Joining together the three samaya principles—samaya of body, samaya of speech, and samaya of mind—brings about your understanding of the cosmos and of the universe altogether. You have the sense that you are not going to follow your neurosis, but you are going to see through it. At the same time, you keep the essence of neurosis, which at this point is no longer neurotic. As is said in the Supplication to the Takpo Kagyü, “The essence of thoughts is dharmakaya.” That is the basic idea here.
Samaya of the Vajra Master
In addition to the samayas of body, speech, and mind, there is a fourth samaya, called the samaya of the vajra master. We have already talked about the vajra master as your only life strength or life potency. If you need energy for your life or to survive, you need the vajra-master samaya to work with that. When you reject the samaya of the vajra master, then you deflate into a sort of dead-rat level or the level of a feeble bat.
The vajra-master-samaya principle is itself divided into samayas of body, speech, and mind, which are connected with the samayas we just discussed. Here, “body samaya” means that your body and the vajra master’s body are combined to form a team, so that you could actually win liberation or enlightenment together. Your speech and mind principles are also combined with the vajra master’s. So you are not actually doing the whole vajrayana path single-handedly, but you are doing it along with your vajra master.
The vajra master is your best partner. Your vajra master is your financier in terms of energy consumption, so you never run out of energy. If vajrayana students run out of energy, it is usually because they have no relationship with the vajra master or the vajra dharma. It is quite simple: if you reject your vajra master’s reinforcement, you automatically feel deflated.
All these samayas have a connection with patience in that they are regarded as practices rather than simply as occurrences. When you see the three samayas as your practice on the path, they become a journey rather than just experiences. As with the mahayana lamkhyer slogans, you bring the environment, your subconscious chatter, and your state of mind onto the path.3 You use all that as the basis for relating with the energy of vajrayana.
But in the case of vajrayana, it is not just that everything is workable. It goes beyond workability—it is so! Therefore, you do not even have to say, “If I step on this ice, there will be water down below, and I might sink into this ocean or this lake.” You do not even have to test it out. It is so! Just go ahead and do it! The question does not exist, but even that is needless to say. The question is long gone!
1. The symbol EVAM is one of the seals of the Trungpa tülkus. The Sanskrit EVAM, or “thus,” is used at the beginning of all sutras, which begin: “Thus have I heard.” In EVAM, the stillness of E and the activity of VAM are in an inseparable balance.
2. The feminine principle has many layers of meaning. It does not simply refer to the female gender, but to the quality of boundless space and emptiness from which all phenomena arise. See Chögyam Trungpa, Glimpses of Space: The Feminine Principle and EVAM (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Vajradhatu Publications, 1999).
3. Lam means “path,” and khyer means “carrying”; so lamkhyer means “carrying whatever you encounter onto the path.” For more on lamkhyer as it is used in the mahayana, see volume 2 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 38, “Point Three: Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Path of Enlightenment.”
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Maintaining the Samaya Vow
You are an idiot if you do not feel terrified in the vajrayana. Likewise, if you feel okay about jumping into midair in a parachute, then you do not know what is going on. . . . But there is a need for idiocy! Once you jump, your fearfulness creates—aah!—first thought. This is a very important point; you catch yourself before the first moment. You catch yourself at that zero situation where you have some kind of wakefulness.
THE DISCIPLINE OF SAMAYA
The samaya principle has many functions; it refers both to the samaya vow at the beginning of the abhisheka, as well as to the commitments the student makes as part of receiving the empowerment. Samaya is based on the understanding of sacredness as its inspiration and working basis. It is based on the experience of wholesomeness and the one-hundred-percentness of the whole situation.
The samaya principle provides intelligence or guidance in the vajrayana teachings, and it is one of the important disciplines in the vajrayana. Therefore, samaya is also referred to as samayashila, which combines the word samaya with shila, or “discipline.” Samayashila refers to your individual discipline with regard to the tradition or the practice. It is realizing and carrying out the mutual bond that you and your vajra master committed yourselves to together. The discipline of samaya involves being directed toward basic sanity.
The bond of samayashila is threefold: first, you are bound to work on yourself; second, you are bound not to create suffering for yourself or your fellow sentient beings; and third, you are bound to overcome your passion, aggression, and ignorance, and all the rest of your neuroses and kleshas. It is very important, absolutely necessary, to keep the samaya vow. Such things as not properly transmuting or working with negativities and emotions, developing laziness, or exhibiting cowardice can all cause the violation of samaya.
However, samayashila is not based on rules or behavior alone, but on your attitude. It is based on openness and on surrendering or submitting, which binds you to the practice and to the instructor of the practice. Samaya is based on a feeling of awe toward the teaching and the teacher combined, which creates magical power. A lot of things are hidden in the vajrayana, and that hidden quality is not revealed until a quality of basic sanity evolves in a tantric way, which comes from openness and the willingness to be completely groundless.
TWO LEVELS OF DISCIPLINE
In the vajrayana, we talk about two levels of discipline: workability, and the union of great joy and wisdom.
Workability
The first level of discipline is workability. It is taking the attitude that the dualistic fixations and habitual patterns that exist in your mind can be accommodated or worked with. They can be refrained from or they can be transmuted, depending on the level of your ability.
The Union of Great Joy and Wisdom
The second level of discipline is realizing that in order to work with these things, the intrinsic nature of your existence can no longer be regarded as a “nature,” but as reality. This reality is the unity or indivisibility of jnana and mahasukha, wisdom and great joy.
Jnana, or yeshe, is an all-knowing, all-comprehensive experience of reality that does not need any feedback or reassurance. It is self-existing openness and precision.
Great joy is a term that can be found in the language of a number of spiritual traditions, particularly theistic traditions. The Hindu tradition also uses the term great joy, and we find similar language in Christianity and Judaism for the experience of the pleasant, beautiful, and seductive side of the face of Jehovah. But in the vajrayana, when we talk about great joy, we are not talking about any blessing descending on us. Instead, the idea is that we have to invoke mahasukha ourselves, personally.
You might ask, “How do I do that?” or “Can I do it?” And the answer is: “You can do it.” You might then say, “If you tell me the technique, then I can do it.” However, that is not how it works. Great bliss can only be evoked on the basis of realizing that kündzop is no longer a hang-up, and töndam is no longer a promise. When you realize that neither kündzop nor töndam is a big deal, there is bound to be a sort of cosmic orgasm taking place, an experience in which power and realization take place automatically. That kind of cosmic orgasm can take place in situations such as the time between life and death, when a mother is giving birth to a child, in the state of panic, and in the experience of sexual orgasm. So a cosmic orgasm can take place in sexual union, as well as the petty orgasm that usually takes place.
This approach to tantra may seem dirty, but we have to use these kinds of analogies. I hope any highly gentee
l people who may be reading this will not be embarrassed. I would like to ask your permission to speak in this matter so we can preach tantra. Of course, vajrayanists themselves would not regard these things as dirty. As for the theists, there may be issues of morality to be considered, and they may prefer a more genteel approach. However, using sexual analogies does not mean that our approach is cheap or perverted now, or that it might have been perverted in the past, or might be in the future. We are just using natural, simple language.
The idea of cosmic orgasm is that everything is one and many at the same time. The logic is: if you experience oneness, you also experience multiplicity at the same time, because of the oneness. This is very simple logic, actually. If you want to be alone in your little cabin, in one little room, the reason is that you are aware of the multiplicity of all the societies around you. That is why you appreciate oneness. At another point, you may feel very lonely and need company. If you call to your spouse, “Come down! We have company!” that is an expression of loneliness at the same time. So again, you are feeling both the oneness and multiplicity. But in neither case is there quite the realization of the unity of the one and the many. However, in cosmic orgasm, there is the experience of the one and the many being indivisible. In mahasukha, because of the experience of the one and the many put together, there is immense openness, an immense feeling of multiplicity, and an immense sense of inauguration.
Mahasukha takes place on a relationship level. It is not particularly connected with the hinayanists, who are leading their frugal lives and trying to work with the truth of suffering in their homespun style, one stitch at a time. Nor is mahasukha connected with the mahayanists, who are trying to develop joy out of nothingness, or shunyata, and who are debating with one another on a dialectical level. Those approaches are not applicable here. But since we have already gone through these trainings, which have provided us with enormous background, we now have an immense, open style. We have the skill of understanding natural phenomena in their own right, in their own exuberance, in their own expansiveness and extravagance. That is joy, or mahasukha.
To review, the first level of discipline in vajrayana is regarding dualistic fixations as the basis of practice. What follows from this is that we work with dualistic fixations in the unity of mahasukha and jnana. In discussing vajrayana discipline, we are not talking about dreamworlds. We are not dreaming about what we will do when we become enlightened, or thinking that when we are enlightened we will become great people and do great things. Instead, we are talking about our own actual personal and ordinary situations. That seems to be the basis of the vajrayana.
MAINTAINING YOUR DISCIPLINE
Sometimes in practice, you may experience fear. Fear might simply be arising in your stream of being, but you might then project onto it the idea of having broken samaya, without having really done so. However, if you begin to separate one little aspect of practice from another, it is going to be very difficult to sort them out. You would need a great logician like Nagarjuna to come along and tell you which part of your practice is on the right track, and which part is on the wrong track. So it is better to regard your practice as one whole, one situation.
At this point, since you do not have Nagarjuna, you should simply let go with the transmission that has been given to you by your teacher. You should dissolve these concerns and maintain your discipline. In other words, do not be concerned with too many details, or with whether or not you have violated your samaya. Simply let go of that situation, and maintain your samaya discipline. Your single-minded discipline is very important. It is sometimes known as the fourth moment—beyond the three moments of past, present, and future. Maintain that. By doing so, it is possible to keep up your discipline and training when the inevitable stormy waves of strong sickness and turmoil overwhelm you.
A basic samaya principle is not to completely lose sight of what you are doing, and not to be overwhelmed by the kleshas. You should not be subjugated by physical ailments or problems on the physical level, but you should stay above those and maintain a sense of sanity. You can develop cheerfulness and joy, in spite of your sickness. You need joy, because dealing with sickness is difficult. But even if you are sick, you do not have to feel that you are completely trapped. There are gaps, moments in which you can cheer yourself up and celebrate the existence of life.
When you have a lot of physical ailments, and there is a moment of lightening up or humor, it is an opportunity to come back to your discipline precisely. I think you are strong enough to do that. You can actually cure physical ailments by simply returning to your discipline. When you are really rolling in the waves, you can just come back. Absolutely! I am not talking from a secondhand point of view, but from firsthand experience. I have done it myself, and it is possible. It is important to continually come back and never give up. In the vajrayana, we are not cheating the world, but we are promoting some kind of goodness.
PROTECTING THE VAJRA DHARMA
I would like to apologize for using so many traditional terms. These terms come out of the texts and scriptures and philosophical writings of my Buddhist heritage, and they are loaded with meaning. However, in this discussion, they are not particularly meant to be philosophical terminology, but experiential terms referring to experiences that actually exist. In presenting the vajrayana, I also do not want to create the impression that everything is over your head, so that there is nothing you can actually do. That would be like telling fairy tales, which seems to be the wrong approach. If I did such a thing, I would be personally punished by the dharma protectors, such as our friend Ekajati, who would be very angry with me.
As far as the role of the teacher is concerned, it is considered criminal to teach vajrayana by presenting it as ordinary. It is also said that trying to convert individuals directly into vajrayana without preparation would be criminal. According to the Hevajra Tantra and many other tantras, students should first be taught hinayana and mahayana, and only then should they be shown the path of mantra, or vajrayana. If teachers ignore that tradition and lead students into the vajrayana immediately, it is quite possible that chaos will result, and a lot of neurosis will take place.
The Guhyasamaja Tantra says that to begin with, a person should receive the complete hinayana disciplines; then they should receive the complete mahayana disciplines; and finally, they should be received into the vajrayana. People in the past have recommended quite strongly that hinayana is the preparation, mahayana is the further direction, and vajrayana is the final crescendo. Without that kind of prior development, vajrayana can be destructive to both the vajra master and the student. So before entering the vajrayana, there needs to be immense respect for the hinayana practice of shamatha-vipashyana, and for the bodhisattva’s paramita practice and their glimpse of shunyata experience. Having had that training, the worthy person can then enter into the vajrayana properly.
Entering the vajrayana is like boarding a vajra airplane. You will be welcomed and received by the vajra master, as well as by vajra hostesses and hosts of all kinds: “Welcome aboard the vajrayana. Captain So-and-So is directing this diamond airplane. If there is anything we can do, please call on us.” Once you get onto this particular flight, it is quite an odyssey, but it does not seem to be all that easy to do. It is necessary to realize the crimes that can be committed, both by an incompetent vajra master (who hardly could be called a vajra master, but should be called a salesperson, which basically means a charlatan) and by a frivolous student who would like to collect powers and techniques and wisdoms of all kinds (which they are not going to get out of a real teacher). So both teacher and student should be very firm in understanding that unless the student has some experience of the hinayana and the mahayana, they are not going to be accepted into the vajrayana.
The teacher at this point is regarded as an immovable person, someone who cannot be shaken by little jokes, little tricks, little scenes, little insults, or little criticisms. That person has a very solid basis in vajra dig
nity. They also embody the lineage of the past completely, every one of the individuals in the lineage. There may be a thousand people in the lineage, but all their wisdom is transmitted and communicated properly by that one particular person: the vajra master.
Presenting tantra is a very sacred matter and very dangerous. If we were off by a quarter of an inch, somebody would tell us that we were doing something wrong. So we are relying a lot on messages from the phenomenal world, and at the same time we are relying on our own intelligence. This discussion of vajrayana is being closely guarded by visible forces and invisible forces. But it is not as if a ghost is hovering around dressed in a white sheet with holes for the eyes. Actually, there is something much more powerful than a ghost guarding this situation. Nonetheless, we can still discuss everything nonchalantly, as if nothing is happening.
GROUNDLESSNESS
The willingness to be groundless could be called the seed of being outrageous in a tantric way. In other words, you are willing to let the threat to security break through. Unless there is that kind of bravery, you are not apt to hear the vajrayana teachings. The more that people without bravery hear the teachings, the more confused or completely terrified they get. They cannot take it.
Usually, the ground is something that you can push against in order to escape. If somebody is trying to catch you with a lasso, you can save yourself from being caught by standing steady on the earth and pulling back on the rope. But with groundlessness, you have nothing to stand on and no way to free yourself. From the tantric point of view, you are caught already and you cannot pull back, so groundlessness has a quality of no escape. Ground, from this point of view, is negative. It is a way to chicken out.
The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness Page 30