་མད་པར་རག་པ་ན་གཙ་བ་ཡན། རག་པ་ཐམ་ཅད་ད་སང་ཞང་བ། མད་པས་
[line 192]ན་འཁར་ཡན་པར་སན། ཕག་རལ133་མཚན་ཞས་པ་ན། མཚན་ཉད་མད་པའ་ཕག་ར་དང། ད་ལས་དངས་
བང་ག་ཕག་
[line 193]ར་ས། མཚན་ཉད་མད་པའ་ཕག་ར་ན་ཆས་ཀ་ས། དངས་བང་ན་གཟགས་ཀ་ས། ད་ལར་ཆས་ཀ་ས་མཚན་མ་
131 read ང་.

132 read འཁར་.
133 read ར་.
མད་པ་དང།
[line 194]གཟགས་ཀ
134
་མཚན་མར་སང་བ་|ཉད་|གཉས་ས་མད་པར་རག་པ་ན་རལ་མཚན་དང་ལན་པ་ལ་ཆང་ཞས་བ། འགལ་པ་
[line 195]ཐབས་ན་དངས་བང་ག་ཕག་ར། གཟགས་ཀ་ས་རམ་གཉས་ག་ཤས་རབ་ན་ཆས་ཀ་ས་དབངས་ལ་ར་ཞས་བ། མ་དམOགས་
[line 196]ཞས་པ་ན། ཆས་ཀ་ས་ས། ཆས་ཀ་དབངས་ཀས་ཆས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་ཁབ་པ་དང། དབངས་ཀས་གར་ཁབ་པར་རག་
[line 197]པའ་ཡ་ཤས་|ཀས་|གཉས་མད་པ། དངས་པ་དང་མཚན་མར་མ་དམགས་པ་ཆས་ཀ་སས་ཀང་ཁབ་བ།
མཉམ་ཉད་ཞས་
[line 198]པ་ན། ཆས་ཀ་ས་ལས་མ་གཞན་བ། ཆས་ཀ་ས་ཉད་སང་བའ་ལང་སད་རགས་པའ་ས་ས། ཆས་ཀ་ས་མཚན་མད་པ་
[line 199]ལ་མ་གཡས་བཞན། ལངས་སད་རགས་པའ་ས་མཚན་མའO་རམ་པར་ཡང་འབང་ཞང་སང་ལ། སང་བཞན་ད་སང་ས།
[line 200]མཚན་མད་པ་ལས་གཡས་ཏ། གཉས་ས་མད་པ་ན་མཉམ་པ་ཉད་ཅས་བ་ས། ཆས་ཀ་སས་གར་ཁབ་པར་འཇག་
རན་དང།
[line 201]འཇག་རན་ལས་འདས་པའ་ལངས་སད་དང་ལན་པའ། ལངས་སད་རགས་པའ་ས་ཀང་ཁབ། ཀན་ཏ་ཁབ་པ་ན་སལ་
[line 202]པའ་ས་ས། སལ་པའ་སས་ཀང་ཀན་ཁབ་བ། ཡང་ན་ཁབ་པ་སར་གཏང་ས། མ་དམགས་པ་ཆས་ཀ་སས་ཀང་ཁབ།
[line 203]ལངས་སད་རགས་པའO་སས་ཀང་ཁབ། ཀན་ཏ་ཁབ་ས། སལ་པའ་ས་ཀང་ཁབ་ཅས་བ། ད་ལར་རགས་པའ་རལ་
[line 204]འབར་པས། སངས་རས་བཞན་མངན་སམ་འགར་ཞང། སངས་ར|ཨ|ཨས་ས་གབ་པར་ཅ|ག་|་མངན་
ཞ་ན། སངས་རས་
[line 205]དང་རལ་འབར་པའ་ཁད་ན། རལ་རགས་པའ་ཁང་དང། སང་འགའ་|མ་|མ་དང། མངལ་ས་ས་ང་ན་
གནས་པའ་འཕ་གའ135་ཁད་
[line 206]བར་ཙམ་ཡད་ད། ད་ལར་ཡང་ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། །གཉན་པར་འགར་པའ་མཐ་སབས་ན། ཞས་པ། ཁང་ག་འཕ་ག་ལ་རང་
[line 207]བཞན་ག་ཀ་འདལ་བའ་གཉན་པར་གར་པའ་མཐ་སབས་ཡད། སང་འག་འཕ་ག་ལ་ན་གང་པ་ཆ་འདལ་བའ་གཉན་
[line 208]པར་གར་པའ་མཐ་སབས་ཡད། ཉད་ཀ་ར་ལ་ཤས་པ། ཁང་ཀ་ཕ་ག་ཡང་ས་ང་ནས་མ་འཕགས་ན་ཡང། ཁ་དང་
[line 209]ས|ཡ|་ཨ ་གར་མ་སའ། ཁ་ཉད་ད་ས་བར་ངས། སས་ནས་ཀང་ཀ་འདལ་བའ་གཉག137་པར་འགར་བར་

136
ངས། སང་འགའ་ཕ་ག་
134 read གཟགས་ཀ་ས་.

135 read གའ་.
136 read ས་.
137 read གཉན་.
[line 210]ཡང་མངལ་ནས་མ་བང་ན་ཡང་ཝར་སས་དང། ས་མ་དང་གམ་པར་མ་སའ། སང་འག་ཉད་ད་ས། སང་འགར་སས་ནས་
[line 211]ཀང། གང་པ་ཆ་གད་པ་འགམས་པའO་གཉན་པར་འགར་བར་ཉས། ད་དང་འད་བར་མཉམ་པ་ཉད་ད་རགས་རགས་པའ་
[line 212]རལ་འབར་པ|འ་|ཡང། སངས་རས་ཁ་ན་བཞན་འཕན་ལས་ལན་ཀས་གབ་པ་|ན་|ཡང། ཆས་མཉམ་པ་
ཉད་ད་རགས་
[line 213]ན་ཡང། ཉན་ཐས་དང་རང་རལ་བར་མ་སས་ཏ། སངས་རས་ས་འགར། སངས་རས་ཉད་ད་གར་ནས་ཀང།
བདད་དང་མ་སགས་འདལ་བ་དང་
[panel 10][line 214]ཆས་ཀ་འཁར་ལ་བསར་བ་ལས་བསགས་པ། སངས་རས་ཀ་དགངས་པ་རགས་པར་འཛན། ཡང་ཆད་མ་ཟ་
[line 215]བ་ལ་ཡང། །གང་མའ་དན་གས་བཤད། །རལ་འབར་བ་ད་དག་ག་མཆད་པའ་ཚལ་ཡང་ཅ་ལར་མཆད།
[line 216]མཆད་པའ་གནས་དང། མཆད་པའ་ཐ་དད་པའ་ཚལ་གས་མཆད་དམ། དབར་མད་པར་རགས་ནས། བདག་ལ་
[line 217]|མ་|བདག་མཆད་དམ། ཚལ་ཅ་ལར་མཆད་ཞ་ན། །བདག་ལ་བདག་མཆད་པས། འཕགས་པ་ཀན་མཉས་ལ།
[line 218]སམས་ཅན་ཀན་འདངས་ཤང་ཚམ་མ། བལར་ཅ་མངན་ཞ་ན། །ཨ་པ་ཡ་པ་ཤ་ལས། བདག་མཆད་ཞས་པ།
[line 219]རང་ག་སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་མ་ནར་པར། རག་པའ་བང་ཅབ་ཀ་སམས་དང་ལན་པས། བདག་མཆད་པ་ཡན་ལ།
[line 220]ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པ་ཀན་ཡང་མཉས་པར་བས་པ་ཡན་ན། ཅ་ས་ཞ་ན། ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པ་རམས་ན། སམས་
[line 221]ཅན་ག་སམས་ཀ་ཆས་ཉད་དམ། མཉམ་པ་ཉད་རགས་བ་བ་ལས་ཐགས་ཁལ་མ་མངའ་བ་དང། རལ་འབར་
[line 222]པ་དར་|བཞན་|ཞག་གOས་མཉམ་ཉད་གཉས་ས་མད་པར་རགས་འམ། །རག་པའ་བང་ཅབ་སམས་པ།

Appendix: The Shorter Madhusādhu Treatise

The treatise found in IOL Tib J 508/5 (ll.32-52, fragmentary at the end) is, as
discussed above, clearly related thematically and structurally to The Four Yogas.
It is the fifth and last text on a fragmentary scroll. The handwriting is fairly crude,
and variations in orthography suggest that the texts may be notes taken from oral
teachings.
Translation
Homage to Glorious Vajrasattva, the vast Buddha body which comprises all of the
tantras of Mahāyoga, the esoteric tantra [class] of method. This was made by
master Madhusādhu. It was made by the power of the yoga of the nature and the
yoga of accomplishment – from the four yogas. Also, the unsurpassed concentration
– from the four absorptions. Thus resting (rnal) is the reality, free from logical
justification and without reference points, while union (’byor) means that all
worldly and transcendent phenomena are of one taste in space.
The four great accumulations are [i] the great result, [ii] the great
accomplishment, [iii] the great merit, and [iv] the great wisdom. All phenomena
are in reality the nature of the tathāgatas, and from this the world’s variety, the
consorts themselves, are emanated.
This is gathered from the tantras of the [esoteric] tantra [class], not created by
the master as his own fabrication. It is gathered from the oral teachings. Just as the
twelve parts of the body, thirteen with the head, make up the complete body, the
thirteen sections make up the complete meaning of the tantra.138 Which
Buddha-bhagavan was this spoken by? From The Tantra Encompassing the Great
Empowerments:
In any of the worlds of the ten realms

You won’t find the Buddha.
Mind itself is the perfect Buddha;
Don’t look for the Buddha elsewhere.
As it says, you won’t find the Buddha-Bhagavan in any of the ten directions or
the three times. Look in your own mind and you will find him. If the nature of
your own mind is realized without mistake, all inner and outer phenomena have
the significance of the two aspects of sameness. This occurs through realizing the
meaning of abiding in buddhahood.
When you find the Buddha in the mind, what then are the natures of mind and
phenomena? From The Tantra of the Primal Supreme Glorious One:
Everything has the characteristics of the sky,
138
While this line may be a clue to the identity of the root tantra behind this text and The Four Yogas,
an examination of the feasible Mahāyoga tantras containing thirteen chapters for the root text of The
Four Yogas yielded no candidates.
And the sky itself is without characteristics.

That itself is the world’s [variety]...
Transcription
༆། །རལ་འབར་ཆན་པ་ནང་པ་ཐབས་ཀ་རད་ཀ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས་ཀན་ཀ་ནང་ནས་བསས་པའ་ལས་ཚད། དཔལ་ར་ར་སམས་
འཔའ་པ་ལ་ཕག་འཚལ་ལ། སབས་པན་མ་ད་སན་དས་མཛད་ད། ད་ཡང་རལ་སར139་རམ་བཞ་ལས། །རང་བཞན་ག་
རམས་འབར་དང། ། གཔ་པའ་རལ་སར140་ག་དབང་ད་མཛད་ད། །ཏང་ང་འཛན་རམ་བཞ་ལས་ཀང་བ་མ་འ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་
ཏ། །ད་ལ་རལ། འབར་ཞས་བ་བ་ན་ཆས་ཀ་དབངས། །དབང་ཐའ་མད་པ་མ་དམགས་ལས་བའ། འབར། ཞས་བ་བ་
ན་འཇགས་རན་དང་འཇགས་རན་ལས་འདས་པ་འ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད། ། དབངས་ས་ར། གཅག་པ་ལ་བའ། །ཚགས་ཆན་
པ་བཞན་141། འབས་བ་ཆན་པ་དང། གབ་པ་ཆན་པ་དང་བསད་ནམས་ཆན་པ་དང། ཡ་ཤས་ཆན་པ་དང། ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་
ད་བཞན་གཤགས142་པའ་རང་བཞན་ཆས་ཉད་ལས། ཐབས་མཆག་ཉད་ས་ཚགས་ས་སལ་པ་འ། ། འད་དག་རད་ཀ་
ཏན་ཏ་ལས་བཏས་པ་ན། སབས་པན143་ཀས་རང་བཟར་བམས་མ་ཡན་ག། །ཞལ་ནས་གསངས་པ་ལས་བཐས་ཏ། ལས་
ཀ་ཚད། ལ་བཅ་གཉས་མག་དང་བཅ་གསམ་ཀས་ལས་ཀ་ཡན་ལག་རགས་པ་བཞན་ད། ཚག །ས །བཤད144་བཅ་
གསམ་ཀས་ཏན་ཏ་འ་དན་རགས་པའ་ཕར་ར། །སངས་རས་བཅམ་ལན། འདས་གང་ནས་བཙལ་ཞ་ན། དབང་ཆས་བསས་
པ་འ་ཏན་ཏ་ལས་ཕགས་བཅ་འ་འཇག་རན145་གང་ནས་ཀང། །སངས་རས་རད་པར་ཨང146་མ་འགར། །སམས་ཉད་
རགས་པ། སངས་རས་ཏ། སངས་རས་གཞན་ད་མ་ཚལ་ཞག་ཟས་གསངས་ཏ། སངས་རས་བཅམ། ལན་འདས་ཕགས་
བཅ་དས་གསམ་གང་ནས་ཀང་རད་པར་མ་འགར་ག། རང་ག་སམ། བཙལ་དང་རད་པར་འགར་ཏ། སམས་ཀ་རང་བཞན་
ཕན་འཆ་མ་ལག་པར་རགས་ན། ཕ་ནང། ག་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀ་རང་བཞན་ཡང་མཉམ་བ་ཉད་རམ་གཉས་ཀ་དན་
ཀས་ །སངས་རས་པར་གནས་པའ་དན་རགས་པས་འགར་ར། །སངས་རས་སམས་ལ་བཙལ་ལ། །སམས་དང་ཆས་
ཐམས་ཅད་ག་རང་བཞན་ཅ་ལ་བ་ཞQ་ན། །དཔལ་མཆག་དང་པ་འ་ཏན་ཏ་འ་ནང་ནས། ཐམས་ཅད་ནམ་ཀ་འ་མཚན་ཉད་ད།
ནམ་ཀ་ལ་ཡང་མཚན་ཉད་མད། །ད་ཉད་འཇག147
139 read འབར་.

140 read འབར་.
141 read བཞན་.
142 read གཤགས་.
143 read དཔན་.
144 read བཅད་.
145 read རན་.
146 read འང་.
147 read འཇག་.
Glossary
Note: these glossary entries are organized in Tibetan alphabetical order. All entries
list the following information in this order: THL Extended Wylie transliteration
of the term, THL Phonetic rendering of the term, the English translation, the
Sanskrit equivalent, the Chinese equivalent, other equivalents such as Mongolian
or Latin, associated dates, and the type of term.
Ka
Wylie Phonetics English Other Dates Type
kaḥ thog Katok Organization
kaḥ thog dam pa bde Katok Dampa Deshek Author
gshegs
klong chen pa Longchenpa Person
dkyil kyil center Term
bka’ ’gyur Kangyur Textual
Collection
bka’ brgyud Kagyü Organization
bka’ gdams pa Kadampa Organization
bka’ ma Kama transmitted Doxographical
scripture Category
ska ba dpal brtsegs Kawa Peltsek Author
sku gsung thugs lhun kusungtuk lhüngyi maṇḍala of Term
kyis grub pa’i dkyil druppé kyinkhor spontaneously
’khor present body,
speech, and mind
bskyed pa kyepa development Term
bskyed rim kyerim development stage Term
Kha
kha kha mouth Term
kha nang khanang inside Term
kheng log khenglok revolution Term
khri srong lde btsan Trisong Detsen Person
’khor khor encircling Term
Ga
gi gu gigu Term
glang dar ma Langdarma Person
dgongs pa ’dus pa’i Gongpa Düpé Do Sūtra Gathering All Text
mdo Intentions
rgyud kyi rgyal po Gyükyi Gyelpo The Commentary Text
chen po dpal gsang Chenpo Pel Sangwé on the
ba’i snying po’i ’grel Nyingpö Drelpa Guhyagarbha
pa Tantra
rgyud ’grel Gyündrel tantric commentary Doxographical
Category
rgyud bcu bdun Gyü Chupdün Seventeen Tantras Textual Group

rgyud sde rnam gzhag Gyüdé Namzhak General Text
Presentation of the
Tantric Canon
sgron me rnam drug Drönmé Namdruk Six Lamps Textual Group
Nga
dngos med ngömé nonexistent Term
snga dar ngadar early diffusion Term
sngags ngak San. mantra Term
Ca
ces ché a sign that closes a Term
citation
gcig pa chikpa oneness Term
gcig las phros pa’i tan Chiklé Tröwé Tantra Tantra Proceeding Text
tra from the One
gcig las ’phros pa’i Chiklé Tröpé Gyü The Tantra Text
rgyud Proceeding from
the One
Cha
chos nyid chönyi true nature of Term
reality
chos thams cad rdzogs Chö Tamché Dzokpa The Great Text
pa chen po nam Chenpo Namkhé Perfection of All
mkha’i mtha’ dang Tadang Nyampé Gyü Phenomena Equal
mnyam pa’i rgyud Chenpo to the Ends of the
chen po Sky
Ja
’jigs med gling pa Jikmé Lingpa Person
Nya
nyang ral nyi ma ’od Nyangrel Nyima Özer Author
zer
gnyan dpal dbyangs Nyen Pelyang Person
gnyis su med nyisumé nonduality Term
mnyam nyid nyamnyi sameness Term
mnyam nyid chen po nyamnyi chenpo great sameness Term
mnyam pa nyid nyampanyi sameness Term
rnying ma Nyingma Organization
rnying ma bka’ ma Nyingma Kama Text
rgyas pa Gyepa
rnying ma rgyud ’bum Nyingma Gyübum Textual
Collection
snying thig Nyingtik Seminal Heart Doxographical
Category
bsnyen pa nyenpa ritual service Term

Ta
ting nge ’dzin tingngendzin absorption Term
lta ba tawa view Term
lta ba’i khyad pa’i Tawé Khyepé Esoteric Text
man ngag Menngak Instructions on the
Stages of the View
bstan ’gyur Tengyur Textual
Collection
gter ma terma hidden treasure Term
Tha
theg pa spyi bcings Tekpa Chichingkyi Definition of the Text
kyi dbu phyogs Uchok Vehicles
theg pa spyi bcings Tekpa Chiching Text
rtsa ’grel Tsadrel
Da
dam pa bde gshegs Dampa Deshek 1122-1192 Author
rdo rje pha bong dorjé pabong vajra boulder Term
rdo rje sems pa’i zhus Dorjé Sempé Zhülen The Questions and Text
lan Answers on
Vajrasattva
ldan dkar ma Denkarma Text
Na
nang nang within Term
nor brang o rgyan Nordrang Orgyan Author
gnubs chen Nupchen Author
gnubs chen sangs Nupchen Sanggyé 9th-10th Author
rgyas ye shes Yeshé century
rnal nel resting Term
rnal ’byor mig gi Neljor Mikgi Samten Text
bsam gtan
snang ba nangwa appearances Term
Pa
po ti poti Term
dpal gsang ba’i Pel Sangwé Nyingpö The Extensive Text
snying po’i rgya cher Gyacher Shepé Commentary on the
bshad pa’i ’grel pa Drelpa Guhyagarbha
Tantra
spyi ti Chiti Crown Pith Doxographical
Category
Pha
phu shi pushi Tibetan Term
transliteration of the
Chinese fu shi
phu shi meng hwe’i Pushi Menghwé Gyok Author
’gyog
Ba
ban chung benchung Term
bu ston Butön Author
bu mo bumo usually “daughter” Term
or “young woman”;
“mother”
bai ro’i rgyud ’bum Bairö Gyübum Collected Tantras Textual
of Vairocana Collection
bo mo bomo usually “daughter” Term
or “young woman”;
“mother”
bod ljongs mi dmangs Böjong Mimang Publisher
dpe skrun khang Petrünkhang
bod sil bu’i byung ba Bö Silbü Jungwa Jöpa The Garland of Text
brjod pa shel dkar Shelkar Trengwa White Crystals
phreng ba
bon po Bönpo Organization
byang cub kyi sems jangchupkyi sem awakened mind Term
byang cub sems jangchupsem Term
byang chub kyi sems jangchupkyi semkyi bodhicitta Term
kyi rig pa rikpa awareness
byang chub sems jangchupsem Term
byang chub sems kyi jangchup semkyi bodhicitta Term
rig pa rikpa awareness
byang chub sems Jangchup Semgompa Meditation on the Text
bsgom pa Awakened Mind
bla ma’i ting nge lamé tingngendzin unsurpassed Term
’dzin concentration
dbang chen bsdus pa’i Wangchen Düpé The Tantra Text
tan tra Tantra Encompassing the
Great
Empowerments
dba’ bzhed Wazhé Testament of Ba Text
dbu can uchen headed script Term
dbyer med yermé inseparability Term
’byor jor union
’bro dkon mchog dpal Dro Könchokpel Person
sba bzhed Bazhé Testament of Ba Text
sbas pa’i rgum chung Bepé Gumchung The Secret Handful Text
sbyor sgrol jordröl union and liberation Term
Ma
ma du sa du Madusadu Author
ma du san du Madusandu Author
ma ha yo ga’i lung du Mahayogé Lungdu Brief Precepts of Text
bsdus pa Düpa Mahāyoga
man ngag menngak esoteric instructions Term
man ngag lta ba’i Menngak Tawé Garland of Views Text
phreng ba Trengwa
man tra mantra Term
mun pa’i go cha Münpé Gocha Armor against Text
Darkness
meng hwa’i kyim Meng Hwekyim Person
Tsa
tsong kha Tsongkha Place
brtsal tsel effort Term
Tsha
tshul tsül mode Term
Dza
rdzogs chen Dzokchen Great Perfection Doxographical
Category
rdzogs pa dzokpa perfection Term
rdzogs pa chen po Dzokpa Chenpo Great Perfection Doxographical
Category
rdzogs rim dzokrim perfection stage Term
Zha
zhabs kyu zhapkyu Term
zhes zhé a sign that closes a Term
citation
gzhi zhi basis Term
gzhi gcig zhichik single basis Term
Za
zur Zur Clan
zur lugs Zurluk Zur tradition Lineage
Ya
ya btags yatak Term
yi dam yidam Term
ye shes dbyings yeshé ying space of wisdom Term
yongs su rdzogs pa yongsu dzokpa total perfection Term
Ra
ra btags ratak Term
rang bzhin gyi rnal rangzhingyi neljor yoga of the nature Term
’byor
ri bo’i rtsegs pa’i tan Riwö Tsekpé Tantra Tantra of the Text
tra Mountain Peak
rig pa rikpa awareness Term
rig pa rang shar gi Rikpa Rangshargi Tantra of Text
rgyud Gyü Self-Arisen
Awareness
rig pa’i khu byug Rikpé Kujuk Cuckoo of Text
Awareness
rin po che spar khab Rinpoché Parkhap Text
ro gcig ro chik single taste Term
ro gcig pa ro chikpa single taste Term
rong klong lugs Ronglong luk Rong-Long Lineage
tradition
rong zom pa Rongzompa Person
La
la sogs lasok Term
las bstsogs letsok Term
lung lung transmitted precepts Term
lo chen dharma shrī Lochen Dharmashri Author
Sha
shad shé Term
bshad thabs shetap Term
Sa
sa skya Sakya Organization
gsang sngags sangngak secret mantra San. guhya mantra Term
gsang phu Sangpu Monastery
sangs rgyas thams cad Sanggyé Tamchekyi Armor against Text
kyi dgongs pa ’dus pa Gongpa Düpa Dö Darkness, the Sun
mdo’i dka’ ’grel mun Kandrel Münpé of Yoga that Clears
pa’i go cha lde mig Gocha Demik Seljé the Eyes: A
gsal byed rnal ’byor Neljor Nyima Commentary on the
nyi ma Sūtra of the
Enlightened
Intention of All
Buddhas
si khron mi rigs dpe Sitrön Mirik Publisher
skrun khang Petrünkhang
sil bu’i dus Silbü Dü Period of Time range
Fragmentation
sems sem mind Term
sems kyi chos nyid semkyi chönyi mind’s reality Term

sems nyid semnyi mind itself Term
sems sde Semdé Mind Series Doxographical
Category
sems snang ba’i chos sem nangwé chö mind’s appearance Term
thams cad tamché as phenomena
gsang bdag zhal lung Sangdak Zhellung The Oral Teaching Text
of the Lord of
Secrets
gsang ba’i snying po Sangwé Nyingpo The Guhyagarbha Text
de kho na nyid nges Dekhonanyi Ngepa Tantra in One
pa sgyu ’phrul brgya Gyuntrül Gyapa Hundred Chapters
pa
gsang ba’i snying po Sangwé Nyingpo The Guhyagarbha Text
de kho na nyid nges Dekhonanyi Ngepa Tantra in Thirteen
pa sgyu ’phrul dra ba Gyuntrül Drawa Chapters
bla ma chen po Lama Chenpo
gsar ma sarma new Term
bsam gtan mig gi Samten Mikgi Drönmé A Lamp for the Text
sgron me Eyes of
Contemplation
bsam gtan mig sgron Samten Mikdrön A Lamp for the Text
Eyes of
Contemplation
bsod nams rtse mo Sönam Tsemo Author
Ha
hwa’i ’gog Hwegok Person
lhun kyis grub lhünkyi drup spontaneous Term
presence
lhun gyis grub lhüngyi drup spontaneous Term
presence
A
a mdo Amdo Place
Sanskrit
Wylie Phonetics English Sanskrit Dates Type
anu Term
Anuyoga Doxographical
Category
tshe dpag tu med pa Tsepaktu Mepa Aparamitāyurnāma- Text
zhes bya ba theg pa Zhejawa Tekpa mahāyāna-sūtra
chen po'i mdo Chenpö Do
ati Term
Atiyoga Doxographical
Category
spyan ras gzigs Chenrezik Avalokiteśvara Buddhist deity
spyan ras gzigs dbang Chenrezik Wangpo Avalokiteśvara Buddhist deity
po
Bhagavan Buddhist deity
dngos po ngöpo existent bhavanā Term

bhūmi Term
bodhicitta Term
byang chub sems dpa’ jangchup sempa bodhisattva Term
Buddha Buddhist deity
Buddhagupta Author
Dānaśīla Person
chos kyi dbyings chökyi ying space of reality dharmadhātu Term
chos sku chöku dharmakāya Term
Dignāga Author
khyung khyung Garuḍa Term
Guhyagarbha Text
Guhyagarbha Text
Tantra
Guhyasamāja Text
gsang ba ’dus pa’i tan Sangwa Düpé Tantra The Tantra of the Guhyasamāja Text
tra Secret Assembly tantra
Guhyayāna Doxographical
Category
Guhyeśvara Person
Indra Non-Buddhist
deity
Kālacakra Doxographical
Category
sku ku Buddha body kāya Term
lang kar gshegs pa’i Langkar Shekpé Do The Sūtra of the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra Text
mdo Mission to Laṇka
sweet or pleasant madhu Term
Madhusādhu Person
mahā Term
Mahāyāna Doxographical
Category
Mahāyoga Doxographical
Category
dkyil ’khor kyinkhor maṇḍala Term
Mañjuśrīmitra Person
Māra Non-Buddhist
deity
sgyu ’phrul Gyuntrül Illusion Web Māyājāla Textual Group
mudrā Term
phyag rgya chakgya mudrā Term
mtshan ma tsenma perceptual nimitta Term
characteristic
sprul sku trülku nirmāṇakāya Term
mya ngan las ’das pa nyangenlé depa nirvāṇa Term
padma ’byung gnas Pema Jungné Padmasambhava Person
Prajñāpāramitā Text
Prajñāpāramitā- Text
hṛdaya Sūtra
Prajñāpāramitānaya- Text
adhyardhaśatika
pha rol tu phyin pa’i Paröltu Chinpé Do Prajñāpāramitā Text
mdo Sūtra
Prajñāpāramitā Doxographical
Sūtra Category
Prajñāvārman Person
rang sangs rgyas rangsanggyé pratyekabuddha Term
rūpakāya Term
dam tshig damtsik samaya Term
wealth saṃbhoga Term
longs spyod sku longchöku saṃbhogakāya Term
’khor ba khorwa saṃsāra Term
sangs rgyas thams cad Sanggyé Tamché Tantra of the Union Sarvabuddhasamāyoga Text
dang mnyam par Dang Nyampar Jorwé with All Buddhas tantra
sbyor ba’i tan tra Tantra
de bzhin gshegs pa Dezhin Shekpa The Symposium of Sarvatathāgata- Text
thams cad kyi de kho Tamchekyi Truth tattvasaṃgraha
na nyid bsdus pa Dekhonanyi Düpa
de bzhin gshegs pa Dezhin Shekpa The Symposium of Sarvatathāgata- Text
thams cad kyi de kho Tamchekyi Truth Tantra tattvasaṃgraha
na nyid bsdus pa’i Dekhonanyi Düpé Do Tantra
mdo
sgrub thabs druptap sādhana Term
sage sādhu Term
Sādhukīrti Person
Sādhuputra Person
mchod rten chöten stūpa Term
bde gshegs snying po Deshek Nyingpo sugātagarbha Text
ri rab Rirap Sumeru Place
Sūryaprabhasiṃha 9th c.? Author
Sūryasiṃhaprabha 9th c.? Author
mdo do sūtra Term
rang gi rig pa ranggi rikpa self-referential svasaṃvedana Term
awareness
rang gi rig pa ranggi rikpa self-referential svasaṃvitti Term
awareness
shes rab kyi pha rol tu Sherapkyi Paröltu Śatasāhasrikā- Text
phyin pa stong phrag Chinpa Tongtrak prajñāpāramitā
brgya pa Gyapa Sūtra
Śākyamuni Person
nyan thos pa nyentöpa śrāvaka Term
dpal mchog dang po’i Pelchok Dangpö The Tantra of the Śrīparamādya Text
tan tra Tantra Primal Supreme tantra
Glorious One
tantra Term
tantrika Term
de bzhin gshegs pa dezhin shekpa tathāgata Term
u pa ya pa sha Upayapasha The Noose of Upāyapāśapadma- Text
Method mālā Tantra
Upāyapāśa Tantra Text
Uṣniṣasitātapātra Text
Dhāraṇī
Vairocana Person
phyag na rdo rje Chakna Dorjé Vajrapāṇi Buddhist deity
rdo rje sems dpa’ Dorjé Sempa Vajrasattva Buddhist deity
rdo rje rnam par gnon Dorjé Nampar Nönpa Vajraviśkambhana Buddhist deity
pa
Vajrayāna Doxographical
Category
dngos po ngöpo existent vastu Term
Vilāsavajra 8th c.? Author
Vimalamitra Person
“pillaring apart” of viśkambhana Term
the two realms
rnal ’byor neljor yoga yoga Term
yogi Term
rnal ’byor pa neljorpa yogin Term
Chinese
Wylie Phonetics English Chinese Dates Type
Dunhuang Place
fu shi Term
Hexi Place
Huai Yu Author
Liangzhou Place
Meng Author
Meng Huai Author
Ouyang Xiu Author
Shazhou Place
a district zhen Term
Bibliography
Dunhuang Manuscripts
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IOL Tib J 454: The Four Yogas. http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_loader.a4d
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IOL Tib J 470, Pelliot tibétain 819, 837: Rdo rje sems pa’i zhus lan [The Questions
and Answers on Vajrasattva]. http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_loader.a4d
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IOL Tib J 508: Various notes on the Guhyasamāja and matters related to The
Four Yogas.
IOL Tib J 583: Notes on Mahāyoga.
IOL Tib J 594: Sbas pa’i rgum chung [The Secret Handful] ascribed to
Buddhagupta.
IOL Tib J 647: Rig pa’i khu byug [The Cuckoo of Awareness] and commentary.
Pelliot tibétain 283: Vajrasattva sādhana.
Pelliot tibétain 337: Treatise on tantric rituals.
Pelliot tibétain 626, 634: Mahāyoga sādhanas.
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———. Sangs rgyas thams cad kyi dgongs pa ’dus pa mdo’i dka’ ’grel mun pa’i
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The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: - A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise From Dunhuang

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The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: - A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise From Dunhuang

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Journal of the

Issue 4 — December 2008

An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)

• Demographics, Development, and the Environment in Tibetan Areas (8 pages)

Text Translation, Critical Edition, and Analysis

A Note from the Field

Contributors to this Issue

A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise from Dunhuang

Tibetan Buddhism in the Tenth Century

That the fragmentation of the previous political and religious establishments

This way of formulating the philosophical approach to Mahāyoga practice was

When, as in the example of a king appointing a minister,

The Four Yogas and Madhusādhu

According to some spiritual guides (the masters Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu)

Themes in The Four Yogas

The Four Yogas Themselves

The Superiority of the Secret Vehicle

The Nature of Buddhas and Yi dams

Mind and Appearances

A close scriptural parallel is found in the Guhyagarbha Tantra, where we have

The mind itself is the perfect Buddha;

Awareness and Wisdom

Having practiced union in nonduality, consciousness is the bodhicitta of the

The concept of a basis (gzhi) as the source of either nirvāṇa or saṃsāra

“Sameness” and “great sameness” are important concepts in the Guhyagarbha

The Result: Lions and Garuḍas

Mahāyoga and Atiyoga in The Four Yogas and Beyond

In ultimate service no subject or object is perceived,

With effort, one meditates over and over again,

in terms of nonduality and spontaneous presence.73 There are essentially two

The Manuscript (IOL Tib J 454)

IOL Tib J 470 (The Questions and Answers on

Classification of Dunhuang Buddhist Manuscripts,” in Dunhuang Manuscript Forgeries, ed. Susan

Cursive interlinear notes in IOL Tib J 470.

The Four Yogas

The Fourfold Greatness

“Accepting this analogy of non-contradiction, should we practice this by

If you unify yourself with your own deity...94

Meditation on the Nature of Mind

Know that the realization of mind itself is the Buddha.98

All dharmas have the characteristic of the sky

That itself is the world’s variety.

In that very lack of characteristics there is manifestation.

As explained earlier, depending on whether mind and phenomena are realized

With total equanimity

Sameness with the Buddhas

Eventually the nature of the tathāgatas is realized. “Where is this oneness?” In

From the commentary:

In as many worlds as there are grains of sand.103

The power of mantras.

are endowed with provisions in proportion to their pure aspirations. This is

The dharmakāya too is essentially unaccomplished.

The dharmakāya is without characteristics. Essentially unaccomplished means

In its pervasion of everything, the dharmakāya also pervades the saṃbhogakāya

realization of nondual sameness by an unerring yogin is also known as the

[line 2]ཉན་མངས་པ་དང། རམ་པར་བང་བའ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་རགས་ཀང་རང་མ་རགས་ཀང་རང། འཕལ་ལ་ལམ་

[line 3]གས་མ་བསབ་གཉན་པ་མ་བཅས་ཏ། ཡ་ནས་|ང|སངས་རས་པ་ས་གསང་ཐགས་ལན་ཀས་གབ་པར་གནས་པ་ལ་བ།

[line 4]།གབ་པའ་ར|མ|ལ་འབར་ན། །རང་བཞན་ད་ཇ་ལ་བཞན་མ་ནར་པར་རགས་ནས། དའ་ངང་ད་གམས་པར་གར་

[line 5]རས་དང་བང་ཆབ་སམས་པ་དང། རགས་འཛན་ལས་བསགས་ཏ། ད་ན་རང་བཞན་ད་བང་བ་ཞས་ཀང་བ། །སད། །དམ་ལ་

[line 6]གནས་པའ་རལ་འབར་ན། སན་བཅམ་ལན་འདས་ཀས། དབང་ཕག་དང་མ་ལས་བསགས་པ་དབང་ད་བསས་ཤང་

[line 7]དམ་ཚག་ཕག་ས། ལས་འད་དང་འད་བས་ཤག་ཅས་བཀས་བསས་པ་བཞན་ད་བག་བར་སན་ཁས་བངས་དམ་བཅས་པ་

[line 8]ལས་མ་འདའ་བར་བད་པ་ལ་བ། །དམ་ཚག་རས་ས་བསབ་པའ་རལ་འབར་ན། གང་མའ་ཡན་ཏན་དང་མ་ལན་ན་ཡང།

[line 9]ད་དང་ཅ་མཐན་ད་སང་ཤང་སབ་པ་ལ་བ། །བ་མའ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་ཏ་ཞས་བ་|བ་|ན། ཏང་ང་འཛན་རམ་བཞ་རམ་