Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

148 Timeless Rapture
Is not what a meditator needs.
Strong renunciation and disillusionment
Are companions when you live alone.
In physical sickness, they are your nurse.
Distracted thoughts of food and clothing
Amount to “conducive circumstances” for turning back [on the
spiritual path].
All you have done so far has caused rebirth in the wheel of life.
Now, relax yourself in nonaction.
That’s how you’ll reach the eternal fortress.
Even if you’re diligent in mentally created virtue,
You won’t reach that eternal, unchanging state.
With the vital point of the absolute expanse without death or
transition,
You can settle your mind in natural repose
And thereby attain the changeless state.
Allow things to arise of themselves, without contrivance:
Lack of contrivance and recognition are crucial.
In mind’s natural clarity, without thoughts,
Lucidity is radiant and empty.
If you recognize its nature,
It is the body of ultimate enlightenment.
When you recognize your own nature,
However impressive your thoughts’ illusory manifestations might be,
However numerous the ways happiness or suffering arise—
Everything is the body of ultimate enlightenment’s pervasive display.
There is then no difference between presence or absence of thoughts.
The natural defects of mind’s stillness or movement are destroyed.
Like ice melting into water,
Whatever appears is vividly your own mind.
After the moment of appearance, nothing follows—subject or object:
All arises unimpeded from emptiness alone.