The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  As long as there is any trace of ego remaining, there is always going to be some doubt. There are different levels in your development: there is the complete destruction of ego, there is being unable to be seduced by ego, and there is ego fixation. If there is just plain old ego, it’s fine; in that case, there are simply problems of hot and cold. But if there is any tendency to become a revolutionary trooper and go against the vajra force, this is the path that leads to vajra hell.

  Vajra hell arises from perverting the teachings, and going against them with deliberate consciousness. So you get into vajra hell not because you are ignorant or cowardly, but because you are brave in the sense of being willing to completely disobey your samaya vows. If you are not practicing enough sitting meditation when you do vajrayana practices, or you are simply experiencing resistance, that seems to be a purely mahayana sin, rather than a vajrayana sin.

  Whether you are a candidate for vajra hell or not depends on whether you develop a philosophy or logic for why you do not sit. For example, you may think that it is okay that you do not sit because what you are doing is in accordance with the dharma. You may think that your reason for not sitting is logical, that it is based on quotations from the scriptures, that there are ideas and philosophy behind it. But in creating a big deal out of your resistance to sitting, you are digging your own grave. The simple experience of resistance has become a philosophical ego trip. Once you develop principles to justify your behavior, it becomes a problem in the long run. That kind of philosophical justification is an application to vajra hell. I am sure that in vajra naraka there are more poets and philosophers than farmers. Even bankers don’t make it to vajra hell! But I cannot give you the whole answer as to how vajra hell works. I am not particularly the janitor of vajra hell.

  AN EXAMPLE OF SOMEONE WHO ENDED UP IN VAJRA HELL

  One example of a person who is supposed to have gone to vajra naraka is a teacher who lived in the eighteenth century, in the reign of the fifteenth Karmapa. This teacher produced literature on tantric abhishekas and initiated a lot of students. But he was making a kind of Satan worship out of vajrayana doctrine, and he turned his students into vicious, aggressive people, which began to cause a lot of pain and suffering in the vicinity where he lived.

  This teacher was celebrating his victory one day, and for this celebration he had set up a tent, and he invited his friends over for a feast. But during the feast an earthquake occurred, and simultaneously, supposedly, there was the utterance “Vajra naraka!” echoing in the sky. Everybody in attendance fell through a crack into the earth. So the teacher’s students went with him.

  Some pilgrims who came to visit my monastery had seen the place where this happened. They had seen the big crack in the earth where the earthquake occurred and the people went downstairs. For a few years, no crops would grow in that area. The whole place became very dry, famine stricken, and desolate. People began to call it Death Valley.

  THE STORY OF RUDRA

  The classic example of someone who went to vajra hell is Matram Rudra, a student who killed his own vajrayana teacher. When Rudra’s teacher told him that his path was wrong, but his brother’s path was right, Rudra killed his teacher and ended up in vajra hell—and he is still there. If you want to meet him, I am sure he will wait for you there!

  The story of Rudra is that he and a fellow student, a dharma brother, were studying with the same master. The teacher said that the essence of his teachings was spontaneous wisdom, and that even if a person were to indulge himself in extreme actions, they would become like clouds in the sky and be freed by fundamental spontaneity.

  The two disciples understood these teachings on spontaneity entirely differently. The first disciple went away and began to work on his own characteristics, positive and negative. He became able to free them spontaneously without forcing anything, neither encouraging nor suppressing them. The second disciple went away and built a brothel. He organized a big gang of his friends to make raids on the nearby villages, killing the men and carrying off the women.

  After some time, the two disciples met again, and both were shocked by the other’s kind of spontaneity. Each of them was sure that he was right, so they decided to go to the teacher and ask for his opinion. When the teacher told the second disciple that the first disciple was right and that he was wrong, the second disciple became so angry that he drew his sword and killed his teacher on the spot. Because he did not like what his teacher had to say, he decided to eliminate him. That disciple was eventually reborn as the demon Matram Rudra.

  There is a powerful link between rudra-hood and the relationship with the teacher. According to the vajrayana, the worst thing you can do is to kill your teacher, to kill the dharma. If you destroyed all life in the universe, that would still be a much lighter sin than destroying the dharma or the teacher. From that perspective, you could say that in comparison, even dictators like Hitler are very mild cases of rudra.

  RUDRA AND THE PRINCIPLE OF ABSOLUTE EGOHOOD

  Rudra, or the principle of absolute egohood, is the opposite of enlightenment. The vajrayana teachings warn that it is actually possible to attain this state of total egohood. Such absolute egomania requires an incredible amount of precision and intelligence, yet there is no ability to communicate. In other words, you are completely walled in. Basically, rudra-hood is the same as vajra hell. With rudra, you actually go through experiences and training in the same way that ordinary people headed in the direction of enlightenment go through their training, but instead of going in the direction of enlightenment, you get sucked into vajra hell and experience constant struggle, pain, and punishment. Because of the intense punishment, pain, and resentment that exists in vajra hell, you turn into a rudra, a cosmic monster who can destroy individuals’ lives.

  The teaching and the practice of rudra is to try to make everything a part of your own personal trip. It is a power trip without any wisdom, the epitome of egohood.

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  Perfecting the Samaya Vow

  The samaya principle is not exactly positive, but it is an utterly delightful process. It is utterly delightful because you begin to realize the depth of reality by experiencing it fully and crudely, and you begin to realize the surface of reality by experiencing it as vast, empty, and fantastic.

  DESTROYING OUR OWN THEISTIC PRECONCEPTIONS

  When we talk about vajrayana, we should be very careful: we should understand the difference between theism and nontheism. In the vajrayana you visualize various deities, which could be misunderstood as the re-creation of a kind of god principle. Therefore, it is very important for you to realize the meaning of nontheism at the beginning. In order to relate to the yidams and the protectors and the various liturgies, you have to understand that they are not the product of defending our territory or proclaiming our religion.

  Once a basic samaya bond is established between student and teacher, and we are joined together with the vajra master, we have a scheme for destroying any possibility of theism. That seems to be the basic bondage. The idea of destroying theism may seem quite outrageous, but our style of destroying theism is not like the Islamic style of chopping off the heads of statues of gods, or destroying churches. What we are destroying is our own preconceptions of the savior notion in our own mind.

  According to the nontheistic approach, we are not going to be saved by the other. However, we are going to be helped by the other, or the guru principle. The guru’s blessing and the blessings of the lineage can enter into our system. We are not going to create a fourth world war to propagate nontheism; the path of nontheism is based on how we can actually conquer ourselves. We have our daddy, our mommy, our guru, and our friends and family. How can we relate to them properly? We have to be free from leaning on any source of help, but at the same time we can be inspired by the power and the blessings that are always available to us, which is an interesting dichotomy.

  You may think that you understand very generally how theism works, but you have to try to un
derstand it more precisely. Theism is ingrown in us. Because of our previous encounters with theism, it sits somewhere very deep within us. It even shows up in the kind of vision that leads to the creation of shopping centers, or supermarkets like King Soopers in Colorado. Anything of that kind is a vision of theism, as opposed to having a dairy farm or a vegetable garden or a bazaar. In that sense, theism is something manufactured.

  Everything in our world has been stamped by theism. In our society and culture, we do not go to the butcher, but we buy packaged meat at the supermarket—that is a manifestation of theism. We do not want to do things manually or to handle things directly in our messy world. Theism is the laundromat and fast-food approach. Overcoming that theistic approach is why we do oryoki at practice programs in our community. Oryoki makes everything very simple: we do our eating, our cleaning, and our dish washing properly.

  Samaya, the basic bondage of student and teacher, destroys any possibility of theism. Theism is based on comradeship, the idea that you and I will try to fix this world together. But according to the samaya principle, you alone are supposed to fix this world, without anybody else. You cannot call your plumber to fix your plumbing; you have to do it yourself. That is the practicality of samaya.

  Samaya as command, samaya as bondage, and samaya as a rule that you cannot violate means that you have to do it yourself. You cannot use any other reference point, any other quotations, or any other ideas, but you have to be genuine and true to yourself. It is comparable to life and death. When you were first born, nobody helped you; you did it yourself. Your mother pushed you out of her cervix and you were born. Later you will die. Nobody makes you die; your breath just stops, and you die on the spot. Everything is raw and rugged, as precise as putting a knife in a sheath.

  Samaya is very personal, very individual. It is like being sick. When you are sick and you look around, you see that nobody else is sick, only you. And if you need surgery, you have to go through the operation yourself. Nobody can do it for you; it wouldn’t help. You alone are put in the ambulance and driven to the hospital, nobody else. You alone are examined by your doctor and told that you have appendicitis. Everything is personal, always. You cannot borrow or substitute anything for anything, but you have to do everything manually. Our lineage has done that, and you have to learn to do that as well. It is very direct. So the samaya bondage is essentially to oneself. The bondage is to personal experience, which is very lonely. It is based on not blaming, not lying, not trying to fiddle with things—and not trying to get reinforcement.

  Once you are committed to samaya, if you violate that commitment, it could send you into complete neurosis or psychosis, so that you have no relationship with your body, mind, and logic at all. You could become completely psychotic, beyond Mussolini and Hitler, because they still had some understanding about reality, even if it was based on psychotic logic. The samaya principle is a powerful bond. Taking the samaya vow is signing one’s name on the dotted line. In doing so, you are saying that you will either go toward absolute complete freak-out, or you will return to fundamental sanity completely.

  UPROOTING THE SAMSARIC WORLD

  Taking the samaya vow is the way to completely uproot the samsaric world. It is how you can understand and uproot the conflicting emotions, or kleshas. So if you want to be uprooted completely, it is necessary for you to understand the samaya principle. The samaya principle is very important, and the consequences of violating such a principle are quite severe. It is possible that you might find yourself stuck with one or two of the kleshas, or maybe all of them, and be unable to bail yourself out. You might be boiled in that pot of kleshas eternally, which does not make a good soup for you or for your friends.

  Not all emotions are conflicting emotions, or kleshas. Emotions like delight, sympathy, and tenderness have more to do with basic goodness than with any kind of obscuration. By overcoming the kleshas, we do not mean that everybody should become like jellyfish, without any good or bad emotions whatsoever. We are not talking about that. We are talking about what actually causes samsara to be perpetuated altogether.

  Some thoughts and emotions are much more keenly directed toward basic goodness. These are acceptable, and they actually become crutches, helpers, or guidelines. The kind of emotions that are not causations of samsara are called lhaksam, which is another term for vipashyana. Lhak means “superior,” and sam means “thought” or “thinking”; so lhaksam is “superior thinking.” Lhaksam refers to the good kind of kleshas. The closest word I can think of for this is kosher. These kleshas are kosher and good.

  However, emotions are tricky. Emotions are also quite prone to being grasped, and they could flip into the lower realm of emotions. But as long as you are able to stay on a very tight rope, as long as you can remain unattached, but still care for others, then it should be all right. With the kleshas, if a nondwelling quality is there, that nondwelling is their transformation into wisdom. By nondwelling, you are overcoming the kleshas altogether.

  If we regard the kleshas as fuel, then absolute bodhichitta is what ignites them. Because whenever a feeling of sympathy or an immediate kindling of kindness occurs, you feel tremendously raw all the time. In the vajrayana, we speak about mantra as protecting the mind—but the heart is left alone, by itself. Mind needs to be protected, because mind is capable of jumping to conclusions of all kinds, but the heart is always pure. Cultivating that tender heart invites quite a lot of pain, but that is all right; it is a part of the process. We have to bear that kind of pain. It is like a young child growing up: a child experiences all sorts of pain, including diaper rash, and that is all right.

  Buddhist teachings say that attaining a precious human birth is the only way we can attain enlightenment. And yet in the human realm, there is a whole range and richness of human emotions that everybody experiences, whether they practice or not, and these experiences seem to have value. So there seems to be value to human life, even if people are not able to hear the dharma. Even if people are capable of being wicked, they still have possibilities of basic goodness in them. Anybody who can respond to pain or pleasure is worthwhile, and they are able to hear the dharma, if there is someone to teach it to them. Nonetheless, people do need to hear the dharma, for then they can actually develop a very profound and deep kindness, and a compassionate attitude toward others. Otherwise, this depth of compassion would be impossible.

  PROFUNDITY AND VASTNESS

  The samaya principle is not exactly positive, but it is an utterly delightful process. It is utterly delightful because you begin to realize the depth of reality by experiencing it fully and crudely, and you begin to realize the surface of reality by experiencing it as vast, empty, and fantastic. This is a similar process to the mahayana idea of joining profundity and vastness. So at this point, having already been introduced to basic vajrayana principles, you can begin to look at the profundity and vastness of the vajrayana teaching.

  Profundity or Depth

  If you take even a short, small glance at the vajrayana, you discover its depth and profundity. Depth, in this case, means that the vajrayana teaching allows us to utterly destroy our ideal scheme of self-preservation, which is known as ego.

  FIXATION AND GRASPING. According to the Buddhist tradition, self-preservation is described by two terms: fixation and grasping. In Tibetan, first we have sungwa, which means “fixation,” and then we have dzinpa, which means “holding” or “grasping.” We fixate on ourselves because we are afraid to lose “I” or “me.”

  Fixation and grasping follow the same logic as seeing and looking, which we have talked about before.1 First you find some kind of ground to fixate on; then, having found ground to fixate on, you begin to grasp it and make it into a permanent situation. It is like the negative perspective of marriage, in which first you fall in love, and then you possess your mate so that there is no room for anything else. Similarly, in terms of ego, first you fixate, and then you grasp or hold on. At that point, everything becomes glued toget
her. Having sungwa first and dzinpa second reflects how ego actually arises: first we fixate with our mind, then we try to grasp our world.

  GRASPING AND FIXATION. When the order is switched so that grasping comes first and fixation comes second, this reflects a path orientation. We start with dzinpa or grasping because it is the part of twofold ego, the ego of self, that we cut through first. Sungwa, the second half of twofold ego, or the ego of dharmas, is talked about second because it is more basic and more difficult to cut through. It is not yet cut through on the hinayana path.

  The meaning of dzinpa and sungwa, from the path point of view, is that first you experience yourself grasping, or holding on to something, and then you actually try to possess it. Holding on is a pathetic gesture. In spite of the care and help you have received from your parents or your local rabbi, priest, guru, sadhu, or whatever you have, you feel so lonely and so lost that you immediately want to grasp something. In theistic terms, you want to be saved. That desire to be saved is apparently why Billy Graham had such successful campaigns. In fact, when Billy Graham was presenting Christianity in England and he asked, “Who wants to be saved?” my mother-in-law walked up and said that she wanted to be saved. So grasping is about the desire to be saved, about wanting to have a hold on freedom or on reality. And the second part of the process is fixation, which is slightly different.