Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

322 Timeless Rapture
on all things tantric; he explained in his autobiography that he considered
that only tantra had sufficient power to deeply influence present-day individuals’
habitual patterns. He also composed a number of important works
on the history of Indian Buddhism. He met a number of Indian masters,
themselves wanderers in Tibet, and he grilled them for information concerning
their country’s Buddhist history. None of his Indian teachers
stayed with him for an extended period; perhaps they would have done so
if they had foreseen how important his work would become—historians
on both sides of the Himalayas still make reference to it, Taranatha’s History
of Buddhism in India, translated into English by Lama Chimpa and
Alaka Chattopadhyaya.
Tibet has produced many enlightened masters over the centuries; some
of them taught, some wrote, some served as administrators, some spent
their lives meditating in perfect simplicity. Few, however, had what some
might call genius. Taranata belongs to the category of genius. He transcended
the bounds of erudition; he was more than a prolific writer, a dedicated
meditator, or an astute social commentator. He thought for himself,
spoke and wrote in a distinctive style, and acted according to his tantric
conscience, thus making a name for himself as a nonconformist whose
power as a teacher led to constant invitations to sit upon and teach from
the highest thrones in the country. Taranata used his renown as a master
of all schools of tantric Buddhism to encourage a nonsectarian and apolitical
approach to Buddhism at a time of extreme upheaval in central
Tibet, struggles that inevitably attracted the involvement of less inspired
teachers.
As we will see, Taranata had no false modesty. It was he who wrote the
first supplication to himself translated below, for use by his disciples, and
this is not the only example of him using his ample eloquence to praise his
own qualities. Jamgon Kongtrul wrote a supplementary supplication to
Taranata and in fact seems to have composed the other supplications of
the series to fit Taranata’s work into the context of the Shangpa lineage. I
see no evidence that Taranata himself intended his supplication as the
exclusively “Shangpa” story of his life. He is the crown jewel of the
Shangpa lineage, the master who gave form to the majority of its meditations,
yet his life, inspiration, and influence (like those of Tangtong
Gyalpo, Kyentsé Wangpo, and Jamgon Kongtrul) went far beyond the
confines of the lineage.