The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Transcendental indulgence is very simple, but you cannot understand this if you don’t do it. When you have the clarity and precision of shunyata along with a feeling of compassion, then you begin to develop who you are and what you are. Your identity, so to speak, becomes absolutely clear. What direction you should be going in and what you should be doing are certain, so you just go and do it. You proclaim yourself with no doubts and no depression. It is very simple that way. If you beat around the bush, there will be endless problems.

  All of this—how to clarify this situation and actually be able to see this fully and properly—is based on the principle of devotion. When you have enough devotion and loyalty to the lineage and to your vajra master, when you actually begin to do what has been said by the teachings, this provides tremendous confirmation. You can be arrogant in the positive sense.

  ABRUPTLY CUTTING THOUGHTS

  There is magic in vajrayana practice and in vajrayana altogether. People often think that magic is the ability to do things like change fire into water, or float up toward the ceiling and then come down again, or make tomato ketchup into cream cheese. But we have a better understanding of magic than that; what is actually happening is better than those things. We are not talking about magic in the style of a conjuring magician on the stage, but we are talking about fundamental magic. This magic is always based on the profound effect that we have discovered from the hinayana discipline of one-pointedness and the mahayana discipline of openness and compassionate nonterritoriality. Out of that comes vajrayana magic, which is that we are able to cut our thoughts abruptly and directly. On the spot!

  Trust

  There seem to be several stages to that process of cutting thoughts. The first is an attitude of trust in your vajra master and in his or her wisdom. Whether your vajra master is a vajra lady or vajra lord, in any case, the vajra master becomes a source of magic to cut your thoughts. When a vajrayana student begins to think of the qualities of the vajra master, that student should have an experience of hot and cold simultaneously. You experience hot because it is so fiery that it burns every deception and doubt, and you experience cold because it puts out the fires of emotional eruptions and emotional blazes.

  Cutting Discursive Thoughts

  When a student has some idea of the vajra master as the author of that power to cut thoughts, the vajra master in turn begins to instruct that student and tell them how to go about this. Because the vajra master is already an accomplished yogi and has gone through this experience themselves, their teaching is much more applicable and understandable to ordinary students.

  In tantric iconography, the herukas and dakinis are wearing garlands of freshly severed heads, which represents cutting through mental contents. That is the first thing we come across: cutting through our mental contents. So the truth of the matter is that first you cut the fringe thoughts, or what are known in Buddhist psychological writings or abhidharma literature as the mental contents. Mental contents are divided into good ones and bad ones. That is to say, some of them are virtuous, such as faith, and some of them are wicked, such as anger and laziness. Nevertheless, they are all mental contents. There are said to be fifty-one or fifty-two of these mental contents, depending on which text you follow—but there are definitely at least fifty.1

  Seeing Thoughts as Unborn, Unceasing, and Completely Empty

  Before you actually cut the guts of ego in yourself, first you cut the mental contents by direct measure. Following the instructions of the vajra master, you look at the mental contents and realize that they do not come from anywhere; then you experience that they do not have any content; finally, when you look at them further, you realize that they do not go anywhere. The traditional way of saying this is that thoughts are unborn, unceasing, and completely empty.

  The magic of cutting your discursive thoughts or mental contents actually happens as they dissolve and you see that they do not exist, and as they arise and you see them as complete shunyata. In other words, thoughts are free from past, present, and future. Toward the end of realizing that thoughts are free from the present, and the beginning of realizing that they are free from the future as well, there is that kind of [snaps his fingers]. That is definitely magic; you are able to cut your thoughts very abruptly and very precisely.

  In the mahayana, you try to quell your aggression and hatred for yourself with maitri, and you quell your hatred toward others with karuna. You have already had an experience of shunyata; you have already seen things as free from concepts, and you have already seen your thoughts as transparent. In the mahayana, everything depends on attitude, and everything is done with diplomacy. But in this case, you cut thoughts abruptly, on the spot. You do not even take an attitude. Taking the bodhisattva vow is committing yourself to an attitude, but in this case you are not committing yourself to an attitude; you are committing yourself to the real thing. You just do it. It is very direct and precise. In the vajrayana, you confront thoughts right away—bang, bang, bang, on the spot. You just do it.

  How to cut your thoughts in this manner would obviously be the next question. But there is no particular way to do it. The only thing I can say is that having developed genuine loyalty to the teachings of vajrayana and dedication to the vajra master, you just jump, on the spot, at your own thoughts. That is the only magic there is. No gunpowder or ingredients are involved, but cutting thoughts is the first way of blowing up the samsaric world.

  This combination of abruptness and devotion and actually being able to do it is the very important first step. So when you practice vajrayana, the main point that runs through all the traditions, through every level of vajrayana practice, is that you are able to cut your mental contents directly and abruptly.

  CUTTING THE CAUSE OF THOUGHTS: PASSION, AGGRESSION, AND IGNORANCE

  Having cut mental contents, we go beyond that, slightly further, to cutting the cause of the mental contents.

  Paralyzing Kleshas

  At this point, we are basically working with passion, aggression, and ignorance: the three root kleshas, or three poisons. Cutting the three root kleshas abruptly on the spot is much more dynamic than cutting the mental contents, which is easier. Cutting the mental contents is like a sneeze: you just pounce on your mind, you just cut it. But the three poisons are deep-rooted.

  The way to work with the three root kleshas is to paralyze them. The basic bewilderment is already a paralyzed situation that is trying to spew out passion, aggression, and ignorance, so you are trying to overparalyze beyond that. You are trying to throw out a much bigger zap—[gasps sharply]—which comes from understanding the sacredness of the vajrayana world.

  Experiencing Sacredness

  In the vajrayana tradition, drinking, eating, sleeping, walking, sitting, and whatever we do in our whole life is sacred. It is sacred because inherently there is no reason for it not to be sacred. It is actually as simple as that. We do not have to build up reasons for why it is holy, or say, “It has been blessed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” We also do not have to say that everything is sacred because it has been blessed by a great Buddhist, like the Karmapa. We don’t have to go through any little logic like that—things are just intrinsically sacred.

  When we touch an object, it is purely an object from our somewhat half-awakened point of view. We touch an object; it is an object that we are touching; therefore, it is good to touch the object. When we listen to a sound, it is good to listen to the sound. When we taste, it is good to taste. That kind of goodness is intrinsic goodness. There is no reason why it should not be, by the very fact that we are not particularly angry or pissed off at phenomena, but we actually accept our world simply as it is. The world is very definitely as it is. There is no reason either to be pissed off at it or to boost it up. It is just a simple world, which is a full world, a bright world, a shining world, a brilliant world.

  The world is a healthy world in its own way. Even if you are sick or unhealthy, even if your bathwater turns out to be full
of rusty clogs from your pipes, still it is healthy. Because of that vajrayana approach of basic healthiness, you actually are able to cut through the original root kleshas, which is the best magic of all. Usually passion, aggression, and ignorance occur through the inspiration of cheapness. You are angry, you are passionate, and you feel stupefied. Because you do not explore, you do not experience any of the room around you; you do not experience any atmosphere. That is very unintelligent. It is as if you were to go to a restaurant, sit at a table and eat, and find that your plate is the only world there is. You don’t even recognize that there is salt and pepper in front of you, let alone notice the music or the decor in that particular restaurant. You just do your thing and devour your food. With that point of view, you find yourself sitting on your plate and consuming your little world. You are not even sitting on your chair.

  Ransacking the Kleshas

  That small-world approach of passion, aggression, and ignorance could be called setting sun, quite definitely so. And that smallness is cut by the largeness of the expanse of space outside of it. It is cut by a sense of vastness and openness, and also by a sense of accomplishment. Magic happens at the level when you begin to loot the privacy of passion, aggression, and ignorance. You begin to search and loot. You go over your whole property, open all your drawers and cabinets, and throw everything out. Then, naturally and obviously, after searching and looting, you begin to find quite good delight. You feel delight that finally you were able to loot, or to ransack, your stronghold, which has given you problems for a long time.

  The process of ransacking is not like the police coming to your home and intruding, or like your enemies or the Mafia ransacking your house. In this case, ransacking is sacred activity, much more so than what you have done already. The whole thing is very sacred; it is basically sane. Whatever you do, whether you do it abruptly or slowly, it is sacred.

  Complete Looting

  When you cut thoughts on the spot so thoroughly, you are cutting karma. But then, because of habitual patterns and because you have not yet cut your basic alaya principle, you come up with further karmic actions. You can cut that by developing a sense of magic, or complete looting. When you have complete looting, there is not a next moment. Situations come from your own mind rather than from somebody else. When you control your mind, when you are able to loot your mind fully, then there is no other world to put garbage into your mind. There is no karma at that point. You have cleaned up the whole thing. Everything is in here, so once you begin to clean that up, there is no problem at all. Making decisions on the spot has no karma. You cannot make a wrong decision.

  Interestingly, during sitting meditation in the vajrayana, you practice the hinayana style of shamatha-vipashyana, which reinforces the state of healthiness of your mind. Then in the postmeditation experience, when you have finished your sitting practice and are going about your regular business, you can zap into that state of mind. You can always do that; it is what has traditionally been improvised. That is the only way to combine hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana together. This means you have to be awake and aware all twenty-four hours of every day.

  Particularly with beginning vajrayana practitioners, there is no relaxation at all, none whatsoever, and you cannot have a good time. But you are being fed by the energy that exists around you, which could be the equivalent of relaxation. That energy is your personal passion, aggression, and ignorance; it is the five-buddha-family principle of energy.2 So you are not exactly relaxed, but you are being fed constantly by this energy. Because of that, you begin to realize that you can give up and let go very easily.

  VAJRAYANA SAYINGS

  In the vajrayana, there are several sayings related to the discovery of transcending habitual patterns, which might be helpful at this point.

  Rikpa Free from Sem

  The first saying is “Rikpa free from sem.” In Tibetan it is sem tang tral-we rikpa. Sem means “mind,” tang tral-we means “free from,” and rikpa, again, means “insight”; so sem tang tral-we rikpa means “insight that has departed or separated from the mind.” It means rikpa that is free from the mind. This is one of the definitions of vajrayana insight: it is insight that is free from thinking about something else, free from perceiving the other. In other words, it is nondualistic; it is just direct perception.

  Buddha without Breath

  The second saying is “Buddha without breath,” which is rather difficult. In Tibetan it is uk tang tral-we sang-gye. Uk means “breath,” tang tral-we, as before, means “separated from” or “without,” and sang-gye means “buddha”; so uk tang tral-we sang-gye means “buddha without breath.” “Buddha without breath” means that the Buddha does not gasp or become short of breath. A buddha does not depend on saying “Phew!”

  This saying is connected with being wakeful. You can become a buddha whether you are dead or alive. Whether you breathe or not, you can become a buddha. So we have insight without mind, then buddha without breathing.

  Meditation without Thought, but Luminous

  The third saying is “Meditation without thought, but luminous or brilliant.” In Tibetan it is sella tokpa me-pe gompa. Sel or ösel means “luminosity,” tokpa means “thoughts,” “thinking,” or “discursive mind,” me-pe means “without,” and gompa means “meditation”; so sel-la tokpa me-pe gompa means “meditation without thought, but luminous.”

  The idea of luminosity here is opposed to just emptiness or the absence of duality alone. When we begin to look beyond duality, we see that it is not just empty and nonexistent. We begin to realize that beyond egohood, there is still tremendous aliveness, vitality, strength, and energy. This aliveness and energy is luminous and bright, and it contains tremendous wisdom. This is the basic point of the vajrayana approach to emptiness or egolessness: it is not purely annihilation, but it goes beyond annihilation. That is what is meant by meditation without thought, but still brilliant.

  Action without Fixation or Desire

  The fourth saying is “Action without fixation or desire.” In Tibetan it is dzinchak me-pe chöpa. Dzin means “holding” or “fixation,” chak means “desire,” me-pe means “not having that,” and chöpa means “action”; so dzinchak me-pe chöpa means “action without fixation or desire.”

  Usually when we act, we act in order to get something. We do not usually do something without getting something back. That is the samsaric approach to action. But in this case, we are talking about spontaneous action. Spontaneous action is related with skillful means; it is related to bodhisattva activity, or working for the sake of others. This kind of action is not based on ego fixation or the desire for our own attainment of any kind of pleasure. It is action without pleasure fixation or ego fixation. Therefore, it is pure action.

  View without Desire

  The fifth saying is “View without desire.” In Tibetan it is shedö me-pe tawa. Dö means “wanting,” and she is another word for lo, so shedö means “mind of desire,” me-pe means “without,” and tawa means “view,” referring to a metaphysical view or attitude; so shedö me-pe tawa means “view without desire.”

  These five sayings are all the blessings of the guru. The guru is the one who bestows the insight free from mind; makes you buddha without breath; teaches you the meditation without thought, but luminous; shows you the action free from fixation or desire; and shows you the view free from desire.

  There are a lot of blessings here, but I do not think these blessings are regarded as a kind of zap. Rather, when students develop these qualities, the teachers can tune in to them more. And in that way, in fact, students can short-circuit their past, present, and future, and begin to see the fourth moment on the spot. That seems to be the idea of blessings here. The guru is able to control the environment, because you and the guru share a world together. Because you share the same world, you both click at the same time, which is known as the meeting of minds.

  These five sayings seem to be the basic reference points of vajrayana. They are the comment
ary to our previous discussion of ordinary lo, transcendental lo, and freedom from habitual patterns. The idea is that when there are no habitual patterns, there is always insight free from mind; buddha without breath; meditation without thought, but still luminous; action without fixation or desire; and view without desire.

  Even at the beginning of the journey, these sayings are basic reference points for how we can attain freedom from habitual patterns and mental concepts. They are not necessarily the fruition, but they describe how we begin at the beginning, at the ground level. These sayings are more at the level of motivation. When we have such motivation, we definitely become nontheistic, because we are not really referring to ourselves. We do not say, “I want this and I want that.” We begin to see through our wantingness and desire.

  Wantingness and desire are the biggest problems and blockages of all. We have a problem with wanting and desire, with wanting to achieve something and wanting to refer back to our habitual patterns to make sure that what we are doing is right. On the basis of all five vajrayana sayings, and because we begin to see through our wantingness and desire, the four reminders arise: our precious human birth, free and well-favored; impermanence; the cause and effect of karma; and the suffering of samsara.3

  1. In Sanskrit, mental contents are called samskaras. In English, they may also be referred to as “formations” or “concepts.” The samskaras are one of the five skandhas, or five “heaps,” that constitute the ego, and they are also one of the twelve nidanas in the chain of interdependent origination. See volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 9, “The Painful Reality of Samsara.”