A Supplication-Prayer for The Longevity Of Prof Samdhong Rinpoche

A SUPPLICATION-PRAYER FOR THE LONGEVITY AND FLOURISHING FORTH
of THE BENEVOLENT ACTIVITIES
of
HIS EMINENCE PROFESSOR SAMDHONG RINPOCHE, THE PEERLESS, SUBLIME SUPPORT-FRIEND
TO THE TEACHINGS AND THE WANDERING BEINGS, ENTITLED,
The Melody of the Eternal Celestial Violin
by His Eminence Drakyab Kyabjgon

O Teacher, embodiment of the four enlightened bodies, One Fully Enlightened,
O Sublime Teachings (Dharma), endowed with all excellences of eschewing
and realizations,
O Assembly of exalted Virtue Intent (Saṅgha), bearing the eight [qualities of] knowledge,
liberation, [and so forth]:1
May You the infallible Three Precious Ones, bestow auspiciousnesses! (1)

Śudhodhana Scion,2 the unequalled Guide to wandering beings,
The Seventeen Accomplished Adepts,3 the main and lineage teachers,
And the assembly of the oceans of Deities of eternal4 longevity:
May You increase forth the life of [our] greatly inspiring Lama! (2)

In fully showering down a ceaseless continuity of the benevolent activities
Of all Victors (Buddhas), upon the limitless realms of those to be subdued
(sentient beings),
You sound a fearless lion’s roar:
To You, the chief of the heroic Victors’ Scions (Bodhisattvas), I supplicate! (3)

By the force of generating the mind [of enlightenment], the noble pledge,
You made in the past, in the presence of The Great Mind Victor,
You are greatly heroic in holding the Teachings during [this] degenerate time,
To You, who hoist the victory-banner of the Dharma, I supplicate! (4)

You, thus, re-emerged in the enactment as an Emanated Body (Nirmāṇakāya),
Appropriately devoting to many Friends of Virtues (Teachers),
And mastered the entire Sūtra and Mantra scriptures, endowed
With the four qualities—so, manifesting the marks of a sublime being.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (5)

On the vast scriptures and systems you learned, You did reflections
to remove doubts,
While implementing them upon Your mind, in practice, and engaged
In the great welfare of the Teachings, and of the wandering beings,
Beautified by the activities of the three-wheels.5
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (6)

You became outstanding amongst adepts, by Your knowledge of the Tripiṭakas,
languages, medicines and others,
The fields of knowledge, of both outer and inner [faiths].6
Abiding by the three vows7purely, You are a practitioner, observing morality
conscientiously.
You are endowed with the splendour of the noble benevolent activities of loving-kindness:
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (7)

Even on each set of words, You propound hundreds of Sūtra and Mantra scriptures,
Laden with greatly profound meanings—other than You, who else has such a mastery?
Even the Thousand-Eyed [celestial chief]8has not acquired such,
Which puts all to smile.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (8)

Through an analytical intelligence, meticulous and sound,
Upon [systems] non-Buddhist and Buddhist, spiritual and temporal,
and all five fields of knowledge,9
You have the supreme confidence, unmatched, in professing,
Clearly standing at the crowns of all adepts.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (9)

From a young age You were at debates, Your sharp weapons
Of citations and reasonings piercing the hosts of those proclaiming
As adepts, preaching wrongly; and, by Your brave and speedy approaches,10
You followed [in the footsteps of] Dignāga.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (10)

To re-illuminate Daṇḍi’s own system,11 You are akin
To Danḍi himself assuming the role of an ordained, a Śrāmaṇa,12
Outshining the multitude of those propounding literary compositions;
You are the Master of writings, Your voice blessed
by The Melody Deity (Saravastī).
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (11)

In many Tibetan schools in the Land of the Exalted (India),
You led batches of youths, the seeds retaining the continuity of our ethnicity,
From Thonmi’s grammar of the Land of Snows, and produced
Multitude of adepts learned at all knowledge-fields.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (12)

The forest where the Teacher (Buddha) roared the sound of Teachings
You transformed it into a garden of the five fields of knowledge,
Thus opening anew, as a trailblazer, the doors
For a university for Tibetan higher studies.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (13)

In particular, You are the Guide of the Path,
Bestowing the celebrations of benefits and happiness,
Your noble gifts of many virtues and perfect explanations
Of knowledges ancient and modern, outer and inner.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (14)

Also, to mutually fill up in languages of India and Tibet,
The priceless Words, commentarial texts, scriptural systems,
You established in India an Institution of translations,
Resembling Samye Translation Centre13—providing a vast works
of translations.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (15)

The heads of the entire universities of the Land of the Exalted (India)
Elected You their supreme President,
All in one voice entrusting You the Chair;
You are the sole ornament of the adepts of the Land of Snow.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (16)

To make flourish forth the greatly far-reaching State affairs,
You were the Head of the House elected by the majority,
And One who sat on the throne of the Lord over Ministers,
One who for the first time ruled fearlessly by law.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (17)

An immense load of hundreds of works of [His Holiness], the Holder of White Lotus,
Difficult to be carried even by a mammoth,
Fell on Your shoulders, yet Greatly Brave You are,
Maintaining the will-power [bearing it all].
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (18)

To embark on the truthful cause of Tibet’s Faith and people,
You eschewed completely financial enterprises that were not wholesome;
By non-violent and peaceful approach of The Middle Way, mutually beneficial,
You maintained purely the democratic administration.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (19)

Steadfast in sagacity, difficult it is to fathom from outside Your depth,
Speaking measuredly and devoid of contradictions,
You abide by practising what is preached,
You thus stand revered upon the crowntop of the arrogant multitude.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (20)

By genuine peacefulness, calmness, contentment and conscientiousness,
You maintain Bodhisattva manners of assuming humility of staying low,
Placing into embarrassmentan ocean of [ordained with vows of] morality;
You are thus revered greatly as a Great Bodhisattva who retains Vinaya.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (21)

Delighted are all Victors, to repay Your kindness,
And with sounds of clapping, praise Your profound
Activities, of great meaningfulness,
Vastly benefiting others thus.
May You, the Noble Minded, Holder of Teachings, The Great Victory Banner
of Dharma,
Kindly live long and may Your benevolent activities flourish forth! (22)

From a long time ago, many Teachers have filled Your mental continuum
With the sublime teachings, making You a great treasury of benefits and happiness;
Please think of adept’s quiet deeds, bestowing endless benefits to others,
Manifest in this splendid sign14 of Your mind! (23)

May You please maintain the noble deeds of distributing to all directions
The wish-granting gem of the Victor’s teachings, in general,
And of the Guardian Tsongkhapa’s stainless system,15
To fulfil the hopes of the fortunate trainees! (24)

By the blessings of The Three Sublime, and the oceans of Victors (Buddhas),
By the force of the truth of the infallible dependent-related-arising,
By the power of the pure faith and samaya-bondship of myself and others,
May all contents of the prayers made here get accomplished spontaneously,
without hindrances! (25)

Colophon16
This Melody of the Eternal Celestial Violin, requesting to kindly live long, through mentioning a fraction of the greatly benevolent deeds of His Eminence Kyabjey Samdhong Rinpoche Losang Tenzin Choekyi Gyaltsen, of Drepung Loseling Tsawa, the peerless stalwart illuminating the Victor’s teachings, the Honourable Former Prime Minister, is composed in continued rejoicing on the excellent qualities of His Eminence Rinpoche: the mental continuum filled with hundred thousands of transmitted and realized qualities, bright with hundreds of insights into ancient and modern knowledges; and the matchless, immensely far-reaching great benevolent deeds: temporal, spiritual, and of Tibet’s knowledge-heritages, the roots of The Land of Snows’ welfare.
In particular, the factors for composing this Praise was the joy, faith and rejoicing I felt from my heart, at knowing that His Eminence Kyabjey Samdhong Rinpoche had accepted, at the repeated requests by the glorious Gyuto Monastery, to bestow spoken commentaries on The Profound Path of Delighting Teachers (zab-lam bla-ma mchod-pa), the Teacher-Integration Practice of the Wensa Whispered Lineage, and The Main Text and The Auto-commentary of The Great Seal (phyag-chen; Māhamudra), in the tradition of the Virtuous Lineage.
Starting from The Great His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Eminences the Tutors, Kyabjey Yongzin Gadhen Trichen Ling Dorjechang and Kyabjey Yongzin Trijang Dorjechang, and many qualified teachers, have, with their greatly compassionate regard, praised, revered and admired His Eminence Kyabjey Samdhong Rinpoche. Besides, His Eminence Rinpoche guides multitude of disciples, maintaining the succession works of the sublime beings, undoubtedly considered by the sublime teachers as the peerless one who would become “the scion more grand than the father”.
I request His Eminence Rinpoche to kindly extensively and continuously turn the Wheel of Dharma (teachings), of the vast and the profound Sūtra (Discourse system) and Mantra (the advanced, Tantric path), and bestow empowerments, transmissions and commentaries.
This Supplication-Prayer is composed for the congregation of those with pure-samaya, and abiding by morality training, to do supplication prayers at the forthcoming teachings at Gyuto. It is composed by the Ninth Re-emanated Drakyab Kyabgon, as labelled so by Naming Abbot,17 bearing upon the crowntop the name Ngok Loden Sherab (although remaining servile to the eight mundane concerns, and of the three awarenesses), one who had from a young age attended, [with His Eminence Rinpoche,] the same classes, diligently, at learning and reflection, am of the same sound closeness, and are Vajra brothers, of pure samaya-bondship.
This was composed on January 15, 2014, and distributed as a Dharma generosity. By the merits in doing so, may all contents of the prayers made herein get accomplished spontaneously!

Translator’s Notes
Prelude
1bkah-hgyur; hdul-wa; Derge (Peking Reprints) 1038, (Vol.45, p.236)
2 dwags-po bshad-sgrub-gling graw-tsang-gi chos-spyod; pp. 451-468
3 Dhokhar Zhabdung Tsering Wangyal; dīrgāyur-indra-jina-h’byung-wa brjod-pa zol-med ngag-gi rol-mo asti (Autobiographical Account; A Vocal Display—An Unpretentious Narration of Events);pp.32-33; LTWA; 2014
4 Ibid; p.42
Translation Notesto the Prayer, requesting His Holiness the Dalai Lama to kindly live long
Terms that have specific contextual meanings are indicated in the English, in the text, by italics; for example: eschewing and realizations.
1The three secrets: of enlightened body, enlightened speech and enlightened mind
2Unelapsed; the original mi-shigs literally means, “non-disintegrating”, “unexpiring”, “indestructible” and so on. For avoiding too negative a sense in the words like disintegrating and expiring, “unelapsed” is the choice made in the translation here.
3Deity of deities; Although the verse makes the supplication to all Buddhas, this qualification is of a Buddha in general, thus entailing the same to all.
4Practitioners; the Tibetan word used here is rnal-’jor (Yogin; An integrating practitioner). For concern of the line in the verse becoming too long, Practitioners is the choice made, in place of saying, “yogi/yogini”.
5By it; the pronoun refers to the spontaneous actualizing of Thoughts envisioned mentioned in the preceding verse.
6 The translation here of the Colophon breaks the long sentence in the Tibetan into parts, for easier understanding.
Translation Notes to Prayer, requesting His Eminence Kyabjey Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche
to kindly live long, composed by Kaybjey Trijang Dorjechang
1Eternity; The literal Tibetan says, “deathlessness”.
2The Fourth Guide of the fortunate era; Refers to Buddha Shākyamuni (Śākyamuni), who is the fourth among the thousand Buddhas appearing in this present over-all era called “The Fortunate Era”.
3Please remain living long; The literal Tibetan says, “remain ever stable”.
4Upālī; the Bhikṣu Upālī, a disciple of the Buddha, renowned for his pure observance of Vinaya; Upalī was the one on whose recollection, during the first Council of Compiling Buddha’s Words, Vinaya-piṭak (teachings on Morality) was compiled.
Translation Notes to the Prayer, composed by Drakyab Kyabgon
1The eight [qualities of]knowledge, liberation, [and so forth]. These are the eight qualities of Saṅgha, the realized practitioners.
The qualities of, 1 Knowing the reality of phenomena (“knowing of the actuality”); 2 Knowing the diverse phenomena (knowledge of the conventional phenomena); 3 Knowing the inner [Dharma]; 4 Knowledge; 5 Freed from the obscuration of attachment; 6 Freed from obscurations of [mental] obstructions; 7 Freed from the obscurations of the inferior; and the quality of, 8 Having become liberated.
2Śudhodhana Scion; Refers to Buddha Sakyamuni, whose father was Śudhodhana.
3The Seventeen Accomplished Adepts; They were the classical pioneering Buddhist teachers, whose commentarial works have greatly elucidated the Buddha’s Teachings. His Holiness the Dalai Lama teaches extensively the texts of these seventeen Teachers. The seventeen Accomplished Adepts are:Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Buddhapālita, Bhavyaviveka, Chandrakīrti, Śāntideva, Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, Asaṅga, Vasubhandu, Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, Vimuktisena, Haribhadra, Gunaprabha, Śākyaprabha and Atīśa.
4Eternal; The Tibetan word here literally means deathless.
5The three wheels; These are the three avenues of maintaining the Teachings: The wheel of training, of hearing (learning) and reflection; the wheel of eschewing [mental afflictions, through] meditative concentration (Dhyāna); and the wheel of activities [of benefitting others].
6 Outer and inner faiths; Non-Buddhist and Buddhist faiths.
7The three vows; Pratimokṣa Vow, Bodhisattva Vow, and Mantra Vow.
8 The Thousand-Eyed celestial Chief; Refers to Indra.
9The five fields of knowledge; They are the knowledge of, Crafts (and constructions), Medicine, Language (‘Sound’), Logic (Reasoning), and Buddhism (the Inner Knowledge).
10Speedy approaches; The literal meaning of the original phrase is “speedy manners”.
11Daṇḍi; An India poet of circa 6th Century, whose work The Poetry Mirror has been the main text of study in poetry in Tibet.
12Śrāmaṇa; A Sanskrit word, meaning, “training [on] virtues”, used as a synonym of Bhikṣu (Virtues Adopt).
13Samye Translation Centre; This was a wing of a temple complex Samye Temple, built by the Tibetan king Trisong Dhuetsen, in the 8th Century. This wing, called “The India Centre of Translations”, was located at the lower southern side of the Temple. See Dhungkar’s Illuminating the Knowledge Fields.
14 The splendid sign; Śrivasta; one of the eight symbols of auspiciousness.
15 Guardian; Guardian is the choice made here in the English, for the literal Protector.
16The translation here of the Colophon breaks the long sentences in the Tibetan into parts, for easier understanding in the English.
17The Naming Abbot; This is an expression to say, whoever has named thus so in the past. A naming takes place in two ways: 1 By random labelling, without necessarily carrying any meaning, i.e., through “the Naming Abbot”, and, 2 By explainable reasons.