Other translations:

Mahamudra Quotations and a Verse on Impermance

Tilopa taught,


Shut down all bodily movement, rest at ease in naturalness
Without the talkativeness of speech, sound is empty like an echo
Not thinking so much as a thought in your mind behold the Dharma like no other Dharma
The physical body is void of substantial pith like a bamboo, a bamboo reed


Mind transcends the domain of thought like the center of open space
Not trying to force or avoid anything just rest relaxed within it.


And again,


Cut all connection with passion/aggression for country and following
Alone in the woods or remoteness of natural retreats just do meditation
Settle into the realm where there is no meditation to do
And if you attain what cannot be attained then you will attain mahamudra


And again,


Don’t think it nor try to approach it by way of ambition
It is there, and then gone by itself, like patterns on water
If it does not stay and is not an object of focus
And is nothing other than just reality
It is damtsig and nothing else, the lamp in the darkness
Eluding ambition, not staying in limits assigned
To see it is seeing all teachings in all the pitakas
Immerse yourself in it—samsara’s toil is done
Absorb yourself in it—wrong-doing and veils will all burn
What this is about could be called the lamp of the teaching


Saraha taught,


Like a fool would do who’s watching over cattle
A yogi gives mind some space to be a mind in
Is as free of attachment as any dead dog
As involved with passion as if he were a leper
So like a Brahmin spinning Brahmin cord
Oh yogi let your mind rest loosely tight
And free of all fixation like a corpse
As mindless be as any madman would
As open and unconstrained as open space be
Be like a crystal’s shining spectrum of light
As uncontrived as a little child be
But keep it to yourself as if you were a mute
These are some ways of getting mind to rest
This is how to get your mind to rest

Gendun Chopel taught this in the context of meditation on impermanence


From a distance the good things in life look good and enticing
When you’ve got what you wanted, the troubles you didn’t, take over
That the fleeting joys of the moment are just a dream
Begins to get through; it dawns on you some time later
That there’s something for sure, it’s got something to do with your own mind
It’s working to set up your own disillusionment


Under the guidance of Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, translated and arranged by Jim Scott, Halscheid, Germany, 1994. Translation copyright 2012, Jim Scott