Translator’s Introduction

Sarah Harding

This is Jamgön Kongtrul’s well-known and probably most useful instruction on the daily practice of Severance, written at the behest of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. It has been translated several times, with the title rendered variously as “Grove of Delights,” “Garden of All Joy,” “Garden of Pleasures,” and so forth. It is also the basis of many oral commentaries by great contemporary masters such as Venerable Tenga Rinpoche, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, and so on. Perhaps because it is so loved by practitioners, I have chosen “beloved” as the translation of kunga (kun dga’), which is in fact the short form of kungyi gawa (kun gyis dga’ ba), “loved by all.”

Indeed, the text is concise and yet thoroughly informative; one might almost call it user-friendly. Each stage is laid out clearly, particularly the famous “feasts” or distributions of the body to the guests. By Kongtrul’s time, many variations on the body-offering visualizations had developed. In this text, Kongtrul recom-mends a method to practice all of them by pairing up white (peaceful) and red (wrathful) visualizations and doing a few pairs at a time, thus cycling through all of them in a few evenings. (Nighttime is the recommended time for a daily practice.) These coupled sets and the rest of the commentary here have informed practitioners in their daily practice of Severance and provided the necessary references for its implementation.

The Beloved Garden: Brief Notes on the Offering and Gift of the Body 1 comes from Jamgön Kongtrul’s The Treasury of Precious Instructions, Volume 14, Chod.

1. Lus mchod sbyin gyi zin bris mdor bsdus kun dga’i skyed tshal in gDams ngag mdzod, Shechen printing, (1999), vol. 14 (pha), pp. 387–405; Kundeling printing, vol. 9, pp. 829–47. Second source: Dingri Volumes, vol. ja, pp. 731–55. Translated by Sarah Harding.