Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

The holy master endowed with the lineage
Is definitely the Buddha of the three times.
To know the master to be the body of ultimate enlightenment
Is to not remain ignorant of the discourses’ and tantras’ meaning.
Realize the nature of the three ordinary bodies like this:
Mind creates your present body
Of ripened karma.
Habitual patterns are based upon it.
The wheel of life appears as its happiness and suffering.
It is said that this body is the result of the past
And the cause of the future.
Fertilized by daytime’s patterns,
You dream of various faults and qualities.
This [dream-time body] is termed “body of habitual patterns.”
The intermediate state’s mental body is unhindered
And has every sense faculty.
It looks like your former body
And follows your karma.
If you realize its nature, it is the body of great bliss;
If you don’t, you reenter the wheel of life.
Until now, existence’s bloody seas
Have tossed with waves of anger and desire.
It is senseless to remain there, faint with suffering,
As an individual attached to objective reality.
The body of ripened karma is a collection of the four elements.
There are many ways to assume this body.
Without realization, you take rebirth within the six realms’ circle,
Whereas I have assumed a pure, illusory body like this:
My body of ripened karma is the Conqueror’s body.
It accomplishes all goals by thought alone.
A Sea of Blessings 109