The Yoga Tradition

by Georg Feuerstein

  Sparsha-dîkshâ — initiation through touch (sparsha), which involves physical contact between the teacher and the disciple.

  Vag-dîkshâ — initiation through mantric utterance (vâc), which occurs when the teacher, with his or her attention firmly implanted in the Divine, utters a mantra or verse from the sacred scriptures.

  Drig-dîkshâ — initiation through gaze (drik), which the teacher performs by gazing into the very being of the disciple.

  Mânasa-dîkshâ — initiation through mere thought, which involves the projection of energy and consciousness through telepathic means.

  Other classifications are also known, but they are all very similar.28 What they have in common is the graceful transformative agency of the divine Power (shakti). Whether the initiate will realize the ultimate Reality at once or only gradually depends on his or her preparation and capacity.

  When by the guru’s mere glance, utterance, or touch the disciple instantly experiences the bliss of Reality, this is also known as shâmbhavî-dîkshâ.29 The word shâmbhavî means “belonging to Shambhu,” and Shambhu (“He who is benevolent”) is a form of Shiva, the ultimate Being recognized in many schools of Tantra. Initiation by touch is compared to the slow nurturing by a bird that grants its fledglings the warmth of its wings. Initiation by glance is likened to the nurturing by a fish that protects its offspring through watchful eyes. Initiation by the mind alone is said to be similar to the nurturing by a tortoise that simply thinks of its young—a simile that means more to a Yoga practitioner than a biologist.

  This type of instant initiation is generally contrasted with shâktikâ-dîkshâ on the one hand and ânavî-dîkshâ on the other. In the former type of initiation the teacher activates by esoteric means the disciple’s innate capacity (shakti) for God-realization so that, after a period of time, enlightenment is spontaneously attained. The latter kind of dîkshâ involves spiritual instruction, including the imparting of a mantra, or sacred word or phrase, which the initiate then recites as directed. Thus, both shâmbhavî-dîkshâ and shâktikâ-dîkshâ are initiations that lead to realization spontaneously, but whereas the one is instant the other represents a delayed reaction, due to the gradual effect of the awakened shakti. Only ânavî-dîkshâ calls for a course of intense application on the disciple’s part. He or she is given the teacher’s empowerment, but has to cooperate with the psychospiritual forces set in motion in him or her through the esoteric process of initiation. The word ânavî means “pertaining to anu,” and anu (“atom”) is a designation for the individual psyche in some schools of Tantra.

  Many more intriguing facts about the ceremonial aspects of dîkshâ can be found in the Mahânirvâna-Tantra (chapter 10), a fairly recent scripture that is greatly valued by practitioners of Tantra-Yoga.30

  Whether initiation occurs by yogic means or through the sheer presence of an enlightened adept, it always magnifies the disciple’s native intuition of Reality, thus provoking a crisis in consciousness: Through the intensified sensitivity to the transcendental Condition, the initiate understands more deeply the mechanisms by which he or she perpetuates the state of unenlightenment. The disciple experiences the basic dilemma or suffering of ordinary existence, seeing how everything he or she does, thinks, and feels is governed by the principle of egoic separation.

  Under the impact of the God-realized adept’s spontaneous transmission, the practitioner undergoes spiritual crisis after crisis, awakening more and more to the sublime principle that he or she is presently free, enlightened, and blissful. As this recognition grows in the disciple, he or she finds that his or her egoic impulses, motivations, and obsessions are becoming increasingly obsolete. In this way the teacher’s grace (prasâda) draws the initiate, step by step, into a radically different disposition—the disposition of enlightenment.31 It is for this reason alone that initiation, or dîkshâ, is given such prominence in the esoteric schools of India.

  Dîkshâ, verily, releases [the aspirant] from the extensive bondage impeding [the realization of] the supreme Abode, and it leads [him] upward to Shiva’s Domain.32

  VII. CRAZY WISDOM AND CRAZY ADEPTS

  In Tibet there is a tradition known by the name “crazy wisdom.” The phenomenon for which this term stands can be found in all the major religions of the world, though it is seldom acknowledged as a valid expression of spiritual life by the religious orthodoxy or the secular establishment. Crazy wisdom is a unique mode of teaching, which avails itself of seemingly irreligious or unspiritual means in order to awaken the conventional ego-personality from its spiritual slumber.

  The unconventional means used by adepts who teach in this risky manner seem crazy or mad in the eyes of ordinary people, who seldom look beyond appearances. Crazy-wisdom methods are designed to shock, but their purpose is always benign: to reflect to the ordinary worldling (samsârin) the “madness” of his or her pedestrian existence, which, from the enlightened point of view, is an existence rooted in a profound illusion. That illusion is the ingrained presumption that the individual is an ego-identity bounded by the skin of the human body, rather than the all-pervasive Self-Identity, i.e., the âtman or Buddha-nature. Crazy wisdom is a logical extension of the deep insights of spiritual life in general, and it is at the core of the relationship between adept and disciple—a relationship that has the express function of undermining the disciple’s ego-illusion.

  The crazy-wisdom message and approach are understandably offensive to both the secular and the conventionally religious establishments. Hence, crazy adepts have generally been suppressed. This was not the case in traditional Tibet and India, however, where the “holy fool” or “divine madman” has been recognized as a legitimate figure in the compass of spiritual aspiration and realization. Thus, the “saintly madman” (Tibetan: lama myonpa) has been venerated throughout the history of Tibet. The same is true of the Indian avadhûta who has, as the name suggests, “cast off’ all concerns and conventional standards in his ecstatic intoxication.

  The Christian equivalent of the saintly madman of Tibet and the Indian avadhûta is the “fool for Christ’s sake.” Yet the large conservative faction among both the clergy and the laity has long driven the unorthodox figure of the “fool” (Greek: salos) into oblivion. The modern Christian knows next to nothing about such remarkable “holy idiots” as St. Simeon, St. Isaac Zatvomik, St. Basil, or St. Isadora, the last being one of the few female examples. It was the apostle Paul who first used the phrase “fool for Christ’s sake” in 1 Corinthians 4:10. He spoke of the wisdom of God that looks like folly to the world, whereas the world’s wisdom is founded in pride. When Mark the Mad, a desert monk of the sixth century C.E., came to the city to atone for his sins, the townspeople considered him insane. But Abba Daniel of Skete instantly recognized his great sanctity, shouting to the crowd that they were all fools for not seeing that Mark was the only reasonable man in the entire city.

  St. Simeon, another sixth-century fool for Christ’s sake, was a skilled simûlâtor of insanity. Once he found a dead dog on a dung heap. He tied his cord belt to the dog’s leg and dragged the corpse behind him through town. The people were outraged, failing to understand that the mad monk’s burden was a symbol of the excess baggage they themselves carried around with them—the ego, or conventional mind, lacking love and wisdom. The very next day, St. Simeon entered the local church and threw nuts at the congregation when the Sunday liturgy began. At the end of his life, the saint confessed to his most trusted friend that his eccentric behavior had been solely an expression of his utter indifference (Greek: apatheia, Sanskrit: vairâgya) to things of the world. Its purpose was to denounce hypocrisy and hubris.

  The mad saint, who in his God-intoxication fearlessly steps beyond the mores of his era, made his appearance also in Islam among the masters of Sufism, and in Judaism among the Hasidic mystics. These holy fools represent a wide spectrum of spiritual attainment, ranging from the religious eccentric to the enlightened adept. The common denominator between them is that in
their lifestyle, or at least in their occasional eccentric behavior, they invert or reverse the standards and conventions of society.

  The most pristine manifestation of crazy wisdom is found in the Tibetan lama myonpa and Indic avadhûta traditions. The Tibetans distinguish different kinds of madness, including what one might call religious neurosis (Tibetan: chos-myon) with sociopathic and paranoid symptoms. These are carefully held apart from saintly madness. Some of the characteristics of saintly madness are not dissimilar to the symptoms of secular and religious madness. However, its nature and causes are quite distinct. The crazy adept’s eccentric behavior is a direct expression not of any personal psychopathology, but of his or her spiritual attainment and profound desire to illumine fellow humans.

  In Mahâyâna Buddhist terms, crazy wisdom is the articulation in life of the realization that the phenomenal world (samsâra) and the transcendental Reality (nirvâna) are coessential. Seen from the perspective of the unillumined mind, operating on the basis of a sharp separation between subject and object, perfect enlightenment is a paradoxical condition. The enlightened adept exists as the ultimate spaceless and timeless Being-Consciousness but appears to animate a particular body-mind in space-time. In the non-dualist terms of Advaita Vedânta, enlightenment is the fulfillment of the two axioms that the innermost self (adhyâtman) is identical with the transcendental Self (parama-âtman), and that the ultimate Ground (brahman) is identical with the cosmos in all its levels of manifestation, including the self.

  Thus the enlightened adept lives as the Totality of existence which, from the narrow perspective of the finite personality, is a veritable chaos. While this is the immediate “experience” of all enlightened masters who live consummately spontaneous (sahaja) lives, there are those whose appearance and behavior reflects more directly their divine madness. These are the crazy adepts who do not care to make sense and who, for the sake of instructing others, disregard conventional expectations, norms, and obligations.

  They feel free to reject customary behavior and to be subversive, criticizing and poking fun at the worldly and religious establishment, dressing in bizarre ways or even going about naked, ignoring the niceties of social contact, ridiculing the narrow concerns of scholars and scholastics, cursing and using obscene language, employing song and dance, and using stimûlânts, intoxicants (like alcohol), and engaging in sexuality. They incarnate the esoteric principle of Tantra that liberation (mukti) is coessential with enjoyment (bhukti); that Reality transcends the categories of transcendence and immanence; that the spiritual is not inherently separate from the world.

  In their wild and eccentric behavior, the crazy adepts constantly challenge the limitations that unenlightened individuals presume and thus confront them with the naked truth of existence: that life is mad and unpredictable, except for the inescapable fact that we are thrown into the chaos of manifestation for only a brief span of time. They are a perpetual reminder that our whole human civilization is an attempt to deny the inevitability of death, which makes nonsense out of even the noblest efforts to create a symbolic order out of the infinite plastic that is life.

  Unlike conventional wisdom, which is meant to create a higher order or harmony, crazy wisdom has the primary function of disrupting humankind’s model-making enthusiasm, its impulse to create order, structure, and meaning. Crazy wisdom is enlightened icono- clasm. What it smashes, in the last analysis, is the egocentric universe and its creator, the subjective sense of being a separate entity-the ego. Thus, as my book Holy Madness explains in more detail, craz^ wisdom is spiritual shock therapy.33

  The crazy adept’s “naturalness” must be carefully distinguished from the mere impulsiveness of the child or the emotionally labile adult, just as it must be differentiated from the kind of learned spontaneity that is pursued in various humanistic therapies. Enlightened spontaneity (sahaja) implies more than enhanced awareness or integration of the body-mind as part of a comprehensive psychohygiene. The realized adepts are not just particularly successful egos. Their spontaneity is absolutely pure and coincides with the world process itself. They act out of the Whole, as the Whole.

  The best known crazy adept of the Tibetan tradition is undoubtedly Tibet’s folk hero Milarepa (written Milaraspa, 1040—1123 C.E.), yogin and poet extraordinaire. His hard years of pupilage under Marpa “the translator” exemplify the ego-grinding tribulations of all authentic spiritual discipleship. Who would not be touched by the traditional Tibetan biography of Milarepa in which we see him rebuild the same tower again and again, fighting physical pain, exhaustion, anger at the futility of it all, doubt about his gum, and spiritual despair? Already an accomplished magician and miracle worker by the time he met his teacher, Milarepa became an adept in his own right through Marpa’s skillful guidance and grace.

  Clad only in a white cotton robe, he traversed the borderland between Tibet and Nepal, teaching by way of his didactic poems and songs. Occasionally Milarepa would be found naked, and in one of his songs he observes that he knows no shame, since his genitals are natural enough. His disposition of crazy wisdom is indicated by the fact that, though living the life of a wandering renouncer, he is known to have initiated several of his female devotees into esoteric sexuality. To the common mind, sex and spirituality do not mix. Tantra, as we will see in Chapter 17, contradicts this popular assumption.

  Marpa (1012-1097 C.E.), the founder of the Kagyupa order of Vajrayâna Buddhism, was himself a crazy- wisdom master. A generous and humorous personage, he would often animate an angry disposition toward Milarepa to provoke in his beloved devotee the spiritual crisis that alone could lead to Milarepa’s liberation. In addition to his chief wife, he also associated with eight Tantric consorts.

  The most exaggerated and outrageous crazy adept of Tibet was undoubtedly Drukpa Kunleg (1455—1570 C.E.), who, like many other saintly madmen, started out as a monk, but upon enlightenment adopted the life of a mendicant. His Tibetan biography, which contains much symbolic and legendary material, claims that he initiated no fewer than five thousand women into the sexual secrets of Tantra. His biographer portrays him as a fond consumer of chung, the Tibetan beer, and an accomplished raconteur who was a fearless and humorous critic of his monastic contemporaries and society at large.

  The crazy-wisdom tradition of India revolves largely around the figure of the avadhûta. The Sanskrit word avadhûta means literally “cast off,” referring to one who has abandoned all the cares and concerns that burden the ordinary mortal. The avadhûta is an extreme type of renouncer (samnyâsin), a “supreme swan” (parama-hamsa) who, as the title indicates, drifts freely from place to place like a beautiful swan (hamsa), depending on nothing but the Divine. The designation avadhûta came into vogue during the Common Era, which saw the rise of Tantra in the form of such traditions as Sahajayâna Buddhism, Hindu Kaulism, and Nâthism, followed by Hatha-Yoga.

  Possibly one of the earliest references to the avadhûta can be found in the Mahanirvâna-Tantra (8.11). This work states that the “crazy” lifestyle of the avadhûta is to the kali-yuga—the present “dark age”—what the lifestyle of the samnyâsin was to the preceding epoch, where the moral fiber was still relatively strong. In the kali-yuga, more drastic means of awakening people are required because of their general insensitivity to the sacred dimension. The “shock therapy” of crazy wisdom is thus preferable to the quiet example of the world-renouncing ascetic, or samnyâsin.

  The Mahânirvâna-Tantra distinctly associates the avadhûta with Shaivism, the religio-spiritual tradition that has God Shiva as its focus. This scripture (14.140ff.) speaks of four classes of avadhûtas. The shaiva-avadhûta has received full Tantric initiation, while the brahma-avadhûta employs the brahma- mantra “Om, the One Being-Consciousness, the Absolute” (om sac-cid-ekam brahma). Both categories are subdivided into those who are as yet imperfect— “wanderers” (parivraj)—and those who have attained perfection—the “supreme swans.”

  One of the earliest Hatha-Yoga scriptures, the
Siddha-Siddhânta-Paddhati, contains many verses that describe the avadhûta. One stanza (6.20) in particular refers to his chameleon-like capacity to animate any character or role. Thus, he is said to behave at times like a worldling or even like a king, and at other times like an ascetic or naked renouncer. The appellation avadhûta, more than any other, came to be associated with the apparently crazy modes of behavior of some parama- hamsas, who dramatize the reversal of social norms, which is a behavior characteristic of their spontaneous lifestyle. In the Avadhûta-Gîtâ, a medieval work celebrating the crazy adept, the avadhûta is depicted as a spiritual hero who is beyond good and evil, beyond praise and blame, indeed beyond any of the categories that the mind can construct. One stanza (7.9) speaks of his transcendental status thus:

  As a yogin devoid of “union” (yoga) and “separation” (viyoga) and as an “enjoyer” (bhogin) devoid of enjoyment and nonenjoyment—thus he wanders about at leisure, filled with spontaneous Bliss [innate in his own] mind.

  The same scripture (8.6-9) explains the designation avadhûta as follows: