Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

88 Timeless Rapture
With no joy in many possessions,
I feel no pleasure or sorrow toward praise or blame.
Even in the face of Lord of Death’s miraculous displays,
I have no fear, since I know them as appearances of my own mind.
The mind’s nature is free from both permanence and transience;
Neither birth nor death frightens me.
Isn’t that the precious general who conquers misleading thoughts?
For the meditator who realizes this,
Appearances arise as a teacher
In the mind’s primordial purity.
This is like the precious elephant that moves armies.
Anger and desire vanish into the state without mental activity;
A bird flying in space has no support.
The six senses that arise are fleeting.
When I don’t cling to them, they become an aid,
A grand, unimpeded sight,
Beautiful ornaments worn by the precious queen.
For the meditator who has realized this,
The mind’s home has no boundaries
And is all-pervasive, like space.
In what cannot be identified, like the horizon,
The door to luminosity has no limits.
Since the absolute expanse and wisdom are inseparable,
The continuity of enlightenment’s three bodies has no bounds,
Like the effortless sun
Whose rays shine in every direction.
That is the precious jewel that fulfills needs, hopes, and desires.
These seven precious possessions’ supreme wealth
Are the meditator’s great ornaments.
We can be separated from our bodies, but not from them.
I consider them our sacred wealth.
I have no need to aspire to the wealth of kings,
Nor do I take pleasure in scholars’ technical terms.
This is no joke: I stake my life on it!