Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama

Tsangyang Gyatso (1 March 1683 – 15 November 1706) was the sixth Dalai Lama. He was a Monpa by ethnicity and was born at Urgelling Monastery, 5km from Tawang Town, India and not far from the large Tawang Monestary in the northwestern part of present-day Arunachal Pradesh.

Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama

He had grown up a youth of high intelligence, liberal to a fault, fond of pleasure, alcohol and women, and later led a playboy lifestyle. He disappeared near Qinghai, probably murdered, on his way to Beijing in 1706. The 6th Dalai Lama composed poems and songs that are not only still immensely popular in modern-day Tibet but have also gained significant popularity all across China.

Quotes

Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso tr. Paul Williams 2004

• Even the stars can be measured,

Their arrangements and influences.

Her body can be lovingly touched,

but not her deep longings.

Those cannot be understood

by science.

• p 12

• Lassoes can catch the wild horses

that flee over the hills.

But nothing, not even incantations

can hold a wild beloved

who has stopped loving

her lover.

• p.13

• The ink of lovesongs

washes off in the rain,

but the love itself,

that which cannot be

written down, stays

inside *here*

• p.16

• I listen intently

to what my teacher says

but beneath that concentration

my loving slips

out of the room

to be with you.

• p.20

• In meditation, the face of my teacher

does not come to me very clearly,

but your face does, smiling one way,

then smiling another.

• p.21

• If I could meditate as deeply

on the sacred texts as I do

on you, I would clearly be

enlightened in this lifetime.

• p.22

• It was snowing at nightfall

when i went out to look for my lover.

Now the secret of where my feet went

is openly visible to everyone.

• p.26

• Lover waiting in my bed

to give me your soft, sweet body,

do you mean me well?

What will you take off me,

Besides my clothes?

• p.27

• Wanting this landlord's daughter

is wanting the topmost

peach.

• p.37

• Back when I was lucky,

I could hoist a prayerflag,

and some well-bred young woman

would invite me home.

• p.44

• I often see my lost lover in dreams.

I will ask a shaman to search in there

and bring her back to me.

• p.52

• Oracle of the Tenth Stage,

Dorje Chokyang, if you have power,

destroy those who hate the natural law.

• p.58

• My lover and I, we meet in complete

privacy, in the southern valley forest.

Then I hear some parrot in the market

jabbering our secrets.

• p.61

• We've had our short walk together,

this joy. Let's hope we meet early

in the next life, as young lovers.

• p.62

• While I live in the monastery palace,

I am Ridzin Tsangyang Gyatso,

honored in this lineage.

When I roam the streets in Lhasa,

and down in the valley to Shol,

I am the wildman, Dangyang Wangpo,

who has many lovers.

• p.64

• Pure snow-water from the holy mountain,

Dew off the rare Naga Vajra grass.

These essences make a nectar

which is fermented by one

who is incarnated as a maiden.

Her cup's contents can protect you

from rebirth in a lower form,

if it is tasted in the state

of awareness it deserves.

• p.70

• I know her body's softness

but not her love.

I draw figures in sand

to measure great distances

through the sky.

• p.72