The wisdom dakini known as Niguma, illustrious Narotapa’s sister, was a self-manifest yogini, a powerful lord bodhisattva on awakening’s tenth stage, who received direct instruction from Conqueror Vajradhara.

She sang these vajra verses of self-liberating Mahamudra (Great Seal):

Nature of mind,
Wish-fulfilling jewel, to you I bow.
Wishing to attain perfect enlightenment,
Visualize your body clearly as the deity
To purify ordinary thoughts.
Develop a noble intention to help others
And pure devotion to your spiritual master.
Don’t dwell on your spiritual master or the deity.
Don’t bring anything to mind,
Be it real or imagined.
Rest uncontrived in the innate state.
Your own mind, uncontrived, is the body of ultimate enlightenment.
To remain undistracted within this is meditation’s essential point.

Realize the great, boundless, expansive state.
Myriad thoughts of anger and desire
Propel you within the seas of existence.
Take the sharp sword of the unborn state
And cut through them to their lack of intrinsic nature.
When you cut a tree’s root,
Its branches won’t grow.
On a bright ocean,
Bubbles emerge then dissolve back into the water.
Likewise, thoughts are nothing but the nature of reality:
Don’t regard them as faults. Relax.
When you have no clinging to what appears, what arises,
It frees itself within its own ground.
Appearances, sound, and phenomena are your own mind.
There are no phenomena apart from mind.
Mind is free from birth, cessation,
And formulation.
Those who know mind’s nature
Enjoy the five senses’ pleasures
But do not stray from the nature of reality.
On an island of gold,
You search in vain for earth and stones.
In the equanimity of the great absolute expanse,
There is no acceptance or rejection,
No states of meditation or postmeditation.
When you actualize that state,
It is spontaneously present,
Fulfilling beings’ hopes
Like a wish-fulfilling jewel.

Persons of highest, middle and common levels of capability
Should learn this in stages suitable to their understanding.

Timeless Rapture – Inspired verses of the Shangpa Masters.
compiled by Jamgon Kongtrul.
Translated by Ngawang Zangpo. Snowlion