The Great Auspicious Beauty Tantra or Trashi Dzenden Chenpögyü (Tibetan: བཀྲ་ཤིས་མཛེས་ལྡན་ཆེན་པོའི་རྒྱུད, Wylie: bkra shis mdzes ldan chen po'i rgyud) is numbered amongst the 'Seventeen Tantras of Menngagde' (Tibetan: མན་ངག་སྡེའི་རྒྱུད་བཅུ་བདུན, Wylie: man ngag sde'i rgyud bcu bdun) within Dzogchen discourse and is part of the textual support for the Vima Nyingtik.
Contents
Kunsang (1987, 2007: p. 88) provides the following summary of this Dzogchen tantra thus:
"...[it] teaches how to establish the nature of awareness and how to identify the basis of confusion and the unmistaken wisdom."
These Seventeen Tantras are to be found in the Canon of the Ancient School, the 'Nyingma Gyubum' (Tibetan: རྙིང་མ་རྒྱུད་འབུམ, Wylie: rnying ma rgyud 'bum), volumes 9 and 10, folio numbers 143-159 of the edition edited by 'Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche' commonly known as Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (Thimpu, Bhutan, 1973), reproduced from the manuscript preserved at 'Tingkye Gonpa Jang' (Tibetan: གཏིང་སྐྱེས་དགོན་པ་བྱང, Wylie: gting skyes dgon pa byang) Monastery in Tibet.
Nomenclature, orthography and etymology
This tantra is rendered in English as "Tantra of Great Beauty and Auspiciousness" (1995, 2003: p. 210) within the English translation of the first book of the Sheja Dzö of Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-1899) entitled in English Myriad Worlds.
English discourse
Kapstein (1992: p. 64) opens the discourse of this Tantra into English with a quotation embedded within Longchenpa's Tegchö Dzö (Wylie: theg mchog mdzod; fol. 3b-4a) which Kapstein renders into English as follows wherein the Adi Buddha, Samantabhadra, voices:
Though I am free from bewilderment, bewilderment has emerged from my expressive power. Though I do not come into being as ground, my nature having arisen without impediment, unawareness has spontaneously emerged from my spirituality that is without determination. Just as clouds do not intrinsically exist in the sky, but emerge fortuitously, so there is no unawareness at all that belongs to the ground.
The following English rendering of a quotation from the Great Auspicious Beauty was embedded in the Sheja Dzö of Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-1899) and specifically the section of the Sheja Dzö translated into English entitled Myriad Worlds (1995, 2003: p. 210), and the Tibetan Wylie was sourced from Wikisource:
These eight are also known as the 'Eight doors of spontaneous presence' (Tibetan: ལྷུན་གྲུབ་ཀྱི་སྒོ་བརྒྱད་, Wylie: lhun grub kyi sgo brgyad):