The Fully Fledged Garuda
The Fully Fledged Garuḍa
Homage to the great suffusive DharmatA etc!
Genuine mind, groundless, without origin, and unchanging,
Unaltered, sovereign, resting freely as it is, released by itself,
Beyond all rejection, acceptance, halting, cultivating, hope and fear—
Homage to the dimension of mind’s nature, the perfect ground.
Utterly pure from the first, expanse beyond imagination’s scope,
The sovereign mind-as-such, the great perfection that is natural,
In which nothing at all is rejected and all has been transcended,
The nature wherein all dharmas have always been free. Listen!
Inexpressible, this already perfect, vast sky-like mind-as-such,
Requiring no action, effortless, beyond all thoughts and ideas,
Expanse of awareness, spontaneous field, unattached to what arises,
Left as it is, released by itself, seen directly, beyond the conceptual,
Is one’s natural situation: do not corrupt it through contrivance!
Any foolish person who surrenders this essential nature
Commits the genuine mind to a trap of their own making.
Contriving and contriving obscures the essential point;
It prevents freedom and brings only more confinement.
Someone who has a spacious and relaxed attitude
Knows that the nature itself requires no adjustment.
Noticed movement clears itself, unspoilt by remedy,
Untransformed by the rejected—Great Perfection.
Reality purified into unreality, existence opposed to non-existence,
A vast sky-like emptiness in which all that is real is eliminated—
Can one who seeks freedom through thus contriving and contriving
Truly be said to escape the extremes of eternalism and nihilism?
Groundless and without origin, it is Great Perfection from the outset,
Without meditation on the empty, appearing, existent or non-existent.
Wherever there is meditation there must also be view and conduct.
This implies conditioned existence and the sufferings of saṃsāra.
Where there is such Dharma, there are convictions held by vehicles.
This is the trap of the emotional afflictions, the means of binding us.
Without a ground, there is no path, and clinging to fruition fades away.
Not the slightest speck of assertion related to any vehicle remains,
And there is, therefore, no tarnish based on karma and its ripening,
No abiding in existence or quiescence, just freedom in a sky-like sphere.
Delight that comes through purifying the channels and winds,
Dispersing and gathering bindus, and through sexual union—
Joy, supreme joy, the joy of cessation and co-emergent joy—
Such forms of bliss and emptiness labelled causes of freedom
Cannot bring transcendence even from the realm of desire.
Contrived emptiness does not give rise to actual liberation.
Those who meditate on the clarity of mind or clear objective conditions,
Such as the colours of wind-energies perceptible through sensory doors,
And who thus contrive to bring about so-called non-conceptuality
Possess the confidence of focusing upon objects of apprehension,
Yet they are utterly bound by the ties of subject-object duality.
How could they possibly find freedom from the realm of form?
Even meditation in which there is no apparent focus or perceptible object,
Based on physical postures, silence, concentration, suppression of thought,
Will only bring repeated circling through the four types of formlessness—
Infinite space and the rest—and will never bring about actual liberation.
States related to the three realms—bliss, clarity and non-conceptuality—
Only cause one to circle through the desire, form and formless worlds
With no opportunity for freedom. Even tīrthikas have such approaches.
What is the difference between their minds and those of other beings?
Although you might claim that these involve a meditation on emptiness,
Whoever contrives and contrives in such ways to cultivate emptiness
Makes of a positive state of mind an antidote that only further binds.
Since it is not the natural state, how can such 'emptiness' be of benefit?
One idea inspires another, and having many thoughts, good and bad,
Serves only as a means to construct the citadel of saṃsāra once more.
Thinking positively leads to the two felicitous, superior realms.
Thinking negatively leads to the three types of vile destination.
Travelling to each in turn, one cannot escape saṃsāra’s course.
One who lacks the causes, both good and bad karma,
Does not experience the result they generate, saṃsāra.
As with space, how could such a person be obscured?
With the vessel of mind adrift on the river of sensory objects,
A person who strives for the effortless sailing of referentiality
Will only exhaust themselves circling the ocean of existence.
They will not be able to reach the distant shore of liberation.
As long as one strives and applies effort to cultivate
A mind of meditation that has an object of reference,
There will be no way to gain freedom from saṃsāra.
With the play of awareness soaring through the sky of the sensory domain,
A person for whom sovereign non-referentiality, free of grasping, dawns
Is spontaneously liberated from the conditioning of subject-object duality
And abides in an unmoving, changeless dimension through the three times.
Whoever’s heart has been seized by the poison of exertion
Will be struck by the falling rain of all the worlds’ sorrows.
Kingly inactivity, absence of exertion, brings contentment.
When equanimous assurance, kingly self-liberation, is found,
Discursivity of thought arises as the play of pristine wisdom.
One has arrived at the primordial state that is devoid of error,
The realization of great naturally arisen, spontaneous presence.
Whoever wishes to find such freedom within their mind
Should not corrupt the genuine mind through contrivance.
Contriving and contriving—that is only guaranteed to confine.
Kingly non-contrivance is key for spontaneously perfect rigpa.
Let mind rest naturally in whatever state it finds itself,
Without effort or application, just momentary openness.
There should be no trace of rejection or cultivation based on labelling,
Nor any ideas of avoidance or acceptance based on a failure to identify.
It is a dimension of free ground, free path and free fruition—
Kingly self-freedom, unmoving and changeless throughout the three times.
Inexpressible and inconceivable, the genuine space of the perfect ground.
There is no freedom, as there is no atom of foundation to what is freed.
There is nothing to look at, nothing to see, nothing to point out through signs.
It transcends the conceptual domain, and involves nothing to be imagined.
It is not existent or non-existent, not both or neither,
A vast expanse that transcends all four possibilities.
An unborn sky-expanse, naturally, spontaneously perfect.
A rich ocean-expanse, unfathomable in depth and breadth.
A solar and lunar expanse, empty yet luminous by nature.
An unelaborate kingly expanse, beyond joining and parting.
Causeless and unconditioned, with impressions purified in their own place,
Left as it is, unveiled and spontaneously freed—a key point of awareness.
Stirrings have ceased and sensory impressions are automatically freed.
"Freed" and "unfreed" are dream-like conventions.
What error can there be in a sourceless dimension?[1]
These are all nothing but conventional expressions.
Sovereign pure awareness brings the assurance of the clear, empty dharmakāya.
Primordially free naturalness brings the assurance of great timeless accomplishment.
Completeness without relinquishment brings the assurance of original purity.
Changeless spontaneous presence brings the assurance of rootless groundlessness.
Spontaneous freedom when leaving 'as is' brings the assurance of great self-arising.
Fresh and genuine, uncontrived and plain,
Ordinary awareness, naturally free, the way of the victorious,
Self-aware and self-liberated, with no need to apply a remedy,
Unborn, spontaneous and perfect, the expanse of awareness that is already free—
In this nature, in which any impression arises as an ally,
The source of deluded acceptance and rejection is exhausted.
Whatever arises—good or bad, happy or sorrowful—is the dimension of rigpa.
The nature of this rigpa is the dimension of the primordial wisdom play.
What a great wonder this exhaustion of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa’s delusory base!
One will liberate all, but all will not bring singular liberation—
Knowing this is the key to self-liberated awareness.
Primordial freedom means there is no ground for repetition in the original state.
Naked freedom means the lack of essential nature, emptiness of true existence.
Self-freedom refers to the absence of any antidote, the genuine nature of mind.
Freedom upon occurrence means purification in its own place is instantaneous.
Freedom upon arising means that this happens simultaneously not sequentially.
Do not deliberately fixate, but remain free of thematic focus.
Allow the natural process of self-arising to unfold automatically.
The natural process of self-dissolution transcends all identification.
Do not fabricate with the mind or block mental activity.
Without internal or external objects, a space-like dimension,
Always empty, devoid of mind within, an immense openness—
How joyous the exhaustion of mind within phenomenal exhaustion!
The nature of objects transcends the deficiencies of intellect.
Mind cannot tarnish the essential nature by objectifying it.
Do not reject or accept, suppress or indulge, hope or worry!
Not situated anywhere, beyond all bases of expression—
In the primordially free dharmatā, loose and uncontrived,
Modification through outer or inner remedies is pointless.
How the self-liberated king settles is the key to awareness:
In natural rest, free from concern, unspoilt by contrivance,
Spontaneous and vast, whatever arises to rigpa manifests in its domain.
Unsought natural rest and natural flow, the dimension of the All Good,
In which language and mind are exhausted, beyond the sensory realm,
There is nothing to view, nothing to cultivate, no "this" to be identified.
In inactivity, the one who retains the strength of a simpleton is at ease.
Primordial wisdom, impartial and unbiased, is pervasive
And beyond comparison in its stainless self-radiance.
It is not found by searching but naturally by letting be.
Self-manifest movement arises as dharmakāya’s play,
From its inception, unsullied by waxing and waning.
By the guru’s grace, let the reality of realization reign!
Not realized through the path of diverse philosophy,
And free from the intellect’s fanciful conceptions—
How wondrous this hidden rigpa, naturally present and free!
In the perfect ground, the dimension beyond imagining,
The font of thought soars gently through the sky of mind—[2]
Causeless and unconditioned, the passage of a single sphere.
Appearing by itself within the space of natural purity,
This planting of the great stake of changeless equality,
Transcending the four modes, neither apparent nor void,
Is an immense expanse, form that is empty in every aspect,
A vast natural expanse, self-freed and spontaneously present.
Through this explanation from within an infinite vast expanse[3]
Of the meaning of the fully-fledged garuḍa transcending four modes,
May all beings find perfection within the expanse of non-abandoning.
This concludes The Fully Fledged Garuḍa, composed by the yogin of the vast expanse of non-action, Longchen Rabjam, at the glorious retreat place of Chimphu. Let it be virtuous! Virtuous! Virtuous!
Translated by Adam Pearcey with the generous support of the Tsadra Foundation, 2023.
Bibliography
Tibetan Edition
klong chen rab 'byams. "khyung chen gshog rdzogs" In snying thig ya bzhi. 13 vols. Delhi: Sherab Gyaltsen Lama, 1975. Vol. 12: 267–276 (4.5 folios)
Secondary Sources
Guenther, Herbert. The Full-Fledged Khyung-chen Bird: An Essay in Freedom as the Dynamics of Being. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies of the International College for Advanced Buddhist Studies, 1996. [PDF on file]
Tulku Thondup. Buddha Mind. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 1989. (Reissued as The Practice of Dzogchen, 2002). [PDF on file]
Version: 1.0-20231230
- Reading tsa bral as rtsa bral.
- Guenther called this line "almost untranslatable," since English lacks the necessary vocabulary. It is also possible that there has been some corruption in the text. The meaning of dal in this context, for example, is unclear. Needless to say, the translation here is tentative.
- In this line Longchenpa plays upon the literal meaning of his name Longchen Rabjam (klong chen rab 'byams), the 'infinite vast expanse'.
ChatGPT Commentary:
This is a fierce, beautiful text. What stands out immediately is its relentless attack on spiritual contrivance. Longchenpa is not merely saying that effort can become excessive; he is saying that the very reflex to “do something” to reality, to improve awareness, to fabricate liberation, is itself the movement that obscures what is already free. The poem returns again and again to this point: the natural state is not produced, not purified into being, not reached by construction. It is “groundless, without origin, and unchanging,” and precisely for that reason it cannot be improved by method in the ordinary sense.
The tone is also strikingly polemical. He is not speaking mildly. He speaks of contrivance as a “trap,” of exertion as a “poison,” of meditative fabrication as something that “only further binds.” This is classic Great Perfection rhetoric at full intensity. It is meant to break the practitioner’s addiction to spiritual engineering. Even refined states—bliss, clarity, non-conceptuality, subtle yogic experiences, emptiness as an object of cultivation—are treated with suspicion when they become something grasped, produced, or maintained. The target is not meditation in some broad casual sense, but the tendency to turn the living fact of awareness into a project.
One of the deepest points in the poem is that bondage is not primarily “bad thoughts” or “negative emotions,” but dualistic handling itself. The problem is the structure of manipulation: rejecting, accepting, correcting, suppressing, cultivating, hoping, fearing. In other words, saṃsāra is reconstituted not only by gross desire and aversion, but by the subtle spiritual ego that wants to purify itself into freedom. That is why he says even “positive” mental cultivation can bind. A positive state used as an antidote is still an artificial position within mind. That is a devastating insight. It means the root problem is not the content of experience but the stance of management.
At the same time, this is not a nihilistic dismissal of everything. The text does not advocate laziness, blankness, or indifference. It points toward a different mode of being: “kingly non-contrivance,” “natural rest,” “momentary openness,” “let mind rest naturally in whatever state it finds itself.” That is subtle. He is not saying, “do nothing because nothing matters.” He is saying, “do not interfere with what is self-liberating.” The state being praised is vivid, open, self-aware, and spontaneously present. It is not dead passivity. It is an unforced immediacy in which whatever arises is allowed to arise within rigpa’s domain without being turned into a problem or a path-object.
I also think the poem is important for the way it undercuts spiritual materialism at very high levels. Many practitioners can let go of crude worldly ambition yet remain deeply attached to subtle attainment: special meditations, energetic experiences, absorptions, signs, purified states, initiatory status, doctrinal certainty. Longchenpa sweeps through all of that with almost merciless freedom. “No ground, no path, no fruition” here is not a slogan of negation for its own sake; it is a way of preventing the mind from reifying liberation into an object outside itself. The poem wants to leave you with nowhere to stand except the already-open condition itself.
Another beautiful feature is the repeated use of vast images: sky, ocean, solar-lunar expanse, garuḍa, sphere. These metaphors are doing real philosophical work. They point to a reality that is unobstructed, centerless, unowned, and not pieced together. The garuḍa in particular suggests immediacy and completeness: not a bird that gradually learns to be a bird, but one fully fledged from the outset. That image perfectly matches the poem’s logic. Rigpa is not embryonic and awaiting development. It is whole from the beginning; the issue is only whether it is left unspoiled by contrivance.
There is also a Madhyamaka-like sharpness in the refusal of all four extremes: not existent, not non-existent, not both, not neither. Yet Longchenpa’s mode here is not merely analytical. He brings that deconstructive freedom into direct contemplative instruction. The point is not to arrive at a correct philosophical position, but to relax the mind’s compulsion to freeze reality into something graspable. The result is not conceptual agnosticism but a living, self-knowing openness.
What may challenge modern readers is that this kind of text can easily be misunderstood. Someone might hear it as permission for drift, vagueness, or avoidance of discipline. But that would miss the experiential demand of the poem. Genuine non-contrivance is much harder than mere collapse into habit. It requires enough clarity to refrain from adding anything extra. It requires the confidence to let appearances self-liberate without immediately reentering the machinery of control. That is why these teachings are so radical: they remove not only ordinary supports, but also spiritual supports. What remains is nakedness.
So overall, I would say this text is a hymn to unmanufactured reality and a warning against the disease of effort. Its central claim is that the primordial state is not attained through correction, because correction already presupposes a departure from what is. Longchenpa is trying to talk the practitioner out of the ancient reflex to meddle with mind. His remedy is not another technique, but confidence in the already-free nature of awareness. That is why the poem feels both liberating and severe: it gives you everything, but only by taking away every place the grasping mind might hide.
Stanza-style Commentary:
Opening homage and first two stanzas
Longchenpa begins by praising the nature of mind as already complete: groundless, unborn, unchanging, beyond rejection and acceptance. The emphasis is immediate and radical: the “perfect ground” is not something produced later through practice; it is the nature of reality from the very beginning. He is setting the keynote for the whole poem—primordial purity, not gradual manufacture.
“Inexpressible, this already perfect…”
Here he deepens that opening by describing mind-as-such as sky-like, effortless, beyond concepts, and already released by itself. The key instruction appears immediately: “do not corrupt it through contrivance.” This is crucial. The problem is not ordinary experience itself, but the attempt to interfere with what is naturally self-free.
“Any foolish person who surrenders this essential nature…”
This stanza sharpens into warning. Once one abandons the natural state and begins “contriving and contriving,” one falls into self-created bondage. The trap is not imposed from outside. It is the subtle spiritual reflex to improve, alter, or fabricate awakening. Longchenpa’s target is the mind that cannot leave reality alone.
“Someone who has a spacious and relaxed attitude…”
Now the poem offers the positive counterpart: relaxed spaciousness. The nature needs no adjustment. Movement, once noticed, clears by itself. This is a classic Dzogchen move: appearances are not enemies to be corrected, and thoughts are not stains requiring an antidote. Freedom lies in non-interference, not in purification campaigns.
“Reality purified into unreality…”
This stanza is a critique of one-sided emptiness. Longchenpa warns against turning emptiness into a negation of all appearance, a kind of sterilized void. If one “purifies” reality into nonreality, one has not escaped extremes at all. One has merely replaced eternalism with nihilism. His point is subtle: true freedom is beyond both substantialism and annihilationism.
“Groundless and without origin…”
Here the argument becomes even more radical. Because the ground is groundless, there is no path in the ordinary sense, no view-conduct-fruition structure to cling to, and no need to meditate on emptiness, existence, nonexistence, or appearance. Longchenpa is not dismissing Dharma casually; he is pointing to the Atiyoga register in which even spiritual architecture becomes too heavy. The moment you solidify a path, you have already entered conditioned experience.
“Without a ground, there is no path…”
This is the terse summary of the prior point. No ground, no path, no fruition. Karma and its ripening do not stain this primordial dimension. This stanza stands very close to the “free ground, free path, free fruition” language that appears later. It is one of the poem’s cleanest declarations of non-graduality.
“Delight that comes through purifying the channels and winds…”
Now Longchenpa criticizes yogic and tantric bliss-states when they are treated as liberating in themselves. Channels, winds, bindus, sexual yogas, bliss-and-emptiness experiences—he does not deny they occur, but he denies that contrived experience can deliver final freedom. Even exalted inner states remain within fabrication if they are method-produced and grasped.
“Those who meditate on the clarity of mind…”
This stanza critiques meditation on appearances, inner lights, and subtle objects. Even refined meditative clarity may still preserve subject-object duality. So Longchenpa is not anti-meditation in a simplistic sense; he is anti-dualistic fixation masquerading as meditation. If there is still an object being stabilized, the root split remains.
“Even meditation in which there is no apparent focus…”
Here he goes further: even objectless concentration, silence, posture, suppression of thought, and absorption can still remain within conditioned states. The fact that no gross object appears does not mean freedom has dawned. One may simply be circling subtler samsaric states. This is a devastating warning against mistaking trance for liberation.
“States related to the three realms…”
Bliss, clarity, and non-conceptuality are named directly as states that can keep one cycling in desire, form, and formless realms. These are often precisely the experiences practitioners cherish. Longchenpa’s point is surgical: any state that comes and goes, however sublime, cannot be the unconditioned.
“Although you might claim that these involve a meditation on emptiness…”
This stanza criticizes cultivated emptiness. If emptiness becomes a positive state of mind used as an antidote, it binds rather than frees. One conceptual construction replaces another. Even “good” thoughts and wholesome mental engineering can rebuild saṃsāra. This is one of the poem’s most powerful anti-contrivance passages.
“One who lacks the causes, both good and bad karma…”
This very brief stanza states the logic: without karmic causes, saṃsāric results do not arise. Space is the metaphor—unobscured, unstained. The implication is not moral indifference but freedom from the mechanism of reactive construction. When mind no longer manufactures karmic fixation, there is nothing to obscure it.
“With the vessel of mind adrift…” / “With the play of awareness soaring…”
These paired stanzas contrast effortful cultivation with effortless non-referentiality. The first describes striving as exhausting, a circular journey on the ocean of existence. The second describes awareness free of grasping as spontaneously liberated from subject-object conditioning. Longchenpa is contrasting “trying to become effortless” with actual freedom from reference points.
“Whoever’s heart has been seized by the poison of exertion…”
This is one of the great lines of the poem. Exertion is not merely effort; it is a poison when directed toward manufacturing the natural state. In contrast, “kingly inactivity” and self-liberation bring contentment. Thought itself, in this realization, is no longer a problem. Discursive movement becomes the play of pristine wisdom. That is an important reversal: the issue was never thought as such, but thought seized and manipulated.
“Whoever wishes to find such freedom…” / “Contriving and contriving…”
This is the poem’s heart-instruction section. Don’t corrupt mind through contrivance. Let it rest naturally in whatever state it finds itself, “without effort or application, just momentary openness.” No rejection, no cultivation, no acceptance, no avoidance. This is pure Dzogchen instruction in compressed form. The repeated language of “free ground, free path and free fruition” seals the non-gradual point.
“It is not existent or non-existent…”
This stanza is philosophically important. The natural state transcends all four logical extremes. It is neither being nor non-being, neither both nor neither. Longchenpa now frames the natural state in apophatic, Madhyamaka-like terms, but he does so poetically, through images of sky, ocean, and luminous expanse. Emptiness here is not nullity; it is inseparable from openness and radiance.
“Causeless and unconditioned…”
Here Longchenpa says impressions are “purified in their own place.” This is a classic self-liberation formula. Things are not purified by a secondary act; they resolve where they arise. Even the language of “freed” and “unfreed” is finally admitted to be conventional, dreamlike. In ultimate terms there was never a solid bondage to dissolve.
“Sovereign pure awareness…”
This stanza strings together assurances: clear empty dharmakāya, timeless accomplishment, original purity, rootless groundlessness, spontaneous freedom. It is almost liturgical. The function is to strengthen confidence in the self-sufficient completeness of rigpa. No supplement is needed.
“Fresh and genuine, uncontrived and plain…”
This is one of the most beautiful and practical passages in the whole poem. “Ordinary awareness” is praised as naturally free, self-aware, and self-liberated, with no need for remedy. Whatever arises—pleasant or unpleasant—is the dimension of rigpa. This is not because samsara is endorsed, but because the very basis of deluded acceptance and rejection is exhausted. What arises becomes an ally, not an obstacle.
“One will liberate all, but all will not bring singular liberation…”
This dense stanza explains several modes of freedom: primordial freedom, naked freedom, self-freedom, freedom upon occurrence, freedom upon arising. The central point is immediacy. Liberation is not sequential. Purification is not a later result. What appears is freed in appearing. This is a deeply Atiyogic compression of doctrinal language into experiential immediacy.
“Do not deliberately fixate…”
Now the instruction becomes very direct again. No thematic focus, no fabrication, no blocking of thought. Let self-arising and self-dissolution unfold naturally. This is beautifully balanced: do not solidify experience, but also do not try to suppress it. Openness is not created by force; it is revealed by refraining from intervention.
“The nature of objects transcends…” / “Not situated anywhere…”
These short stanzas reinforce the same point. Objectification cannot stain reality. Hope, fear, rejection, indulgence—drop them. Because dharmatā is primordially free, internal and external remedies are pointless. Longchenpa is removing every remaining excuse for spiritual manipulation.
“How the self-liberated king settles…” / “Unsought natural rest…”
The royal imagery returns. The “king” settles by natural rest, unconcern, and non-contrivance. There is nothing to view, cultivate, or identify. Even “this” is too much. The phrase about “the strength of a simpleton” is lovely: it suggests innocence, uncalculating ease, freedom from clever spiritual self-consciousness.
“Primordial wisdom, impartial and unbiased…”
This stanza states plainly that realization is not found by searching but by letting be. Self-manifest movement is dharmakāya’s play. So phenomena do not need to be excluded for dharmakāya to be present; their self-display is already its expression. That gives the poem its extraordinary confidence and lightness.
“Not realized through the path of diverse philosophy…”
Longchenpa closes doctrinal doors once more. Philosophy cannot capture this, and conceptual elaboration cannot produce it. Hidden rigpa is naturally present and free. The poem ends as it began: not with a constructed attainment, but with recognition of what is already so.
Final stanzas on the vast expanse and dedication
The concluding imagery gathers the whole poem into vastness, equality, natural purity, and spontaneous presence. The garuḍa image suggests completeness from the outset—fully fledged, not progressively assembled. The dedication then universalizes the realization: may all beings find perfection in this non-abandoning expanse. It is a fierce poem, but also a generous one.