འཕགས་པ་འཁར་གསལ་གྱ་མད 4

4

Kāśyapa then asked the Blessed One, “Blessed One, if the meanings of the ringing staff are so, what are the reasons for this whole range of meanings, from ‘staff of gnosis’ to ‘it is a practice aimed at the application of recollection’?¹⁴ Could the Blessed One explain?”

The Blessed One replied, “The ringing staff causes the accomplishment of the practice of gnosis; causes the accomplishment of vast learning; engenders an unhindered understanding of worldly and transcendent wisdom, virtue and nonvirtue, the conditioned and unconditioned, and the contaminated and uncontaminated; and it causes the accomplishment of wisdom. Therefore, it is called the staff of gnosis.

“Practicing the strict observance of discipline, patience, the cultivation of meditative concentration with a single-pointed mind devoid of distraction,¹⁵ and constant meritorious actions, as if their head or turban had caught fire, those who hold the ringing staff do not forsake these practices even for an instant. Therefore, it is called the staff of excellent qualities.

“Those who hold this ringing staff will become perfect in the sixteen kinds of practice: (1–4) the four truths of suffering, origin, cessation, and the path; (5–8) the four immeasurable states of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity; (9–12) the four meditative concentrations: the first meditative concentration, second meditative concentration, third meditative concentration, and fourth meditative concentration; and (13–16) the four formless states of meditative attainment: the sphere of infinite space, the sphere of infinite consciousness, the sphere of nothingness, and the sphere of neither perception nor absence of perception.