Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

284 Timeless Rapture
your busyness. Thoughts of spiritual life become rare, and whatever
you do becomes a wide arena for mingling with negative acts. The
flames of your spouse’s attachment and anger are searing, and the
burden of your karmic debt to your children is crushing. Whatever
you do, you become weighed down by an oppressive load of suffering.
You suffer, but you cannot stand to see others in opulent circumstances.
These events repeat themselves many times; spiritual
life becomes distant.
Adopting the second lifestyle, that of an ordained person [in a
monastic institution], also entails suffering. You renounce a small
home for a big home. You strive at commerce and agriculture; you
make horses and donkeys beasts of burden; you become preoccupied
with increasing your wealth; you plan for your old age; and
you give counsel to close relations. You become attached to craving
for pleasure; you long for happiness in the enjoyment of food
and drink; you lay plans for your residence and its protection; and
you are distracted by never-ending activity. Day and night, your
horizon is defined by your attachment or anger. You are burdened
by the obligation to remember rank. Because of your worldly pleasures,
your spirituality becomes a hypocritical, false image of study
and reflection. Flames of your attachment, anger, and competitiveness
tower; those attitudes’ thorns always sting. Whatever you
do is for this life’s benefit; you always make hopeful plans. Master
and disciple struggle with one another, without faith; you feel jealous
competitiveness toward your spiritual brothers and sisters. The
strongest part [of your character] is the mountain of your eight
worldly concerns; the weakest, your behavior due to lack of study.
So many faults separate your mind from spiritual life—authentic
spirituality focused on freedom is very difficult! The Transmission
of Monastic Discipline states:
It is difficult to initially renounce home life, abandoning both
large and small family duties. (Treasury of Discourses and
Tantras, Section 3, pp. 8a-8b)
These words come from a text outside the Shangpa tradition, but they
were first written about one hundred years after Sangyé Nyentön’s life by
Longchenpa, a Nyingma master who received the Shangpa teachings at a