FROM THE EPIC OF GESAR

Now in this time when the five corruptions are rampant and increasing, it is difficult to liberate from evil karma these savage sentient beings through the Causal Path of Characteristics, the Mahayana alone. It is even difficult to ripen them through Tantra, the Fruition Path of the Secret Mantra. For their minds are hard as rock and stone: if you do not carve its hard surface with a chisel, even if you soak it in a stream, it will not give way. Even if you rub it with butter and oil, it will not become flexible. They are too stiff to be bent by the teachings on this life and the next. They will not submit to the restraint of the temporal and spiritual laws.

Formerly, during the lives of the Three Dharma Kings,3 the Ancestor and his Descendants, when the Land of Tibet passed from Bšn to Buddhism, in order to naturally pacify the temperamental demons of Tibet, Lotus Skull garland,4 the Mantra Holder, bound them by oath. If he had managed to make them swear their oaths of fealty to the Buddha Dharma three times, then the Dharma Kings would have been long-lived.

But even though the sovereign and subjects shared bliss and happiness, devilish ministers, noblemen and warlords turned the subjects from the commands of their lord king. [Faced with such opposition Padmasambhava failed to complete his taming of the native spirits of Tibet.] Padmasambhava's failure to bind the spirits of Tibet more than twice led to disordered conditions in the state and the auspicious coincidence of the Glorious Gateway, the perfect astrological conjunction, was missed. As a result there was the turmoil of weaponry in the four directions. The foreign borderland demons wandered into Central Tibet. And the dynasty of the Dharma kings fell down to the level of commoners.