Key Issues of Visualization

A Melody of Brahma Playing Throughout the Three Realms by Dza Patrul Rinpoche, translated and introduced by Tony Duff. The first Patrul Rinpoche (Dza Patrul Chokyi Wangpo) was a very learned and accomplished master in 19th century Tibet. In this text, he explains the most important foremost instruction taught in the Nyingma tradition for development stage practice. It is a Nyingma teaching, but it is completely applicable to the development stage practice taught in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.This foremost instruction is called Four Nails Pinning the Life Forces. This instruction is a set of four headings which cover all the main topics of development stage practice and which are, at the same time, a complete set of instructions for the practice.Further than that: because they are the main topics of development stage practice, they also include all the many sub-topics of the practice.Patrul Rinpoche explains all of this clearly and then enumerates 40 different sub-topics, each one being an instruction for development stage practice. Moreover, when Dza Patrul explains the Four Nails, he also explains it in terms of the other main instructions for development stage practice; for example, he gives an excellent explanation of the subject called "Purifying, Completing, Ripening" in relation to the first nail. Altogether the text is a very rich source of instruction for anyone doing development stage practice and an excellent resource for those trying to understand its various detaisl. The importance of the Four Nails instruction can be understood from the fact that, whenever authors in the Nyingma tradition need to summarize the points of development stage practice in one place, they refer to the Four Nails or to the Purifying, Completing, Ripening instruction. Because this text explains both sets of instructions it is an ideal way to learn the key points of development stage practice. This teaching is also covered, but in a different way, in the Longchen Nyingthig text on deity practice, a seperate companion book - Presentation of Instructions for the Development Stage Deity - so the two books could be read together. Includes the Tibetan text.