Śrī Simha's Ultimate Upadeśa: Seven Nails that Strike the Essence of Awakening

Abstract

The following introduction to The Seven Nails is dedicated to a formidable scholar and cherished colleague, Professor Venerable K. L. Dhammajoti, whose academic legacy and ethos served as a guiding light in the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. It is a study on a text from the early corpus of the teachings of Atiyoga or Great Perfection (Tib. rdzogs chen). According to hagiographical accounts, Śrī Siṃha delivered it in a jewelled casket to his heart-disciple Jñānasūtra with the purpose of resolving any lingering doubts concerning the ‘nature of mind’ (sems nyid), the indivisible union of awareness, clarity, and spaciousness. Even though the origins of The Seven Nails (Gzer bu bdun pa) are sheathed in the language of symbolism and mystical experience, its pithy contents have a liberating and enduring value that cuts across religious denominations and prescribed dogma. In its present incarnation, our text was transmitted to Tibet by Śrī Siṃha’s Indian disciple Vimalamitra, the fifth and last in a line of early Dzogchen patriarchs that realised the ‘rainbow body’ (’ja lus) – an esoteric experience of awakening portrayed as the physical body’s dissolution into particles of light.