Buddhist Jihad

Happy Tibetan New Year

Losar greetings from Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche.

Sixth Dalai Lama: Poem No. 18

18.

Could I just fill my mind with holy dharma

As I have filled my mind with her


I would become a buddha


In this very body

In this very life

.

Sixth Dalai Lama: Poem No. 1

Yes, I know I've been posting very little lately.  Sorry.

Thought I'd go for something completely different.

Which is this, a translation of the first in a series of love poems by the Sixth Dalai Lama.

Some of you may not know that there was a Dalai Lama who wrote love poems and indeed who had lovers.  He wore blue silk, not monk's robes.  He did not shave his head, but wore his hair long.  He refused to ride on horseback but walked around Lhasa, freely, carousing, relaxed and open.  He built the Lukhang, a chapel behind the Potala featuring unusual paintings of meditation practices, which I was lucky enough once to see.

Many many different translators have worked on these.  Thought I'd add my versions, translating not from word to word, but from meaning to meaning. All errors are, of course, mine.

1.

clear  white  moon

rising  over

east  ridge  horizon


arising in  mind 

again

           and again

instant presence:

                                  her face



.

Women Poets of Tibet: "A Small Stone Casts Its Ripple" from Poetrymind

Read this beautifully-written, insightful piece on women poets of Tibet at poetrymind (originally published as part of the catalog of the Tibetan Literary Exhibit at Smith College).

Excerpt:

           "Machig Lapdron’s (1055-1143) lineage of Chod exemplifies the highly sophisticated understanding of the cornerstone of the Mahayana teachings on emptiness and the illusory belief in an ego.

 

In Buddhist philosophy, the ‘conceit’ of ego is perceived as the ultimate demonic force and obstruction to liberation.

Fully comprehending this view releases the practitioner into a field of compassion whereas the psychical/physical becomes a means to feed the illusory demons of the mind’s projections thus embracing rather than rejecting negative forces through repression.

Eighth century, Yeshe Tsogyal, an earlier incarnation of Machig Lapdron, in her parting advice incants these words, “I have yet to find any ‘thing’ that truly exists.”

On the other hand, Nangsa Obum, a contemporary of Machig Labdron and famous “delog” draws on the metaphor of weaving, a traditional women’s occupation, to illustrate the stages of the path to realization in a famous folk drama widely known throughout Tibet.

Her song in many ways closely parallels the tradition of Terighati (songs of the nuns from the time of the Buddha) drawing on the immediacy of her domestic life.   However slender, these representations are but ciphers in a larger cultural context. . ."