THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: with Commentary by Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche

The great Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna (1st - 2nd century A.D.) wrote his celebrated poem Letter to a Friend as a letter of advice to a king with whom he was friendly. Despite its short length (only 123 verses), it is a monument in the Indian Buddhist tradition. It covers the whole Mahayana path with unusual clarity and memorable imagery, and it is for this reason that it is widely quoted by Tibet's great masters and scholars in the many commentaries they have written on the Buddhist path.

Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche's commentary, though not particularly long, provides such an explanation:
"This text is one of the most cherished works amongst practitioners of all levels of understanding and practice. It is priceless advice written by the renown master Nagarjuna-known as the second Buddha-to his dear friend."-- Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

"An inspiring classic of Buddhist literature, an enlightening commentary, an impeccable translation."-- Matthieu Ricard, author

Nagarjuna, a South Indian Buddhist saint who lived in the second century, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher.

Longchen Yeshe Dorje, Kangyur Rinpoche (1897-1975), of the monastery of Riwoche in Kham, was a great scholar and treasure revealer. He left Tibet in the 1950s and was one of the first Tibetan masters to accept Western students.

The Padmakara Translation Group has a distinguished reputation for its translations of Tibetan texts and teachings, and is renowned for its clear and accurate literary style.

The following excerpt is from the translator's introduction to Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend.

The Letter to a Friend is unusual in that it covers the entire Mahayana path in no more than 123 verses, and it is hardly surprising that many passages need a certain amount of explanation if they are to be properly understood. A number of commentaries were written on it in Tibet, of which two, one by the Nyingmapa Lama Mipham (1846-1912) and the other by the fourteenth-century Sakya master Jetsun Rendawa, have been translated into English. The present translation is of a commentary by Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche, and is a further tribute to him as the founding father and abiding inspiration of the Padmakara Translation Group, which has already translated his commentary on Jigme Lingpa's Treasury of Precious Qualities.

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Some people might reasonably wonder whether a classical text in the form of advice addressed to an Indian king living almost two thousand years ago has much relevance for members of Western society in the twenty-first century. And yet as we read the Letter it is worth asking ourselves what sort of person Nagarjuna's "friend" is. On the assumption that the author's advice was originally intended for King Surabhibhadra personally (along with his court, perhaps), and that he did not go out of his way to flatter him, we can glean a number of clues as to the king's character from the text itself. Despite leading a busy court life with the usual responsibilities of royalty, he appears already to have a good knowledge of the Buddha's teachings (verse 3), and Nagarjuna makes frequent allusions to passages in the sutras, which must assume more than a passing acquaintance with the latter.

The manner in which Nagarjuna addresses him would suggest that the king is essentially a good and indeed devout man, though at the same time prone to distraction and easily enticed by the pleasures of court life. Nagarjuna evidently feels it necessary to warn him to keep a roving eye off other people's wives (verse 21) and, as for the king's own marriage, Nagarjuna clearly considers it important to give him some advice on the matter and devotes no less than two verses to this. Nor does he allow the king a few mild fantasies as to the life he can expect in the celestial realms as a reward for suitable behavior in the present life, but reminds him that even the greatest happiness that might result from positive deeds is bound to end (verse 70 et seq.). Elsewhere (verse 33, for example) Nagarjuna advises the king against other temptations to which it seems he might easily fall prey, and the admonition not to prowl around at night comes as something of a surprise if we are to take it as a reflection on the king's habits. Again, the essential advice on eating habits a few verses later would suggest that Surabhibhadra is something of a bon vivant. Yet when it comes to practicing the Buddhist path, he would seem to be prone to doubts, for shortly before concluding his letter Nagarjuna provides a few lines of reassurance: the great Bodhisattvas were all once perfectly ordinary people like you, he tells him, so you can be sure that you will get enlightened too.

If some of the above is speculative, it hopefully provides a picture of Nagarjuna's friend as an essentially human person, prone to the weaknesses and doubts that we all have in common. We may not be heads-of-state or wealthy aristocrats, but many Buddhists in the West do share with King Surabhibhadra a relatively comfortable background and lifestyle, and no shortage of worldly distractions. Seen in this light, Nagarjuna's advice is as valid and contemporary as it was when he wrote it.

True, there are a number of points that have to be understood in their ancient Indian context and adapted accordingly. Not many Americans or Europeans are likely to find themselves tempted, for example, to commit negative actions for the sake of brahmins (verse 30), but it is nevertheless important not to fall under the misconception that to do something negative, thinking that it is for one's teacher's sake, lets one off the karmic hook. Similarly, the advice to reflect on women's bodies as being unclean has to be understood in its proper context as an important meditational device for remedying attachment, in this case addressed to a heterosexual layman but applicable, with an appropriate change in wording, to anyone for whom sexual desire is likely to prove a distraction from meditation. Far from being a misogynistic tirade, it is intended to make us take a cool, objective look at what it is that makes us slaves to our passions and thus see them for what they are with a little less frustration and even a certain sense of humor.

Other passages that may seem difficult to relate to if taken at face value include the traditional descriptions of the different realms of samsara. Here it is important to understand that, according to Buddhist teachings, the six realms of samsara are all illusions, hallucinations perceived by the minds that have created them, and that the descriptions found in the texts are broad generalizations of an infinite number of such hallucinations that are possible. The hells are experiences of intense anger and fear arising from attitudes dominated by aversion and hatred. It is these very emotions that create the torment and confusion perceived, in its furious, extroverted form, as the hot hells, and in a more introverted form as the cold hells. The fate of the pretas in the realm of hungry ghosts reflects the attitudes, grossly magnified, of minds driven in earlier lives by intense desire and an inability to give anything away. And the fact that these states are generally associated with specific individual realms does not prevent them from being experienced less intensely in other realms. Who among us in the human realm has not experienced the paralyzing effect of cold hatred or the unbearable paranoia of jealousy, or observed the truth in the saying, "Pride comes before a fall"?