Anniversary of Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche’s Parinirvana
Today is the Anniversary of Buddha Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche (Tib. Rgyal-ba Ston-pa Gshen-rab Mi-bo-che) completing the Twelfth Deed, The Deed of Realisation (Tib. rnam-par grub-pa’i mdzad-pa), when he achieved nyangen ledepa (Tib. mya-ngan las’das-pa) or parinirvana in 7817 BC, 9,838 years ago. The very essence of all the Yungdrung Bön teachings he taught is encapsulated in the four lines known as The Four Wheels of Bön / ༎བོན་འཁོར་ཚིག་བཞི།། (Tib. Bon ‘khor thsig bzhi).
The Four Wheels are:
TA-WA YE PHAB
།།ལྟ་བ་ཡས་ཕབ།
Take the highest View.
CHYO-PA ME YAR-DZEG
།སྤྱོད་པ་མས་ཡར་འཛེག།
Step up with your activities, starting from the smallest virtues.
NYING-JE ZHI-ZUNG
།སྙིང་རྗེས་གཞི་བཟུང་།
Whatever practice you do, take compassion as the base.
PHA-ROL-CHYIN CHU CHYO
།ཕ་རོལ་ཕྱིན་བཅུ་སྤྱོད།།
Practise the Ten Paramitas with determination.
These four lines are what we call The Four Wheels of Bön. This Teaching is the foundation and the essential summary for all kinds of methods and practices found in Yungdrung Bön.
Lopon Tenzin Namdak, Trnscr. & Ed. Carol Ermakova, Dmitry Ermakov, The Four Wheels of Bön །།བོན་འཁོར་ཚིག་བཞི།།,
Foundation for the Preservation of Yungdrung Bön, UK, 2016, p.23
Yongdzin Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche has given extensive teachings on The Four Wheels of Bön on several occasions. You can find an edited transcript of these teachings in this book: Lopon Tenzin Namdak, Trnscr. & Ed. Carol Ermakova, Dmitry Ermakov, The Four Wheels of Bön །།བོན་འཁོར་ཚིག་བཞི།།, Foundation for the Preservation of Yungdrung Bön, UK, 2016.
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