Written by Paul Baffier
Blog | Dzogchen Text Translations | Dzogchen Texts | The Dzogchen basics
The Small Hidden Seeds is one of the fundamental texts of Dzogchen. Here is the translation by Paul Baffier & the Dzogchen Today! translation committee.
You can find a short commentary of this text by Mila Khyentse HERE.
Homage to the Victorious One, glorious Samantabhadra!
How could be perceived as an object of the mind
The profound absence of elaboration?
Within the experience of the profound absence of concepts,
There is nothing but the experience itself.
Phenomena are just as they are
And do not engage into each other.
The expressions are profound, though
How could they fit to the ultimate reality?
Accumulations of merits and wisdom,
Meditative absorption, purification of propensities,
Those are only nails of grasping.
As within the space where there is nothing to grasp, no artifice,
Keeping your back straight, crossed legs and the like,
Even all the corporal contrivances,
Manifestly arise from an inferior conception of body.
Within the space without body, there is nothing to cure!
For what abides originally as space,
There is no crossed legs, straight back and the like!
The natural expression abides as space,
It is the basis of transformation within the space.
Accumulations of merits and wisdom,
Meditative absorption, purification of propensities,
Those are only nails of grasping.
As within the space where there is nothing to grasp, no artifice,
Keeping your back straight, crossed legs and the like,
Even all the corporal contrivances,
Manifestly arise from an inferior conception of body.
Mind itself is pure and perfect space, primordial expanse,
It is the basis to accomplish Enlightenment.
Mind itself has no root or basis:
It cannot be found by looking for it, like space.
Enlightenment free from birth
Is totally beyond the causes and result of Enlightenment!
(IOL Tib J 594)
Buddhagupta
English translation: Paul Baffier, based on Tibetan text and Philippe Cornu’s French translation.
Proofreading, Dzogchen Today! translation Comittee, 2022.