འཕགས་པ་མཚན་མ་བཟང་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་མད intro.10

intro.10

There are no extant commentaries on Auspicious Night preserved in the Tengyur, but the sūtra is referenced sporadically in indigenous Tibetan Buddhist literature. The sūtra’s title is found in the writings of the Sakya patriarch Drakpa Gyaltsen (grags pa rgyal mtshan, 1147–1216), the Nyingma master Longchenpa (klong chen pa, 1308–64), the Sakya hierarch Künga Sangpo (kun dga’ bzang po, 1382–1456), the Sakya hierarch Anyé Shap (a myes zhabs, 1597–1659), and the fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Losang Gyatso (ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–82). In these instances, the sūtra is typically cited as part of a list of works that were studied by the author or for which he had received reading transmission. Two prominent Tibetan authors, the second Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa (dpa’ bo gtsug lag phreng ba, 1504–66) and the eighth Tai Situ Chökyi Jungné (ta’i si tu chos kyi ’byung gnas, 1699/1700–1774), quote the first two verses of Auspicious Night as proof that the Mahāmudrā meditation instruction of not letting the mind follow after, cling to, or examine thoughts concerned with the three times (past, present, and future) is not a teaching of the controversial Chinese teacher Hashang (whom the Tibetan tradition usually portrays as having taught a form of meditation in which thoughts are actively suppressed), but an authentic—that is, Indic—instruction that can be found in a canonical text.⁵ It appears, then, from these quotations that the sūtra (or, to be precise, the first of the verses of Auspicious Night) was used in Tibet by schools/lineages propagating the Mahāmudrā and/or Dzogchen systems of meditation.