[1] A Summary of the View, Meditation, and Conduct

By Yangthang Rinpoche

[2] Sole bindu, timeless, eternal protector,

All-pervasive lord of all the families of buddhas, Guru Vajradhara,
If as we earnestly and single-pointedly pray to you, you know.
Grant your blessings that the view of the lineage of the enlightened perspective may
​strike our hearts!

You have obtained a human life, which is difficult to find,

Have aroused an intention of a spirit of emergence, which is difficult to arouse,
Have met a qualified guru, who is difficult to meet, [3]
And you have encountered the sublime Dharma, which is difficult to encounter.
Reflect again and again on the difficulty
Of obtaining such a fine human life.
If you do not make this meaningful,
It will be like a butter lamp in the wind of impermanence.
Do not count on this lasting a long time.
At death, if you have no confidence that you will be liberated in the intermediate period,
How terrifying will be the miseries of future lives!
When you [4] must wander in endless saṃsāra,
If you contemplate the nature of this, you will be disillusioned.
If you can try your best to gain confidence in this life,
I would be most grateful—
This is my hope for you.

The View

If you wish to look into the mirror of the actual nature of your mind,
Do not look outward. Rather, look inward.
Looking outward involves the delusion of reification.
By looking inward, you observe your own mind. [5]
Do not follow after past thoughts,
Or anticipate thoughts to come.
As soon as you encounter the agitated thoughts
Of the present by directing your mind inwards,
Loosely rest right there,
Without modifying them in the slightest.
This natural settling of thoughts
Is a way of resting, but is not the main practice.
But in that very way of resting [6]
You are ready to encounter pristine awareness, which is the main practice.

As soon as you rest in your natural state,

Thoughts spontaneously cease and depart.
Right where the luster of thoughts disappears,
Is the empty, transparent nature of the mind.
Without focusing on anything, free of falling to any extreme,
A space-like experience arises.
Its empty nature is the dharmakāya.
In the essential nature of that emptiness
Is the transparently luminous manifest nature of the mind.
Devoid of any expressible, substantial characteristics,
Its spacious and unimpeded self-illumination,
Which is naturally clear, is the saṃbhogakāya.
There is no other perceiver
Of this luminous, empty pristine awareness.
That which is perceived is the empty dharmakāya.
That which perceives is luminous primordial consciousness.
These two may be expressed as emptiness and luminosity,
And they may be called [7] absolute space and primordial consciousness.
These two are not separate.
The manifest nature of that emptiness is luminosity,
And the essential nature of that luminosity is emptiness.
So luminosity and emptiness are unified.
They are not separate, for they are of one taste.
There is no duality of the perceived and the perceiver.
This is perceived nondually,
So it is called discerning self-awareness,
In which the mind sees itself.
That very nature of the one taste of luminosity and emptiness
Is the equal taste of the good and bad, of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.
So there is no difference between the two, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.
Just that is the Great Perfection.
In the mindstream of one who realizes this Great Perfection
Impartial compassion
And impartial pure vision
Emerge effortlessly and naturally. [8]
That all-pervasive compassion is the nirmāṇakāya.
The pristine awareness of the three kāyas is just that,
So recognize that it is nothing other than that.
As long as there is vague uncertainty,
Realization of the nature of existence will never come.
So you must ascertain this from within.
This is the view of the Great Perfection.

Meditation

Among the three—the view, meditation, and conduct—

​the view is primary.
So it is crucial to realize the view without error.
Without realizing the view, there is no basis for meditation.
Once you have directly realized the view without confusion,
You are ready to experience it by way of meditation.
Meditation is persevering dedication to dwelling in the nature of the view
Of encountering your own essential nature.
There is nothing else on which to meditate.
Until the view becomes expansive,
Without counting the number of years and months, [9]
Determine to devote your whole life to Dharma.
That is what the best of Dharma practitioners do.
From the very outset, if you give lip service to the equality free of conceptual
​elaboration and so on,
While taking it easy, without practicing in formal sessions,
Doing whatever you like—eating and lying about—
In the end, there will be no difference between your freedom from conceptual elaboration
​and futility;
And there is a great danger that you will sink into oblivion when you are about to die.
Empty talk and boasting are useless,
So in accordance with sublime beings,
Be a humble Dharma practitioner, letting your conduct accord with your speech.

Therefore, it is best if you retire to mountain solitude,

Or at least stay in a place where there are few distractions.
Divide your time between formal sessions and post-meditative periods,
Dwell in meditative equipoise and avoid the nine kinds of activity.
Without being distracted outward and without grasping inward,
Evenly rest [10] in the naturally settled indwelling nature.
All appearances that arise as objects of the five senses,
Are like reflections of planets and stars in the ocean.
Whatever arises, evenly rest without grasping in the expanse.
The best of meditations is abiding without even the slightest object of attention.
Even though that is difficult for beginners,
After awhile, with gradual effort, it will happen.
During the post-meditative periods, train in emptiness, compassion,
And view phenomena as being like illusions and dreams.
As for Dharma conduct, strive as much as possible in purifying obscurations.
In particular, it is crucial to direct your thoughts after meditation
To the view that arose while in meditative equipoise,
So that your post-meditative experience is integrated with your formal sessions.
Distinguish between the substrate and the dharmakāya and between the mind and
​pristine ​awareness.
Once you have analyzed and recognized all the faults and virtues pertaining to
Erring, straying, being mistaken and so on,
It is important that you strive in adopting virtues and rejecting faults.

[11] Those are the practices for the post-meditative periods.

When you strive for a long time in such practices,
Whatever meditative experiences and appearances arise, such as bliss, luminosity, and
​nonconceptuality,
Do not identify with them or fixate on them,
But ascertain them with the view and sustain your practice of resting naturally.
Gradually, fine meditative experiences will increase and bad ones will cease.
At the outset of each session, arouse bodhicitta,
Practice guru yoga, and take the four empowerments,
And after each session, seal it with prayers of dedication.
Those comprise the framework of meditation, so they are indispensable.
In particular, until you have reached the culminating practice of non-meditation
And self-knowing pristine awareness has actually arisen as the guru.
The crucial point to be embraced
Is regarding the training in guru yoga as the main practice.

If you can practice each day in four sessions of yoga [12]

Without being too tight or too loose,
You will certainly hold the fortress of eternal rest
In the culmination of all the five kinds of meditative experiences and so on taught by
Vimalamitra.

Even if not, if those who apply just a moderate degree of effort in this
And just engage in hearing and reflection,
They will experience less clinging to the eight mundane concerns
And will spend their lives in a relaxed, cheerful manner.
They will progress along the path, and before long
They will surely be liberated in the eternal ground of omniscience.

Conduct

Then to give a partial account of the conduct,

If you dwell in meditative equipoise like that,
When fresh thoughts suddenly emerge
Or they crop up subliminally,
Perceive their emergence from your own pristine awareness. [13]
Do not do anything, such as following after
The good, bad, pleasurable, miserable, and so forth.
Rather, as soon as you see them arise,
Rest in the nature of just that which has arisen.
By naturally resting, thoughts will disappear by themselves,
And you will return to pristine awareness.
Then continue the practice of resting naturally like before.
Thus, whatever good and bad thoughts arise,
Do not fixate on them, but watch them arise and be released by themselves.
However thoughts are released in the three ways, there is no difference.
The one point is that they self-arise and self-release.
Even though thoughts occur, they arise from the expanse of the dharmakāya.
Even though thoughts stop, they cease in the expanse of pristine awareness.
If you know their arising does no harm and you let them release themselves,
You will receive a special enhancement of the view. [14]
By striving like that, the supreme, middling, and least modes of release
Will gradually come, including a decrease of thoughts,
With no harm coming to the ground due to their arising.
If the crucial points of such ways of release are missing,
Liberation will never be attained.
Knowing how thoughts release themselves is the best conduct.

As for the results of practicing like that,

Afflictive thoughts gradually decrease,
Clinging to the eight mundane concerns diminishes,
Admiration, reverence, and pure vision gradually increase,
Dreams are apprehended, and the clear light appears.
Such is the authentic fruition of the path.
On the other hand, we do not know whether such things as visions of deities, receiving
​prophecies,
And the arising of extrasensory perception are the fruition of the path or not.
If we do not know good from bad, we are deceived by māras. [15]
Do not wait for such things—just let them go!
Finally, on the verge of death or in the transitional phase of the actual nature of reality,
Recognize the appearances of the ground and hold the fortress in that very ground.
Then you will certainly be liberated.

I have composed this summary of the view, meditation, and conduct

Simply in order not to rebuff a request by a friend.
This is lip service about things I lack,
So there are bound to be many errors.
Therefore, please inquire of others and investigate carefully.
If there are a few points that are correct,
I pray that this will enhance the practice of my friends,
Contribute to the culmination of the practice,
That they will then simultaneously be liberated in the expanse of eternal ground
And accomplish the needs of themselves and others.

Simply in order not to rebuff the request by Lama Tsewang, [16] who came from
Riwoché in Kham, the one going by the name of Yangthang Tulku composed this with no
head and no tail. May it be a cause of benefiting the practice of my friends.

Translated by B. Alan Wallace, with the assistance of Tenzin Weigyal Chodrak (Pojen
Tseng).