All sounds are the resonance of voidness

by Shabkar (Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol)

English version by Matthieu Ricard
Original Language Tibetan

All sounds are the resonance of voidness
Thoughts are freed just as they arise.
At death the net of the body is at last torn apart
Taking down the boundaries of one's retreat.

-- from The Life of Shabkar: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin, by Shabkar Tsogdruk Rongdrol / Translated by Matthieu Ricard

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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

This poem is a vision of one profoundly at peace with the notion of death: The ensnaring "net" of the body is "torn apart" in an act of liberation of the self, not its loss. Death is "breaking down the boundaries" of our "retreat" hut. Death, in other words, frees us from the separation that is apparent in material embodiment and the sense of isolation that tends to emerge in the mind as a result of identification with the body.

Shabkar, always the wanderer, is saying that, at the endpoint of life our retreat is accomplished and the isolation created by the body is no longer necessary... We are now free to continue our journey through interconnected vastness.



Recommended Books: Shabkar (Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol)

This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight & Awakening Rainbows Appear: Tibetan Poems of Shabkar The Life of Shabkar: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin Food of Bodhisattvas: Buddhist Teachings on Abstaining from Meat



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