Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

NOTES
1 An edited version of this article appeared as “The Shangs pa Bka’ brgyud Tradition,”
Chapter 4 in E. Gene Smith, Among Tibetan Texts (pp. 53-57).
2 Matthew Kapstein, “The Shangs-pa bKa’-brgyud: An Unknown Tradition of Tibetan
Buddhism,” in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, p. 140.
3 The Shangpa tradition has a series of source texts in verse, called vajra verses. Kongtrul
included only this one in his collection, although he gives it prominent mention in
the book’s subtitle: “Collection of Vajra Verses and Melodious Songs of Realization.”
4 Throughout this text, where the gender of a spiritual master, deity, protector, buddha,
or bodhisattva is not specified, masculine pronouns are used in the absence of
a gender-neutral alternative in English. Personal pronouns of either gender (or of
any person, singular or plural) rarely appear in the original Tibetan text.
5 These last two lines, like a number of pairs of lines in this song, juxtapose opposites.
“The path of the messenger” refers to the practice that corresponds to the third
empowerment, that of wisdom engendered by an embodiment of transcendent
knowledge. Métripa’s practice of this incurred his expulsion from the monastery. To
“focus on the tip of the nose” can refer to tranquillity meditation at the outset of the
Buddhist path.
6 The sound Iti (eetee), which closes many songs in this collection, is used to indicate
that the words must not be altered. According to Steven Rhodes, this word in Sanskrit
closes a quote.
7 According to Bokar Rinpoché, brjod med in the text should be read as brjed med.
8 The Lhasa edition of The Collection of Shangpa Masters’ Biographies (p. 39) has dman
ma (old), not smas ma (wounded).
9 The first name here, Dorjé Denpa, is the common Tibetan name for this master; Punyakara-gupta
is his monastic name in Sanskrit. Although Tibetans commonly translate
Indian names into Tibetan (for example, “Nagarjuna” is usually referred to as
“Ludrub”), Dorjé Denpa is alone among Kyungpo Naljor’s main teachers to be most
often referred to with a Tibetan name, a convention I have followed in this book.
10 According to Bokar Rinpoché, these are the four main philosophical systems—
Vaibashika, Discourse, Mind Only, and Middle Way.
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