Jewel Ship

Jewel Ship (T. rin chen gru bo རིན་ཆེན་གྲུ་བོ་). A commentary on the Kulayaraja Tantra by Longchenpa.

Title

Full title:

• Tib: byang chub kyi sems kun byed rgyal po'i don khrid rin chen gru bo
• English titles:
  • The Jewel Ship: A Guide to the Meaning of Pure and Total Presence, the Creative Energy of the Universe [Lipman and Merrill]
  • The Jewel Ship: A Guide to Ultimate Bodhicitta (pacifying all dualism of conceptual mind and perfecting non-duality wisdom, the original essence of mind), the Source of all Samsara and Enlightenment. [Tharchin Rinpoche]

Summary

Lama Tharchin Rinpoche states:

[This text] is the most essential and ultimate teaching because it is from the Dzogchen Great Perfection. It gives the essential pointing-out instructions on the essence of mind, the ultimate Buddha, our own original abiding nature. It is called "The Jewel Ship" because it shows how to cross the ocean of samsara in one instant.

In "The Jewel Ship," Longchenpa explains the extraordinary qualities of the Great Perfection among all Dharma teachings. He gives a basic preparation for the path with an explanation of how to find a teacher that you can rely on, explaining the positive qualities of such a teacher as well as describing the kinds of teachers that are fake and unreliable. He also shows what kinds of students the teacher can rely upon and what kinds of students are unreliable. The Omniscient Longchenpa then synthesizes all of the teachings of the view, meditation, conduct, and result of the Great Perfection teachings as the main practice in this short text.

Contents

According to David Germano, Longchenpa outlines the following contemplative system in his commentary on the Kunjed Gyalpo:

The description is divided up into the traditional triad of a contemplation session: the preliminaries (here identified as guru yoga), the main practice and the concluding practices (here specified as techniques for sustaining the visions and experiences). The guru yoga begins with simple visualizations of a syllable emanating light rays, continues with self-visualization as the deity Sems dpa' rdo rjey, a visualization of an image of the guru upon your head, and further visualizations of surrounding lineage masters and so forth. In addition, you utilize a special breathing technique called "vajra repetition" (rdo rje'i bzlos)—you pronounce Om as you inhale, ah as you hold the breath momentarily, and hum as you exhale. This practice is a quite standard tantric contemplation, but it is important to note this is introduced as a preliminary which serves to contextualize the main practice, which would be the Great Perfection proper.

The main practice involves four subdivisions: determining (the ground) through the appropriate view, finalizing through contemplative cultivation (of this view); clearing away treacherous pathways through your conduct; and divesting yourself from all hopes and fears as the fruit. The view section involves exclusively poetic / analytic thematic meditative inquiry or reverie, though the two references to how many days should be spent on it clearly indicate that formal meditative sessions are indicated. The contemplation, conduct and fruit sections begin with relaxing in the seven point lotus posture, but are in fact in their entirety "technique-free" yet highly experiential scripts for working with one's own psyche.

The concluding phase provides some simple practical techniques for coping with various situations. As strategies for dealing with obstacles to one's meditative practice, kLong chen rab 'byams pa advocates traditional Buddhist techniques such as supplicating one's Master, trusting in pure vision, cultivating love and compassion, and training one's mind to be constantly aware of karmic consequences of one's actions as well as impermanence. While other solutions are again more cognitive in nature, he offers specific advice for feelings of drowsiness and distraction towards objects—"stick to a cool room with a high seat, exert yourself and do physical exercises." He also reiterates the importance of stabilizing concentration on an objective reference, the precise content of which is not relevant, followed by a clear explication of how such stabilization is utilized. The beginning level of such practice involves the achievement of a calm, collected state of mind, which, however, is periodically interrupted by the movement of thought (sems gnas thog nas 'phro). The intermediate level of familiarization with such contemplation is reached when one begins to gain the ability to find such calm amidst the movement of thought ('phro thog na gnas). The advanced level is when calmness and thoughts manifest with-out any duality or fissure (gnas 'phro gnyis med du shar ba).

Tibetan text

• བྱང་ཆུབ་ཀྱི་སེམས་ཀུན་བྱེད་རྒྱལ་པོའི་དོན་ཁྲིད་རིན་ཆེན་གྲུ་བོ།, Buddha Nature: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative

Translation

• Longchenpa, You Are the Eyes of the World, translated by Kennard Lipman and Merrill Peterson, Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2000. Archive version

Oral commentary

• The Jewel Ship by Longchenpa, Teachings by Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, Spring 2010.