Namo Guru Hasa Vajra Ye!

You realized genuine reality
And by the power of your realization
You taught your disciples, your daughters and sons,
Not to try to make thoughts go away
Because thoughts are already liberated
In the very spot where they are
Oh great one, Shepa Dorje
I bow at your feet, respectfully.

Mind’s projections and habitual tendencies are limitless
So if you don’t know how to self-liberate thoughts
Without trying to make them go away
You’ll never be free of getting rid of your thoughts
As they come up one after the other!
Thoughts self-liberated, not given up, is
Definitive meaning’s profound point.

The basic nature of things is not produced by cause or condition
If you can’t cut through your subtle ideas
About the way things really are
Your own theories about reality
Will shackle you in chains
So baselessness and rootlessness are
Definitive meaning’s profound point.

“Mind’s impulse to sudden thought cannot be stopped by hundreds with spears”
This is how Milarepa sang it and so
There must be another way—
It’s attachment dissolving naturally,
Free as soon as it dawns
This way of liberation is  
Definitive meaning’s profound point.

Thoughts’ movement between the three times cannot be locked in an iron box
So know that conceptuality
Is the great self-emptiness
Self-liberation of your thoughts is
Definitive meaning’s profound point.

Form, sound, smell, taste and touch and the qualities they possess—
Even wisdom deities
Don’t refrain from enjoying them
The six consciousnesses self-liberated
Is spacious relaxation
Taking sense-pleasures to the path is
Definitive meaning’s profound point.

What about the appearance of the six kinds of objects that go with the consciousnesses?
There isn’t anyone, whoever it may be
Who can put a stop to that
So knowing that the object appearing there
Has no substantial existence
And taking appearance to the path is
Definitive meaning’s profound point.

So that’s the way of definitive meaning—it’s incredibly profound
And since samsara and nirvana are not different things—they’re equality
And since rejected and gained are non-dual—they’re equality too
Definitive meaning’s profound way is present naturally.

May you find doubt-free certainty in profound definitive meaning
And get used to not taking one thing up
And abandoning another
And get used to not creating one thing and
Stopping something else
And may the benefit of self and other be
Accomplished naturally.

On December 28, 1997, in the Garden of Translation near the Great Stupa of Boudhanath, Nepal, this was spoken extemporaneously by the one only called “Khenpo”, Tsultrim Gyamtso.  
Translated by Ari Goldfield with thanks to Jim Scott for his translation and arrangement of Milarepa’s song, The Six Questions. Translation copyright 2012, Ari Goldfield.