Ed Gabrielsen

This is Part Four in a series of commentaries on the text, Tilopa’s Song to Naropa, or as it is sometimes called, Song of the Mahamudra. I am using the English translation by Lex Hixon.

Lex Hixon (1941-1995)

In researching this piece, I looked him up to inquire about permission to use his translation, and I found his biographical information online. It was stunning to read. He was a remarkable person, and had a wide perspective and vision of spiritual practice. Here are some highlights:

Born December 25, 1941 in Pasadena, California.

1960 (age 19) began study of prayer and meditation with Vine Deloria, Senior, Lakota Sioux elder and Episocapal priest in Pierre, South Dakota.

1963 (age 22) BA, philosophy, Yale University

1966 (age 25) began discipleship with Swami Nikhilananda, Ramakrishna Mission, Vivekananda Center of New York

1976, PhD, comparative religion, Columbia University,
(doctoral disertation on the Gaudapaka Karika, Sanskrit scritpure from early Advaita Vedanta)

His books include:
Coming Home: the Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions
The Heart of the Qur’an: An Introduction to Islamic Spirituality
Mother of the Buddhas: Meditation on the Prajnaparamita Sutra
Great Swan, Meetings with Ramakrishna
Atom from the Sun of Knowledge
Living Buddha Zen
Sufi Meditation

The translation of Tilopa’s Song to Naropa comes from the book: Mother of the Buddhas, by Lex Hixon (Quest books, 1993)

The completely open nature of all dimensions and events is a rainbow always occuring yet never grasped.

To experience events as completely open, we can see everything as a rainbow. This is a reference to impermanence. There is a famous line in the Diamond Prajna Paramita Sutra that relates to this. See all things as a dream, a phantom, a bubble, a shadow. Everything is like the dew, like a flash of lightning, like fog and mist. These metaphors appear throughout Buddhist literature.

Meditations on impermanence are very powerful. They help us shift out of conceptual thinking and into direct experience. When we become immediately tuned into direct experience, we see the stunning truth of impermanence. Everything is changing moment by moment. Thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, the clouds in the sky, the sounds of cars, birds, people. Each moment is in motion. Everything is moving and changing.

When we really become aware of this movement, we see that nothing stays the same. Nothing is fixed and unmoving. All phenomena arise, subsist, and then fade away. Because of this, we can say that everything is like a rainbow or a dream.

A rainbow appears out of nowhere. It is fleeting. Ephemeral. If you try to grasp it, you will not find anything to grasp. A rainbow is an illusion. It is made when sunlight passes through water vapor in such a way that the light splits into colors. A rainbow is conditional. It does not exist on it’s own, and it does not endure. It is evanescent.

Dreams are the same way. A dream is fleeting. It seems so real while we are in the dream, but when we wake up, it disappears. The dream simply vanishes. Where does it go?

In the same way, bubbles, shadows, phantoms, dew, a flash of lightning, fog and mist cannot be grasped. They are fleeting, ephemeral, evanescent: all examples of impermanence. When we look carefully, we will see that everything is like this; a rainbow always occuring yet never grasped.

This direct experience of impermanence is always available. The rainbow is always occuring. But we do not see it because of conceptual thoughts. We solidify the world and ourselves with conceptual thinking. In fact, we rarely have direct experience at all. Most of the time, we merely experience our thoughts about our experience. Thoughts are a conceptual overlay. The thinking mind is like a veil over our eyes.