Report February 2024: Vajrakilaya
This month we published another major text of the Longchen Nyingik cycle: Vajrakīlaya: Overpowering the Forces of Māra. Two of our texts were translated in other languages as well, the History of the Yumka practice into German and the White Sur into Spanish.
Vajrakilaya according to the Longchen Nyingtik, courtesy of Dodrupchen Chorten Gompa
When Jigme Lingpa was in his sixties he ‘translated the signs’ of the four specific sādhanas of Palchen Düpa—Yamāntaka, Hayagrīva, Yangdak Heruka and Vajrakīlaya—at the request of Dodrupchen Jigme Trinle Özer, Jigme Losalchen, and Tsewang Lhamo, the Queen of Derge. This must have been in the 1790’s. Jigme Lingpa mentions that these practices had been translated during the time of Tri Songdetsen (742-c.800), but their lineage had been interrupted, thus showing the need for them to be revealed again. This is the sādhana of Vajrakīlaya: Vajrakīlaya: Overpowering the Forces of Māra, from the Oceanic Gathering of Awesome Ones, revealed by Jigme Lingpa. The introduction says:
It is Vajrakumāra who brings
All conceptual thoughts of mind and phenomena
Within the expanse of the primordial wisdom of persistent action.
As with almost all termas, the text includes some of the famed lines from the tantras:
Hūṃ. When vajra wrath is aroused, aggression is cut right through.
Enlightened mind is the perfect vajra itself.
The primordial wisdom of emptiness
Is non-conceptual, beyond the thinking mind.
The samaya of ‘liberating through compassion’
Involves neither killing nor subduing.
Jigme Lingpa proclaims:
All who take this as their yidam practice
Will not be afflicted by obstacles and māras,
And will gain mastery over all enlightened activities.
And finally, the colophon of the text reads:
The hidden, crucial points of the infinite sections of the tantras of absolute space
Found in the mind-direct, symbolic, and oral lineages,
Are condensed and clarified in these yellow scrolls—
This, the lineage of Padmasambhava, is most excellent!
Samaya. Sealed. Sealed. Sealed.
Our translation of the White Sur practice of the Longchen Nyingtik has been translated into Spanish and can be found here: La ofrenda de sur blanco que permea todos los reinos. The History of the revelation of the Yumka cycle was translated into German as Die Geschichte der weiblichen Praxis der „Königin der großen Glückseligkeit“