Choosing the Right Word We have included a short discussion of interesting dharma terms with an eye to shedding light on their significance by probing the literal meaning of the words. Complexity and Simplicity - Dependent Arising - Grasping and Fixation - Lha or La - Lobur Luminosity/Osel - Mahamudra - Prejudice and Equanimity - Rikpa - Tsal - Trangdön and Ngedon - Ziji Lobur: Adventitious, Incidental, Accidental, Temporary, Sudden, Fleeting One of the central tenets of the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages is that everyone has Buddha’s wisdom as the basis of their being. This wisdom mind goes by many names. Buddha nature, bodhichitta, self-awareness, sugatagarbha, mahamudra, and rikpa are but some of the words used to indicate this enlightened essence that is our nature. It is the mind that is pointed out in what the Vidyadhara called transmission; it is the wisdom that is revealed in the context of abhisheka. The Shambhala tradition calls it basic goodness, dö-ne sangpo (Tib. gdod nas bzang po), “primordially good” or “good from the beginning.” To point out and uncover this wisdom mind is the path that our lineages present to us. Our journey is one of greater and greater contact with wisdom, a journey of touching our heart, recognizing our mind, and sustaining that awareness. So if that’s our nature, what’s our problem? Why is this journey necessary? Wisdom mind is not our only heritage; it comes with coverings, often called “obscurations” in the Buddhist tradition, or the “cocoon” in the Shambhala path. Are these inheritances of ours of equal weight? Our lineages respond, “No.” The classic statement of the difference is found in the Uttaratantra: The basic nature is empty of what is lobur, Which has the characteristic of being separable. But it is not empty of the unsurpassable qualities Which have the characteristic of being inseparable. Obscurations, which cover wisdom mind, are not intrinsic to our nature; they are lobur (Tib. glo bur), which is a difficult word to translate effectively. It means not essential, removable. One way of rendering it in English is “incidental.” While this is true, it gives the factors that stand between us and enlightened mind very little gravity. “Accidental” in its classical sense works well, but its modern usage falls too heavily on the side of unintentional, whereas our obscurations are the result of our previous intentional acts. In colloquial Tibetan, lobur has the sense of sudden and temporary. The line, “Suddenly free from fixed mind,” from one of the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala terma, is an instance of this usage. Lobur has this sense of “temporary” when applied to obscurations as well, but as Khenpo Tsering recently pointed out to us, we have to be careful of the connotation here. The obscurations, our cocoons, are indeed “temporary,” but only as compared to our buddha nature, our basic goodness. In fact, our obscurations may have been with us for many lifetimes. “Temporary” seems to have too fleeting a sense to be applied to such long-standing impediments. Probably the most accurate rendering of lobur in English is “adventitious.” It has the right meaning, “added from another source and not inherent or innate,” but it’s an awkward term to use. It isn’t part of our daily speech and for many of us its precise meaning does not come readily to mind. It describes our obscurations accurately, but its formal, somewhat obscure tone doesn’t fit well with “our little problems,” our obscurations of wisdom, which always appear to arise in-our-face: gritty and ready-at-hand. Lobur may be a case where selecting one all-purpose translation is not possible and we have to allow ourselves to use a range of terms, letting context dictate whether we hold to the technically correct “adventitious” or choose a word that better fits the circumstance. TOP Complexity and Simplicity Our chosen translation, "simplicity," for trötral in Tibetan or nishprapancha in Sanskrit, is often rendered by other translators as "freedom from complexities" or "freedom from elaborations" and makes an interesting journey through the three yanas of Buddhist thought. Prapancha (tröpa in Tibetan) comes from the Sanskrit root pach, which means "to spread out" or "proliferate." In the early sutra teachings of the hinayana, prapancha is the word used to indicate the tendency of conceptual mind to proliferate or elaborate on the bare perception of the senses. In the mahayana, it is not prapancha, but its negative, nishprapancha or trötral (nish in Sanskrit and tral in Tibetan are negations), that is emphasized. Particularly in the prasanga madhyamaka school, nishprapancha is said to be the most apt description of the absolute truth: freedom from all conceptual elaborations, all our ideas about what reality is and isn't. In the vajrayana, trötral is found as the second of the four yogas of mahamudra. When the nature of thought has been understood, one can rest in a state of awareness undisturbed by the movement of concept. Here especially, the Vidyadhara felt that the more literal "freedom from complexities" did not capture the relaxed feeling of the experience that "simplicity" conveys. TOP Dependent Arising / Tendrel The Tibetan word tendrel (rten 'brel) is an abbreviation of the term ten-ching drelwar jungwa (rten cing 'brel bar 'byung ba). It is a translation of the Sanskrit term pratitya-samutpada, which has been variously translated as "dependent arising, dependent co-origination, interdependence, relativity, auspicious coincidence," and so on. Pratitya-samutpada is the technical name for the Buddha's teaching on cause and effect, in which he demonstrated how all situations arise through the coming together of various factors. In the hinayana, it refers in particular to the twelve nidanas, or links in the chain of samsaric becoming. These twelve are portrayed in the familiar drawing of the wheel of life. When the practitioner is finally able to break one of these links—for example, by overcoming ignorance or attachment—the entire cycle of suffering ceases and enlightenment is attained. The teaching of pratitya-samutpada can be summarized in the pratitya-essence mantra: OM YE DHARMA HETU-PRABHAVA HETUM TESHAM TATHAGATO HYAVADAT TESHAM CHA YO NIRODHA EVAM VADI MAHASHRAMANAH SVAHA This famous mantra is actually a summary of the teachings of the Buddha. One of his first five disciples, the arhat Assaji, was asked by Shariputra, a wandering ascetic, what his master taught. Assaji replied with this statement (probably without the OM and SVAHA). Translated, he said, "Regarding dharmas that arise from a cause, the Tathagata taught their cause and also their cessation. Those were the words of the Great Mendicant." Upon hearing these words, Shariputra attained to the first stage of the path, entering the stream. For many centuries now, this mantra has been used to stabilize the power of blessings in one's mantra recitation, as well as to purify dharma practice, especially any misunderstandings of the view. In the madhyamaka tradition, tendrel or pratitya-samutpada is considered equivalent to emptiness itself. Because arising depends on many various causes, phenomena cannot be said to be autonomous, or truly self-existent. In The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna wrote: Whatever is dependently arisen Is explained to be emptiness; It is dependently labelled. That itself is the middle way. At the very beginning of this same text, Nagarjuna praised Shakyamuni Buddha above all as the teacher who taught tendrel, or dependent arising: To the one who teaches dependent arising, Which is peace and the pacification of complexity— No cessation, no birth, No nihilism, no eternalism, No coming, no going, Not many things, not one thing— To the perfect Buddha, the best of teachers, We prostrate. This verse forms part of an exorcism liturgy, which is traditionally practiced on the 9th, 19th, and 29th day of the lunar month. By chanting the verse and recollecting the meaning of tendrel/emptiness, obstacles are banished. In addition to the profound philosophical meaning of dependent arising, tendrel often has the connotation of auspiciousness, or good fortune. In that case, it can be considered an abbreviation of tashi tendrel (bkra shis rten 'brel), which is commonly translated as "auspicious coincidence." In Glimpses of Abhidharma, the Vidyadhara commented on this particular meaning of tendrel, relating it to the process of the twelve nidanas: This idea of auspiciousness is usually either regarded as just a form of speech or associated with superstition. It involves a sense of power. The word for "auspicious" as it related with this notion of "coincidence" or tendrel is, in Tibetan, tashi; in Sanskrit, mangalam. Auspiciousness is an aspect of coincidence, of this meeting together of conditions. The movement of ignorance and feelings and perceptions, and so on, is an auspicious one, in a sense, an appropriate one; because all of these twelve causal links are related to each other continuously, infallibly. In other words, there is no mistake about what is happening. Everything is right and appropriate at that very moment. That is what mangalam is, or tashi—a blessing. TOP Grasping and Fixation We generally translate zungwa and dzinpa as "grasping and fixation." Nevertheless, they are code words for "subject" and "object," or the "perceiver" and "perceived" aspects of our experience (that is, in reverse order—zung refers to the object, and dzin to the subject). With that in mind, many translate the phrase zung dzin as "subject and object" or, to try to capture the "grasping" sense of the verbal root, as "apprehender and apprehended." We might do the same in a strictly philosophical context, but in the more practice oriented texts that were the core of our work with the Vidyadhara, we tried to get more at the psychological roots of dualism. This story of our understanding of the translation of these two critical terms comes from the 1980 Vajradhatu Seminary. It provides a good illustration of how dharmic and linguistic understanding interweave during the process of translation. Vidyadhara: According to the Buddhist tradition, self preservation is described by two terms. In English, the first one is grasping, or holding, and the second one is fixation. In Tibetan, first we have zungwa which literally means "fixation." We fixate on ourselves because we are afraid to lose us, me, altogether. The second type of problem is called dzinpa. Dzin means "holding," "grasping." . . . I wonder whether our translators might have some explanation of these two words. It would be very helpful. We have been struggling with the translation of zungwa and dzinpa for a long time. Mr. Mermelstein? Larry Mermelstein: With your permission, sir, if I understand our conversations on this, in the Tibetan term, first we have zung, or "fixation," and then dzin, "grasping." This order reflects how ego itself actually arises: we fixate on "other" and then, based on that, we grasp onto ourselves, our mind. Based on our belief in the other as real, an object of our fixation, we come to see ourselves as truly existent. But in our English translation, and the way you have presented it in the past, the order is switched: First comes grasping and then fixation. This order reflects a path orientation. We talk about dzinpa, or "grasping," first because it is the first of twofold ego, the ego of self, which we cut through first. And zungwa, involving the ego of dharmas, which we call "fixation," is talked about second because it is more basic and more difficult to cut through. It is not cut through on the hinayana path. Is that correct, sir? Vidyadhara: I think so. You're right. It's always good to have translators around. [Laughter.] I have spent hours and hours with my fellow translators, honorable ones, trying to figure out how to translate dharmic terms. TOP Lha or Is It La? Some confusion exists between two Tibetan words, sometimes used interchangeably: lha and la. The first, lha, is the Tibetan word used to translate the Sanskrit deva, meaning "deity," "god," or "divine." This is also the term used in the Shambhalian sense of natural hierarchy: lha, nyen, and lu. (If we were to be more daring in writing this word like it is actually pronounced, we might spell it hla!) The word la (bla) literally means that which is "higher" or "above," as in the word lama, the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit guru (which literally means "heavy," —heavy with good qualities, as the tradition explains). Lama Ugyen once explained lama as "one who looks down from above (la) with the love that a mother (ma) has for her children." La is also a Pön term, meaning "soul," "life force." An example of the confusion between these words comes in the alternate spellings of the term drala or dralha. Both are found in texts, and they are usually referring to the same principle or type of deity. The Dorje Dradül much preferred the former spelling, explaining that the word means "above" or "beyond" the "enemy" or "aggression." We used to translate this as "war gods," which might be seen to favor the other reading, but it was actually just an attempt to characterize this deity type. TOP Luminosity /Ösel An interesting and sometimes perplexing word worth shedding some light on involves the very notion of "light." The term ösel (Tib.'od gsal) literally means "clear [sel] light [ö]," and there are many who translate it this way. "Clarity" is another popular rendering. The Vidyadhara, however, preferred "luminosity," which points not so much to the light itself, but to the quality or state of being radiant. He once remarked that even though the experience of brightness, the vividness of the phenomenal world, was an important experience on the path, it wasn't in itself ultimately the point. Beyond that, as Thrangu Rinpoche once remarked, luminosity comes to mean the basic "knowing" quality of mind in which nothing is excluded. In his oral commentary on Pointing Out the Dharmakaya, Thrangu Rinpoche makes the following comments on ösel and shunyata in discussing "the dharmata nature of mind": While it is empty and while there is nothing there in a sense, nevertheless there is a natural clarity or luminosity, which is traditionally referred to as buddha nature, the spontaneously present qualities, and so on. Here luminosity does not refer to physical light or some kind of physical radiance. In this context, luminosity simply refers to the cognitive capacity or awareness, which is the defining characteristic of a mind. A mind is not any thing, and yet it cognizes; that is what is meant by the unity of luminosity and emptiness. This is something that we experience directly and that we do not have to talk ourselves into through logical analysis. TOP Mahamudra The Tibetan word for mahamudra is chag gya chenpo (chak chen for short). In Sanskrit, maha means "large" or "great." It corresponds exactly to the meaning of the Tibetan word chenpo. Mudra, or chag gya, has many meanings. It can refer to the hand gestures used in vajrayana ritual practices; to the symbolic ornaments worn by visualized deities; to the female consort of a deity, who is the aspect of knowledge, inseparable from the masculine quality of skillful means; to a human consort in the practice of karmamudra; or to a seal, such as the stamp or seal of a monarch. Commentators who emphasize the meaning of "seal" will often explain how mahamudra means that the entire world of appearances is sealed or marked by emptiness. The term chag gya can be further broken down into two components: chag and gya. Chag is the honorific word for hand, the term appropriate when referring to the hand of an elevated person, such as the guru, or to the hand of a deity. When this meaning is highlighted, the shortened term for mahamudra becomes a pun in Tibetan: chak chen, or "big hand." Gya by itself means a "seal." Sometimes terma texts are "sealed" for secrecy by repeating this word: gya gya gya. In the Treasury of Knowledge, Jamgön Kongtrül the Great defines mahamudra as: Chag gya, or "seal," refers to union; chenpo, or "great," refers to this union's nature fully pervading all the phenomena there are—no phenomenon lies beyond it. Here, union refers to the unity of appearance-emptiness, awareness-emptiness, or bliss-emptiness. This union is nondual. Two are not joined to become one. Rather, their nature is inseparable, in the same way that water cannot be separated from wetness. As the Heart Sutra might put it, appearance is emptiness; emptiness is appearance. Adding chenpo means that it is so great that it completely transcends concept. TOP Prejudice and Equanimity The four limitless ones culminate in a supplication for equanimity: "May they [all sentient beings] dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and prejudice." Here, equanimity is being defined as freedom from passion, aggression, and prejudice. Freedom from prejudice—in other words, impartiality or an unbiased attitude toward all beings—is the key. The Tibetan word for prejudice is nye ring. Nye literally means "near" or "close." Ring means "far" or "distant." So this fourth line could be paraphrased: "May all beings rest in equanimity, free from attachment to those thought of as close and free from aversion toward those thought of as distant." Nye ring, or "near far," points to the fundamental experience of duality that drives our lives: the eight worldly dharmas of loss and gain, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, disgrace and fame. "Near ones" are the people that we hold near and dear, such as family and friends. "Far ones" are the people that we dislike or hold at a distance. These could include so called neutral people, with whom we feel no particular connection and whose impact on our lives we consequently ignore: the grocery store clerk, a bank teller, someone we might pass on the street. Equanimity (tang nyom) is the mind that is free from this kind of dualistic judgment, an attitude that sees all beings as equal to one another and, most importantly, equal to oneself. Tang means "to give" or "to send," and is a form of the verb tong found in tonglen, the mahayana practice of sending and taking. Tang has been explained as giving up our aggression to enemies and our attachment to friends. Nyom means to be "even" or "equal" and is related to a word for meditation, nyam- shak, which literally means "to rest evenly" and has been translated in various ways: to rest, to meditate, to rest in meditation, or to rest in meditative equipoise. So equanimity is giving up our hold on duality and resting evenly in meditation, without the prejudice of holding those we like near and those we dislike away. TOP Rikpa Rikpa is a key term within Buddhism and in particular within the tradition of the "great perfection" (Tib. dzokchen, San. ati or maha-sandhi). As with any important word, it can have a variety of meanings and nuances depending on the context. The Tibetan rikpa translates the Sanskrit vidya, which comes from a verbal root meaning "to know, understand, perceive, experience." It can denote the action of knowing or understanding, with some emphasis on the perceiving or seeing of an object, and so it is weighted toward the perceiver side of the subject-object dynamic. Thus, in common, ordinary usage it can just refer to mind. At the beginning level, this is the practical application of knowledge to the relative world, often through the study of the ten arts and sciences, or rik-ne (rig gnas), which is from the same root. At its highest level, there is no longer any separation between the seeing and the seen, the knowing and the known, the meditator and the object of meditation. Thus, rikpa can refer to the most basic experience of mind and, at the same time, to the highest understanding of mind that the teacher points out to the student—the true nature of mind. One way to begin to understand rikpa is to look at its opposite—ma-rikpa (or avidya in Sanskrit) is un-knowing, not knowing, ignorance at its most basic level. This is not the afflictive emotion of "ignorance" or "delusion" that we often speak of in the context of the three root kleshas of passion, aggression, and delusion (Tib. ti-muk, San. moha). Ma-rikpa is a more fundamental state of ignorance. It is the basic ignoring of space that creates our solidified perception of other. Our ignorance becomes so solid that we lose any reference point outside of our own dense black cloud of un-knowing. We become completely lost in this state from which our painful conditioned existence arises. As for a basic understanding of rikpa as the antidote and opposite of that, the Vidyadhara discussed rikpa in relation to other aspects and definitions of mind. In the context of the four foundations of mindfulness, he presented rikpa in its cognitive-knowing aspect: According to the Buddhist tradition, there are three main aspects of mind, which in Tibetan are called sem, rikpa, and yi. The basic mind, the simple capacity for duality ... is sem. Rikpa literally means "intelligence" or "brightness." In colloquial Tibetan, if you say somebody has rikpa, it means he is a clever, sharp fellow. This sharpness of rikpa is a kind of side function that develops from the basic mind, it is a kind of lawyer's mentality that everybody develops.... It looks at the problem in every possible way—inside-out and outside-in. Later, when giving advanced dzokchen teachings (1983), the Vidyadhara noted: Rikpa is an interesting term. The translations we have come up with before have been problematic. We had difficulty translating rikpa in The Rain of Wisdom as well. I'm not particularly trying to make you into translators, as such; but you should know these terms. Rikpa means "insight," which in this case means that whatever you see is clear. This is the closest to the definition I can come. If you look up insight in the Oxford English Dictionary, or in any other dictionary, it will mean something else. But insight here means that whatever you see is appropriate and precise. Following the Vidyadhara's view, for many years we translated rikpa as "insight," with the emphasis on its more active sense of knowing and perceiving. When Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche composed an ati-style guru yoga for the Vidyadhara ("The Guru Yoga of Dharma Sagara"), we compared our translation of rikpa with other translators of ati texts, many of whom translate this term as "awareness" emphasizing its open, spacious, and expansive nature. At that time we began to adopt this translation in most cases. It is also worth noting that rigdzin (rig 'dzin) translates the Sanskrit vidyadhara, or "awareness holder," which became Trungpa Rinpoche's main title, given to him by H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche. Vidyadhara is also translated as "knowledge holder," and Trungpa Rinpoche sometimes used the phrase "crazy-wisdom holder." Also, it is important to note that rigdzin is different than the Shambhala term and title Rigden. While the first syllable of rigden sounds the same, it is a different word and is spelled differently in Tibetan (rigs Idan). It most often means "endowed with a [noble] family" as the Rigden King is the one who unifies the kingdom and bring all subjects into one vajra family lineage TOP Tsal: Expressive Power / Manifestation / Display Previously, we discussed the meaning of rikpa (Tib. rig pa), or “awareness,” which is a key term used in the teachings of dzokchen. Tsal (Tib. rtsal), another key term in both the mahamudra and dzokchen traditions, refers to the potential of this awareness to manifest, as well as the manifestation itself. Tsal is a difficult term to translate. Having a range of meanings, it has been translated into English in many ways. It can refer to the “skill” or “dexterity” produced through training, whether physical or mental. It can refer, for example, to the prowess of a well-trained athlete or of an experienced meditator. In the teachings on the nature of mind, in some contexts tsal refers to an inherent “potential” of mind to express itself. In this sense, it has variously been translated as “power,” “potency,” “capacity,” “creativity,” “energy,” “creative energy,” “expressive power,” and “resourcefulness.” In other contexts, tsal refers to the outcome of that creative potential. In this sense, it has been translated as “display,” “manifestation,” or “expression.” In both cases, the word conveys a feeling of energy and dynamism. In his commentary on the Lamrim Yeshe Nyingpo (The Gradual Heart of Wisdom), Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso presents tsal using the analogy of a mirror. In discussing the line, “Since awareness-display, the trikaya, appears on the path,” Rinpoche explained: Awareness itself [rikpa], which is the embodiment of the three kayas, is the ground and does not itself appear, but its display [tsal] appears through the methods of the path. That is what “appears on the path” means. For example, it is like a crystal. A crystal has the potential to display the colors of a rainbow. When the proper conditions are applied, such as rays of light hitting it, the potential is displayed outwardly as the appearances of a rainbow. The crystal’s potential is like the awareness that abides as, or in, the ground. The proper conditions are like the methods of the path. What arises when light strikes the crystal is like the display of awareness as the various appearances. In discussing the meaning of tsal, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche uses the analogy of the sun and its light. As he explains, the relationship between mind’s essence and its expression (tsal) . . . is like the relationship between the sun and sunlight: you cannot have sunlight without the sun shining. It’s the same with the expression of mind essence and the essence itself. The essence doesn’t increase or decrease, is neither improved or worsened. The only possibility of recognition lies in the expression. . . . It is said that when the expression dawns as sherab, as knowledge—when the expression knows its own nature—it is liberated, there is freedom. When the expression moves as thought, as thinking, it is bewildered—there is delusion. TOP The Story of Trangdön and Ngedön The Translation Committee learned early on that translating Tibetan could force one to explore new frontiers of the mind, effecting permanent alterations. In fact the Vidyadhara told an aspiring student that what was needed to learn Tibetan was "a new mind." Translating single terms or phrases can present challenges, since these terms are likely to enter our dharma vocabulary and have a very long shelf life. The translations of the Tibetan terms trangdön and ngedön (Sanskrit: neyartha and nitartha) are good examples. These two terms have important implications about how one studies and teaches the dharma, and naturally have a critical place within Ngedön School (not to mention Nitartha Institute). In learning the dharma, it is said, one must first grasp the trangdön in order to appreciate the ngedön. The Committee translates ngedön as "true meaning," which is acceptable to most people, although there are acknowledged drawbacks: is true meaning the opposite of false meaning? (Other common alternatives are "certain," "final," "definitive," "ultimate, "clear," or "absolute meaning" or "truth.") To add even more to the mix, the Sanskrit word literally means "the meaning that has been drawn out" as opposed to neyartha, "the meaning to be drawn out." Trangdön has been translated as "literal meaning," which no one, including the Vidyadhara, was completely satisfied with. Some would have preferred a term along the lines of "provisional meaning," i.e., something that calls for more explanation. But the Vidyadhara insisted that the term should not be pejorative: thus "literal meaning." In the Vidyadhara's understanding, these terms describe not so much levels of dharma as levels of understanding. So it's not that, for instance, mahayana is ngedön whereas hinayana is trangdön. Rather, there is a ngedön (profound) and a trangdön (literal) way of understanding both hinayana and mahayana. In his usage, these terms come to mean "the words" and "their sense." TOP Ziji Ziji appears in the language of both Buddhism and Shambhala. The Vidyadhara commented that both zi and ji have a sense of light and brilliance to them, glossing zi as "shine" or "glitter," and ji as "splendor." He added that ji also carries a sense of "monolithic." In keeping with that, when translating buddhadharma we have rendered ziji as "splendor," "radiance," "brilliance," and "full of splendor." One piece of etymology might be of interest here: zi also can mean a variety of precious stone unique to Tibet, a type of black and white striped agate with "eyes." The more eyes, the more it was valued in Tibetan culture, and as an historical note, the Vidyadhara often wore a theb-long (thumb ring) made of zi, a gift to him from Namgyal (aka "Nammie") Ronge, brother of Noedup and Palden. In the Shambhala teachings, ziji has particular importance. Though on occasion, especially in our early days, we translated ziji as "light," we quickly settled on two renderings that the Vidyadhara felt brought out the inner quality that resulted in an outer radiance: "confidence" and "dignity." These are key terms in the Shambhala teachings. In fact, both render the one Tibetan phrase, ziji. The choice we made largely depended on the context—often the result of lengthy discussions with the tertön, the Druk Sakyong. TOP