Among the Tibetans, a people who revere poetry, Gendun Chopel is famous as a poet; he is considered one of the greatest Tibetan poets of the twentieth century, renowned both for his mastery of the various forms of poetry as well as for his ability to compose verse spontaneously. His poems are admired especially for their immediacy and ease. He was also a student of poetry, both in Sanskrit and in his native Tibetan. He studied Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetry in his youth and is said to have made his own translation from the Sanskrit when he was in India. During his time there, his poetry was strongly influenced by his study of the great Sanskrit poets; he admired Kālidāsa above all others. Gendun Chopel wrote poems throughout his life, from his childhood to his last days. A selection of his poems is offered here.
Unknown here by anyone in any way
This long cord of the changeless god
Ties the boundless sphere of reality to the sphere of awareness,
Ties the awareness of the child to the interior of the body,
Ties the stone heap of the body to food and drink,
Ties food and drink to external causes.
Thus the cord is tied, one to the other.
There are no points where it can be cut but these:
The first place is desired by none;
It is death, where the cord of body and mind is cut.
The other place is known by none;
It is where the cord decays, merging sphere and mind.
This mind is a goddess, beyond all bounds.
The homeland of this goddess is not this world,
Yet the little toe of the goddess of the mind
Is tied tightly to this body by a thread.
Then, until this thread is cut
Whatever the body feels seems to be felt by the mind.
Whatever help or harm is done to this little toe
The goddess feels as pleasure and pain.
If the cord is cut, all is well.
Yet the whole world fears the cord’s cutting.
In striving to keep the cord connected,
The ends of the cord become wrapped in thorns.
To extract the point of each thorn,
We study each category of culture;
We stay busy with this taxing toil,
Extracting thorns until we die.
This unfinished busyness, never abandoned,
Seems an entrance; its purpose the rebirth of beings.
When just one part of this mind, equal to space,
Sinks into the mire of deeds of flesh and blood,
Then come terrors of hot and cold, hunger and thirst, hope and fear.
I wonder if this suffering ever ends.
Yet this body, fashioned by the glory of culture,
Achieved through a hundred endeavors,
In keeping with the truth of the queen of heaven’s prophecy
Must remain on this earth a few more years.
I sang this song.151
Compassionate power of the three jewels,
Reliable refuge that never deceives,
Calming all illusions of meaningless saṃsāra
Bless our minds to turn to the dharma.
Whatever we ponder, the affairs of the world
Have no more essence than a sesame seed.
Transform our minds in this short life;
Starting now, reveal the essential sacred dharma.
The time of youth is but a summer flower
The luster of beauty but a winter rainbow.
Since human life does not last long
Practice the essential sacred dharma now.
In times of sorrow, we hope for joy.
In times of joy, we fear the coming sorrow.
There is no time free from the straits of hope and fear.
Practice the essential sacred dharma now.
Cherished and protected, base of sickness and disease,
Made elegant with ornaments, its nature is impurity.
The impermanent body has no essence.
Practice the essential sacred dharma now.
The rich complain from the place of the rich.
The poor weep from the place of the poor.
Each human mind has its own burden of suffering.
There is no happy time in saṃsāra.
In general, all joys and sorrows that seem outside
Are magical creations of one’s mind alone;
Reflections from inside that appear outside,
Not things outside that have come near.
Knowing this well, when analysis
Severs the root of the basic mind,
You will abide in the true sky of reality
Beyond this fog of appearance.
This so-called existence is a fiction.
This so-called nonexistence is a fiction.
Untainted by all such fictions,
The nature of the mind is perfect buddhahood.
Thoughts of “is” and “is not” are like ripples in water;
They follow one after the other.
Dissolving easily into the aimless state,
They arrive at the ocean of the primordial sphere of reality.
Appearances are the magical display of the mind.
The mind is empty, without base, without foundation.
By holding baseless phenomena to be the self
You and I wander in the realm of saṃsāra.
Without pursuing perceptions,
When you look directly at the perceiver itself,
You will see your own inexpressible face;
The path to achieve buddhahood is not far.
Through the blessings of the divine three foundations,
May you quickly find the emptiness of your own mind,
And from the kingdom of the ever-pure great perfection,
Bring about the great aims of boundless beings.152
If the unchanging nature of the mind is not seen,
Though it has been with you always without beginning,
How can you see wondrous visions
Newly created through forceful meditation?153
The mirage of a lake of clear water with patterns of waves
Is recognized to be a plain of dry sand.
Unwanted things that come to be true
Are but portions of the suffering gathered in saṃsāra.154
Leading worldly beings from the path of worldly conventions
To the sphere beyond the world,
Lord of the dharma, guide for beings of the three worlds,
I bow down to the leader of existence and peace, the Holder of the Diamond Throne.
Objects of veneration are the paṇḍitas and translators of the past
Who gathered well into a treasury ringed by snowy mountains
The jewels of knowledge of all vast realms
To safeguard them even to the end of four ages.155
Shabkarwa, sole lord of the dharma
Inseparable from Padmapāṇi, embodiment of compassion,
Whose life story is Brahmā’s drum,
Summoning countless migrators with the richness of his merits.
Abiding at a lofty stage, all treatises on logic
Were perfected long ago in wondrous ways,
Appearing without obstruction
In the mirror of your clear mind.
Yet with words easy to understand, suited to the minds
Of beings beset by a hundred sufferings,
He who teaches even the most profound doctrines with ease
Among virtuous friends of the degenerate age is but you.
The crystal realm of your pure intellect is
A divine abode of spontaneously created qualities
Shimmering with reflections of texts of a hundred colors.
You are the dharma friend, ever active.156
Who would reproach the shining of the full moon?
Who would not bow at the feet of Śuddhodana’s son?
What peacock does not rejoice at the thunderclap?
Why would my mind be unsatisfied with the ambrosia of true dharma?157
Like a bee circling again and again
Around a gently swaying lotus,
In the vast and splendid temple,
I am moved by devotion again and again.158
The naked truth, terrifying to behold,
Is not to be covered with robes of self-deception.
This is the first vow of the scholar.
Please keep it though it costs you your life.159
As they draw near to the nature of things,
The words of the learned become mute.
All phenomena, subtle by their very nature,
Are said to be beyond expression in words or thoughts.
The mind is placed in the nature of the emptiness of all things.
In this saṃsāra, thick with the mirages of appearance
That even the Tathāgata’s hand cannot stop,
Who can let go of belief in existence and nonexistence?160
The wisdom beyond existence and nonexistence
Is the essential point of the profound thought of Nāgārjuna, father and son.
This eloquent explanation distills into one the Snowy Land’s traditions
Of the true forefathers of the new and ancient schools.
When from the expanse of my lama’s compassionate mind
The sun of knowledge shone in all directions,
Though it pained the heart of one blinded by wrong views,
It caused the calyx of the mind of one with sight to smile.
The essence of the minds of all the victors in space and time,
The refined, cut, and polished jewel of scripture, reasoning, and instructions,
The gold of the inconceivable sphere of reality;
It is due to my past karma that I hold these in my heart.
Yet in all the water in the mouth of the lama Mañjunātha [Tsong kha pa],
The ocean of eloquence forming the wheel of the dharma,
If there is a part muddied by the swamp of my ignorance,
I confess it from my heart to the assembly of the impartial.
At the instant that the sun’s rays of the eloquence I strove for here
Shine upon the lotus of the minds of scholars,
May sweet nectar, the honeydew of self-arisen wisdom,
Always ripen as the nature of peace.
May I be cared for in all my lives by the lama
And know without error and just as it is
The sphere of the profound nature of reality, free of elaboration,
And then proceed to the end of the path of purity.
Through the strong wind of a thousand virtuous deeds,
May the autumn clouds over the capital of mistaken appearances of the nonexistent
Become of one taste in the sky of the sphere of reality,
And the sun of the triple-bodied victor shine forth.161
Hey! After I had gone away,
Some nonsense-talking lamas
Said that Nechung, king of deeds,
Did not let me stay because I was too proud.
If he is a protector who purifies,
How could he permit those impure monks to stay,
Wandering all over, the known and unknown,
Selling tea, beer, and dried mutton?
Their lower robe hiked up, folded like palm leaves,
The worst carry weapons, knives, and clubs.
If they’d been expelled, it would be fine;
Between last year and this, there are more and more.
Because I lacked faith, pure as Venus,
Some say I was banished to far off lands.
Why weren’t impure beings banished
Like cows, female yaks, birds, and bugs?
There is no purpose in four-fanged king Nechung
To banish to who knows where
Those who study and ponder the Victor’s teachings
Braving hardships of heat, cold, and fatigue.
Destroyers of the good dharma with fine hats, robes, and boots
And destroyers of the dharma who eat simple food;
When we look at them, there is great difference.
But when the king above [Nechung] looks at them, there is no difference.
Rather than banishing to distant mountain passes, valleys, and towns
Those who take pride in studying the books of Ra and Se,
Would it not be better to banish to another place
Those proudly selling meat, beer, and tobacco?
Ha ha. Consider whether this is true.
Carefully ask the elder geshes too.
The speaker of these words is the sophist,
Sanghadharma, lion of reasoning.162
Son of Śuddhodana, friend to transmigrators unfamiliar,
Delighting in the festival that fulfills two vast aims,
Send down the seasonal rains of blessing, without limit or end,
From the pavilion of dense clouds filled with the water of compassion.
The froth of clouds of smoke on a great endless plain,
An unfamiliar friend plays a thighbone trumpet,
The pattern of a huge land where five colors shine;
Whatever I see, I am melancholy.
The relatives and servants we meet are but guests on market day.
The rise of power, wealth, and arrogance are pleasures in a dream.
Happiness alternates with sorrow, summer changes to winter.
Thinking of this, a song spontaneously came to me.
When we lack it, fearing hunger, we seek food and drink.
When we have it, fearing loss, we arrange our gathered profits.
Slowly counting the beads of an old rosary, striving at such petty affairs,
The thread of this short human lifespan comes to its end.
Worldly affairs, no matter what they are, never end.
At the end of doing deeds, there grows despair.
When all pleasures and wealth proudly gained are gathered,
They make up but one tenth this pile of pain.
Matching the games of lies and deception
With worldly schemes, pursued with great pains,
After waiting so long, it turned to nothing, just deceit.
Three years of miserable labor have worn me down.
When you are rich, they slink up close;
When you are poor, they scorn you from afar with pointing fingers.
The nature of bad friends who do not know kindness as kindness;
I think of this; tears and laughter rise up in me.
The talents of a humble scholar seeking only knowledge
Are crushed by the tyranny of a fool, bent by the weight of his wealth.
The proper order is upside down.
How sad, the lion made servant to the dog.
Endlessly busy with the work of the seasons, summer and winter,
Human life is wasted in pointless distraction.
Still, I indulge in the flamboyance of careless distraction.
How sad, this sense of being old in body, not old in mind.
On a flowery plain in the land of the mind’s six objects,
A child of uncertain knowledge wandered afar.
The way I used to think about meaningful things
Is now lost without a trace. I see this and it makes me sad.
Wandering like a deer from the realm of six ranges
To arrive in a distant kingdom of unfamiliar humans,
There I lost my heart to a glamorous fickle woman.
A wretched son who has forgotten his kind parents, I am sad.
Following the dance steps of the demoness of ignorant thoughts,
These false confusing phenomena move to and fro.
Material things seen today are forgotten tomorrow.
Being in this aimless state is sad.
When looked at, the marvels of the world seem pleasing.
When attained, each has its own suffering.
After moments of brief happiness become but a dream,
There is always something that makes me sad.
Curdles of suffering, misconceptions beneath our hopes and fears,
Mix with the milk of the experience of spontaneous delight.
Although the comforts of food, drink, and possessions are all arranged,
The experience of inner happiness, content and carefree, is missing.
The basis of my ambition for greatness is consumed in fire;
The unwanted tax of the monk’s robe is left in ashes;
If only I had the utter freedom to wander from one land to another
With a madman’s behavior, chasing whatever comes to mind.
The castle of the threefold reason is utterly destroyed;
The knots of claims about the eight extreme views are severed at their very site.
If only I had the joy of the deepest awareness,
Knowing that whatever appears is without foundation, has no basis.
Into the sphere of clear light, empty, without edge or center,
The nature of the mind, grasping nothing, dissolves as one taste.
If only I had the good fortune to practice this day and night,
Knowing for myself unspoken untainted bliss.
A sad song recalling fleeting appearances, my mother’s changing frowns and smiles,
And my own experiences, sometimes happy, sometimes painful,
Was sung by the gullible wanderer Gendun Chopel,
In the land of Bengal, unfamiliar realm beyond the mountain range.163
The wealth of the world is mist on the mountain pass.
My closest friends but guests on market day.
Uncertain joys and sorrows are last night’s dream.
I think and think; they have no essence.
Led by the unknown envoy of Yama,
My friend wanders the long and narrow path to the next life.
Sublime refuge, three divine foundations,
Please be his compassionate guide.
Being born then dying is the nature of saṃsāra;
Its manifestation, the illusion that nothing changes.
The royal decree of relentless Yama
Has befallen my helpless friend.
When the drizzle of past prayers and deeds is falling
The afternoon rainbow appears, seeming so real.
When the sun of yearning begins to shine,
It vanishes in the realm of invisible sky.
Dear childhood friend, radiant half of my heart,
When the flower of youth blossomed,
The streams of our minds mixed.
Where in the six realms could you be now?
At the end of three days of bountiful friendship,
In the narrow riverbed of Gyishö Lhasa,
We promised to meet before too long.
The time has come to meet within a dream.
All beings, old, young, those in between,
See what unpredictable death looks like.
Yet there is no means to end the inner grief
Of those left behind by childhood friends.
To feel remorse at someone’s death is foolish;
It only ruins the body and mind.
Yet I cannot overcome the accustomed,
This habit of mind so long familiar.
As your body lay dying, a skeleton’s image appeared;
Hoping only to remain alive,
You stared with death’s eyes.
If what they say is true, it devours my heart.
In the way things appear to the ordinary mind,
You are still with me; you seem so real.
When the bow of memory is bent,
It only causes an empty heart.
Pondering how love and friendship endure,
I dispatch to my friend in the land beyond
The few good things I’ve done
In the field of the infallible three jewels.164
When they see you in happiness, they bow down before you.
When they see you in sadness, they turn away and hide.
This nature of all ordinary beings
I have known from long ago.
When they see your prospering, they gather before you.
When they see you in decline, they turn away and hide.
This nature of all ordinary beings
I have known from long ago.
For people whose behavior is untamed and coarse,
If a law is not made to behead them,
What other way is there to compassionately change their ways
Than to teach them the sufferings of hell?
In the presence of the officials of the lord of humans
The marginal human Gendun Chopel says,
“I won’t drink, I won’t drink, I won’t drink liquor.”
I offer this promise to the assembled common people.165
Today the vagabond has arrived
At Bodhiviṣa in the eastern land,
The place to encounter Vajravārāhī,
Consort of Ghantapa, lord of adepts.
The wind horse, the so-called deeds of former lives,
Has no direction on the road.
I, a child of Tibet, born in Tibet,
Have spent a portion of my life in the land of India.
Completing the whole cycle of twelve years
Without seeing my delightful homeland and
Most of all, not meeting my kind old mother;
When I think about this, I feel pangs of separation.
The long northern path
And the great ocean in the south,
These are roads for those endowed with courage,
The one route that leads to weariness.
At the monastery of the glorious and incomparable Narthang
I met the omniscient supreme incarnation.
Not regarding me as an inferior person,
He generously engaged in pleasing conversation.
The commentaries on the Bodhicaryāvatāra,
Of Chumigpa, Yangonpa, and so forth
Fell into my hands, I, a seasoned lover of words.
If they arrived, they would be the monastery’s centerpiece.
The heat of the plain of India is hard to imagine
For those who have only heard of it.
Unless they have gone there and felt it,
You may ponder it, but it does not appear to the mind.
Even when the breeze blows, it is like a tongue of flame.
Even when you drink cool water, it is like black tea.
Although this is so, thus far it has been my fortune
Not to have suffered from heatstroke.
In an unfamiliar region of a foreign land,
I am like a human deer, without companions.
There are no signs on the roads as to where they lead,
There is no way to know where to stay in this land.
In the early part of my life, I gathered bundles of books;
In the later part of my life, I carried the burden of harsh words.
I have led my life in sorrow;
I wonder if this will serve the teaching of terminology.
But now there is no purpose in speaking words
That have the sharp edge of a rock.
This painful interior, filled with conflict,
Spontaneously emerged to my familiar friends.
My longtime pundit friends
Set out to act for the welfare of all beings.
To the writing of this unrequested book
They may respond with criticism and derision.
More than that, there is a sense of loss;
Although I have gone on pilgrimage to India and Tibet
I have not felt my obstructions being purified,
Though my wisdom has clearly increased.
With two-thirds of my life now gone,
I have the teaching on achievement but not the teaching on conduct.
Because I am a person from a faraway land,
My affection for my homeland is stronger than before.
What is it that will show me the love of my friends?
I yearn to return quickly to my own land.166
Calcutta, Nepal, Beijing,
The city of Lhasa in the Snowy Realm,
When I look at people wherever they are,
I see they have the same nature.
Even those who don’t like chatter and hubbub,
And are restrained in their ways,
When they see butter, tea, silk, or money,
Are no different from an old fisherman.
Officials and nobility like flattering talk.
Common people like cunning and deceit.
Today most like cigarettes and beer.
The young like to be pretty and flirtatious.
They keep to their father and mother’s side
And hate anyone who is different.
The natural state of mind in humans and cattle
Is seen to be the same.
They go on the Tsari pilgrimage for the sake of their name.
They practice asceticism of heat and cold for the sake of food.
They read the scriptures of the Victor for the sake of offerings.
If we consider it calmly, it’s all for the sake of wealth.
Ceremonial hats, monks’ robes, banners, canopies,
Ritual offerings of food and drink,
Whatever we do,
I see nothing more than a wondrous spectacle.
Like arriving at a goat shed or a dog house,
In all mountain passes and valleys, there is no happiness.
Yet until this illusory body of flesh and blood perishes,
We have no choice but to remain on this earth.
A statement like this, so honest,
Alas, may irritate others.167
The meat-eating wolf, the grass-eating rabbit,
Instead of discussing the nature of food,
It is best if they kept to their own ways for a while
Within the circle of their own kind.
Making nomads eat pork,
Making villagers drink melted butter.
If they don’t like it, there’s no point in insisting;
If they do, there’s no point in stopping them.
The blind ant runs about for the sake of happiness.
The legless worm crawls about for the sake of happiness.
In brief, all the world is racing with each other,
Running toward happiness, one faster than the next.
Sometimes, seeing a goddess is revolting.
Sometimes, seeing an old woman creates lust.
Thinking, “This is it,” something else comes along.
How can the deceptions of the mind be counted?
Our attitudes change so much
From childhood to when we are old and decrepit.
Analyze your own experience and you know this.
How can you have confidence in today’s thoughts?
Due to the mind’s insanity, we do not recognize our own face,
Yet we constantly measure the secular and sacred, heaven and earth.
Courageous are we who seek lasting refuge
In this series of mistaken appearances.
If we get used to something long enough,
Nothing in this life does not make us sad.
True divine dharma, solace of this sadness,
At least once, is certain to come to mind.168
In this world of the human land, pleasing yet painful,
All beings, with a hope that looks to the future,
Naturally seek to leave behind
Some trace of themselves.
Some leave a son or a disciple who bears their lineage.
Others leave behind their eloquence, wealth, or fame.
Some pass away after establishing a monastery or images of holy beings.
The trace of others is the wealth they gathered and their beautiful homes.
As for the imprint of the beggar, lacking both dharma and wealth,
There are none of these things mentioned above.
So to pay for the free meals I ate for far too long,
I leave this small book in a stranger’s land.
Through the hectic writing of this unrequested book
That slowly consumed thirteen years of my life,
Although it is uncertain whether it will be praised or blamed by others,
I see that it is certain to be of some small benefit to others.169