The Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje by Ruth Gamble

Author:Ruth Gamble [Gamble, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Rangjung Dorje does not describe in any detail the process by which he procured the long-life water directly. He also skips over the other activities he performed while back in Tibet. Other sources, for example, suggest that he used some of the funds that he had accrued from the capitals to produce a gold-inked edition of the Buddhist canon.319 His only mention of this project in the Verse Liberation Story reads, “I had all the Buddha’s sūtras and the commentaries written out, and when I was consecrating them, countless bodhisattvas appeared to dissolve into them, and I heard a voice proclaiming the Dharma.”320

This edition of the canon may or may not be the version that later became known as the Tsel edition because it was written or housed at Tsel Monastery, the seat of the Tsel myriarch. If he is referring to the Tsel canon, then Rangjung Dorje’s description of having finished it contradicts other sources that say it was finally completed by the young Tsel lord and author of the Red Annals, his student Tselpa Künga Dorje, sometime between 1347 and 1351, after Rangjung Dorje’s death.321 Tselpa Künga Dorje does not mention Rangjung Dorje’s contribution to this project in the Red Annals. The chronology and relationship between these two writers and their concurrent projects remain unclear and needs more investigation.

As Rangjung Dorje finished his version of the canon, Toghun Temür, or someone from his court, had already sent an envoy to bring him back to the capitals. Rangjung Dorje’s protests against his return to the capitals were muffled in the Verse Liberation Story. But in his songs from this period and his later stay in the capitals, he is more strident. In these songs, he describes the capitals as the opposite of the sacred sites and hermitages of Tibet. Instead of praising them, he lists their faults and cites the many ways they impede yoga practice. In these descriptions, he produces poetic images of Dada and Xanadu that sit in direct contrast to those found more commonly in both the Chinese and Western poetic traditions. For Rangjung Dorje, Dadu and Xanadu were traps, not paradises. The song he wrote in Xanadu in 1337—which is quoted in the introduction and translated in full in chapter seventeen of this book—reflects this assessment. It reads in part:

Now you are free from saṃsāra’s mud,

Strike out for nirvāṇa’s dry shore.

Now you have abandoned worldly relatives,

Rely on sacred, spiritual friends.

Now you have stopped pointless chatter,

Recite secret mantras.

Now you have stopped debauched exertions,

Exert yourself at dhyāna.322

Now you have renounced sweets,

Rely on samādhi’s food.

Now that you have stopped hankering for towns,

Wander in mountainous borderlands.

Because when we don’t do these things—

External appearances become expert in deception;

Children of the mind, they are crazy in the head.

Preconceptions proliferate and last longer; but

Virtuous friends become increasingly rare.

Ignorant veils and fogs get thicker and

We wander on multiplying cliffs of depravity.

Unwholesome friends lead us

To prison, the three bad destinations,

Where we will wander without end.323

The song begins with a plea to his audience and himself not to give up their cultivation of yoga despite their surroundings.

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