The Itipiso read in the light of the Great Perfection
The Ancient Chant
Morning and evening, in the monasteries of Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, monks and nuns chant a sentence that has scarcely changed in two thousand years:
Iti pi so bhagavā arahaṃ sammāsambuddho vijjācaraṇasampanno sugato lokavidū anuttaro purisadammasārathi satthā devamanussānaṃ buddho bhagavā ti.
It is the buddhānussati, the recollection of the Buddha. In the Aṅguttara Nikāya the Blessed One recommends it to Mahānāma and other lay followers as the first of six recollections. A noble disciple who calls the Tathāgata to mind in this way, he says, has a mind no longer gripped by greed, hatred or delusion; the mind becomes upright, gladness arises, and from gladness come rapture, tranquillity and concentration, one after the other.
The formula came to Tibet in its Sanskrit form:
ity api sa bhagavāṃs tathāgato ‘rhan samyaksaṃbuddho vidyācaraṇasaṃpannaḥ sugato lokavid anuttaraḥ puruṣadamyasārathiḥ śāstā devamanuṣyāṇāṃ buddho bhagavān.
The translators of the imperial period had to find a Tibetan word for every epithet. For the perfection in samyaksaṃbuddha they used rdzogs pa. For vidyā they used rig pa. For the su of sugata they used bde ba, bliss, and for anuttara, bla na med pa. Within a few centuries those same words had become the working vocabulary of the Great Perfection, rdzogs pa chen po. Whether anyone intended the connection hardly matters. A Tibetan who recites the recollection of the Buddha says rdzogs pa, rig pa and bla na med pa in one breath.
The two traditions do not mean the same thing by these words, and the difference deserves attention. The Pāli recollection turns the mind towards a man who lived, taught and passed away. Dzogchen says that the one being recollected is one's own nature, and always was. Recollection, anussati, rjes su dran pa, gives way to recognition, ngo shes pa.
Samantabhadra's Aspiration, revealed in the Gongpa Zangthal, states the point in its first lines. There is one ground and there are two paths. To recognise the ground is to be Buddha; not to recognise it is to be a sentient being who wanders. Each epithet of the Itipiso can be heard as a description of what is recognised.
Bhagavā and arahaṃ
Iti pi so means “for this reason too, he is". Buddhaghosa, in the Path of Purification, reads each epithet that follows as a further reason why the Blessed One deserves the name, so that the whole sentence is a chain of reasons pointing at one person.
The Pāli commentators heard several words in bhagavā. He is bhagyavā, the fortunate one. He is bhaggavā, from the root bhañj, the one who has broken the defilements. He possesses bhaga, the six excellences of lordship, Dharma, glory, splendour, aspiration and effort. The Mahāniddesa adds that this is no name given by mother or father; it is a designation that arises at the culmination of liberation.
The Tibetans compressed all of this into bcom ldan 'das. Bcom, conquered, refers to the four māras. Ldan, endowed, refers to the excellences. 'Das, gone beyond, has no counterpart in the Sanskrit at all. The translators added it so that nobody would picture the Blessed One resting in a quiescent nirvāṇa apart from saṃsāra. He has passed beyond both.
The Dzogchen tantras open with bcom ldan 'das kun tu bzang po, the Blessed One Samantabhadra, and the three syllables take on another colouring there. Nothing in the Great Perfection is conquered by force. A thought arises, is recognised as the play of awareness, and frees itself, rang grol, like a line drawn on water. The endowment is lhun grub, the spontaneously present qualities of the ground, which were never acquired. The going beyond is ka dag, primordial purity, which never fell into either extreme in the first place. The Mahāniddesa said the name arises from liberation and is not conferred; Dzogchen goes further and says the qualities were never produced.
For arahaṃ Buddhaghosa gives five derivations. The arahant is far, ārakā, from the defilements. His enemies, ari, are slain. The spokes, ara, of the wheel of becoming are broken. He is worthy, araha, of offerings. And he has no secret place, raha, where he might do wrong.
Tibet chose the second, dgra bcom pa, foe-destroyer. Dzogchen traces every enemy back to ma rig pa, the failure to recognise one's own nature, and the third derivation then fits with surprising precision. In the Treasury of Words and Meanings the Omniscient Longchenpa describes the whole wheel of the twelve links unrolling from one moment, when the ground's own radiance appears and is not recognised as one's own. The spokes are broken at the hub, where the wheel starts.
The fifth derivation, having no secret, has its echo in a word the Nyingthig masters often use: rang gsang, self-secret. Nobody hides the nature of mind. It conceals nothing, and still it stays secret from everyone who looks away from it.
Sammāsambuddho
To render the prefix saṃ- in samyaksaṃbuddha, the translators reached for rdzogs pa, complete, lacking nothing. The epithet became yang dag par rdzogs pa'i sangs rgyas, the Perfectly and Completely Awakened One, and with it the name of the Great Perfection entered the oldest liturgy Tibet possessed.
Buddhaghosa explains the Pāli as sammā sāmañca: awakened rightly, and by himself, without a teacher. In Dzogchen that small word sāmaṃ, by oneself, runs through the whole teaching as the prefix rang: rang byung ye shes, self-arisen primordial wisdom; rang rig, awareness that knows itself. Awakening by oneself then means something more than needing no teacher. Awareness wakes to itself, through itself. The master points, and the recognition belongs to the one who recognises.
The Tibetan sangs rgyas carries a teaching in each syllable. Sangs is to clear or to wake, as the sky clears after cloud or a sleeper wakes. Rgyas is to expand or blossom. The Nyingma masters hear the two aspects of the ground in them. Sangs is ka dag: the obscurations were never really there, so nothing has to be removed. Rgyas is lhun grub: the qualities open by themselves, so nothing has to be added.
The Sanskrit root budh, to awaken, also gives bodhi and bodhicitta. The Kunjed Gyalpo, the All-Creating King and root tantra of the Mind Series, calls the ground itself byang chub kyi sems, the mind of awakening. It speaks in the first person as that mind and declares that all buddhas, all beings and all worlds arise from it and never leave it. The southern tradition honours awakening as what the Buddha attained. The Mind Series uses the same word for the nature of everything.
Vijjācaraṇasampanno
Endowed with knowledge and conduct. Here no interpretation is needed to find the bridge, because the translators rendered vidyā as rig pa, the word on which all of Dzogchen turns. Its opposite, avidyā, the first link of dependent arising, became ma rig pa. In Tibetan the epithet reads rig pa dang zhabs su ldan pa, endowed with rigpa and with its feet.
The Pāli canon is exact about what these words cover. In the Ambaṭṭha Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya, vijjā is an eightfold knowledge that culminates in three: recollection of former lives, the divine eye that sees beings die and take birth according to their deeds, and the knowledge of the destruction of the taints. The Sekha Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya counts fifteen elements of conduct: virtue, guarding the doors of the senses, moderation in eating, wakefulness, seven good qualities and the four absorptions. Buddhaghosa adds that by perfecting knowledge the Buddha fulfils omniscience, and by perfecting conduct he fulfils great compassion.
That pairing of omniscience and compassion survives in the Dzogchen account of the ground as essence, nature and compassion, ngo bo, rang bzhin and thugs rje. The essence is empty, the nature luminous, and compassion is their unobstructed responsiveness; compassion is simply wisdom in motion. Knowledge and conduct also live on as view and conduct, lta ba and spyod pa. Padmasambhava's advice is well known: let the view be as high as the sky, and let attention to cause and effect be as fine as flour. However far the view reaches, the feet stay on the ground.
The third knowledge, the destruction of the taints, āsavakkhaya, speaks of exhaustion, khaya. The Nyingthig names the end of its own path in the same way: chos nyid zad pa, the exhaustion of phenomena in dharmatā, the last of the four visions. In the Pāli the taints are worn out; in the Nyingthig every appearance, including those of the path, dissolves into its source. The same plain word for ending stands at the top of both.
In the first discourse at Sarnath, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha describes his awakening in five terms that arise together: vision, knowledge, wisdom, vijjā and light. Knowledge and light are one event. Elsewhere in the Aṅguttara Nikāya comes the line pabhassaram idaṃ cittaṃ, this mind is luminous, defiled only by defilements that arrive from outside. Here the old canon comes very close to what Dzogchen calls 'od gsal, the luminosity of rigpa.
One difference must still be kept in view. In the Pāli tradition vijjā is a fruit. It dawns at the end, after virtue and absorption. In Dzogchen rig pa is the ground, present from the start, never lost and never gained, only recognised or missed. The word is the same, but it has moved from the summit to the root, and almost everything else in the comparison follows from that move.
Sugato and lokavidū
Buddhaghosa finds four senses in sugato, the Well-Gone. The Buddha's going is beautiful. He has gone to a beautiful place, nibbāna. He has gone rightly and does not return to what he left behind. And, reading the word as sugada, he speaks rightly, saying only what is true and helpful, at the right time.
The Tibetan translators took a different path from all four. They rendered su as bde, bliss, and the Sugata became bde bar gshegs pa, the one gone to bliss. Two doors of the Great Perfection open from that one choice.
The first is sugatagarbha, bde gshegs snying po, the essence of the Sugatas. The Ratnagotravibhāga teaches that this essence dwells in every being, covered over yet never stained, like gold lying in the earth. Longchenpa, in the Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle, identifies it with the ground of Dzogchen, and the Heart Essence, snying thig, carries the same snying in its name. To recollect the Sugata is to recall the essence one already is.
The second door is bliss. In the Secret Mantra, great bliss, bde ba chen po, is awakened through channels, winds and essences, through the ascending and descending joys, until bliss and emptiness are known as one. Dzogchen recognises the same bliss as the natural quality of rigpa, uncontrived and unconditioned. The two belong to one road. Bliss ripened in the subtle body becomes the very support in which the blissful nature is recognised, and recognition frees that bliss from grasping. The Sugata has gone to a bliss that was the nature of mind from the beginning.
The word gata, gone, holds a paradox of its own. The Noble Nāgārjuna opens the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way by praising the Buddha who taught dependent arising, without coming and without going. Dzogchen describes the ground as 'gro 'ong med pa, beyond coming and going. The Well-Gone has gone where nothing goes.
Lokavidū, knower of the world. Buddhaghosa distinguishes three worlds: the world of formations, the world of beings, and the world of space, the container in which beings live. The Buddha knows all three completely. The Saṃyutta Nikāya gives an etymology the Tibetans kept remarkably closely: it is called the world, loka, because it disintegrates, lujjati. The Tibetan 'jig rten means just that, the support that perishes.
In the Rohitassa Sutta the Buddha says that it is within this fathom-long body, with its perception and mind, that he makes known the world, its arising, its ending and the way to its ending. The world is not reached by travelling to the edge of space. Dzogchen takes one more step. The world is gzhi snang, the appearance of the ground, and once recognised it is rang snang, the self-display of awareness. The knower of the world knows it at its source.
The honorific mkhyen pa recalls the two knowledges of a buddha, knowing things as they are, ji lta ba, and knowing them in all their multiplicity, ji snyed pa. In the light of Dzogchen they are the empty essence and its unobstructed display, seen together.
Anuttaro purisadammasārathi
Anuttaro, unsurpassed, is literally “having nothing higher", the negative an- with the comparative uttara. The Tibetan bla na med pa, with nothing above, carries the formula straight into the structure of the nine vehicles.
The ninth vehicle is atiyoga, and ati itself means beyond or utmost, close kin to anuttara. The Nyingma masters call it theg pa'i rtse mo, the peak of all vehicles. The highest class of tantra in the new schools of the Secret Mantra is named rnal 'byor bla na med pa, unsurpassed yoga. Within the Upadeśa Series of Dzogchen, Longchenpa distinguishes four cycles: outer, inner, secret, and the unsurpassed innermost secret, yang gsang bla na med pa'i skor. The Heart Essence, grounded in the Seventeen Tantras, among them the Sound Tantra and the Array of Jewels, belongs to that last cycle. So the word a Pāli reciter applies to the Buddha is the one Tibet used for the top of its whole path.
A point of grammar adds something. Buddhaghosa counts anuttaro as an epithet in its own right: the Buddha is unsurpassed. The Sanskrit and Tibetan versions join it to what follows, so that it is the charioteer who is unsurpassed, skyes bu 'dul ba'i kha lo sgyur ba bla na med pa. Dzogchen can hold both readings. The ground is unsurpassed because nothing lies beyond it, and the method of direct introduction is unsurpassed because nothing stands between the pointing and the seeing.
Purisadammasārathi, charioteer of persons to be tamed. Damma comes from the root dam, to tame, and the Tibetans rendered it 'dul ba, the same word they used for the Vinaya. Sārathi became kha lo sgyur ba, the one who turns the reins.
In the Kesi Sutta of the Aṅguttara Nikāya the Buddha talks with Kesi, a horse trainer, who trains some horses gently, some harshly and some with both. The Buddha answers that he trains people in the same three ways, and that those who respond to none of them he “kills": he no longer speaks to them, and in the discipline of the Noble One that is death enough. Behind the image stands the older chariot of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, where the self is the rider, the body the chariot, the intellect the charioteer and the senses the horses.
In Dzogchen the taming changes its character. The master does not break the horse but shows it the open field. Garab Dorje's first statement striking the vital point is ngo rang thog tu sprad, introduce directly to one's own face. The Heart Essence speaks of three kinds of practitioner: the instantaneous, cig car ba, for whom recognition and liberation happen at once; the one who leaps, thod rgal ba; and the gradual, rim gyis pa. The unsurpassed charioteer knows which of them is standing in front of him. Taming itself becomes rang bab, letting the mind settle into its own condition, as muddy water clears once it is left alone.
Satthā devamanussānaṃ, buddho, bhagavā
Satthā devamanussānaṃ, teacher of gods and humans. Satthā, Sanskrit śāstṛ, became ston pa in Tibetan, the one who shows. Every Dzogchen tantra opens with the five perfections, phun sum tshogs pa lnga, of teacher, retinue, place, time and teaching, and the ston pa of the recollection heads that list.
In the history of the Great Perfection “gods and humans" is meant almost literally. According to the lineage accounts, Vajrasattva transmitted the teaching in the realm of the gods to a god-son named Adhicitta, lha'i bu sems lhag can, who was later born in Oḍḍiyāna as Garab Dorje, the first human holder of Dzogchen. The teaching came down from the heavens into the human world by exactly the path the epithet names.
The three transmissions trace the same descent. The mind transmission of the Victorious Ones, rgyal ba dgongs brgyud, passes from Samantabhadra, the dharmakāya, without words or signs. The symbolic transmission of the vidyādharas, rig 'dzin brda brgyud, passes through Vajrasattva and the awareness-holders by gesture and sign. The oral transmission of persons, gang zag snyan brgyud, passes from ear to ear. Gang zag translates the Pāli puggala, the same plain word the suttas use for any human being on the path. In this lineage the teacher of gods and humans is Samantabhadra, Vajrasattva and Garab Dorje together, the three kāyas teaching as one.
Buddho follows. Drawing on the Paṭisambhidāmagga, Buddhaghosa gives two meanings: he has awakened to the truths, and he awakens beings. These correspond to the two benefits, for oneself and for others, rang don and gzhan don. In Dzogchen they are the dharmakāya and the two form kāyas, which act for others without effort, the way the sun warms without meaning to.
After nine qualities the bare word buddho returns, as if the recollection, having described the Awakened One in every way it can, now simply says his name. Samantabhadra's Aspiration does something similar in its own way: rig na sangs rgyas, to recognise is to be Buddha. In the same prayer Samantabhadra speaks as the one awakened from the very beginning, ye nas sangs rgyas. Those two syllables, ye nas, are what the Pāli formula never says, and they are the heart of what Dzogchen brings to it.
The formula ends as it began, with bhagavā. Buddhaghosa notes that the first occurrence sums up and the last one crowns. For Dzogchen the circle has its own meaning, because ground, path and fruit are not three. The Blessed One recalled at the start and the Blessed One recognised at the end are the same awareness. Longchenpa, in the Treasury of the Dharmadhātu, sings of a nature to which nothing has been added and from which nothing has been taken away.
Reciting it
Read as the Pāli tradition reads it, the Itipiso describes a sage who woke up beneath the Bodhi tree: his worthiness, his knowledge and conduct, his compassion and his teaching. It is recollection in the full sense, the heart turning towards one who went before, so that faith grows into joy, joy into calm, and calm into a ground for insight. It lacks nothing on its own terms.
Read in the words the Tibetan translators chose, the same sentence already contains rdzogs pa, rig pa, bde ba, bla na med pa and ston pa. The Great Perfection did not have to invent a vocabulary.
In practice the old chant can be used exactly as the southern tradition teaches. Recite it slowly, letting each quality come to mind in turn. At the final bhagavā, stop reaching towards the Blessed One and rest as the awareness in which every one of these qualities was already complete. Recollection has then done its work: it has led back to the one who recollects, and found there what Samantabhadra calls the Buddha from the very beginning.
