..續本文上一頁taking a walk in a garden near the Vajra Seat, Bodhisattva Vajrasattva suddenly appeared to them, saying, “Both of you have been learned panditas for the past 500 lives, yet you have not attained enlightenment. If you do not want to miss the chance again this life, you should set off right away to the Cool Charnel Ground in the Han land.” Hearing this, Vimalamitra immediately took a trip to the Han area where he followed Sri Simha and received many pith instructions of the Great Perfection. He stored away a portion of what he had learned at Jixiang Gate, which is located right here in your city Xian. [7]
Returning to India, Vamilamitra related his experience to Jnanasutra who then followed in the same footsteps to the Cool Charnel Ground to request teachings from Sri Simha. Following his master for a longer time period, Jnanasutra attained the highest state of Great Perfection realization. When Sri Simha was entering paranirvana, he conferred to Jnanasutra the Pith Instruction of Seven Definitive. Jnanasutra then returned to India”s Basam Charnel Ground, bringing with him also all the hidden scriptures he had retrieved from Jixiang Gate.
Vamilamitra requested an audience with Jnanasutra and besought teachings. When Jnanasutra was entering paranirvana, he transmitted to Vamilamitra the Teachings on Four Abiding. Vamilamitra imparted the pith instructions to Guru Padmasambhava who later came to Tibet…. Now this is the transmission history of Nyingmapa”s Great Perfection. We could see that the origin of esoteric lineage is Tathagatha Samantabhadra. Buddha Shakyamuni in his life also personally transmitted a number of tantras, including Kalachakra and Mañjuśrī-Nāma-Saṃgīti. But there are other tantric teachings which began to appear only after Buddha Shakyamuni”s paranirvana.
People who know neither the historical aspect nor the meaning of extraordinary lineage are likely to be opinionated, which is somewhat excusable. The transmission of the “Symbol Lineage of Vidyadharas,” for example, is incomprehensible to ordinary beings. Actually it works in a way very similar to Zen”s mind-to-mind transmission, in which the student can achieve realization by the teacher”s pointing out through a gesture or a koan. Similarly in Vajrayana, Guru Pinpoche may simply point to his students where the space resides; those with a suitable capacity will see the nature of the mind instantly. This, then, is the so-called Vidyadhara mind stream lineagetransmission. However, as such state transcends all mortal senses, academic research, an investigation based on six faculties, is in no way to reach into its subtleties. Frankly, without faith and devotion,no amount of examination will be productive, which is not unlike the result obtained by blind men”s patting of an elephant.
Nowadays people often remark: “What is the big deal of having a lineage
It”s all much ado about nothing!” But a conclusion deduced from external appearance while discounting the inner quality can hardly be called sound. Master Hong Yi once pointed out that what”s inside could be more crucial than what is out there. Drawingnational flags as an analogy, he says that a national flag was but a piece of ordinary fabric before it gets sewed into a flag.However, as the national flag is being raised, it commands respect from everyone in the ceremony. Can we call this behavior toward a piece of fabric superstitious
Of course not. Similarly, as the Buddhist scriptures seemingly are composed of common vocabularies, the academic viewpoint sees no difference between them and worldly articles. Nonetheless, the scriptures are indeed imbued with extraordinary blessings which can only be perceived by the mind, not by naked eyes.
IV. Rainbow body accomplishment in Han History
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