Jigme Lingpa’s Vision of the Longchen Nyingtik
Today on Jigme Lingpa’s anniversary, we encourage everyone to read the amazing account of Jigme Lingpa’s vision of the Longchen Nyingtik from Dance of the Moon in the Water: An Account of my Realizations And Secret Visionary Experiences:
Jigme Lingpa’s vision of the Longchen Nyingtik, by Tara di Gesu
…on the evening of the twenty-fifth day of the tenth month of the Female Fire Ox year (1757), my devotion to the great master Guru Padmasambhava blazed so intensely that tears welled up. Prompted by some vague memories from the past, I was overcome with a profound sense of sadness: “We red-faced Tibetans behave like outcasts, and in this land where people live with a mere semblance of the Teachings and are rife with desire and aversion, I wander like an orphan left behind in the borderlands. That compassionate protector, greater than all the buddhas, has departed for the Glorious Copper-Coloured Mountain. When will I ever have the fortune to meet him now?” At this thought I was filled with immense grief. I fell asleep with tears flowing ceaselessly.
As I mentioned in the autobiographical account of my realization, The Dance of the Moon in the Water, the following vision occurred to me. Amid a vast expanse of luminosity, all-pervading and boundless, I was riding a beautiful white snow lioness and was carried off into the limitless reaches of space. After a while a landscape took shape and I arrived on the circumambulation path of what seemed to be the Jarung Khashor Stūpa of Boudha in Nepal. As soon as I went to its eastern courtyard I met the dharmakāya wisdom ḍākinī face to face. She handed me a flat wooden casket shaped like a sealed amulet box and said:
For disciples with pure perception,
You are Tri Songdetsen.
For disciples with impure perception,
You are Senge Repa.
This is the treasure of Samantabhadra’s wisdom mind,
The symbols of Vidyādhara Padma’s vast expanse,
The great secret treasury of the ḍākinīs. Let the signs be absorbed.
The moment she had said this she vanished without trace and the vision grew faint and hazy. Overflowing with joy, I opened the casket. Out tumbled five rolls of yellow scroll paper and seven white crystals about the size of peas. As I opened the largest scroll on the spot, the air was filled with countless aromatic fragrances of medicinal herbs such as camphor. My head and whole body tingled, and suddenly a thought arose: “The treasure lord of this is Rāhula. These teachings are extremely potent and should be approached with caution.” When I gradually unrolled it, I noticed that outwardly it had the form of a stūpa and inside it was abound with the secret symbolic script of the ḍākinīs, beyond the reach of the intellect. Unable to read it, I began to roll it up again, and at that very instant, like a magical illusion, the drawing of the stūpa disappeared and the symbols within all turned into Tibetan script. It was a sādhana cycle of the Great Compassionate One (Dukngal Rangdrol). I skimmed through it and then stopped. Wondering to whom this transmission had fallen, to whom it had been entrusted and what kind of prophecy it contained about my future lives, I looked at the bottom and saw very clearly:
Entrusted as the Dharma share of the Dharma king, father and son.
When I read the rest, the entire text appeared all at once in my mind like a reflection arising in a mirror, yet it was somehow impossible to read it out in sequence. It was an experience difficult to put into words. Then, with boundless joy, I put some of the crystals into my mouth and was about to take the yellow scrolls and return home when a monk in disguise suddenly appeared beside me as a companion. He said, “I’ve long had a feeling that something like this would come to you,” and showed me extraordinary reverence. I became certain he was the protector of the teachings, the Great Sage Rāhula. At that moment I reached the northern courtyard of the circumambulation path. When I opened another scroll, I came upon the key inventory The Casket of Enlightened Mind. It was so exceptionally vivid in my mind that an experience of irrepressible great bliss blazed up. I thought, “This is truly liberation through seeing. I must show it to my mother.” Just then, through an opening in the sky, a richly adorned woman whom I took to be my mother came down abruptly. She was the one who later deciphered the symbols at Samye Chimphu. I showed it to her, saying, “Look, liberation through seeing!” She replied, “You really are too eager to show what ought to be kept secret. It’s not only liberation through seeing but also liberation through tasting, so eat it yourself!” She made me eat all the crystals and yellow scrolls, and when I gulped them down, every word and their meaning was imprinted in my mind, wondrous beyond measure. At that moment I awoke from the visionary experience…
References
Gyatso, Janet. “Ḍākki’s Grand Secret-Talk: An Expression of My Realizations concerning the Longchen Nyingtig.” In Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Dilgo Khyentse. The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel: The Practice of Guru Yoga according to the Longchen Nyingthig Tradition. Boston: Shambhala, 2013.
Tulku Thondup. Masters of Meditation and Miracles: The Longchen Nyingthig Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Boston: Shambhala, 1996.