Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

The Shangpa Masters and Their Lineage 349
seems to have more to do with Naropa’s Six Doctrines than Niguma’s. The
last song contains these lines:
In the voice of the kati crystal channel,
I sing the song of rainbow drops.
All marks of aggregates’ and sense elements’ solidity
Dissolve within the exhaustion of phenomena beyond the mind’s
domain.
This verse uses terminology unique to Great Completion’s Tögal meditation,
again outside the Shangpa lineage’s scope. In the supplication to
Kyentsé Wangpo that follows, which Kongtrul wrote and included in the
collection of supplications to Shangpa lineage masters, he breathes not a
word in reference to the Shangpa lineage. We can only speculate concerning
Kongtrul’s reasons for this. He and Kyentsé were both committed to
an ecumenical approach to tantric Buddhism, as were most of the past
Shangpa masters. Perhaps he felt it was more important to honor the Buddha
in Kyentsé than to use the supplication for the lineage’s publicity purposes.
Perhaps he felt the best service he could render the Shangpa lineage
was to make bridges between it—a marginal, homeless lineage—and mainstream
Tibetan Buddhism. Perhaps he wished to remain faithful to the
Shangpa spirit, which never followed such common, loyalty-inculcating
practices as elaborate visualizations of masters, deities, dakinis, protectors,
and so on, gathered in a “lineage tree.” The Shangpa teacher-student relationship
is based entirely in the present, one on one, and does not make
reference in visualization for refuge to any other figure, be it as an enlightened
human or a deity. It is possible that all these considerations motivated
Kongtrul to refrain from a lineage-centered approach to these final songs
and supplications, for in the supplication he composed to himself,
Kongtrul refers to himself as a Karma Kagyu, not Shangpa Kagyu, master.