9. The Lion’s Roar That Vanquishes the Diversions and Errors of Hermits Who Meditate upon the Heart Essence
BY JIGME LINGPA



In the innate natural continuity,
I bow to the Great Perfection,
Beyond meditation, modification, and change,
Without distraction or fixation,
Endowed with a core of awareness,
And transcending the conceptual mind that deliberately accepts and rejects.

This is the vital essence of the tantras of the luminous Great Perfection,
The heart essence of Padma, the heart blood of the dakinis.
It is the ultimate meaning that transcends the gradual approach of the nine vehicles.
It can be expressed only through the power of the wisdom mind transmission.
For the sake of those yogi meditators
Who are single-mindedly dedicated to the supreme essential meaning,
I have composed this text,
Not through restrictive conceptual analysis,
But from the treasury of the vast expanse of the wisdom mind.

Here, one’s pure aspirations made in past lifetimes
Are joined with meeting a fully qualified holy guru
Who holds the ultimate lineage of realization.

Then, if you know how to supplicate,
Through surrendering to such a teacher with complete trust, And with fervent, single-minded yearning faith,
Your devotion will serve as the contributing condition,
And the guru’s realization will be transferred to the disciple.

This nature, free from conceptual elaborations,
Is the natural state of the Great Perfection,
Which cannot be shown by words or examples.

It is an unimpeded manifestation, without limitations,
And it does not fall into extreme views.
It is the immediate awareness of Directly Cutting Through,
Which never sheds its coat nor changes color.

As meditation has fully become just this,
You have purified the attachment to meditating.
Released from the chains of view and meditation,
Certainty is born from within.
The “thinker” is gone without a trace.

You are no longer benefited by good thoughts, harmed by bad thoughts,
Or misled by thoughts of an indeterminate nature.

Expanse and awareness have become all-pervasive.
And so the spiritual qualities, which are the signs of the path, have been actualized.
Even the names of so-called errors, diversions, and ways of straying do not exist.

However, although this teaching is the pinnacle of all vehicles,
There are individuals of the superior, middling, and lesser categories.
Since it is difficult to find those [disciples] of the most superior acumen,
There might be misunderstandings between guru and disciple.
In that case, even if the disciple meditates,
Due to this shortcoming, he or she will find it difficult to develop good qualities,
And will go astray.
In relation to this, from the viewpoint of
The personal meditation practice of those who follow a gradual path,
There are the three stages:
Intellectual understanding, actual experience, and realization.

[Interlinear note (yig chung) within the root text:

Relating these to the stages of the path of the general vehicle:
On the path of accumulation, one acquires intellectual understanding.
On the path of joining, one gains actual experience.
And on the path of seeing, one gains realization.
These words of the learned and accomplished ones appear to be very true.]

These days it seems there are many who consider
Their mere intellectual understanding to be genuine meditation.
And so, there are many who go astray by attaching conceptual labels [to experience].

To explain how this occurs:
At times consciousness is clear and empty,
Your meditative equipoise is without any thoughts at all,
And you are in a relaxed and comfortable mood.
When this happens, it simply indicates that the meditation experience of bliss is predominant.

[You may think,] “My meditation is exactly it! No one knows any better than me. My realization is just like this!” and you will feel proud.
However, if at this point you do not rely upon an authentic teacher, then as it says in the Dzogchen teachings,
“Intellectual understanding is like a patch, it wears off.”

As this illustrates, there are many who, when they meet with good or bad circumstances, [separate from their practice] like water separates from milk.

Furthermore, bad circumstances are somewhat easier to successfully bring to the path,
But bringing good circumstances to the path is very difficult.
Thus there are those who arrogantly presume that they have high realization, yet strive for the glories of this life. They are distracted, filled solely with attachment to the “mara demon of the ‘child of the gods.’”
This is due to not having understood the key point of the self-liberation of the six sense fields.

These days there are many who speak of these [kinds of views and meditation] as if they were amazing signs of accomplishment . . . although those who point this out are just [regarded as] “white ravens.”

However, for those of you who practice the sacred dharma from your hearts, such a fixated conceptual view will not help your practice of meditation.

In the four sessions of daily practice, you should focus on guru yoga,
Receiving the four empowerments.
Then, within the state of merging your mind with the guru’s mind,
Let awareness be free and unbound.
Persevere thus from the depths of your heart,
Until the essence of this experience
Has become unsupported and free of any reference point.

Likewise, for meditation experiences:
When calm abiding meditation predominates, there will be experiences of emptiness.
When insight predominates, there will be experiences of clarity and so forth.

In brief, knowing the vital point of discursive thoughts,
The power of discriminating intelligence blazes forth.

And although you know how to bring both stillness and movement into meditation,
Yet the essence of the “knower” is under the tight grip of ego fixation,
And you stray into a pattern of analytical examination and so forth.
These are highly undetectable and dangerous conceptual obscurations.
Therefore, as these are present, it is premature to label thoughts as “dharmakaya.”

Do not bind this immediate awareness, which is unimpaired and uncorrupted,
With the meditators’ “remedies,”
Or with attachment to your view.

You should solely take as the path
This free and unbound,
Unimpeded open transparency.

Moreover, if you fall under the influence of speculation
Based on your ideas about meditation and postmeditation,
Then you will [enter] the dangerous passage of diversions, errors, and strayings on the path.
If you do not know how to identify these, then you will be unable to distinguish whether or not [your meditation] is correct.

Therefore, the hidden flaws of these are explained here:

What is “emptiness”?
It is that which is empty and without a self-entity from primordial beginning.
It is free from the four and the eight extreme views.
This immediate awareness, which is free and unbound and beyond concepts,
Is known as “rigpa.”

This may not be understood.
For example, in the lower vehicles, there is conceptual analysis to affirm nonexistence and to negate existence. And following this, you arrive at an empty, blank nothingness.
Or, as in the lower tantric classes with the svabhava mantra and so forth, through meditative concentration, you purify everything into emptiness, [asserting] a mere “clarity and emptiness.”
Or, if you experience an [imputed] view that [everything] is like an illusion,
These are errors.

Likewise, for “calm abiding meditation”:
The coarse and subtle thoughts are naturally pacified in and of themselves.
The nature of mind, free of the waves of discursive thoughts,
Has an abiding aspect that is vividly clear and wakeful,
Self-illuminating self-awareness.

Misunderstanding this, thinking that calm abiding is a mindless vacant state, is an error.

Regarding “insight”:
It is the recognition that both stillness and movement
Are the natural reflection
Of the essence of your awareness.
It is clear and aware without grasping—that’s it!
Otherwise if you do not understand this and investigate stillness and movement,
It is an error.

There are a variety of ways of explaining
What are known as “meditative equipoise” and “postmeditation.”

However, according Dzogchen’s own terminology,
“Meditative equipoise” is to abide
While embracing the essence of whatever arises with mindfulness.

Then, while being attentive to that [practice],
The aspect of movement, that which transforms and changes,
Is known as “postmeditation.”

Misunderstanding this, [you think that] to one-pointedly keep in mind an empty viewpoint is “meditative equipoise.”
And following this, you superimpose an illusion-like emptiness upon whatever arises and call this “postmeditation.”
This is an error.

What is meant by “nondistraction”?
It means that you do not stray into the subtle undercurrents of deluded thinking.
And, you do not enter into a state of vague oblivion.
This is known as genuine, innate mindfulness.

If you are anxious about being distracted,
And if you are bound by deliberate, restricted mindfulness,
Then these are errors.

What is “ordinary mind”?
It is said to be immediate awareness,
Which is untainted by either faults or good qualities,
Left as it naturally is.
It is sustaining the continuous flow of awareness.

Misunderstanding this, to identify it as your ordinary, autonomous mundane thinking is an error.

What is “nonmeditation”?
Entering the womb of the natural state,
The attachment to meditating or not meditating is purified.
Without any artificial modification or any reference point whatsoever,
You establish the citadel of all-pervasive mindfulness.

If you are in a state of careless indifference, remaining in your ordinary manner,
Or if you are daydreaming in an indeterminate, vague oblivion,
These are errors.

What does “sustaining whatever arises” refer to?
Whatever thought arises, look directly at it,
Neither blocking it, nor examining it, nor following after it.
Release the thinker itself within awareness,
And sustain the unimpeded open transparency of stillness and movement.

Misunderstanding this, to carelessly follow after whatever thoughts arise and analyze them is an error.

Similarly, there are three diversions:
If you are attached to bliss, you will be born as a god in the desire realms.
If you are attached to clarity, you will be born as a god in the form realms.
And if you are attached to nonthought, you will be born as a god in the formless realms.
These are known as points of diversion.

I will explain how to identify them and their errors:
That which is known as “bliss” is untainted by the three major root sufferings.
It is like, for example, when you cannot bear to separate from [Abiding] within the natural state.
It is said to be the arising of the experience of joyful bliss.

This is not like the bliss of defiled, outflowing desire.
Nor is it said to be like the arising of thoughts of happiness and delight.
Nor is it being delighted with changing objective circumstances.

What is known as “clarity” is that which is not tainted by the obstructing forces of drowsiness and fogginess.
It is the unobstructed shining forth
Of rigpa’s aspect of potency,
Or of [rigpa’s] avenues of expression.

It is not the avenues of perception endowed with the characteristics of apparent objects such as shapes, colors, and so forth,
Which are the natural forms of deluded perception.

Moreover, in regard to “nonthought”:
It is free from thinking all kinds of thoughts
And from being disturbed by the deluded thinking that reifies things as being real.
It is said to be thought-free, like space.

It is not like fainting and losing consciousness.
Nor is it a black darkness like deep sleep.
Nor is it like when the senses withdraw and you feel nothing.
In brief, these three types of experiences are merely the manner in which signs of the path manifest, and they naturally and spontaneously occur.
However, if you do not realize this and meditate deliberately hoping for them,
And when they do occur, if you embrace them as though they were genuine meditation and become attached to them,
Then this will cause you to be diverted into the three realms of existence.

Likewise, there are the four ways of straying (in regard to emptiness):
Straying into emptiness’s having the character of a knowable object,
Straying into taking emptiness as a path,
Straying into taking emptiness as a remedy, and
Straying into superimposing emptiness.

Each of these four is said to have an original straying point
And a temporary straying point.

However, if we briefly summarize them:
The essence of ultimate emptiness is primordially pure.
It is free from the fetters of being a compounded phenomenon
And of being a mental construct.
This present awareness is immense, boundless, primordial purity.

Misunderstanding this key point, if you regard emptiness as something separate,
Like stamping emptiness onto appearances,
This is straying into [emptiness’s] having the character of a knowable object.

Likewise, you may not be convinced that it is ordinary mind or self-knowing awareness (rang rig) that you take as the path.
You may not understand that cause and result are by nature inseparable
And are from the very beginning spontaneously present and already complete.

Then by meditating on emptiness as a path, you exert yourself with the hope that the result of the dharmakaya will arrive from somewhere else.
By this, your meditation is mentally constructed.
This is the straying point of taking emptiness as a path.
Once again, whatever thoughts and emotions arise,
Their essence is none other than emptiness from the very beginning.

As there is nothing beyond that,
There is no need for these two things:
The afflictive emotion that is to be abandoned
And emptiness as a remedy [for it].

When your awareness identifies the “object to be abandoned,”
At that very moment, like a snake naturally unknotting itself,
It is self-liberated.

Misunderstanding this vital point,
If you need to meditate by applying an additional remedy of “emptiness”
Onto the thought or emotion that is to be abandoned,
This is straying into [taking emptiness as] a remedy.

Concerning the straying of superimposing emptiness:
Whether the [practice] is elaborate or unelaborate,
Within the primordial, vast sphere,
The spacious expanse of Samantabhadri,
Clarity and emptiness are spontaneously present as a great unity.

By not understanding this,
Then the reified meditator
And the conceptual way of dissolving [all phenomena] into emptiness
Are not unified,
And thereby skillful means and wisdom are divorced.
And thus, you are not sustaining the continuity
Of “ordinary awareness” beyond concepts,
Through the nonreferential “watcher.”

And keeping your previous intellectual theories in mind,
You think:
“There is nothing to meditate upon and no meditator.”
“Everything is emptiness.”
“All is dharmakaya.”
“Karma and its results do not really exist.”
“This is mind.”
“These are thoughts.”
“Nothing at all can be found to exist.”

This is what is known as superimposing [an intellectually] resolved view of emptiness.
Nowadays there are a great many who do this.

In brief, while meditation has been placed in your hand,
On the journey to the level “endowed with the excellence of all aspects,”
There are the concealed places and narrow, treacherous pathways
Of errors, diversions, and points of straying.

If you do not carefully discern these experiences,
Even if you are a clever talker and a shrewd writer,
As it says in the Dzogchen teachings,
“Meditation experiences are like mist, they will fade away.”

As it is explained, even trifling positive and negative circumstances
Can deceive a “great meditator.”
This is due to his becoming completely confounded in the face of circumstances.

Therefore, if you don’t embrace [your practice] by means of
This extraordinary vital point for removing obstacles and bringing enhancement,
Then staying in a strict retreat away from all human contact,
You will bemoan the ascetic hardships of your concentration practices.
You will bind yourself tightly in meditation postures,
Meditating on deities and reciting mantras,
Cultivating the practices of the channels and vital energies, and so forth.
But how will you attain liberation and enlightenment,
Merely through the difficulty of searching for and buying such goods?

As it says in the Condensed Perfection of Wisdom Sutra,
“Though one may remain for countless years
In a mountain valley filled with snakes,
Five hundred miles from anywhere,
Yet such a bodhisattva, who does not understand [the true meaning of ] solitude,
Will only develop further pride and will remain in samsara.”

Therefore, through understanding this vital point of taking whatever arises as the path,
Then in the hermitage of the body,
There is the practitioner, the mind,
Accomplishing the practice of remaining in solitude.
There is no path more effective than this.

Thus, don’t hope to make much of your months and years spent in retreat,
But just count your whole lifetime as the measure [of your retreat].
Place your efforts into sustaining the continuity of the uncontrived natural state.

Whatever good or bad thoughts may arise,
Do not apply the “patch” of just directly apprehending it,
Noticing, “Oh, here is a thought.”
Nor should you apply a remedy, as though it were a “moxibustion” treatment,
Onto the thought to be abandoned.
Doing nothing whatsoever, be unconcerned,
Like an old man watching children play.

By passing day and night without interruption
Within the state free from conceptual elaborations,
Thereby, you will perfect the mastery of thought-free insight.

Whether there is stillness, movement, or mindful awareness,
Whatever arises, [whether] good or bad thoughts,
By achieving stability within the expanse of empty awareness,
The Great Perfection beyond concepts,
Then as it says in Dzogchen,
“Realization is like space, unchanging.”

So it is said that although the yogin’s body may appear ordinary,
Since his mind remains in the wisdom realization of The dharmakaya, free of effort and activity,
All that appears and exists is the mandala of the guru.
Whatever arises is all-pervading primordial wisdom,
And apparent objects are [experienced as] symbols and scriptures.

The [yogin’s] wisdom mind, naturally at ease,
Is beyond the activities of the levels and paths.
And from the primordially liberated vast expanse of samsara and nirvana,
In the interim [until all beings are enlightened],
He will effortlessly and spontaneously
Accomplish the benefit of the teachings and living beings.

Then at the same time as the enclosure of your physical body dissolves,
Just as when a vessel breaks
And the space within it merges inseparably as one with the space outside,
[The realized yogin] will manifest true enlightenment
Within the youthful vase body,
The primordial ground expanse of inner luminosity,
Free from the investigating mind.
This is the final, ultimate accomplishment!

In summary:
Relative deluded appearances, the great falsehood,
Have dissolved into the vast expanse
Of the essential nature of awareness.
Thus the mind play of discursive thoughts, like a child’s dance,
Has subsided within the continuity of mindfulness beyond concepts.

As I am not intoxicated by stuporous sleep
From imbibing the beer of good thoughts that pursue a high view
And bad thoughts that shackle in doubt,
I remain at ease in naked ordinary awareness.

These profound and pithy vajra verses
Of the wisdom mind transmission
Will overpower, one hundred times over,
The exaggerated claims of those who spout their theoretical understanding,
As well as the piercing torment of the treacherous passage
Of stillness and movement.

Due to the auspicious connection of my previous accumulation [of merit]
And pure aspirations,
Together with the kindness of the profound path of the vajra yoga,
The knots of my central channel were released.
And as a testimony of this, I wrote these oral instructions on the vital points,
Based on my own experience.

When the roar of the summer thunder-drum resounds,
It splits asunder the mouse-like hearts of pretentious learned ones.
And as profound experience and realization have overflowed from within,
I was unable to conceal these words that spontaneously burst forth.

By this virtue,
Through sustaining the natural flow of mindfulness,
All of the nonvirtue accrued from straying into erroneous, restricted mindfulness
Is spontaneously purified within the innate continuity.

May all realize the Great Perfection!
The Lions Roar That Vanquishes Diversions and Errors was insistently requested many times by my attendant Dampa Longdrol Ying Rig, who is rich in the wealth of faith, generosity, and learning, while constantly maintaining the practice of the luminous Great Perfection due to his past karmic connection; and also by Kusum Ying Rig, whose mind abides in the three solitudes, and remaining in closed retreat, is focused on the practice of the Luminous Vajra Heart. Based on these requests, I, the Kusulu yogin, Padma Wangchen Yeshe Palgyi Rol Tso (Powerful Lotus Wisdom Glorious Lake of Enjoyment), who consider myself familiar with the direct experience of the natural state (mngon sum gyi gnas) of the luminous Great Perfection, wrote this text during my retreat in the Great Secret Flower Cave of Ogmin Khadro Tshok Khang, “Feast Hall of the Akanishtha Dakinis,” which is at the navel of Samye Chimpu. Do not show this text to those who have not received these instructions, or to those who, even if they have received them, hold wrong views; being intoxicated with the poisonous waters of pride, they thus lack the fortune to apply these vital points of the path. All those of you who are dedicated to practice, read this text again and again!
All those who have certainty may be given the reading transmission of it.

It is entrusted to the care of the sacred Nyingthig Protectors.
SAMAYA GYA GYA GYA