The Letter of Prediction
 by His Holiness the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa

Emaho.

Self-awareness is always bliss;

The dharmadhatu[1] has no center nor edge.

From here to the north [in] the east of [the land] of snow

Is a country where divine thunder spontaneously blazes[2]

[In] a beautiful nomad's place with the sign of a cow[3],

The method is Döndrub and the wisdom is Lolaga[4].

[Born in] the year of the one used for the earth[5]

[With] the miraculous, far-reaching sound of the white one[6];

[This] is the one known as Karmapa.

 

His is sustained by Lord Donyö Drupa;

Being nonsectarian, he pervades all directions;

Not staying close to some and distant from others, he is the protector of all beings:

The sun of the Buddha's Dharma that benefits others always blazes.

 

[1]Chos kyi dhying, the expanse of all phenomena and equivalent to sunyata or emptiness.
[2]The Seventeenth Karmapa's place of birth is Lhathok: "Lha" means divine and "thok" means thunder. In the text, thunder is poetically called "gnam chags" or "sky iron."
[3]The name of the nomadic community where the Karmapa was born is Bakor; "ba" means "cow," and the Dharma term for cow, "dodjo," is used in the text.
[4]Method refers to the father and wisdom to the mother.
[5]His Holiness was born in the Wood Ox year; a tree lives from the earth and an ox is used to plow it.
[6]This refers to the sound of the conch shell that miraculously resounded in the air for about an hour after His Holiness' birth.

Translated July, 1992 in Rumtek, Sikkim by Michell Martin