Kyema Kyihü! O Lotus-born, master of pure awareness,

Sentient beings like me in this degenerate age possess evil karma.

When I yearn for happiness, yet contrive to create only suffering,

When my every effort is completely wrong, who can I turn to?

Look on me with compassion, you who live in Ngayab Ling—

Care for me, guide me, inspire me, make me one with you.

Lead me, right now, to the Copper-Coloured Mountain of Glory!

 

Even an enlightened being, compassionate as you,

Left the Tibetans behind, and departed for Ngayab Ling.

Yet for the children of Tibet, descendants of the monkey,

You are our only refuge, in this life and the next: so who can I turn to?

Look on me with compassion, you who live in Ngayab Ling,

Care for me, guide me, inspire me, make me one with you.

Lead me, right now, to the Copper-Coloured Mountain of Glory!

 

Life is precarious, like a chick perched on the edge of a cliff.

There’s no certainty that death will not come tonight.

Planning to live forever, I am caught by the demon of distraction,

And when the henchmen of the lord of death come by, who will I turn to then?

Look on me with compassion, you who live in Ngayab Ling—

Care for me, guide me, inspire me, make me one with you.

Lead me, right now, to the Copper-Coloured Mountain of Glory!

 

We sentient beings in samsara are addicted to actions that bring suffering:

Any intention to practise the Dharma fades like the stars at dawn,

And our lives are wasted, squandered in slavery to trivial things.

When death, the greatest foe of all, arrives, who then can I turn to?

Look on me with compassion, you who live in Ngayab Ling—

Care for me, guide me, inspire me, make me one with you.

Lead me, right now, to the Copper-Coloured Mountain of Glory!

 

We ordinary people have the mentality of infants,

The older we get, our study, contemplation and meditation steadily grow more feeble.

And the eyes of the six perfections go blind.

But when the elements dissolve, one by one, who can I turn to then?

Look on me with compassion, you who live in Ngayab Ling—

Care for me, guide me, inspire me, make me one with you.

Lead me, right now, to the Copper-Coloured Mountain of Glory!

 

We might aspire to the path of virtue and devote ourselves to it,

And yet if we look, we’ll see our practice is a sham, riddled with the eight worldly obsessions.

The results of our harmful acts are ripening, without our even noticing, and because of this,

In the bardo state, our decision is made—we are bound for the hell-realms. Who can I turn to then?

Look on me with compassion, you who live in Ngayab Ling—

Care for me, guide me, inspire me, make me one with you.

Lead me, right now, to the Copper-Coloured Mountain of Glory!

 

Kyéma! When my life force is spent,

The vital glow slips from my body, and breath comes in gasps, one upon the other,

When the inner supporting air withdraws, and my weak and groaning corpse severs

The links between me and loved ones in their grief,

Let me not suffer the fiercest agony, at the final moment of death,

But instead behold the dakinis come to bid me welcome.

 

Kyihü! Earth, water, fire, air and space: as the five elements

Dissolve one by one, the visions of smoke, mirages,

Sparks and lamps becomes clear, and thereupon unfolds

The subtle dissolution of appearance, increase and attainment.

And so, as consciousness dissolves into appearance,

Like an eclipse in a cloudless sky,

The red experience dawns, and red essence rises to the heart.

 

In turn, as appearance dissolves into increase,

Like moonbeams slanting through a sky-light,

The white experience unfolds, and white essence descends.

Then, as increase dissolves into near attainment,

Like the darkness at dusk on a clear and cloudless night,

The black experience draws in, and I sink into the alaya, the ground of all.

 

Once again, with the eight-fold separation of the life-supporting wind,

I awaken slightly from unconsciousness, and the original primordial radiance dawns,

Clear and unobstructed, like a limpid autumn sky.

While I rest in this state of empty cognizance, free from all obscuring veils,

In this moment, may I realize the primordial purity of nowness,

the space that is free from conceptual mind,

As 'ordinary' awareness, fresh, vast and boundless.

And through the power of meditating in that state,

In that very instant may I seize the stronghold of

The space of the primordial ground, the secret depth of inner luminosity,

The vast expanse of the wisdom mind of Samantabhadra,

Endowed with its six special qualities!

 

If I am not liberated in this, the first bardo,

The appearances of space dissolve into spontaneously present luminosity,

And when sound, light, rays, mandala patterns and the like arise—

The visions of the eightfold process of unfolding—

May I recognize them as my own appearances in the bardo of dharmata,

And be liberated, like a child leaping into its mother’s lap.

 

Yet if I am shocked by the sounds, terrified by the rays,

Frightened by the appearances of deities, and liberation eludes me,

Then by the truth of the nature of reality, and through the blessing of the master,

At the moment of awaking from this dream of delusion,

May I be inspired and liberated, miraculously born

In the heart of a lotus flower in a natural nirmanakaya realm!

 

Through the power of entering the path of the Clear Light Dzogpachenpo,

The truth that surpasses all the nine graded vehicles,

After I enter the womb of the primordial,

May all the signs of liberation: sounds, lights, earthquakes,

Relics of the five families, forms of the peaceful and wrathful deities, and the like

Become visible for all to see.

 

By the power of the extraordinary pure intention I possess as a vidyadhara,

By the power of the truth of the nature of reality, which is free from being anything in and of itself,

May sentient beings of the three realms of existence, and especially

All who are connected in any way with me,

Be liberated, altogether, all at once

In the wondrous pure realms of the four kayas, full of joy!

 

Once I was alone in solitary retreat in ‘The Akanishtha Vajra Cave’, a hermitage blessed by the naturally arising enlightened speech of Padmasambhava, when early one morning, I caught sight of Mount Hépori and thought: “Wait…It was on that hill-top just over there that Khenpo Shantarakshita, the master Padma, the King and the disciples once walked, subjugated gods and ghosts, and relaxed. Many are the tales that appear to that effect. But now, apart from their names, not a single trace of them remains.” I was gripped by a conviction that in the very same way, everything is transient, impermanent. And although I had reckoned on staying alive, and not dying, for a few years more, what certainty was there that I would not leave for my next life the very next day? This train of thought filled me with haunting sorrow and aching weariness, and a sense of renunciation that was boundless. The memory of Guru Rinpoche, the King and the disciples plunged me into floods of tears. And this was why, at that moment I, Chatral Khyentsei Özer, wrote this ‘Prayer and Aspiration to Training in the Pure Realms of the Four Kayas’: a prayer invoking and imploring Guru Rinpoche, coupled with an aspiration prayer suitable for daily recitation based on the root words of the way to attain liberation through the experiences of the bardo states.

 

~ Translated by Rigpa Translations