8The brief and beautiful Buddhist texts in this book point towards the inexpressible sweet simplicity of our own minds. This simplicity is usually obscured by the complexity of our reified experience and the conceptual elaboration we employ to try to work out who we are and what our life is for.

The doha songs offered here are not fuel for intellectual analysis. Rather they offer us gentle encouragement to turn towards our own minds as the ungraspable simplicity of the ever-present ground.

The dohas here arose from the minds of enlightened yogis in Eastern India during the 8th -10th centuries. The collection is referred to as the Asta Doha Kosa in Sanskrit, Do-Ha mDzod brGyad in Tibetan. The collection is supplemented by the famous Mahamudra Aspiration prayer, also known as the Chagchen Monlam (Phyag-Chen sMon-Lam in Tibetan), written by the third Karmapa.

The introduction and translation from Tibetan is by James Low