TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

WHENEVER HE TAUGHT, the Third Dalai Lama Gyalwa Sonam Gyatso set aside magic and mystery and spoke only on the basic foundations of Buddhist practice, the simple everyday methods for cultivating spiritual awareness. His teachings had a profound influence on the people who came to hear him, and wherever he went he left behind monasteries and spiritual centers that over the centuries to follow would reshape the civilizations he had contacted. Due to his work the gentle doctrines of the Buddha spread like the rising sun over a land that previously had known only conflict and war.

Because of his dedication to an intensive schedule of teaching, the Third Dalai Lama was unable to write as extensively as had his predecessors. Nonetheless, several dozen titles did issue from his pen. Included in this book is perhaps his most famous work, Essence of Refined Gold. It is hoped that this will reveal the clarity and direct simplicity of the Third Dalai Lama as an author and teacher. I have included Tsechokling Yeshey Gyaltsen’s Biography of the Third Dalai Lama at the end of the volume as an appendix to give a sketch of the training and magnificent deeds of this Lord of Yogis, a master of masters who contributed so greatly to the spiritual and cultural development of Asia.

The brevity of the Third Dalai Lama’s composition suits the Central Asian approach to spiritual literature, wherein people rarely just read a book by themselves, but rather prefer to have it read to them by a lineage master, either at large public gatherings or in smaller, more private groups. The tradition is that the master doing the reading should have received the text in an unbroken oral transmission going back over the generations to the lifetime of the original author. The reading usually incorporates commentary, anecdotes, and personal reflections on the meaning of the text, thus bringing it to life and contextualizing its import to the needs of the specific audience. An ancient and somewhat obscure scripture is thus brought into a more modern age with a transformed edge to it. During the twelve years that I resided in India (between the years 1972 and 1984) I had the pleasure of attending several dozen such public “readings” given by His Holiness the present Dalai Lama, as well as many by his two principal gurus; some were centered on ancient Indian texts, including several by Nagarjuna (second century C.E.); others were centered on more recent Tibetan works. In each case His Holiness would take the classical scripture and, blending reading and commentary, speak for five or six hours a day over a period lasting from a week to a month, thus churning the milk of an ancient classic in order to extract the fresh butter of a contemporary understanding.

I first received the transmission of Essence of Refined Gold from the Dalai Lama in 1976, when he led an extensive reading of it in the main temple at Dharamsala, India. The audience included several hundred high lamas and scholars, dozens of accomplished yogis, and several thousand laypeople. To address the varied backgrounds in the audience, His Holiness combined profundity and simplicity in his explanation of the text, leaving all who attended with a sense of magic and awe.

Most educated Westerners are now somewhat aware of the tradition of the Dalai Lamas and what it represents. Many are also aware of the central details of the present Dalai Lama’s life. His autobiography Freedom in Exile achieved a considerable readership around the world, and numerous books such as The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness, which present his quintessential message for working toward individual and world peace, are now in print. When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, he was thrust dramatically onto the center of the international stage.

It has been personally wonderful for me to witness not only the growth of interest in this most amazing personage, but also the increased receptivity to his message by peoples the world over. And of course even though His Holiness is a Buddhist monk and spends much of his time teaching to traditional Buddhist societies in Asia, he dedicates an equal amount of his schedule to traveling the world in order to meet with spiritual and secular leaders, speak in universities, lead interfaith services, and so forth. On these travels he makes no attempt to “convert” Western people to Buddhism, but rather attempts to inspire within them a commitment to the universal spiritual values of love, compassion, wisdom and so forth, that are commonly valued within all great spiritual traditions. As he once put it, “My religion is love and compassion, because these are qualities that all living beings require. Regardless of whether or not one follows any religious tradition, love and compassion are valued by all.”

Several times during my residence in Dharamsala Christian monks came to him and requested him to give them Buddhist ordination; he refused, stating that for them to be good Christian monks was sufficient, and that if they were interested in Buddhism they should just study and practice whatever aspects of Buddhist doctrine they felt were useful to them and to incorporate these into their usual Christian training as complementary elements. Once when I spoke to him before embarking upon a teaching tour of my own he said to me, “Remember, our purpose is not to make more Buddhists, it is to make more enlightened beings. When you teach Buddhism, don’t encourage people to become Buddhists; just encourage them to cultivate the qualities of love, compassion, universal responsibility, and wisdom within themselves. If some special people with strong karmic connections want to formally become Buddhist, then that is acceptable, but in general the emphasis should be on a commitment to inner spiritual values, not to any specific religious tradition.”

Without a doubt the most precious phase of my own life was the twelve-year period I spent in Dharamsala on the mountain where His Holiness has resided during much of his life as a refugee in India. During those years I had the great honor and pleasure of annually attending half a dozen discourses and tantric initiations that he gave in various places around India, as well as several dozen private meetings and interviews with him. I never ceased to be amazed by his delightful combination of personal power and humility, his intensity yet simplicity and playfulness.

One of the most memorable public meetings was at a morning talk he gave one year at Delhi University. He was passing through the city en route to Europe and had a luncheon appointment with the president of India. After his talk he invited questions from the audience, and these generated considerable excitement. Then a young student at the back stood up and asked an almost painfully silly question. The audience giggled. Someone in his entourage jumped up and announced that it was time for His Holiness to leave for his luncheon date, adding that the president could not be kept waiting. His Holiness did not move from his chair, but rather simply looked at the audience and replied, “First I should answer this question.” Again the member of his entourage mentioned the president’s name. His Holiness sat quite still and then said in a very quiet voice, “My problem is that if I were to make a difference between the president of a country and a junior student in a college, I could no longer call myself the Dalai Lama.” He then proceeded to speak in great depth to the question that had been put to him, bringing into his answer a sense of profundity which nobody had imagined lay dormant in the original inquiry, yet somehow transferring the beauty of his words from his own person to that of the young student. He received a standing ovation.

The Chinese Communist takeover of Tibet in 1959 and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent flight to India as a refugee, together with his long years in exile, would perhaps have broken a lesser man’s spirit. Somehow His Holiness has endured the experiences in such a manner as only to grow from them. He often quotes the Mahayana precept, “See those who harm you as manifestations of the guru, come to teach you strength and courage.” Certainly he has practiced this instruction in his own life and has reaped the according rewards.

Perhaps the Dalai Lama’s greatest charm is his ability to make every individual who comes to him feel like the most loved and respected person on earth. After a Kalachakra initiation in Bodh Gaya in 1973 I stood in line with one hundred and fifty thousand others to receive his personal blessings. After three days in line in the hot sun I finally found myself in the temple in front of him. I expected him to look tired, or perhaps even bored, after such an ordeal. He looked at me as though I were his closest friend returning from a long absence, stroked my beard, and whispered laughingly into my ear, “Chokyi trogpo nyingpo, tashi delek,” which translates as “Longtime spiritual friend, welcome.”

The Dalai Lama often says of himself, “I am nobody special, just a simple Buddhist monk.” And in fact he is just that. It is a type of simplicity that touches to the heart of humanity and inspires the most profound sense of hope in the innate goodness and joy of simply being human.

I have attempted to capture that sense of humility punctuated with innate joy and goodness, which I regard as the qualities most precious to his heart.

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The subject of Essence of Refined Gold is the Lam Rim, a term that refers to both a lineage of spiritual methodology and also a genre of literature aimed at elucidating that methodology. Lam Rim literally means “stages on the (spiritual) path.” The lineage was brought to Tibet in 1042 by the illustrious master Atisha Dipamkara Shrijnana. The prototype for the literature is Atisha’s Bodhipathapradipa, or A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment,¹ which Atisha wrote for the Tibetans a few years after his arrival in Tibet. The work enjoyed immediate popularity, and over the centuries that followed, hundreds of commentaries to its central themes, or the Lam Rim, sprang forth from the pens of Tibetan authors.

Atisha’s Lam Rim tradition was in fact a synthesis of numerous Indian Buddhist lineages. However, its two principal components were the wisdom teachings that had come from Buddha to Manjushri and Nagarjuna and the method/energy teachings from Buddha to Maitreya and Asanga.² Both of these lines were transmitted from generation to generation, and in the eleventh century they were united by Atisha. He acquired the former from his Indian master Vidyakokila the Younger. As for the latter lineage, to receive this he had to travel to Indonesia. The tradition had been passed to an Indonesian master by the name of Dharmakirti,³ and when Dharmakirti returned to his homeland the lineage went with him. Atisha had heard of this transmission and of how it had become lost to India. Therefore he booked passage on a boat and set out on the long journey. Thirteen months later he arrived in Indonesia, or Suvamadvipa,⁴ “The Golden Islands.” There he met with the great guru Dharmakirti and was accepted as a disciple. He remained studying and practicing under this master for the next twelve years, until he himself had accomplished the teachings of which he had come in search. Only then did he return to India.

It is said that during his life Atisha studied with more than fifty gurus, but of all his teachers he felt most deeply indebted to the Indonesian master Dharmakirti. When Atisha came to Tibet, he taught with special vigor the lineages that he had received from this guru.

Atisha’s visit to Tibet itself is a poignant story.⁵ King Yeshey Od had been trying for years to get Atisha to come and teach in his Himalayan kingdom, but due to Atisha’s importance in the Indian monasteries the monastic abbots would not grant their permission. Then an event occurred that caused them to change their minds. King Yeshey Od fell into the hands of the Garloks and was put up for ransom, the amount demanded being the weight of his body in gold. His nephew Jangchub Od managed to raise almost the required quantity, but when he brought it to the Garloks it was found to be a few pounds short. However, King Yeshey Od had in mind a different purpose for the gold. He instructed his nephew to send it to India as an offering to the monasteries with a request that they send Atisha to teach in Tibet, stating that in addition to the gold he was offering the life of a king. Yeshey Od thus died at the hands of the Garloks and his gold went to India.

The Indian abbots consented to allow Atisha to go to Tibet for a period of three years. The three became six, and in the end Atisha remained until his death thirteen years later.

Atisha had hundreds of disciples in Tibet, but of them all the foremost was Lama Drom Tonpa, who is often said to have been an early incarnation of the Dalai Lamas. It was to Lama Drom that Atisha left most of his lineages, including the Lam Rim lineage that is the subject of Essence of Refined Gold. Lama Drom divided the tradition into three lines of transmission, and these were not to be reunited for three hundred years. Then in the fourteenth century Jey Rinpoche Lama Tsongkhapa, root guru of the First Dalai Lama, collected together the fragmented lineages. Since then the complete tradition has always been passed on intact.

There are different ways of speaking about Tibetan religious history and of dividing the Tibetan traditions into sects. The most common is to do so by the periods of translation of the Indian scriptures. Those sects which had formed prior to the eleventh century and which follow the translation terminology of the eighth-century master Padma Sambhava are generally referred to as the Nyingma, or Old Ones. In earlier times numerous sects were included in this category, but today they are more or less amalgamated and are generally considered to be one sect.

In the middle of the eleventh century Tibet experienced something of a renaissance, and again there was a move to examine the Indian scriptures. At this time, the translation terminology was revised and standardized. Three principal sects, together known as the Sarma, or New Orders, formed at this time: the Kagyu, the Sakya and the Kadam. This latter was the tradition produced by Atisha’s work in Tibet.

Each of these orders of Tibetan Buddhism had direct roots in a specific Indian master: the Nyingma in Padma Sambhava, the Kagyu in Naropa, the Sakya in Virupa, and the Kadam in Atisha. The work of synthesizing and fusing these lineages was not to occur for another three hundred years, when Lama Tsongkhapa studied under forty-five Tibetan masters representing all the major traditions. In the early 1400s Tsongkhapa established Ganden Monastery to house and preserve his fusion lineage.

In combining the various Tibetan traditions Lama Tsongkhapa needed a common denominator, a common base upon which all could stand. He found the key to this in Atisha’s Lam Rim tradition, which had already found its way into most Tibetan sects. It became the basis of the Kagyu Order when Milarepa’s chief disciple, Gampopa, composed his Jewel Ornament of Liberation,⁶ and its influence upon the Sakya was so profound that the Sakya Lama Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche referred to the Sakya as being Kadam-based.⁷ Furthermore, a glance at the works of the Nyingma formulator Longchen Rabjampa reveals the extent of the impact that Kadam Lam Rim had upon the tradition of the Old Ones.

To emphasize the importance he wished to place on the Lam Rim tradition, Lama Tsongkhapa composed three works on the subject, often called the Lam Rim Che Dring Chung or Great, Medium, and Concise Treatises on the Lam Rim Tradition. The first of these is extremely detailed, being over one thousand pages (or five hundred folios) in length. The second is just under half as long, providing a less formal guide. The third is a brief verse work expressed in terms of Lama Tsongkhapa’s personal meditational experiences. This latter text is also known as the Lam Rim Nyam Gur, or Song of the Lam Rim Tradition, or Song of the Stages on the Spiritual Path.

Of the hundreds of Tibetan commentaries that have been written on the Lam Rim methods, eight have been singled out by the Tibetan masters as being especially noteworthy. These are simply called the Lam Rim Chenpo Gye or Eight Great Lam Rims. The first three of these are the above works of Lama Tsongkhapa. Then follows the Third Dalai Lama’s Essence of Refined Gold. Next is the First Panchen Lama’s Easy Path to Enlightenment⁸ and, after that, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Sacred Word of Manjushri.⁹ Seventh in the list is the Second Panchen Lama’s A Guide to the Quick Path.¹⁰ Finally we have Dvakpo Ngawang Drakpa’s Path of the Excellent Scriptures.¹¹ The list as here arranged is in order of the dates of composition of the texts and not of importance or length.

For our purposes the two most important of these Lam Rim scriptures are Lama Tsongkhapa’s Song of the Stages on the Spiritual Path and the Third Dalai Lama’s Essence of Refined Gold. This latter work is a “word commentary” (Tib., tshig-’grel) to the former, and quotes much of it.

Thus the Third Dalai Lama’s text is a commentary to the contemplative and highly mystical Lam Rim poem of Lama Tsongkhapa. Its rather brief length of twenty-three folios has over the centuries maintained its status among the dozens of Lam Rim treatises as a favorite for public discourses. As the present Dalai Lama puts it later in his own commentary to Essence, the text incorporates all the central doctrines and practices of the classical Indian Buddhist tradition, from the initial method of cultivating a working relationship with a spiritual master, up to the highest tantric yogas of illusory body and clear light mind that induce the final experience of enlightenment.

I originally translated and published the Third Dalai Lama’s Essence in 1978 in a small volume of early Dalai Lama works I brought out with Tushita Books of India. Curiously enough, the following year His Holiness visited Mongolia for the first time (in this incarnation), and as a gift to the Mongolians took them a number of Tibetan copies of Essence of Refined Gold printed with gold ink, since the Third Dalai Lama four centuries earlier had taught this text extensively in Mongolia. Later I discovered that His Holiness also took along thirty copies of my English translation to give to the Russian and Mongolian officials he met who could not read Tibetan but who had access to the English language.

However, from the point of view of a Western reading audience there were a number of problems with this straightforward translation of Essence of Refined Gold. The Tibetan text is brilliant and powerful, but it contains such a wide range of ideas in so concise a form (only twenty-three folios, or forty-six pages) that it is not easily understood by the uninitiated. The oral commentary to the text given by His Holiness in 1976 makes an excellent guide to the basic text. Moreover, the discourse was a “meaning commentary” (Tib., don-’grel), and thus covered the material of the Third Dalai Lama’s text in a general and direct manner, dealing with the central themes of the work rather than the specific technicalities. Therefore I approached His Holiness in 1981, asking him for permission not only to translate his teaching on Essence but also for his blessings to edit it for a Western audience. In addition, I requested and received his permission to intersperse relevant comments he had made in private interviews I had attended over the years when these threw light on the topics being discussed by the Third Dalai Lama in Essence.

Also included in this book is a prayer by the Third Dalai Lama to be read in conjunction with Lam Rim meditation. The text begins with the usual Mahayana procedures of taking refuge; generating the four immeasurable thoughts of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity; making symbolic offerings to the visualized assembly; and so forth. It then goes on to call upon the various gurus in the lineage of transmission of the Lam Rim method, beginning with Buddha and the early Indian masters, then the Kadam gurus who followed from Atisha’s work in Tibet, and finally Lama Tsongkhapa and the Gelukpa masters who came after him. The prayer concludes with Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Perfections, which provides the meditator with a reminder of the principal Lam Rim topics. Ideally, after reading the prayer the practitioner would sit in silent meditation for at least half an hour.

Originally this text was included by the Third Dalai Lama in Essence of Refined Gold. However, with the permission of the late Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, senior tutor of the present Dalai Lama, I have here placed it on its own. It does not sit well in the middle of Essence from the perspective of a Western reader, for whom it breaks the flow and upsets the tone of an otherwise clear prose work. By itself, however, it works well as an independent text. In fact it is more common to find a lineage prayer such as this at the end of a treatise rather than in the middle. For example, the First Dalai Lama does just that with his short commentary to the Atisha Lojong tradition.¹²

I have also provided as an appendix a translation of a traditional biography of the Third Dalai Lama taken from a collection of biographical materials entitled Lam Rim Lagyugi Namtar (Tib., Lam-rim-bla-rgyud-gi-rnam-thar), or “Lives of the Gurus in the Lam Rim Transmission,” the magnum opus of Tsechokling Kachen Yeshey Gyaltsen, the guru of the Eighth Dalai Lama. This work is a wonderful source of historical knowledge, outlining the biographies of the principal Indian and Tibetan masters in the Lam Rim transmission lineage, from Buddha until the late eighteenth century. Accounts of all the names listed by the Third Dalai Lama in A Lam Rim Preliminary Rite are to be found in Tsechokling’s excellent history. His biography of the Third Dalai Lama provides an excellent portrait of the master’s life, times, and principal accomplishments.

The teachings of the Third Dalai Lama had a profound effect upon the development of Asia. It is my sincere wish that his teachings may also prove useful to the West. He did not say anything Buddha or Tsongkhapa had not said, but he restated their words in a way that brought new meaning to them. For this reason his Essence of Refined Gold is as popular in Tibetan and Mongolian circles today as it was four hundred years ago.

In closing I should say something about my system of romanization of Tibetan and Sanskrit names and terms. In general, I have tried to simplify the presentation of Tibetan names and terms. Tibetan formal spelling abounds in silent letters—prefixes, superscripts, subscripts, and suffixes—that are either totally unsounded in speech or else completely alter the pronunciation of the root letter of the syllable. For instance, mKhas-grub is simply pronounced Khe-drub; and bsTan-pa pronounced ten-pa, etc. It seems more sensible to write these as they sound, not as they are transliterated, except in cases where I feel the formal spelling is relevant. In this latter instance the word is set in parentheses, e.g., (Tib., grags-pa). However, in the notes and bibliography, all Tibetan is presented in full transliteration.