Calling the Guru from Afar:
The Chariot that Leads the Sun of Blessings
Composed by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsog Jungnge
Dhīḥ!
Your explanations, by means of debating, teaching, and composing the essential points
Of the ocean of the way of the Dharma, the scholarly traditions of sūtra and tantra, are unrivalled.
O greatly kind guru, lord of scholars, think of me!
Grant me that discrimination that understands all that this is and how it exists!
Through binding perception together with the vigilance and alertness that are free of blithe
Even in your dreams you are unblemished by subtle misdeeds.
O greatly kind guru, supreme among venerable ones, think of me!
Grant me the excellent ornament of supreme stainless morality!
Through the four aspects of gathering disciples that accord with the devotion of
The congregation of various wanderers, you lead them to enlightenment.
O greatly kind guru, who bears the excellent adornment, think of me!
Grant me the power and ability to lead all limitless wanderers!
You are the great strength that effortlessly enters and arises from
The collections of concentrations that are vast, profound, and beyond enumeration.
O greatly kind guru, supreme leader of powerful yogins, think of me!
Grant me the quality of the supreme wisdom of experience and realization!
You have the mind that realizes the non-truth of all phenomena, in the nature of an illusion and that
Clears away like mist the conceptual habits that cling to the eight worldly dharmas.
O greatly kind guru, who has the mind of definite emergence, think of me!
Please, in an instant, loose these tight shackles of karma and afflictions!
Although you have cut the root of saṃsāra with your illustration of selflessness,
Due to the strength of your compassion you do not grasp at the bliss of peace.
O greatly kind guru, who has abandoned the extremes of saṃsāra and peace, think of me!
Grant me the accomplishment which simultaneously achieves the dual aim!
You uninterruptedly meditate on the purpose of the four stakes which bind the life force 1, and
Your three doors are the pure display of the three maṇḍalas.
O greatly kind guru, who has mastered the generation stage, please think of me!
Please bestow the stream of four initiations into the vase at my heart!
When, by means of the excellent path of supreme methods, you pierced the vajra body,
You perfected the great strength which realizes the sixteen points of truth.
O greatly kind guru, who has mastered the completion stage, please think of me!
Please grant me the degree of heat which has mastered the wind-mind!
The quick path of “breaking through” and “leaping over” 2 dissolved in the center of your heart,
And the contaminated aggregates of the path of the four visions ripened into the body of light.
O greatly kind guru, who has mastered the Great Perfection, please think of me!
Father who transfers the blessings of the Mind Lineage: Please bestow upon me that reward!
In a single instant you unimpededly perceive the unmixed quiescence of all
Objects of comprehension included among dharma and dharmatā 3.
O greatly kind guru, sovereign of great knowledge, please think of me!
Please annihilate, without leaving any remaining, the collections of obscuring faults in my continuum!
You love all destitute wanderers who are tormented by limitless suffering
Just as a mother does her own most dear and precious child.
O greatly kind guru, upholder of a treasury of sympathetic love, please think of me!
Please grant me the armor of the mind of enlightenment which benefits others!
You’re able to establish all those who wander, powerlessly, in the greatly frightening realms of saṃsāra,
As if by magic, into the kingdom of perpetual bliss.
O greatly kind guru, the only treasury of such ability, please think of me!
Please grant the virtue and goodness of the supreme activities of benefit and bliss!
You excel at showering down the appropriate discipline, without avarice, to bring about the liberation
Of these incorrigible wanderers who were not tamed by previous conquerors.
O greatly kind guru, who has supreme strength of heart, please think of me!
Destroy at one time all the hundreds of disadvantages of the five degenerations!
You, who sends forth and collects back however many
Billions of emanations of peaceful and wrathful maṇḍalas.
O greatly kind guru, ultimate pervasive lord of the hundred buddha families, please think of me!
Please open the budding, indestructible terma-door in the center of my heart!
We are tormented by disease, weapons, and hunger more intense than a heap of flames!
This abyss, circling through the six migrations, is more disparaging than prison!
Our disorientation is more pitiable than that of a sentient being who is blind!
O greatly kind guru, with your compassion, dare you to discard all of us?
Although we, destitute, vividly make requests with faith,
If there is no relief of your supreme, unrivalled blessings
Then when great torment and distress again come to the center of our hearts,
O greatly kind guru, these bodies will be very near to crumbling!
When, being powerlessly swept along by the fierce torrents of suffering,
We became morsels of food for the pernicious sea monsters of karma and delusion,
Although we wished for an island of uninterrupted bliss
Our hopes were in vain. Guru, think of us!
Think of us, guru of unequalled loving sympathy and great kindness!
Having effortlessly transferred to wanderers’ continuums
The marvelous collections of your three secrets, excellent qualities, and holy actions, without exception,
Please grant the auspiciousness that stirs up saṃsāra from its depths!
Colophon: This prayer which is measured by eighteen distinct verses was written in the intervals of the morning sessions during the wood-snake year of the 16th rabjung cycle (1965) by Ngawang Lodro Tshungme [Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok Jungnge], motivated by the desire to benefit the faithful, such as the heart-friend Pedzin. May virtue and excellence increase!
Translators’ Colophon: This prayer was translated at Sera Je Monastery, Bylakuppe, India, in April 2018, by Śakya Gelong Gyalten Lekden, with input from Śakya Gelong Jampa Khedrub. May any benefit that arises from this translation be dedicated to the continued display of the long and healthy lives of all of our holy gurus.
Notes
1. The Great Tibetan Dictionary: “The four critical stakes of the generation stage of Mahāyoga Tantra: The stake of deity concentration, the stake of the essence mantra, the stake of unchanging intention, and the stake of the activities of expansion and contraction. These are the four stakes which bind the life force of the non-dual mind of all phenomena of cyclic existence and nirvāṇa.”
2. These are two of four essential parts of Great Perfection (Dzogchen) practice. Breaking through is paired with “essential purity” and leaping over is paired with “spontaneity.”
3. Here dharma is referencing all conventional phenomena and dharmatā is the way of being, or suchness, of all phenomena, or simply emptiness. The relationship between the two words, the way in which the second is a modified version of the first, captured in both Tibetan and Sanskrit, is lost in most English translations, which is why I chose to keep the Sanskrit.