Derge Kangyur/Tengyur e-text, Esukhia/Barom edition — public domain (mechanical reproduction)
The Praise in the Form of a Confession (Deśanā-stava) is a devotional and reflective work that frames the practitioner's internal psychological struggle as a plea for spiritual guidance. The text oscillates between the expression of deep personal affliction and the recognition of the Buddha's supreme qualities. The author details a state of spiritual impasse where the practitioner is caught between the extremes of intellectual wisdom, which leads to indifference or agitation, and emotional grasping, which leads to discouragement. By articulating the failure of individual effort to resolve the tension between conventional concerns and the realization of emptiness, the text commits the reader to a posture of total reliance on the Buddha's capacity to grant a stainless view. The work functions as a confession of the practitioner's inability to maintain balanced engagement, ultimately positioning the Buddha as the only source of liberation from the cycle of hatred, delusion, and the perishability of conceptualized objects.
Provenance
About this text
A praise of confession and a plea for spiritual guidance, the Deśanāstava is a work of the classical Tibetan tradition. It is attributed to the Indian author Candragomin. The text was translated into Tibetan by Buddhākaravarman and the monk Rin chen bzang po, the translator of Zhu chen. It is preserved in the Tengyur, volume ཀ, where it comprises six pages and is situated within the Eulogy collection. The work enacts a confession of the practitioner's internal psychological struggles, framing a state of spiritual impasse where the individual is caught between the extremes of intellectual wisdom—which may lead to indifference—and emotional grasping. By articulating the failure of individual effort to resolve the tension between conventional concerns and the realization of emptiness, the text positions the practitioner in a state of total reliance on the Buddha, the King of Physicians, to resolve these afflictions. A scholar or serious reader consults this work today to examine the articulation of the practitioner's inability to maintain balanced engagement and the subsequent reliance on the Buddha's capacity to grant a stainless view.
Sanskrit title
Deśanāstava
Indian author
Candragomin
Tibetan translators
Buddhākaravarman, zhu chen gyi lo tsa ba dge slong rin chen bzang po
Cite thisAnuvāda, “Praise in the Form of a Confession” (Toh 1159), machine draft, 2026.https://naxiai.com/tibetan/works/toh1159
Summary & commentary
Significance
The work is significant for its candid depiction of the psychological obstacles encountered during the integration of emptiness and compassion. It provides a case study in the tension between the ultimate and conventional perspectives within the Indo-Tibetan tradition. For the modern reader, it illustrates the use of the confession genre not merely for moral rectification, but as a tool for diagnosing cognitive and emotional instability in spiritual practice.
Structure
Passages
Section
Description
1
Invocation and Refuge
Homage to Mañjuśrī and a declaration of refuge in the Buddha as the peerless guide.
2-5
The Dilemma of Practice
An analysis of the failure of meditation on emptiness, the risks of conventional engagement, and the resulting state of agitation and discouragement.
6
Plea for Intervention
A request for the stainless view to overcome the affliction of loss and the weight of past karma.
7
Praise of the Buddha's Qualities
Recognition of the Buddha's realization of the ultimate meaning and his ability to eliminate the seeds of afflictions.
Themes
The Tension between Emptiness and Conventionality (2, 5)
Psychological Affliction and Agitation (3, 4, 5, 6)
The Role of the Buddha as Physician (1, 6, 7)
Impermanence and Karma (4, 6)
Summary, significance and provenance note generated by gemma4:31b from the translation and the catalogue record.
In the language of India: Deśanā-stava. In the language of Tibet: Bshags pa’i bstod pa (Praise of Confession). Homage to Mañjuśrī Kumārabhūta.
To the King of Physicians, the peerless supreme guide of beings, free from all faults and the source of all qualities, I take refuge in you and, constantly observing you, I confess the transformations of my own faults.
My own mind is not at peace, being agitated by the crocodiles of the afflictions, tossed by the waves of poor discernment and judgment, and resembling a river current that is extremely difficult to cross.
When the great waves of the ocean of desire are violently stirred, if I rely upon the raft of impurity, my mind is then surely consumed and destroyed by the fire of hatred, like dry grass.
To pacify the torment of the fire of hatred, if I meditate upon the pond of loving-kindness, my mind is then seized by the mud of attachment—the desire for all beings to be happy.
To cleanse the stains of the mud of attachment, if I wash with the water of equanimity, the compassion of the Protector of the World, which dispels the suffering of all beings, utterly declines.
O Lord, if I meditate upon compassion, great sorrow arises within me. If I rely upon joy to pacify this [sorrow], the flickering mind becomes merely frivolous.
If I generate weariness to pacify joy, the mind there becomes powerless and despondent. If I praise myself through diligence, I fall into the domain of the enemy of pride.
As an antidote to that, one meditates on the emptiness of all things. In that state, one becomes indifferent to the welfare of others. If, for their sake, one relies upon the conventional, the mind then gives rise to the thought of wealth. If the mind is applied to wealth and the like, it will be made to drink the wine of all faults; intoxicated by the sleep of pride and delusion, all aspirations are utterly destroyed.
Even when I wish to practice generosity, the powerful stinginess certainly seizes me. If I should give after having first removed that [stinginess], I will then feel regret for a long time. Even if I restore my faith through faith once more, I fall into the results of another world. If, through the knowledge of impermanence, I make myself free of hope, I become utterly discouraged by laziness for lack of a reason.
When the Protector of the World is intensely tormented by suffering, and considering that [others] were also my kin in the past, if I wish to act for the sake of others, I am helplessly seized by the perception of a self. Following the view of a self, pride follows; it then completely grasps at "mine." There, by pride, arrogance, desire, and so forth, I am utterly destroyed like an enemy in a rage.
When the net of afflictions, as terrifying as the hosts of Māra, has spread everywhere, then, like the unbearable night of the dark fortnight, the darkness of the side of evil increases. The sin is difficult to describe, the regret is hard to endure, and birth becomes unbearable suffering. What greater harm could there be than that?
Even so, one should practice that very thing oneself. If one turns away from harming others—which is the cause of various sufferings—then wicked people, who have become enemies despite being innocent, will provoke agitation with a malice as sharp as the edge of a sword. Even when my own mind wishes to practice patience, it is then bound by the fetters of their misconduct. Being thus obstructed and thoroughly constrained, it is completely parched by the fierce fire of hatred and becomes devoid of compassion. Just as the wise avoid a tree that harbors the poison of a terrible-looking snake within its trunk, so too does the conduct of anger conceal and destroy my own virtuous intentions. Like a stone scorched by the rays of the sun, or like dust and ash completely dried up, or like a path covered in a mass of sand, the rain of Dharma is useless for my mind. Because I do not examine my own unbearable suffering, I cannot even endure that Protector of the World who, as if striving to benefit me, provides the supreme aid of patience and generosity. Whether he acts with hostility, flees and avoids me, becomes distracted, or turns me away, he is constantly training someone like me. Yet I do not think of such a person as a guru. Even if I were to go and make requests, he is difficult to find; if I cannot maintain a patient disposition when patience is the supreme great medicine, what other cause for patience do I have? My mind is agitated, seized by the rākṣasas of the afflictions, and like one with a fever, I lack the diligence to benefit myself.
When I behold the world, worthy of being seen,
I feel only hatred for the primary self, not compassion.
I know that beings experience the results of their own actions,
And that all are powerless and subject to destruction.
Even when I consider others to be faultless,
I see only the delusions of the cataracts of ignorance.
Though I am an ocean of faults myself,
I cannot tolerate even a fraction of the faults of others.
Though there are other perfect qualities such as patience,
It is truly a wonder that I am so intolerant.
Like clouds rising in the sky during the summer,
The clouds of afflictions in my mind come and go again and again.
Shameless and lazy, I am a wretched person.
If the cold winds of the afflictions should arise,
Though I strive to conquer them with the blazing fire of meditative concentration,
The cataracts of sleep and mental dullness increase,
And my desire for a comfortable bed only grows.
My mind is rendered powerless by the noose of attachment,
Burnt by the fire of hatred, and destroyed by pride.
Completely filled with the arrows, spears, and weapons of every fault,
I have become helpless and senseless.
Having regained mindfulness, I am bound and quickly terrified;
Utterly defeated, I am disheartened,
And deceived by guile and deceit,
I wander in the lowly domain of Māra.
However much I focus on calm abiding
And repeatedly direct my mind toward it,
From that very focus, the noose of the afflictions
Is helplessly pulled by the rope of attachment to objects.
If I apply effort, agitation arises;
If I abandon that, discouragement will arise. Since the proper method for this is so difficult to find in balanced engagement, how shall I manage to steady my agitated mind? If I practice with wisdom, agitation occurs; if I rely on grasping, discouragement arises. Since the union of these two is so difficult to find, how shall I manage to steady my agitated mind? If I apply effort, agitation will occur; if I relax that, discouragement will arise. Since achieving the middle way between these is so difficult to find, how shall I manage to steady my agitated mind?
Even if the forest of faults is repeatedly burned by the fire of concentration, because the root of the view of self is not destroyed, it grows back intensely before me, moistened by the rain. One who merely sees the stream of afflictions and their results may turn back from them, and though they may abandon the stream of the mind, they remain very far from striving for the benefit of beings. The Protector, being free from even the slightest attachment, has become indifferent toward all beings; the cause of such a mind is like a lamp whose fuel is exhausted—the nirvana in which the aggregates are without remainder.
But that which dispels the suffering of all wandering beings is the bodhicitta, the alchemy of the essence of nectar. When one meditates on non-conceptuality as the cause of awakening, at that time I am merely running in circles of conceptual thought. Without anyone grasping at anything at all, just as in the manner of a dream, even if one meditates, one is still wandering within the domain of the enemy of conceptual thought—the conceptualizer and the object of conceptualization.
O Lord, behold this most unbearable affliction and grant me the stainless view! Whatever cherished things I conceptualize, each and every one of them first perishes. Or perhaps it is my own fault for what I have done in the past; what can the Blessed One do for this? Even the sun, which dispels the darkness of the entire world, cannot clear away the gloom for those who are born blind. For one who has long displayed the symptoms of a chronic illness, what can a temporary application of medicine achieve here, where the mind is constantly deluded? For a leper whose hands and feet are severed, what is the use of taking medicine for a moment? The tree of the mind, existing from beginningless time, is saturated and moistened by the bitter sap of the afflictions. It cannot be turned into something of delicious flavor; what will a drop of the water of virtues accomplish? It is a great wonder if my mind, which is the very nature of all faults, could be transformed into the alchemy of awakening. Yet when applied to this or that virtue, it remains as the very substance of faults. Whatever is described as a great medicine, that very thing becomes poison to me. If logic itself is the supreme elixir, it does not exist if there is no trust in the mind. I think that logic is that which dispels the flourishing afflictions and does not produce any other faults; yet I have not done so again, wondering what it truly is. When the instructions on the mind are applied as the antidote to the causes of faults—the latent tendencies of intention and the habitual patterns of the elements—then by meditating on those instructions of the mind, this will be pacified before long. The Protector is completely free from all faults.
You perceive the ultimate meaning of all phenomena, and you have taught it through various methods; thus, you eliminate the seeds of the afflictions without exception. Your body, blazing with the marks of beauty, is seen by those who stand before you, and the nectar to be drunk is heard by the ears; thus, the seeds of the afflictions are utterly destroyed. O Lord, you are far more supreme than that; you possess the unsurpassed sun of the Dharmakāya. Though contemplated, it is not an object of the world’s experience; that it destroys the cataracts of faults is truly wondrous. With whatever supreme mind you may have, and abiding in whatever state of calm abiding, you pacify all faults in every way—to that Blessed One, I prostrate. Thus, whatever merit I have gathered through this composition of the Perfect Praise to confess your unsurpassed qualities, may it be as white as the beautiful moon, and by it, may all beings go to Sukhāvatī. This concludes the Praise of Confession composed by the master Candragomin. It was translated, edited, and finalized by the Indian abbot Buddhakāravarma and the chief editor and translator, the monk Rinchen Zangpo.