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Identifying a Capable Student
To the guru who has realized basic selflessness
I pray in awe with body, speech and mind;
Please bless us, me and all my students to come,
That we too realize basic selflessness.
Please hold us in compassion's steady grip
That keeps our skandhas free of ego-idea,
Of everything that idea's feeding on;
Now we've prayed, Oh watchful shepherd, listen to this.
This consciousness conceiving “I” and “me,”
I look at it but know not how to see;
If you can meditate on mahamudra,
Your seeing will be one where nothing is seen.
To do this mahamudra meditation,
The basics: faith, respect and great resolve;
While on the path, causality please know and heed;
To get the fruit directly to emerge,
You need the guru's wang and lung and guiding words;
To be a vessel for instructions like these,
The student has to have the merit it takes
And must keep going right through good times and bad,
Persevering even in the face of death;
Oh young apprentice, can you practice like that?
If so, it's through your training lives before;
If not, then there's no point in saying more.
You got the picture when you said it like this:
”What I think is me, I cannot find.”
You’re done with personal lack of self.
You want phenomena's lack of it too?
Then follow me throughout the next twelve years,
And then you'll recognize your mind itself.
So then, to recognize your mind itself,
Oh young apprentice, work with mind like this.
Under the guidance of Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, translated by Jim Scott, Cha’n Centre, Tenerife, arranged at KTC, New York City, Summer, 1995, Tibetan page 294. Translation copyright 2012, Jim Scott