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    Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhicitta
    Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhicitta
    Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhicitta
    Ebook179 pages2 hours

    Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhicitta

    By Khunu, Dalai Lama and Gareth Sparham

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    About this ebook

    Revered by many--especially His Holiness the Dalai Lama--as the very embodiment of altruism, the late Khunu Rinpoche Tenzin Gyaltsen devoted his life to the development of bodhicitta--the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Presented in both English and the original Tibetan, this modern classic is a collection of Khunu Rinpoche's inspirational verse.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWisdom Publications
    Release dateNov 11, 2012
    ISBN9780861716678
    Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhicitta
    Author

    Khunu

    The monk Khunu Rinpoche (1894-1977) was born in Kinnaur, India, and educated in Tibet. A lifelong student and teacher, he taught, among others, the current Dalai Lama and other Tibetans who were exiled from their homeland in the 1950s.

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      Book preview

      Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea - Khunu

      Vast as the Heavens

      Deep as the Sea

      WISDOM PUBLICATIONS

      199 Elm Street

      Somerville, Massachusetts 02144 USA

      www.wisdompubs.org

      © Gareth Sparham 1999

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Bstan-’dzin-rgyal-mtshan, Khu-nu.

      [Byaṅ chub sems kyi bstod pa rin chen sgron ma źes bya ba

      bźugs so. English & Tibetan]

      Vast as the heavens, deep as the sea : verses in praise of

      bodhicitta / Khunu Rinpoche.

      p.    cm.

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 0-86171-146-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1.  Bodhicitta (Buddhism)  I.  Title.

      BQ4398.5.B7713 1999

      294.3’422—dc21

      98-40886

      ISBN 978-0-86171-146-8

      eISBN 978-0-86171-667-8

      16 15 14 13 12

      7 6 5 4 3

      Cover design by TL, interior design by Jennie Malcolm. Cover image: Khunu Rinpoche at Tso Padma(Rewalsar), India, 1976. Photo by Christopher Fynn.

      Wisdom Publications’ books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for the permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

      Printed in United States of America.

      This book was produced with environmental mindfulness. We have elected to print this title on 30% PCW recycled paper. As a result, we have saved the following resources: 8 trees, 4 million BTUs of energy, 667 lbs. of greenhouse gases, 3,615 gallons of water, and 242 lbs. of solid waste. For more information, please visit our website, www.wisdompubs.org. This paper is also FSC® certified. For more information, please visit www.fscus.org

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Translator’s Acknowledgments

      Translator’s Introduction

      Foreword to the 1966 Edition by the Dalai Lama (Tibetan and English)

      The Jewel Lamp: A Praise of Bodhicitta (Tibetan and English)

      Translator’s Dedication

      Notes

      TRANSLATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      This small book has been in the making for many years.Wendy Finster first suggested that I translate the verses into English in 1980. I would like to thank her for motivating me and keeping me going with her enthusiasm without any thought of personal gain. I would also like to thank Joyce Murdoch, that most admirable of women, who typed the original manuscript, and Patricia Donnelly and Sarah Thresher who were instrumental in originally causing the work to appear in English. I would also like to thank Ngawang Wangmo for painting a beautiful picture of a wish-fulfilling bodhicitta tree that I had hoped might be used as an illustration for the book. When I finished the translation in 1992, Lochen Rinpoche very kindly gave me a photocopy of the mDzad rnam and rNam thar thar pa’i them skas by Ngodup Gasha (Angrup Lahuli), which provided most of the information for Khunu Rinpoche’s biography. I would like to thank Lochen Rinpoche for giving me the book and Ngodup Gasha for allowing me to make use of his work.

      The translation of the verses was thoroughly revised and corrected by Sara McClintock in 1997 and 1998. She also edited the introduction and supervised the writing of the essay on bodhicitta. Her effort goes far beyond usual editorial assistance and would be more accurately described as collaboration. That having been said, all remaining errors in the work are mine alone. I owe a debt of gratitude to Nick Ribush for initially accepting this work for publication and to Tim McNeill for patiently smoothing away bumps on the way to completion. Finally I would like to thank the DalaiLama Tenzin Gyatso for taking an interest in this work and encouraging its publication, Lobsang Gyatso (before his untimely death) for explaining impenetrable verses to me, and Nga-hua Yeo for supporting me as a monk.

      Thubten Thardo (Gareth Sparham)

      TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

      The Author ¹

      Tenzin Gyaltsen was born the second of three sons to Ka lan pur and Norki in 1894 or early 1895 in the village of Shunam in the Rupa region of Kinnaur, or Khu nu (as the local people call it), on the Indo-Tibetan border. His village lay in a relatively prosperous farming region, 2,000 to 2,500 meters above sea level, surrounded by mountains as high as 6,500 meters and drained by the upper reaches of the Sutlej River. The valleys in this region are extremely beautiful, covered with thick forests of mountain pine giving way at lower levels to orchards of apple and apricot trees fringing fields of mountain barley. Though not a rich area in the modern sense, its economy easily supported a traditional way of life that was based on the Tibetan Buddhism of south central Asia and strongly influenced by the accommodating syncretism of the north Indian plains people to the south.

      Amongst his own people, Tenzin Gyaltsen is better known by the honorific names Khunu Rinpoche (precious one from Kinnaur) and Negi Lama. Negi is a clan or caste name used by almost all the people of Kinnaur except metal workers and weavers, and is said to derive from a term of respect given in earlier times to officials at the court at Rampur, an important town on the Sutlej River. In the case of Negi Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen, Negi refers as well to his personal family name (Ne gi pang), which means the guru from the Negi family, or the guru from the people of the Negi caste. As a sign of respect, and following the customs of his own people, I refer to him as Khunu Rinpoche, or Rinpoche for short.

      Khunu Rinpoche started his spiritual training at the age of seven under the guidance of his maternal uncle Rasvir Das, who lived in an adjoining village. Rasvir Das taught Khunu Rinpoche how to read and write Tibetan, and then, following the custom in those parts of the border area of Tibet, had him memorize the Diamond Cutter Sūtra (Skt. Vajracchedikā Sūtra) and the Verse Summary of Perfect Wisdom (Skt. Ratna-guṇa-saṃcaya-gāthā). The Ne gi pang family were traditionally followers of the Drukpa Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism, so at the age of thirteen Rinpoche went to Lib pa (an area north of Kinnaur where the southern school of Drukpa Kagyu flourished) to receive instruction in the spiritual exercises preliminary to the practice of the general precepts of Buddhism. He studied under Sonam Gyaltsen, a personal student of a famous teacher from Kham (southeastern Tibet) called Togden Sakya-shri.

      In 1913, at the age of nineteen, Khunu Rinpoche set out for Tibet to continue his religious

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