Vast as the Heavens Deep as the Sea Vast as the Heavens Deep as the Sea VERSES IN PRAISE OF BooHICITTA Khunu Rinpoche Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Wisdom Publications • Boston WisDoM PuBLICATIONs 199 Elm Street Somerville, Massachusetts 02144 USA www. wisdompubs.org © Gareth Sparham 1999 All righiS reserved. No pan of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, elecuonic 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 ofCongms Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bstan-' dzin-rgyal-miShan, Khu-nu. [Byail chub sems kyi bstod pa rin chen sgron rna 7.es bya ba btugs so. English & Tibetan] Vast as the heavens, deep as the sea : verses in praise of bodhicitta I Khunu Rinpoche. P· em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN o-86171-146-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bodhicina (Buddhism) I. Tide. BQ4398.s.B7713 1999 2.94·3' 42.2.-dc2.1 ISBN o-86171-146-7 Desipul by: Jennie Malcolm Covn-imagt: Khunu Rinpoche at Tso Padma (Rewalsar), India, 1976. Photo by Christopher Fynn. WISdom Publications' books are prinred 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. Prinred in Canada. TABLE oF CoNTENTS Publisher's Acknowledgment VI Translator's Acknowledgments vu Translator's Introduction 1 Foreword to the 1966 Edition by the Dalai Lama 20 (Tibetan and English) The jewel Lamp: A Praise ofB odhicitta (Tibetan and English) 23 Translator's Dedication 146 Notes 147 TRANSLATOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This small book has been in the ~aking 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 beau tiful 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 collab oration. 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 Dalai Lama T enzin 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) Acknow/~d}(mmts vii