The Key Issues of Visualization: Four Nails Pinning the Life-Forces

92 Pages·2011·1.494 MB·English,Tibetan

by  Tony Duff

THE KEY ISSUES OF VISUALIZATION:
FOUR NAILS PINNING THE
LIFE-FORCES,
““A MELODY OF BRAHMA PLAYING
THROUGHOUT THE THREE REALMS””
BY DZA PATRUL
TONY DUFF
PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE
This text is secret and should not be shown to those who
have not had an empowerment into Buddhist Secret Mantra.
If you have not had that, reading this text can be harmful to
your spiritual health!
Copyright © 2011 Tony Duff. All rights reserved. No
portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
a n y m e a n s , e l e c t r o n i c o r m e c h a n i c a l , i n c l u d i n g
photography, recording, or by any information storage or
retrieval system or technologies now known or later
developed, without permission in writing from the
publisher.
First edition, February 2011
ISBN: 978-9937-8386-5-8
Janson typeface with diacritical marks and
Tibetan Classic typeface
Designed and created by Tony Duff
Tibetan Computer Company
http://www.tibet.dk/tcc
Produced, Printed, and Published by
Padma Karpo Translation Committee
P.O. Box 4957
Kathmandu
NEPAL
Committee members for this book: composition and
translation, Lama Tony Duff; editorial, Tom Anderson;
cover design, Christopher Duff.
Web-site and e-mail contact through:
http://www.tibet.dk/pktc
or search Padma Karpo Translation Committee on the web.
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
The Key Issues of Visualization: Four Nails
Pinning The Life-Forces, ““A Melody of
Brahma Playing Throughout The Three
Realms”” by Dza Patrul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Supports for Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Tibetan Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
iii

INTRODUCTION
This book presents a text called The Key Issues of Visualization:
Four Nails Pinning The Life-Forces, ““A Melody of Brahm(cid:188) Play-
ing Throughout the Three Realms”” written by the Tibetan
master Dza Patrul, Chokyi Wangpo [1808––1887].
All of the practices of the Vajra Vehicle are contained within
its two main levels of practice, which are called Development
Stage and Completion Stage. The practise of Vajra Vehicle
begins with Development Stage which concerns the develop-
ment, or one could say ““generation”” or ““creation””, of a deity.
Completion Stage takes the process begun in Development
Stage to completion, hence its name.
There are enormous numbers of deities connected with De-
velopment Stage and there are one or more Deity Instruction
texts, as they are called, for each deity. These texts explain
the details needed to visualize the deity——what each deity’’s
v
vi FOUR NAILS PINNING THE LIFE-FORCES
1
body is like, which sceptres the deity carries , what it wears,
what its immeasurable mansion is like, and so on.
The text on the Four Nails is concerned with visualization
but is not a Deity Instruction text; it is about the process of
visualization, meaning the development of a deity, as a whole.
It explains Development Stage as a whole by presenting a
2
specific foremost instruction that pins down all the key issues
of such practice, one called the ““Four Nails Pinning The
Life-Forces””. Thus it is a text which applies to the practise of
any and every deity connected with Development Stage.
An Explanation of the Title
As mentioned just above, the title of the text in this book is
The Key Issues of Visualization: Four Nails Pinning The Life-
Forces, ““A Melody of Brahm(cid:188) Playing Throughout the Three
Realms””.
The Four Nails Pinning The Life-Forces is the name of one of
the principal instructions for Development Stage practice that
is taught in the Nyingma tradition. It consists of a set of four
phrases, each one being the name of one of the key issues of
visualization, meaning Development Stage, practice. These
phrases are like nails which are both pinning down and
1
Tib. phyag mtshan ma. ““Sceptres”” is a commonly used term in
the language of Development Stage. Sceptres are the objects held
by a deity; they reflect the particular powers and capabilities of
the deity, so are indeed ““sceptres””.
2
For foremost instruction, see the glossary.
INTRODUCTION vii
holding within them all of the life-forces of the path that are to
be found within Development Stage.
The title includes the poetic sub-title A Melody of Brahm(cid:188)
Playing Throughout the Three Realms. A feature of Develop-
ment Stage is the development of the speech of a buddha
through the recitation of a deity’’s mantra. The speech of a
buddha traditionally has been compared with the very melo-
dious voice of the form-realm god Brahmå. This text is a
melody of the Brahma-like speech of a buddha which, like the
mantra of an actual deity is playing throughout the three realms
of samsara or cyclic existence.
The Secret in Secret Mantra and Implications
There is a major theme in Dza Patrul’’s text which is easily
missed due to the forthright presentation, even in the title, of
the text’’s main topic of visualization. If you read the whole
text carefully, paying special attention to the verses at the
beginning and end, you will see that he stresses the ““secret””
aspect of the teaching. This cannot be ignored! In fact, ac-
cording to the teachings of the Vajra Vehicle, because ““secret’’
is the nature of Vajra Vehicle as a whole, this aspect of the
teaching has to be considered first, before the details of the
sub-sections of Vajra Vehicle, Development Stage, can be
taught.
The term ““secret”” in this context has two meanings. Firstly,
it means that the things being discussed are profound to the
point of being hidden from the ordinary mind of the average
person. For example, the first line of the text mentions the
viii FOUR NAILS PINNING THE LIFE-FORCES
““supreme secret”” when referring to the blissful yet empty
nature of indestructible enlightened being, represented by
3
Vajrasatva . And the text repeatedly mentions the ““three
secrets”” of a buddha; this is a name for the body, speech, and
mind of a buddha given because ordinary beings’’ minds
simply cannot see, in a direct perception of them, what these
inconceivable things——meaning these things which are out-
side the range of concept——are like. Secondly, it means that
the teachings on such profound secrets are deliberately kept
secret, meaning private, both so that the power of the teach-
ings is preserved and so that people who have not been first
prepared and then taken into the profundity are not harmed
by trying to do something with it when they have not been
properly readied for it.
According to Secret Mantra’’s own ways, a person cannot even
hear about the instructions in this book unless he has already
been prepared for and then entered into the Vajra Vehicle.
Preparation can take many forms though it is usually done
through what are called the ““preliminary practices””. Actual
entrance into the profundity of the Vajra Vehicle is done
through the process of empowerment in which one is ““en-
tered into the maïçala of a deity””, as it is called. Empower-
ment is the means by which a person is brought into the
profound secrets of enlightenment and then given permission
to engage in the practices relevant to them. The book Em-
3
You will see in this book both ““satva”” and ““sattva””. According
to the Tibetan tradition this is not a mistake. See under ““satva
and sattva”” in the glossary for an explanation.