<P><BR><A target=_blank href="http://www.berzinarchives.com/sutra/sutra_level_2/short_commentary_three_principles_path.html">http://www.berzinarchives.com/sutra/sutra_level_2/short_commentary_three_principles_path.html</A><BR>(Alexander Berzin's hompage)</P><P>I prostrate to my ennobling, impeccable lamas.</P><P>(1) I shall try to explain, to the best of my ability,<BR>The essential meaning of all the scriptural pronouncements of the Triumphant Ones,<BR>The path praised by the Triumphants’ holy offspring,<BR>The fording passage for the fortunate desiring liberation.</P><P>(2) Listen with a clear (mind), O fortunate one,<BR>Whose mind would rely on the path pleasing to the Triumphant<BR>Through being unattached to the pleasures of compulsive existence<BR>And eager to make meaningful your life of respites and enriching factors.</P><P>(3) Since taking keen interest in the pleasurable fruits <BR> of the ocean of compulsive existence, without pure renunciation,<BR>Is no method for (achieving) the peace (of liberation) –<BR>In fact, by craving what is found in compulsive situations,<BR> limited beings are completely bound –<BR>First, strive for renunciation. </P><P>(4) By accustoming your mind that there is no time to waste<BR>When a life of respites and enrichments is so difficult to find,<BR>Turn from your obsession with the appearances of this life.<BR>By thinking over and again about the problems of recurring rebirth<BR>And that (the laws of) behavioral cause and effect are never a fraud,<BR>Turn from your obsession with the appearances of future (lives).</P><P>(5) When, by accustoming yourself in this way, you never generate, for even an instant,<BR>A mind that aspires for the splendors of recurring samsara,<BR>And you develop the attitude that day and night always is interested keenly in liberation,<BR>At that time, you have generated renunciation. </P><P>(6) But since even this renunciation, if not held with the development<BR>Of a pure bodhichitta aim, will not become a cause<BR>For the splendors and bliss of a peerless purified state (of enlightenment),<BR>Those with sense generate a supreme bodhichitta aim. </P><P><BR>(7) Carried by the currents of the four violent rivers,<BR>Tied by the tight fetters of karma, hard to reverse,<BR>Thrown into an iron-mesh pit of grasping for true identities,<BR>Completely enshrouded in the heavy gloom of the darkness of unawareness, </P><P>(8) Unrelentingly tormented by the three types of suffering,<BR>Life after life in limitless compulsive existence –<BR>Having thought about the condition of your mothers<BR>Who have found themselves in situations like these,<BR>Develop a supreme bodhichitta aim. </P><P>(9) Even if you have built up as habits renunciation and a bodhichitta aim,<BR>Still, if you lack the discriminating awareness of realizing the abiding nature of reality,<BR>You will be unable to sever the root of your compulsive existence.<BR>Therefore, make effort in the methods for realizing dependent arising.</P><P>(10) Anyone who has seen that (the laws of) behavioral cause and effect<BR>Regarding all phenomena of samsara and nirvana are never a fraud,<BR>And who has had fall apart the sustaining supports of his or her (cognitions)<BR>aimed (at inherent existence), whatever they might have been,<BR>Has entered the path pleasing to the Buddhas. </P><P>(11) Appearances are non-fraudulent dependent arisings<BR>And voidness is parted from any assertions (of impossible ways of existing).<BR>So long as you have these two understandings appearing to you separately,<BR>You still have not realized the Able Ones’ intention.</P><P>(12) But when, not in alternation, but all together at once,<BR>Your certitude from the mere sight of non-fraudulent dependent arising<BR>Causes all your ways of taking objects (as inherently existent) to fall apart,<BR>You have completed discerning the correct view. </P><P>(13) Further, when you know how appearance eliminates the extreme of existence<BR>And voidness eliminates the extreme of nonexistence,<BR>And how voidness dawns as cause and effect,<BR>You will never be stolen away by views that grasp for extremes. </P><P>(14) When you have understood the points of these three<BR>Principle aspects of the path, as they are,<BR>Rely on solitude and, by generating the power of joyful perseverance,<BR>Quickly realize, my son, your immemorial goal.</P><P> </P> |