The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
Page 7
WAYS TO ENTER
In a sense, entering the vajrayana is choiceless, but at the same time, there is a choice. As far as your own basic attitude is concerned, there is a choice as to what extent you will give up your clinging. If you do not enter the hinayana path of accumulation, then you can avoid getting into the vajrayana, but once you begin the path of accumulation and go on to the path of unification and so forth, you have no choice.1 So even beginning to get into the hinayana seems to be equivalent to entering the vajrayana.
To clarify the whole thing, the various bodhisattva experiences are not intended to be the marks or signs that you are ready to enter into the vajrayana. You might be on the level of the first path, the path of accumulation, and still enter the vajrayana. In order to move from the mahayana to the vajrayana, you do not need to have fully realized the ten mahayana bhumis, although you do need to have had a glimpse of them and of the enlightenment of the eleventh bhumi.
In the same way, in order to move from the hinayana to the mahayana, you do not need to have fully realized awareness or mindfulness, but you do need to have had a glimpse of it. So we are not particularly discussing a person of the eleventh bhumi being a vajrayana practitioner, although they could be. We are talking about a person on the path of accumulation being a vajrayana practitioner at the same time. You may not be able to pull millions of buddhas out of your skin or become a universal monarch, but those are superficial credentials. In fact, even when you are still at the level of the first path, you could develop the same understanding and meditative experience as a person at the eleventh bhumi level, and you could enter into the vajrayana.
When people enter the vajrayana, some are more attracted to one tantric yana, while others are more attracted to another yana. But the attraction is not quite the point; it is the practitioner’s innate nature that is important. For instance, somebody could be highly attracted to kriyayoga, but actually be an atiyoga candidate, or vice versa.2
NOT WASTING TIME
The vajrayana is based on very strict discipline. You cannot waste too much time. Otherwise, it might be like the story of the Tibetan spiritual leader and scholar Sakya Pandita (1182–1252 CE) and the Chinese emperor Goden Khan. When the Sakya Pandita went to China as the Imperial Spiritual Instructor, the emperor said, “I have to check on you for three years to see whether you are a suitable guru.” At the end of three years he said, “I think you are a suitable guru. I would like to receive instruction from you.” But the Sakya Pandita replied, “I now have to check on you for three years.” And at the end of the three years, the Emperor died. The point is: don’t waste time.3
PICKING UP MESSAGES
In the vajrayana, you pick up messages at a much higher level of sensitivity. The clarity becomes very powerful and obvious, and a real flash occurs. You receive guidelines about how to handle your life from the point of view of symbolism and the self-existing messages of your lifestyle. You get feelings, for example, that indicate what the energy of the day will be. If you are in tune with reality, you receive constant, spontaneous guidance. Enormous powers of mental clarity can be developed even without attaining complete, full enlightenment. The question is how much you are able to relate with your passions, and how much you are able to develop precision and clarity. The whole thing is completely workable.
FEAR OF TANTRA AND COSMIC ALIENATION
In entering the vajrayana, a certain amount of fear is good. If you are overly eager and enthusiastic about the whole thing, you might make mistakes. But if you are fearful and you feel that you are not ready for the vajrayana, it is a very good sign. That is precisely why you are ready for the vajrayana. Because there is no pride, no sense of looking for another drama, the whole thing becomes very powerful and workable.
If you are at the level of entering the vajrayana, you do not know where you are going or whether you are going or coming. You have already gone through the shunyata experience, but now you are getting into something very foreign to shunyata experience, which is slightly crazy and scary. You are getting into something that does not really exist either in the shunyata experience of the bodhisattva or in the hinayana. You feel that you have been alienated from your familiar world, from your beliefs, from your practice, and from everything in your life. You have been alienated from a lot of things, but at the same time you find a quality of trust, and a hook or foothold into the bigger world.
You find that you are relating with something or other, but you do not know exactly what you are doing. Therefore, you begin to explore and to find out what it is all about. You do not want to go all the way back, and you do not want to go forward all that much either. You would like to have a convenient journey, one that takes place properly, and you find the various methods and means of vajrayana empowerments to be very concrete and helpful. In an empowerment ceremony you are told that now you are “Tathagata So-and-So,” and therefore you are going to practice this way or that way. It is efficacious and very rewarding.
At the same time, the whole approach is somewhat outlandish. This has nothing to do with the particular culture of countries such as Tibet or India or wherever. It is a cosmic alienation that takes place. The logic of the vajrayana is not the usual logic that we use, so there is a feeling of being slightly haunted and fundamentally uncomfortable. It is quite right to develop a person in that way. Within that huge space of lostness and that feeling of hauntedness—big lost space—the various empowerments that take place are by no means overcrowded and busybody. They are a gift.
Fear of tantra arises because it is so unreasonable, particularly Buddhist tantra. For example, Buddhist tantra does not care at all about the ground it inherited from Hinduism. In fact, Buddhist tantric iconography shows wrathful deities stamping on the Hindu gods, saying, “Shiva is under my right foot, and Parvati is under my left foot, and I am stamping on all of your egos!” So the vajrayana is very unreasonable, and it is not hospitable. No gratitude is involved. As another example, Padmasambhava in his wrathful embodiment created earthquakes and landslides that shook the country landscapes of Tibet and changed them all around. Even the invitations presented to him by the local deities were rejected, and those deities were cut down immediately, one by one.
So Buddhist tantra is very strange and unreasonable, and the pride involved with it is tremendous—it is called vajra pride. Such pride could also be called crazy wisdom. In Tibetan, crazy wisdom is yeshe chölwa: yeshe means “wisdom,” and chölwa means “gone wild.” A description for crazy wisdom that is found in the scriptures states: “He subdues whoever needs to be subdued and destroys whoever needs to be destroyed.” Crazy wisdom is just the action of truth. Unlike ordinary craziness, it is both ruthless and accurate. It is fantastic.
Fear of tantra is not just about your own personal existence, but you are also reflecting the fear that arises from national pride or national ego. Vajra pride does not accept that; you no longer let that kind of national ego come into your system. So vajra pride is a kind of vajra penicillin. At the same time, in both Hindu and Buddhist tantra, there is a danger that the quality of pride could become a problem. Tantra is proud of itself, and tantric teachers are also proud of themselves; and since the tantric teachings are self-contained, the teachers as well as the students may feel that they do not need any help from anything outside, none whatsoever. But by acting in that way, they screw themselves up, unless they first go through the hinayana and mahayana as preliminary training.
One of the weaknesses of tantra is that it has no inbuilt mechanism to help you rebound from going too far, nothing that acts as a moderating principle. The bodhisattva path is fantastic in that regard; there are constant self-corrective mechanisms. And in tantra, once you reach the advanced level of mahamudra, you can correct the situation by reading it accurately.4 But as far as a tantric beginner is concerned, there is no corrective mechanism at all. By the time you discover that you have gone off, it is too late; you have already psychologically exploded. So either you are on
the path or you are not. If you are on the path, then you can go on beyond that starting point. You have something definite to work on. But at the beginner’s level of vajrayana, the only way to stay on the path is through good training in the previous yanas.
One way of looking at this is to use the old Zen proverb about the path to enlightenment: “First you see the mountain, then you don’t see the mountain, then you see the mountain.” In hinayana, you see the mountain; in mahayana, the mountain of suffering is dissolved into emptiness; and in tantra, you begin to see the mountain again. You are almost involved in a reacquaintance with, or re-creation of, the world. But you have to go slowly and ritually, so that this time you are conscious of what is happening. And to do this properly, you need to have had training in the hinayana and mahayana.
THE DANGER OF TEACHING VAJRAYANA
The vajrayana is said to be both difficult to understand and difficult to teach. It is also said to be dangerous to teach. Those of us who are teachers, or vajra masters, have been told by the grandparents and the great-grandparents of the lineage not to proclaim vajrayana to those who are not ready. We were told that if we did so, we would suffer from proclaiming such secrets. It has even been said that we should not proclaim the vajrayana to anybody at all, because we would be wasting our time and people would not understand such teachings, so it would be better to do something else. Practices like sending and taking, or helping old people to cross the street might be better than proclaiming the vajrayana. Nonetheless, with permission from my root guru,5 the lineage, and the protectors of the teachings, we will proceed with our discussion of the dharma.
TWO CONTINUATIONS
There are two styles of tantric tradition: spring continuation and autumn continuation. In spring continuation, you take the ground as the path, and in autumn continuation, you take the fruition as the path. But whether your tradition is that of ground or fruition, there is still the path. In either case, students have to work hard, so in that sense the path is always the same.
Taking the Ground as the Path
Spring continuation means using the ground as the path. In Tibetan, this is called shi lamdu chepa. Shi is “base” or “basic ground,” lam is “path,” du is “as,” and chepa means “doing it”; so shi lamdu chepa is “taking the ground as the path.” Here the ground or first inspiration is made into the path. This approach is connected with what is known as lower tantra.6
In the springtime, the journey is one of sowing the seed, and the sprouting of the seed into greenery. Like a seed, you have great potential; therefore, you can journey in the vajrayana. So in spring continuation, the way you are is the ground, which can be used as the path.
Taking the Fruition as the Path
Autumn continuation means using the fruition as path. In Tibetan this is drebu lamdu chepa. Drebu means “fruition,” and again lamdu chepa means “taking as the path”; so drebu lamdu chepa means “taking the fruition as the path.”
In the autumn, when you have gathered your harvest and stored your seeds and grains, you appreciate what you have harvested. Therefore, you can relate with sowing further seeds. You are inspired because you know that seeds can be grown, nice flowers can bloom, and you can produce more flowers next year.
Vajrayana teaching techniques are not particularly sneaky or magical. They simply make use of those two possibilities. Some teachers have a ground quality, as if they had grown out of the ground; other teachers are accomplished already, so their achievement is their path. You can find those two approaches to teaching in any kind of education system, even with ordinary subjects like mathematics or science. Some teachers teach from the point of view of what they were, and some teach from the point of view of what they are. As far as students are concerned, some people are inspired by the first approach, and other people are inspired by the second. It is very simple and straightforward.
In any case, even when we talk about taking the fruition, or autumn, as the path, you still have to go through the winter and the whole cycle all over again. One of the important points in vajrayana is that you have to learn to backtrack all the way to good old hinayana and fantastic mahayana. The precision of hinayana is absolutely necessary; otherwise, when you do vajrayana practice, you will have difficulty doing your mudras and mantras and visualizations. You will have difficulty quieting your mind, and you will be lost in the middle of nowhere. You might even think that you are in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike.
The substance of the vajrayana comes only from the best of hinayana and the best of mahayana. When you begin to practice sending and taking, or tonglen, and you exchange yourselves for others, only then are you no longer soaked in setting-sun vision. Only then can you generate greater warriorship.
In turn, once you have finished your vajrayana preliminary practices, you could actually associate yourselves with the vajrayana path, and with whatever appears or is given in our discipline and tradition. Vajrayana preliminary practices require exertion, stillness of mind, thoroughness, and selflessness, so before beginning them, further training in the previous yanas makes sense. Because of that training, you can handle and experience properly the best of the vajrayana.7
A NATURAL RIPENING PROCESS
In terms of beginning at the beginning, we find that we are born in the middle of winter when everything is frozen. The world outside is white with snow, and it is too cold to go outside. But when we begin on the spiritual path, we discover that winter has an end; we begin to discover spring. Everything is thawing, there is softness, and we see the green shoots of grasses and plants. The spring is a time for planting. So we begin to cultivate our field, to spread manure, and to sow seeds.
As our journey continues, we have summer. In this case it is a long summer, and it includes Indian summer. We have a long journey, a very long journey, a completely long journey. We do our practice again and again. We sit and meditate again and again and again. We sit, we practice, we sit, we practice. We continue to confront our emotions and everything else. It is a long summer.
Then something begins to break; some kind of opening happens. Autumn is coming. The leaves begin to change color, and there is a change of attitude. A change of season is in the air. That change could be seen as a warning of winter or as a threat, but it also could be seen as a celebration that the seeds we have sown have finally born their results.
The idea of the four-seasons metaphor is that a natural journey takes place. On that journey, you begin at the beginning, get used to practice and discipline, ripen, and finally see results. And you make that journey through the seasons again and again. For several years, you go through the seasons, and finally you realize that a journey has taken place. You see that you are not the same person you were originally, not the same Joe Schmidt. Your appearance and your existence altogether have begun to change and become softer.
The vajrayana path is designed to confirm your change or development as naturally as possible. It is a natural process, and at the same time it is good. Your intentions are good and gentle, because by that time you have already become a child of illusion.8 You are already a thoroughly trained, or shinjanged person,9 and you are already a tonglen-ed person. Therefore, you are capable of practicing vajrayana fully and thoroughly. That kind of training is important. Otherwise, if you were just an infant, and you were given tantric ritual instruments to play with such as a ghanta, dorje, or damaru (bell, scepter, or hand drum), you could get lead poisoning from chewing on your dorje, or puncture your damaru by trying to find out how strong it was. So the point is that when you become a vajrayanist, you should already be a fully grown hinayanist as well as a mahayanist.
Although at this level the vajrayana could be called a journey, it does not go anywhere and it does not come from anywhere. So the vajrayana is a vehicle that seems to have neither beginning nor end. You can neither reverse it nor proceed further along. The vajrayana is self-existent, by its own nature. Therefore, the vajrayana path could be said to be a nonjourney.
1. The path of accumulation and the path of unification are the first two of the five paths. For more on the five paths and the bodhisattva levels, or bhumis, see volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 60, “The Five Paths,” and see volume 2, chapter 44, “The Paths and Bhumis.”
2. Kriyayoga and atiyoga are two of the six tantric yanas: kriyayoga, upayoga, yogayana, mahayoga, anuyoga, and atiyoga. For a discussion of these yanas, see part 10, “The Tantric Journey: Lower Tantra,” and part 12, “The Tantric Journey: Higher Tantra.”
3. Other accounts relate that, after the testing period, Sakya Pandita did in fact end up giving teachings to Goden Khan.
4. Mahamudra means “great symbol,” and refers to the highest realization of the New Translation School. For a discussion of mahamudra, see part 11, “The Tantric Journey: Mahamudra.”
5. The root guru refers to a student’s primary teacher, and in particular, the teacher who enters that student into the vajrayana teachings. Trungpa Rinpoche’s root guru was Jamgön Kongtrül of Shechen.