Why the Song of the Vajra Is Everything
Dorjé Lu, the Vajra Song from the Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon
The Song That Is the Whole Path
The Song of the Vajra from the Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon was never composed. It was not written by a poet, not translated from one language into another, not invented to please gods or men. It is the natural sound of Samantabhadra in union with Samantabhadrī, the self-resounding of the dharmakāya in the space of its own wisdom. The tantras call it dorjé lu, the Song of the Vajra. Its syllables are not Sanskrit and not Tibetan; they are the symbolic speech of the ḍākinīs of Oḍḍiyāna, a language that does not describe reality but is reality sounding itself.
This essay makes one claim and makes it without hesitation. The Song of the Vajra is everything. It is refuge. It is bodhicitta. It is Semdzin, the holding of the mind. It is Tsa Lung, the yoga of channels and winds. It is Rushen, the separation of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. It is Trekchö, cutting through to primordial purity. It is Direct Crossing, the spontaneous presence of the four visions. And at its end it is even the dedication of merit. One who sings it while resting in the nature of mind has, in that very singing, accomplished the entire path, from the first refuge to the fruition of the three kāyas.
This is not a poetic exaggeration. It is what the tantra itself declares, what the Omniscient Longchenpa confirms, what Adzom Drukpa placed at the summit of his holdings of the mind, and what the structure of the Song reveals line by line when it is heard with the ears of the Great Perfection. In its first quatrain lie the four yogas of the Mind Series; in its second, the four symbols of the Space Series; in its third, the four ways of leaving everything as it is in Trekchö; in its fourth, the four visions of Direct Crossing. Then come the lunar and solar energies and their dissolution into one taste, the three manifestations of energy and the mind of the Buddha, the vital points of the body, and finally the three kāyas. The Song is not about the path. It is the path, sung.
Let the student therefore approach what follows not as information but as an initiation into a way of hearing. When the Song is next sung, it should be impossible to sing it as a mere chant again.
Where the Song Comes From
The Song of the Vajra is spoken in the Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon, one of the Seventeen Dzogchen Tantras of the Pith Instructions. It is preserved there, explained by the Omniscient Longchenpa in the Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle, practised as a dance and as a song by the masters of the Heart Essence, and placed by Adzom Drukpa as the seventh and culminating holding of the mind in his instructions on the Clear Light Great Perfection. What the tantra itself says about it is more astonishing than any later praise.
What the tantra says
In the Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon the Song is not sung by the Teacher to the disciple. It is sung by the disciple, the Great Sage of Nonconceptuality, as a supplication to the Teacher, Vajradhara. Roused by a song that had never before been heard, with faith that dispels darkness made manifest, he petitions the Teacher with the words of the Vajra Song. The tantra then declares that by this Vajra Song the heart-centre of the Teacher is fully grasped. From the very first, then, the Song is refuge: the cry with which the mind of the disciple seizes the heart of the Buddha.
The tantra continues, in the voice of the Teacher. He says that the Song is not a mistaken path; it is the indestructible vajra dhāraṇī, the unbreakable spell that holds everything. From the great unchanging self-appearance, the whole mass of sound is declared to be complete within it. It is the foremost of the yogin’s methods, beyond all fame. It is the very activity and conduct of the mind of all the Buddhas.
Then comes the instruction that makes the Song a practice. The fortunate yogin who wanders in the charnel grounds should take up the Song of the Vajra again and again. It is the companion for abiding in nonconceptual concentration. It goes before every form of conduct. Therefore it is to be sung at the gathering of the feast, at the empowerment, on entering the maṇḍala. In the intervals between these, it is excellent samādhi; it seals with the seal of self-aware bliss; it joins with the Great Seal; it enters all the pith instructions and transmissions of the master; every object of attention is liberated in its own place. For one who has not yet reached concentration, it brings the mind to rest; and if the yogin sinks into dullness, it rouses him. The vajra dance is to be danced as well, and whoever relies continually on the song and the dance becomes one of the vajra family.
Every claim of this essay is already present in these few lines of the tantra. Refuge is there, in the grasping of the Teacher’s heart. The holding of the mind is there, in bringing to rest the one who has not found concentration. Conduct and the separation of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are there, in the charnel grounds and in the Song that goes before all conduct. The completion stage is there, in the seal of self-aware bliss. The Great Perfection is there, in the liberation of every object in its own place.
What the Omniscient Longchenpa says
In the Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle, where he explains the Vajra Song and vajra dance, the Omniscient Longchenpa introduces the Song with the words that, as the The Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon explains, this song of dharmatā takes up the enlightened intent of Samantabhadra in union with Samantabhadrī. Then he unfolds its meaning in verses of breathtaking openness: unborn and therefore unceasing, neither coming nor going, all-pervading; blissful, supreme and unmoving; like the sky, liberated and without stain; rootless and without support, homeless and unattached; primordially free, spontaneously equal, vast; without bondage and without release; blazing dharma at the core of the sun and moon, spontaneously present and directly evident; a mountain of vajra, an immense lotus, the sun, the lion, the song of wisdom; a great sound, a music beyond compare, enjoyed to the very limits of space; a Buddha equal to all Buddhas, Samantabhadra the vast, the peak of the Dharma, in the sky-like womb of Samantabhadrī; open clarity, spontaneously present, the ever Great Perfection. And he ends with the instruction on which everything else rests: sing it while remaining within the all-pervading, vast expanse of the nature of mind.
The Omniscient One thus defines both the meaning and the method. The meaning is the union of Samantabhadra and Samantabhadrī, of awareness and space, of the sun and the moon. The method is to sing while resting in the nature of mind. Nothing else is required.
Adzom Drukpa and the seven holdings of the mind
The Dzogchen tantras list twenty-one holdings of the mind, and the Omniscient Longchenpa arranged them; but the masters have emphasised seven in particular. Adzom Drukpa, from whom our lineage of the Great Perfection descends, sets out these seven in his instruction manual on the Clear Light Great Perfection, The Excellent Path, the Essence of Wisdom, Lam bzang ye shes snying po. In his text the distinctive feature of the holdings is that calm abiding and insight are to be experienced simultaneously, not one after the other. The seventh and last is the semdzin with the Song of the Vajra.
The position is significant. The first six use a single syllable, a single sound, a single image or a single movement. The seventh uses the whole Song, in which every syllable, every sound, the breath, the body and the entire path are gathered. It is the holding of the mind in which all the others are fulfilled. Adzom Drukpa himself taught that, as we wear different clothes according to the climate, so in practice we must use different methods according to circumstances. The Song is the one garment that fits every season.
In the same tradition the holdings of the mind are preceded by the seven mind trainings, of which the seventh brings the practitioner to the experiences of bliss and emptiness, clarity and emptiness, and the real condition of phenomena, and by the separations of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa of body, voice and mind. The Song gathers all of these too.
The masters who sang it
The Song has been danced and sung throughout the Heart Essence lineages. Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo set down the manner of performing the vajra song and dance as it comes from the The Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon, so that the tantra’s instruction to sing and to dance would remain a living practice. In our own time, great masters of the Great Perfection such as Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and our own Root-Guru have taught it as an essential practice, sung at the beginning of every session and at every gathering, explained syllable by syllable as a map of the entire path.
The many forms of the Song
The Song exists in many forms. The version in the tantra itself begins e ma ke ri ka ri and closes with sa sa ri ri li li a a ma ma ra ra. The version that the Omniscient Longchenpa cites in the Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle differs from it in many syllables. Different lineages sing it with different spellings and different melodies, and even within a single living lineage of transmission it has been taught in more than one form. The masters do not regard one as correct and the others as mistaken. The Song did not arise at one time or in one place, and its syllables are not words whose spelling must be fixed but sounds whose power lies in the state of the one who sings them.
The form presented here is the one transmitted to us by our Root-Guru, as he received it from Karma Bajra, his own Root-Guru, whom he calls “The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel”. It is in this form that we sing it, and it is this form that the following pages explain.
The Song as Transmitted by Our Root-Guru
The Song has eight movements. Four quatrains open the four great doors of the Great Perfection; then come the energies, the three manifestations of energy with the mind of the Buddha, the vital points of the body, and the three kāyas. In our lineage it is sealed with the Heart of Dependent Origination.
The four yogas of the Mind Series
EMA KIRI KĪRĪ — shiné, calm abiding
MASHTA BHĀLI BHĀLI — lhagtong, insight
SAMITA SURU SURU — nyam nyi, sameness, the nondual state
KUNDHALI MASU MASU — lhundrub, spontaneous presence, the self-perfected state
The four symbols of the Space Series
EKARA SULI BHATAYE — mi tog pa, beyond thought
TSA KIRA BHULI SALAYE — selwa, clarity
SA MUN TSA RAYE SU GHA YE — dewa, bliss
BHE TA SA NA BHU KU LI YE — yer mé, nonduality
Trekchö: the four ways of leaving everything as it is
SA KA RI — ma chö pa, leaving it unaltered
DHU KA NA — ma tak pa, leaving it unexamined
MA TA RI — ma drub pa, producing nothing
BE TA NA — ma bé pa, making no effort
Direct Crossing: the four visions
BA RA LI — direct perception of reality as it is
HI SA NA — the increasing of vision
MA KHARTA — the full and complete vision
KILANAM — the exhaustion into reality, self-arising spontaneous presence
The energies
SAMBHARA TAMEKA TSAMPTA PA — the lunar energy
SURYA BHATARE PASHANASA — the solar energy
RANA BHITI SAGHU RALAPA — their integration into rigpa
MASMIN SA GULI TAYAPA — one taste
The three manifestations of energy and the mind of the Buddha
GHURA GHURA SAGA KHARNALAM — dang, radiance
NARA NARA ITAR PATALAM — rölpa, play
SIRNA SIRNA BHESA RASPALAM — tsal, dynamic expression
BHUNDA BHUNDA CISHA SAKELAM — the mind of the Buddha, the primordial state
The vital points of the body
SA SAH — the two sides of the neck
RI RĪ — the two points below the breasts
LI LĪ — the two points near the armpits
I Ī — the two points at the groin
MI Ī — the two points at the ankles, near the bone
The three kāyas
RA RA RĀ — dharmakāya, sambhogakāya, nirmāṇakāya
The seal
ye dharmā hetu-prabhavā hetuṁ teṣāṁ tathāgato hy avadat, teṣāṁ ca yo nirodha evaṁvādī mahāśramaṇaḥ svāhā
It Is Refuge
The Song is refuge because it is a supplication that seizes the heart of the Buddha, and because what it seizes is not other than the one who sings. In the tantra the Great Sage of Nonconceptuality does not ask for a teaching about refuge; he sings, and by singing he grasps the Teacher’s heart-centre. The Song is the cry of the disciple and the self-sound of the Buddha at once.
Refuge has four depths, and the Song sounds all four together. In the outer refuge one turns to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṅgha. The Song is spoken by the Buddha Vajradhara, it is the whole Dharma condensed into sound, and it is sung in the assembly of the vajra family, at the feast, at the empowerment, at the entrance to the maṇḍala. In the inner refuge one turns to Lama, Yidam and Ḍākinī. The Song is the Lama’s heart grasped; it is the speech of Samantabhadra and Samantabhadrī in union, the primordial deity; and its syllables are the symbolic language of the ḍākinīs. In the secret refuge one turns to the channels, the winds and the essences as the three kāyas. The Song names them in its own body: the lunar and solar energies, their integration, the vital points of the body. In the innermost refuge one turns to the essence, the nature and the compassion of the ground. The Song ends with RA RA RĀ, the three kāyas themselves.
And beyond all four lies the authentic refuge of the true mode of being, in which one is inseparable from the refuge. The Omniscient Longchenpa says that the Song is to be sung while remaining within the vast expanse of the nature of mind. To sing it so is to take refuge by letting be, rang bap, in one’s own original face. There is nothing to clear away and nothing to set up. The singer is not running towards a protector outside; the singer is the refuge, sounding itself. In this singing, Samantabhadra is not invoked from afar. The union of Samantabhadra and Samantabhadrī is recognised as the union of one’s own awareness with its own space.
This is why the tantra can say that by the Song the Teacher’s heart is fully grasped. Ordinary refuge reaches towards the Buddha. The refuge of the Song grasps the Buddha’s heart because it discovers that heart as its own.
It Is Bodhicitta
The Song is bodhicitta because its first quatrain is the Mind Series, and the mind of the Mind Series is byang chub kyi sems, the mind of awakening itself. In the Great Perfection, bodhicitta is not first a wish that later becomes realisation. It is the primordially pure and spontaneously present mind of awakening, and the four yogas of the first verse are the four degrees in which it reveals itself.
The tantras of the Mind Series, from the All-Creating King to the Great Space of Vajrasattva, call the ground of everything the bodhicitta. All phenomena of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are its display; it is the king who creates all. When the Song begins EMA KIRI KĪRĪ, it begins with the stilling of the mind in calm abiding; when it continues MASHTA BHĀLI BHĀLI, insight sees the nature of that stillness and of all movement; SAMITA SURU SURU is the sameness in which no difference remains between stillness and movement, self and other; KUNDHALI MASU MASU is spontaneous presence, in which the bodhicitta perfects itself without effort. To sing these four lines in the state of rigpa is to traverse ultimate bodhicitta from its first glimpse to its completion.
Relative bodhicitta is present too, and present inseparably. The Song is to be sung at the gathering of the feast, for the vajra family and for all guests. Its sound is not a private murmur but a melody that fills space; Longchenpa calls it a great sound, a music beyond compare, enjoyed to the very limits of space. Whoever hears it receives liberation through hearing, as every true mantra liberates through hearing. The compassion of the ground, thugs rje, is sung in the Song’s three manifestations of energy, radiance, play and dynamic expression, which are the ceaseless responsiveness of the dharmakāya to beings. And Longchenpa’s verse a Buddha equal to all the Buddhas is the very aspiration of bodhicitta made fact: what one wishes for all beings, the Song declares to be already the case.
The Song is also, as the masters of our lineage say, an expression of joy. When we are joyful we feel like singing and dancing, and the Vajra Song and Dance take this natural joy of body, energy and mind and integrate it into contemplation. Joy is the warmth of bodhicitta; a heart that sings is a heart that has opened. So the singer does not first generate love and compassion and then sing. In singing within the nature of mind, the singer’s awareness is the bodhicitta of the Mind Series, and its sound pours out as compassion for all who hear. Aspiration and application, relative and ultimate, are here a single breath.
It Is Semdzin
The Song is a holding of the mind because Adzom Drukpa made it so: in The Excellent Path, the Essence of Wisdom it is the seventh and culminating semdzin. And it is a holding of the mind because the tantra itself gives it the two functions that define every semdzin: it brings to rest the mind that has not found concentration, and it rouses the mind that has sunk into dullness.
What the holdings of the mind are for
Sem means mind and dzin means to hold. Every semdzin holds the mind on a support, a syllable, a sound, a posture or an image, and in that holding the restless mind is stilled. But the masters warn that if we think the holdings serve only to produce a still mind without thoughts, they have no value for discovering our true nature. Their real purpose is to produce experiences, of emptiness, of clarity and of sensation, and to teach the practitioner to work with them until the nature of mind is discovered within them. This is why Adzom Drukpa’s instructions stress that calm abiding and insight are to be experienced together, in one moment: the stillness the holding produces and the awareness that recognises it arise as one.
How the Song holds the mind
In the semdzin with the Song of the Vajra, one sings and integrates in the presence of the sound. When one is truly integrated in the sound, there are no thoughts. If thoughts arise, it means one of two things: either one is too relaxed, or one is not present in the sound. So while singing, one observes oneself. This is the whole method, and it is extraordinarily precise. The Song is not sung as a beautiful background while the mind wanders; it is sung with the whole of one’s presence, so that the singer and the sound are not two.
Its melody is a support of extraordinary power. The mind that follows its strange syllables cannot wander, because there is no meaning to grasp and no story to follow. Long sung, the melody stills the breath and the mind together, and a vast, soft calm appears: this is the calm abiding of EMA KIRI KĪRĪ. At the pauses between the movements, when the sound ends and the space it opened remains, the knowing that was listening is suddenly alone with itself. The sound has cut its own support. What remains is not the calm of the all-ground but the awareness that knew the sound and knows its absence: this is the insight of MASHTA BHĀLI BHĀLI. In the semdzin of the Song, remaining in the presence of the sound, one obtains all the benefits of calm abiding and insight together, develops clarity, finds the calm state more easily, and has the opportunity to discover one’s real nature.
Rousing and settling
The tantra adds a further precision: for one who has not reached concentration, it brings the mind to rest; if the yogin sinks, it rouses him. A slow, deep melody settles an agitated mind; a bright, rising melody wakes a heavy one. The master teaches the student to sing according to the state of the mind, just as he teaches which semdzin to use.
The base of knowledge
The masters add a warning. The Song of the Vajra, being a powerful mantra, brings great benefit in any case; but it is far more effective when it is sung with the understanding that its function is integration in the state of contemplation. Without a base of knowledge, the Song becomes like an ordinary song and the Dance like an ordinary dance. One must first discover the state of contemplation through the experiences of clarity, emptiness and sensation; then one can integrate into it every movement of the body, every sound of the voice, every aspect of energy and mind, leaving nothing aside. This is why the Song stands last among the seven holdings: it gathers the fruit of all the others, and when sung by one who has been introduced, it carries recognition directly into sound.
It Is Tsa Lung
The Song is the yoga of channels and winds performed through sound. Each of its syllables governs a part of the body; its sounds correspond to the energy centres and are linked to the channels. It names the lunar and solar energies and their union, it sounds the vital points of the body pair by pair, and the tantra says that it seals with the seal of self-aware bliss and joins with the great seal. Singing it with full voice and an open body works on the channels, winds and essences as directly as any exercise of the Vidyādharas.
The sun and the moon
The Tantra of the Union of the Sun and Moon is named after the union this practice achieves. SAMBHARA TAMEKA TSAMPTA PA is the lunar energy, cool and white, flowing in the left channel; SURYA BHATARE PASHANASA is the solar energy, warm and red, flowing in the right. RANA BHITI SAGHU RALAPA is their integration into rigpa: the two currents enter the central channel and are no longer two. MASMIN SA GULI TAYAPA is one taste: in the central channel, method and wisdom, bliss and emptiness, the white and the red, are of a single flavour. This is the whole of the completion stage in four lines. What the yogin of the inner heat accomplishes by drawing the winds into the central channel, so that the white essence descends and the four joys arise, the singer of the Song accomplishes by sounding the union of sun and moon while resting in awareness.
The seal of self-aware bliss
The tantra says that the Song seals with the seal of self-aware bliss and joins with the great seal. This is the language of the four joys. The bliss of the Song is not a pleasant mood but the bliss that arises when the winds settle in the centre and the essences melt; and it is self-aware, recognised by rigpa as its own radiance. The second quatrain names it explicitly: SA MUN TSA RAYE SU GHA YE is dewa, bliss, standing between clarity and nonduality. In the Song, bliss is never separated from awareness, and so it is never a mere experience to be clung to. It is the example wisdom that already is the meaning.
The breath of the Song
The Song is sung in long, unbroken phrases. The breath is gathered low in the body, held without strain, and released slowly through the whole length of a line. This is the vase breath and the vajra recitation made into melody. The posture straightens, the belly warms, and the mind rides the long exhalation as a rider follows a horse. Sung daily, the Song trains the breath as surely as the breathing exercises, and with the same results: a gentle heat below the navel, breath becoming even in both nostrils, the winds beginning to gather towards the centre.
The vital points of the body
Then the Song touches the body point by point: SA SAH on the two sides of the neck, RI RĪ below the two breasts, LI LĪ near the two armpits, I Ī at the two sides of the groin, MI Ī at the two ankles near the bone. These are paired places where the energy of the channels gathers, and the paired syllables, short and long, sound them like the two strokes of a bell. Our Root-Teacher teaches that mantric syllables reside within the network of channels, and that when they are pronounced with the authentic sound, at the right frequency, the channels resonate and their knots are opened. The final verses of the Song are this teaching in action: the voice travels down the body from the throat to the feet, and as each pair is sounded, awareness rests at that point and the channels there are loosened.
The dance
The tantra joins the song with the dance: whoever relies continually on the vajra song and dance becomes one of the vajra family. When the Vajra Dance is danced, the movements of the body create communication between the energy centres that the syllables represent. The movements are symbolic, but they are not merely symbols: their main point is precisely this communication at the level of energy. And the communication does not concern our body alone. Just as we have many chakras and functions of energy, there are correspondences between them and the dimension we live in and the whole universe; that is why the dance is performed on a maṇḍala representing our dimension, whose interconnected lines correspond to the energies of the body. Danced rightly, it brings the characteristic experiences of this practice. The Yogic Exercises of the Vidyādharas loosen the channels by movement and breath; the vajra dance does the same within melody and the state of contemplation. Both are the Great Perfection’s own yoga of the body, and both lead to the same place: the central channel expanding to include all the channels in its flow, as awareness rests in its own place.
It Is Rushen
The Song is the separation of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa because it is the conduct of the charnel ground, it goes before all conduct, and in its alternation of sound and silence it shows the singer, again and again, the boundary between the movement of mind and the stillness of awareness, until that boundary itself dissolves. The tantra places it exactly where rushen belongs: with the fortunate yogin who wanders in the charnel grounds, singing it again and again.
The outer separation
In the outer rushen the practitioner goes to a solitary place and enacts with body, voice and mind the behaviour of all six classes of beings until body, voice and mind are exhausted, and then rests without correction. In the stillness that follows, the whole drama of saṃsāra is seen to be movement and the rest beneath it to be untouched. The Song is this practice in its most refined form. Its syllables are not the words of any realm; they are the sound of the one who is beyond the six realms. Sung with full voice in a lonely place, with the whole body behind it, it exhausts ordinary agitation as effectively as the enactment of the realms. And when it ends, the same vast stillness opens. In that stillness one sees what rushen is meant to show: that saṃsāra is the noise, and nirvāṇa the silence in which the noise arises, and that both are the play of one awareness.
The three secret separations
In the tradition of Adzom Drukpa the secret rushen is threefold. The separation of body is linked to the experience of sensation, the separation of voice to the experience of clarity, and the separation of mind to the experience of emptiness. Through these three experiences the practitioner separates mind from the nature of mind. In the separation of body, one holds the vajra posture until the body is utterly exhausted, sounds PHAṬ, lies down and relaxes; in that moment, called nalwab, settling in the natural condition, concepts vanish and naked presence is easily discovered. The Song unites all three. Its long phrases and the body that carries them bring sensation; its sound brings clarity; and the silence after it brings emptiness. The singer who rests in the presence of the sound and then in the silence after it passes through the three secret separations in a single breath.
The separation of speech
The Wisdom Guru of Rigzin Jigme Lingpa trains speech with HŪṂ: sealing the world with the sound, training with it, making it pliant, and finally letting it enter the path by dissolving into emptiness. The Song is the training of speech carried to its end. One begins by sounding its strange syllables as syllables; then the sound fills the space around and within; then it moves freely, rising and falling with the breath; and finally it is recognised as what Longchenpa calls the song of wisdom, sound that is not other than emptiness. Here the separation of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa in speech is complete: ordinary speech, which clings to meanings, is separated from the self-sound of dharmatā, and the self-sound is recognised as one’s own voice.
The separation of mind
The training of mind searches for the origin, abiding place and destination of thought. The Song gives this search its most direct object. Where does the Song come from? From no place: it arises in the throat but cannot be found there. Where does it abide while it sounds? Nowhere: it is everywhere and in no point. Where does it go when it ends? Nowhere: it simply is no longer heard. The singer who looks in this way finds what the tantra promises: every object of attention is liberated in its own place. This is the ultimate meaning of rushen, the discovery that the prison of saṃsāra has no walls.
It Is Trekchö
The first three quatrains of the Song are the three Series of the Great Perfection sung one after another: the Mind Series, the Space Series and the cutting through of the Pith Instructions. Together they contain the whole of Trekchö, the path of primordial purity, from the first settling of the mind to the effortless rest in which nothing is done at all.
The four yogas: the Mind Series
The Mind Series, transmitted by Vairocana from Śrī Siṃha and Garab Dorje, arranges contemplation as four naljors, four yogas. EMA KIRI KĪRĪ is shiné, calm abiding, the mind settling into its own stillness. MASHTA BHĀLI BHĀLI is lhagtong, insight, the recognition that stillness and movement are equally the display of one awareness, so that awareness no longer moves when thought moves. SAMITA SURU SURU is nyam nyi, sameness, in which all appearances and experiences are of one taste, without the slightest division into inner and outer. KUNDHALI MASU MASU is lhundrup, spontaneous presence, in which contemplation has become uninterrupted and everything arises as the self-perfected play of the state. The first verse of the Song is the Mind Series from beginning to end.
The four symbols: the Space Series
The Space Series speaks of the state through four da, four symbols or signs by which it is recognised. EKARA SULI BHATAYE is mi tog pa, beyond thought: the vast absence of concepts in which nothing is fabricated. TSA KIRA BHULI SALAYE is selwa, clarity: that absence is not dark but luminous, knowing. SA MUN TSA RAYE SU GHA YE is dewa, bliss: that luminous emptiness is joyful in itself. BHE TA SA NA BHU KU LI YE is yer mé, nonduality: emptiness, clarity and bliss are not three, and the one who knows them is not other than them. These are the same three experiences, emptiness, clarity and sensation, that the seventh mind training and the holdings of the mind in Adzom Drukpa’s tradition bring forth, now recognised as symbols of the state itself and sealed in their nonduality. Where the Mind Series works with the movement of mind, the Space Series rests directly in the space of the state, and the second verse of the Song carries the singer into that space.
The four ways of leaving: the Pith Instructions
The third verse is the heart of Trekchö itself. SA KA RI is ma chö pa, leaving it unaltered: awareness is not corrected, improved or adjusted. DHU KA NA is ma tak pa, leaving it unexamined: awareness is not analysed, observed or turned into an object. MA TA RI is ma drub pa, producing nothing: no state is cultivated, no experience sought. BE TA NA is ma bé pa, making no effort: there is no meditator straining to remain. These four are the essence of the four ways of leaving everything as it is, the cokzhak of the Heart Essence, in which the body is left like a mountain, the eyes like the ocean, awareness as it is and appearances as they are. When nothing is altered, examined, produced or forced, what remains is rigpa in its naked freshness.
Three Series in one breath
The Song does not ask the singer to choose among the Series. It moves from mind, through space, into the pith instruction, as the ripening of contemplation moves from settling to resting to letting be. And because every line is sung within the nature of mind, as the Omniscient Longchenpa instructs, the singer is not practising these stages one after another. They are all present in each line, as the whole of the moon is reflected in each drop of water.
It Is Direct Crossing
The fourth quatrain is the four visions of Direct Crossing, and the Omniscient Longchenpa’s verses on the Song are themselves a description of what those visions reveal: blazing dharma at the core of the sun and moon, spontaneously present and directly evident. Where Trekchö rests in the empty essence, Direct Crossing lets the luminous nature display itself, and the Song sings that display from its first appearance to its final exhaustion.
The four visions sung
BA RA LI is the first vision, chos nyid mngon sum, the direct perception of reality as it is. The luminous space, the spheres of light and the fine vajra-chains of awareness appear for the first time, unstable, moving like water poured from a jug, and are recognised as the self-radiance of awareness. HI SA NA is the second vision, the increasing of experience. The lights expand and multiply, the spheres grow, the chains of awareness slow and begin to rest, and the first sketches of the maṇḍala appear. MA KHARTA is the third vision, awareness reaching its full measure. Complete buddhafields arise, the deities in their maṇḍalas, the five families in union; the sambhogakāya that was always latent in the ground is fully manifest as one’s own radiance. KILANAM is the fourth vision, the exhaustion into reality. Having reached their full measure, the visions withdraw into their source, like the moon waning into the dark of the new moon; nothing remains to be seen and no one remains to see, and the radiance has returned into the inner clarity of the youthful vase body, now knowing itself. The presentation of our lineage calls this rang shar, self-arising: what returns is what was always spontaneously present.
The sun and the moon of the tantra
The title of the tantra is itself an instruction in Direct Crossing. The sun and the moon are the two luminous lamps, the light of the eyes and the light of space, the radiance of the heart and its display in the sky. Their union is the moment when the inner and outer lamps are seen to be one light. Longchenpa sings of the core of the sun and moon blazing, a mountain of vajra, an immense lotus, the sun, the lion: these are the images of the visions themselves, the immovable vajra posture, the lotus of the sambhogakāya fields, the sun of the luminous expanse, the lion’s gaze of the dharmakāya. The singer who rests in the nature of mind while sounding BA RA LI, HI SA NA, MA KHARTA, KILANAM is not imagining the visions; he is resonating with the very process through which they unfold, and the Song becomes the support on which they ripen.
Sound and light
The Heart Essence teaches that at the bardo of dharmatā the ground luminosity appears as sounds, lights and rays. The rays are the light; the lights are the visions; and the sound is the self-sound of dharmatā, which the tantras describe as a thousand thunders. The Song of the Vajra is that sound recognised in life. One who has sung it daily, resting in awareness, will meet the great sound of dharmatā at death not as a terror but as a song one has always known, and will recognise it as one’s own voice. This is Direct Crossing completed at the juncture of the bardo.
The Ground Sung Back to Itself
After the four doors of the path, the Song turns to the ground from which the path arises and into which it returns. It sings the three ways in which the energy of the ground manifests, the mind of the Buddha that is their source, and finally the three kāyas. In these last verses the Song is no longer describing a way to awakening; it is awakening describing itself.
Radiance, play and dynamic expression
The Heart Essence teaches that the energy of the ground manifests in three modes. GHURA GHURA SAGA KHARNALAM is dang, radiance: the formless clarity of awareness before any appearance, like the light of a crystal before it falls on anything. NARA NARA ITAR PATALAM is rölpa, play: the display of lights, spheres and forms within the field of awareness itself, like the rainbow images a crystal reflects within its own body; this is the play of Direct Crossing. SIRNA SIRNA BHESA RASPALAM is tsal, dynamic expression: the energy appearing as an apparently external world, like the rainbow cast by the crystal onto the wall. Recognised, these three are the three kāyas; unrecognised, they are the three realms of saṃsāra. The Song sings them so that the singer may recognise every appearance, inner or outer, subtle or gross, as the energy of his own state.
And then BHUNDA BHUNDA CISHA SAKELAM, the mind of the Buddha, the primordial state: the source of all three, the youthful vase body whose radiance is turned inward, the ground before ground and appearance are distinguished. Here the Song returns to its own origin.
The body as maṇḍala
The vital points, sounded from the neck to the ankles, place the whole body within the Song. The voice that sang the dharmakāya now touches the flesh, pair by pair, so that nothing of the singer remains outside the state. The body is not left behind as something ordinary while the mind contemplates; it is consecrated as the maṇḍala in which awareness abides, the palace of the channels, winds and essences. This is the Great Perfection’s refusal to separate the subtle body from rigpa, and its confidence that, when awareness rests in its own place, the body follows.
RA RA RĀ
The Song closes with three syllables: RA RA RĀ, the dharmakāya, the sambhogakāya and the nirmāṇakāya. The tantra’s own version ends, with the same intention, on the doubled syllables a a ma ma ra ra. Everything the Song has sung is gathered into the three kāyas: the four yogas and the four symbols as the dharmakāya’s empty essence, the four visions and the three manifestations of energy as the sambhogakāya’s luminous nature, the body and its points as the nirmāṇakāya’s compassionate appearance. The last sound of the Song is the fruit.
Even the Dedication
In our lineage the Song is sealed with the Heart of Dependent Origination, and this seal makes the Song its own dedication. The deepest dedication, the masters teach, is made free of the three spheres, without one who dedicates, anything dedicated or anyone to whom it is dedicated. The Song arrives at exactly this freedom and then sets its seal upon it.
Ye dharmā hetu-prabhavā: all phenomena arise from causes; the Tathāgata has taught their cause, and also their cessation. Sung at the end of the Song, this verse gathers the whole practice back into the truth of dependent origination. The merit of singing is not a possession that the singer holds and then gives away; it is itself a dependently arisen display, empty of any owner. To recognise this is already to dedicate it in the dharmadhātu, as the seven-branch offering of the Ḍākinī Ngöndro dedicates the accumulation of virtue within the space of the clear light. Ordinary dedication says, “May this merit go to all beings.” The Song’s dedication sees that the merit was never anyone’s, and so it is already everywhere.
And the Song itself has been an act of giving from the first syllable. The tantra commands that it be sung at the gathering of the feast, where everything is offered; Longchenpa calls it a music enjoyed to the very limits of space; and every being who hears it receives the seed of liberation through hearing. A Buddha equal to all the Buddhas, the Omniscient One sings: there is no being who is excluded from the three kāyas with which the Song ends. When the last syllable has sounded and the seal of dependent origination has been set, the virtue has already been dedicated, because the singer has recognised that singer, song and those who hear it are one luminous expanse.
Sing, and It Is Done
Therefore, O fortunate ones, hear the conclusion. One who sings the Song of the Vajra while resting in the nature of mind accomplishes in that singing, spontaneously and without remainder, everything the path contains.
In the first breath of EMA, the heart of the Teacher is grasped and one is the refuge: that is refuge, accomplished.
In the four yogas of the first verse, the mind of awakening reveals itself from calm to spontaneous presence, and its joyful sound pours out to the limits of space for all who hear: that is bodhicitta, accomplished.
In the presence that rests in the sound without falling into thought or into slackness, in calm and insight arising as one, and in the silence after the sound that leaves only naked knowing: that is the holding of the mind, the seventh and crowning semdzin of Adzom Drukpa, accomplished.
In the union of the sun and the moon, the long breath of the line, the seal of self-aware bliss, the syllables that govern the body and the voice travelling through its points: that is the yoga of channels and winds, accomplished.
In the conduct of the charnel ground, the full voice and the vast stillness after it, sensation, clarity and emptiness passing through body, voice and mind, the sound whose origin, abiding and destination cannot be found: that is the separation of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, accomplished.
In the four yogas, the four symbols and the four ways of leaving everything as it is, unaltered, unexamined, unproduced, without effort: that is Trekchö, accomplished.
In BA RA LI, HI SA NA, MA KHARTA, KILANAM, the blazing core of the sun and moon displayed and exhausted: that is Direct Crossing, accomplished.
In RA RA RĀ, the three kāyas; and in the seal of dependent origination, the virtue dedicated in the space of the clear light: that is the fruit and the dedication, accomplished.
The tantra says that the Song is the activity of the mind of all the Buddhas. The Omniscient Longchenpa says: sing it while remaining within the all-pervading, vast expanse of the nature of mind. Nothing else is asked. Not a single practice is left outside this singing, because the Song is not a method among methods; it is the Great Perfection sounding itself through the throat of one who no longer stands apart from it.
So sing. Sing at dawn and at dusk, in the feast and in solitude, in the charnel ground of your own fears and in the pure land of your own awareness. Sing until there is no singer and only the Song, and then sing on, for the benefit of all beings as vast as space.
Open clarity, spontaneously present at once: the ever Great Perfection.
