LIKE OUR PREVIOUS entry, the precise origin of this short text entitled Melodies of an Adamantine Song remains a source of intrigue. Traditionally, the work is attributed to one Maitrīyogi, also known as Kusalī Jr., one of Atiśa’s three Indian teachers of mind training. We know very little of this master, other than the scant personal information we find in some of the later Tibetan biographical writings on Atiśa. According to these sources, Kusalī Jr. was a yogi dedicated to the cultivation of bodhisattva Maitreya, the future Buddha, from which he acquired the epithet Maitrīyogi, or “practitioner of loving-kindness.” The same sources also tell us that this master’s empathic power was so great, once he even felt the pain of a dog that was being hit by a stick, with clear bluish marks visible on his back.
Although reference to the person of Maitrīyogi is found in earlier Kadam texts, such as Sé Chilbu’s commentary on the Seven-Point Mind Training, to date, I have yet to see any explicit mention of this particular text in any work before the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The earliest we have is the inclusion of the full text in Shönu Gyalchok’s Compendium of Well-Uttered Insights, where, in the colophon, we find the following statement: “This sublime being [Atiśa] gave this instruction both in India and Tibet as a hidden guide to those sublime ones who shared deep interest in the practice.” Unfortunately, Shönu Gyalchok does not tell us what source he used when compiling his anthology. Shönu Gyalchok’s version is clearly the one we find in Mind Training: The Great Collection, the basis of the translation below.
Unlike Wheel of Sharp Weapons, we do not have any traditional exposition in the form of commentary on this short text. Ostensibly, the work is a series of ecstatic, spontaneous songs sung in a dialogue between Maitrīyogi and Maitreya. A third voice, an anonymous narrator, is probably the person who first compiled the songs into a single narrative.
The text is composed of three parts. First is a song expressing deep commitment to the altruistic ideals of taking others’ suffering upon oneself and offering one’s virtues to others, culminating with a statement of a single-pointed determination to have one’s mind trained. At the end of this song, the text refers to the preceding verses as “a chanting meditation (gyer sgom) on compassion, loving-kindness, and awakening mind in the form of an adamantine, or vajra, song,” the suggestion here being that this is a meditation practice to be undertaken in the form of chanting.
In response to this song, the bodhisattva Maitreya utters a series of lines expressing his joy at the yogi’s dedication and practice. Opening with the lines:
This song that dispels sufferings of the lower realms through mere hearing,
this song that cuts down the tree of cyclic existence through mere reflection,
this song that swiftly grants enlightenment through mere meditation—
wondrous indeed is this song of love, compassion, and awakening mind!
Maitreya extols the virtue of engaging in the altruistic practices enshrined in tonglen practice and states that there is nothing in the Mahayana scriptures that is not contained within this spiritual practice. This is the second part of the text.
The final part of the text opens with a description of a host of miraculous beneficial effects that result from this exchange between the yogi and his meditation deity, which then leads to Maitreya revealing his entire form to the yogi. This is followed by the final prayers honoring Maitreya through making a series of offerings to him, concluding with an appeal to help the yogi have his mind successfully trained.