CHANDRAGOMIN

Praise in Confession

Salutations to princely Manjusri!

Peerless king of physicians, guru of the world,

Totally faultless one, source of virtuous qualities,

Having visualised you, 0 refuge, I, always ill,

Shall confess, describing my changes of fault.

Like an extremely hard to cross, ocean current,

With waves of sordid discursive preoccupation,

When agitated by the sharks of defilement,

My mind has not been made calm.

Tossed by great waves of the sea of desire-attachment,

If I rely on the vessel as unclean,

There my mind, by the fire of aversion,

Is burned off and destroyed like dry grass.

To pacify the scorching fire Of aversion,

Even if I develop the lotus pond of love,

There, wishing happiness for all people,

The mind ends in the mire of attachment.

To purify the stains of the mire of attachment,

If I cleanse it with the water of even mindedness,

There even the World-protector's compassion,

Which dispels the distress of all creatures, would decay.

0 Chieftain, if I cultivate compassion,

Great sorrow is generated in me;

If I rely on gladness to pacify this,

The distracted mind grows excited.

If I produce sadness to calm that joy,

There mind will grow helplessly depressed;

Persistently praising the inferior,

I come within range of the enemy conceit.

I cultivate all-emptiness, the antidote to that,

There I have no effort for the sake of others;

If I resort to the relative for their sake,

There the wish for wealth is born.

If I set the mind to amassing wealth,

I ferment the liquor of all the faults;

Drunk, drowsy with pride and delusion,

All higher aims end only in defeat.

Even when I may wish to give,

Powerful stinginess restricts me

But even if I dispel it and come to give,

For a long time after I regret it.

Making myself serene with faith in a future reward

Becomes a fall into the fruits of the next world;

If I act without expectation, aware of impermanence,

Without a motivation I dissolve in apathy.

Protector, I am torn by the suffering of the world,

Viewed as having been relatives even in the past;

I wish to course in the welfare of others,

But am held in check by having the notion of "self."

On the tracks of the view of self follows conceit,

Which makes me embrace "mine",

There conceit, pride, desire and so forth

Shatter me like angry enemies.

When the net of defilement is all unfolded

And frightening as the legion of Mara,

Like the unendurable mark of time

The darkness of sinister directions spreads.

I will recite my misdeeds; the regret to follow is hard to support;

Rebirth would be suffering unendurable;

What oppression is greater than that?

I myself course the same way.

When I turn away from harming others,

Which acts as the cause of the various sufferings,

Having become an enemy to the blameless wretched crowd,

I shake at it with violence like the edge of a sword.

Even when I wish to make myself patient,

I am tied by their binding misconduct;

Terribly blocked and tied by that,

Theatre of aversion dries me of all sympathy.

Just as vipers, unbearable to see,

Dwelling within a tree repel the wise

So concealing a course of hatred,

My attitude repels virtues.

Like a stone [slab] baked by sunshine,

Like clods become dust by dehydration,

Like a road filled with heaps of sand,

The rain of Dharma is no benefit in my mood.

My own unbearable suffering uninvestigated,

Someone such as tries to do me a favour,

Who helps me with forbearance and generosity,

That, 0 World-protector, I am unable to bear.

Hating him or fleeing and evasive,

Highly unsettled or repelling him-even so,

He instructs those like me unceasingly;

Even so, I do not think of him as a guru.

Even having gone to request, it is hard to find;

At a time for patience, the best, the great medicine,

If I am not patient with a patient disposition,

What other occasion for patience will I have?

Held by demonic defilement, their minds are agitated;

Feverish, they cannot even try to help themselves;

As I observe the world, worthy of my regard,

0 Chieftain, aversion is born, but nothing of compassion.

People course in the fruits of their own activity,

Aware of the inevitable dissolution of all;

Having even examined the blamelessness of others,

See their projections out of foggy confusion!

I myself, though an ocean of faults,

Do not tolerate even a fraction of someone [else]'s;

I count patience a blessed quality in another,

But for this I am not patient-here's the wonder!

As though rising into the spring time sky,

Masses of cloud defilements in my mind

Come and go again and again;

Unabashed, I am wretchedly apathetic.

But even if the cold wind of defilement has come to arise

And been zealously defeated with a blaze of concentration,

With the spreading smoke of drowsiness and languor

Desires for a bed proceed to grow.

My mind is rendered helpless by the noose of desire-attachment,

Burned by the fire of aversion, conquered by the conceits;

All filled with weapons, the arrows and the spears

Of all the faults I am helplessly stupefied.

Finding my memory, bound and soon atremble,

Crushed, I am dissolved;

Lured by pretence and delusion

I circle through the lower range of Mara.

Whatever, however I envisage for the calm state,

Focusing, refocusing the mind there upon it,

From this the noose of defilement

Drags me helpless toward objects with the rope of attachment.

If I tend to diligence, excitedness ensues;

Relinquishing that, depression is produced;

Its proper balance being difficult to find,

What shall I de for my agitated mind?

Coursing in wisdom, excitedness will emerge;

Holding to restraint, depression will be born;

Its integration being difficult to find,

What shall I do for my agitated mind?

Proceeding with perseverance, excitedness will result;

Relaxing that, depression will be born;

Its middle way being difficult to find,

What shall I de for my agitated mind?

Over and over, with the forest fire of meditation,

The jungle of fault may be burned, yet

The fixed root of "self' being unconsumed,

It comes to life in advance, as though moistened by rain.

For some the flux of mere defilement-karma-fruition,

By being seen, will be diverted;

Do they not eliminate even the flow of thought?

This is quite far from interest in the welfare of the world.

The guardians part only from attachment,

Regardless of all the world;

The flow of thought, like a lamp whose cause is exhausted,

Enters nirvana, the remaining aggregates consumed.

Whatever dispels the distress of all the world

The thought of awakening: ambrosia, elixir

When I develop the nonconceptual as cause of awakening,

Then I am only chasing differentiations.

All the world is like a dream-by no one

Is there any act of perception whatsoever;

Even having cultivated, I course in the very range

Of the enemy: differentiation of conceiver and conceived.

0 Chieftain: this quite unendurable hurt

Observe it and g-rant me the immaculate view;

Whatever I cherish, whatever preoccupies me,

Those very things frustrate me at the start.

But what can the Lord do for faults

That I myself have created before?

The dispeller of darkness for all the world, the very sun

Cannot dispel the black darkness of those who have been born blind.

Relying for so long upon what is unhealthy

And having constant mental infatuation with it,

I am punished with leprous hands and feet;

What can I do by occasional reliance on medicine?

The tree of thought, from beginningless ages of time,

Moistened and fostered by the bitter sap of defilement,

I cannot make a sweet tasting substance of it;

What will it become with a drop of quality water?

My mind has all the faults by its very nature;

Great wonder should awakening become the philosopher stone!

Even as I apply myself to just that quality,

I continue to be the very substance of fault.

Whatever is taught as the great medicine itself

Just that becomes poison for me;

Were there a better elixir which were relevancy itself,

If I have no confidence, it does not truly exist.

Whatever dispels certain more intense defilements

And does not cause the production of others,

That is called "relevant"; being in my mind,

How then has it not been made certain as well?

The impressions of predisposition, tendency, and element

Applying myself to the antidote for [these] causes of fault

When I develop the instructions for meditation,

Here, before long, they grow calm.

0 Guardian, completely devoid of all faults,

Who sees the highest meaning of all dharmas,

By expounding it in various modes as well,

You entirely dispel the seeds of defilement.

Your body blazing with marks of beauty,

As I see the Presence before me,

So I come to hear the nectar drunk by ear;

The seeds of defilement are entirely destroyed.

0 Chieftain, you are for superior to that,

Possessing also the supreme sun of the Dharmabody;

Even with meditation, it eludes the range of the world

That it conquers the fog of fault: What a great wonder!

With whatever high mind is appropriate,

Abiding in whatever calm state is appropriate,

Who pacifies all the faults in all the modes,

Whatever the Lord may be, that I salute.

By the virtue of framing a proper praise

Of such confession to the supremely qualified one,

Whatever I have gathered, bright like a beautiful moon,

May everyone go to the Land of Bliss.