The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Reality is crude to its very core, just pure mere lust that cuts to the core of reality. For a long time, depending on how old we are or how much heritage we have received from our particular culture, we have assumed that we have actually been perceiving the reality of the phenomenal world—but we haven’t quite. The depth remains untouched, as something more than what we have experienced. We have never touched reality properly in terms of profundity, at all.

  Vastness

  We have not yet experienced real vastness completely either, because we have been so stupid. We have only been thinking in terms of what the vajrayana teaching is in reference to our sunny-side-up ego and the philosophy around it. Don’t you think that is slightly perverted and so limited? We have not actually related even with the light of fireflies, let alone with the brilliance of something like the Great Eastern Sun.

  Going Deeper

  Both vastness and profundity are mind’s creation; they are your mind’s creation. Profundity means getting deeper, so that you can cut the thickness of stupidity. Vastness means that you can expand, so that you can go beyond the territoriality of possessiveness. From the point of view of vastness and profundity, samaya means greater thinking, or greater vision. It means greater punishment and greater reward. Perhaps it is not so much reward, but rather the absence of punishment as reward. And finally, you gain magical power.

  We are talking of the depth of the depth of profundity: nobody has gone to that depth completely. We are talking of the vastness of the vast of the vast: nobody has expanded that much. If you go too deeply into the vajrayana, ordinarily you will be hurt, and you might say, “Ouch!” And if you become too vast, you will be so stretched that you might again say, “Ouch! I don’t want to be stretched that far.” In fact, Matram Rudra’s body was so stretched out that it became the basis of the charnel ground and the basis of all the mandalas that we build.2 The heart of Matram Rudra was so pierced that he shouted, “Ouch!” And out of Matram Rudra’s utterance sprang the shout of Vajrakilaya, the penetrating dagger.3

  The samaya principle allows you to go deeper, deeper, and deeper. It is like surgery. The samaya instrument is the practice, and the user of that instrument is the vajra master, who is like a surgeon in that they are very well-meaning, but seemingly mean. Exploring the depth and vastness is part of the surgical operation. It is necessary for your mind to be stretched and penetrated. Why is that necessary? It is because we are so thick and so clumsy. We are so thick that the depth has to be experienced, and we are so clumsy that the vastness has to be experienced at the same time.

  Pre-vajrayana students still have little rudras, or touches of ego. They still have all their little tricks happening. So they need to have an operation by the great surgeon, the vajra master. The vajra master’s role is to stretch you out and exasperate you in every possible way. The idea is to penetrate and puncture your skin at the same time as stretching your whole existence, so that the phenomenal world no longer means anything to you except being awake all over the place. That is recognizing vajra nature; it is seeing the rising sun of the East.

  The samaya process is pushing and pulling you at once. In terms of vastness, if you are about to be stretched and you chicken out by trying to run out of the operating room into the street, you will look so funny, half-stretched and trying to run away. You will die or be run over by cars. Quite possibly you will be arrested by the police force, because you look so funny and stretched-out and indecent. So you cannot chicken out of the vastness.

  And as far as the depth goes, if you are about to be profoundly penetrated and you chicken out and run away, you will end up in the mental hospital. There you will be treated by psychologists, who are like cosmic vultures. Because they need their salaries, they need to keep you in the hospital. So it seems much better to stick with the vajrayana, in spite of all the trials and tribulations.

  In the vajrayana, you are protected from psychological cults, from ultimate and temporary world-pain, and from all sorts of drugs and mental breakdowns. You are finally included in this very beautiful world of sanity that nobody seems to have heard of. But actually, somebody has heard of it and experienced it: it is the great twenty-six-hundred-year-old tradition of vajrayana, which actually goes back to even before that time. This world is so beautiful, so warm, so indestructible, and so unshakable. In this world, you are actually protected and served. You are invited to enjoy yourself in the diamond castle of the vajra world.

  1. In his book True Perception, Trungpa Rinpoche discusses the process of perception in terms of seeing and looking. In the chapter “State of Mind,” he talks about perception starting with seeing, followed by looking. In the chapter “Joining Heaven and Earth,” he says that from the nontheistic point of view, the order is reversed so that first we look, and then we see. See Chögyam Trungpa, True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2008).

  2. For a discussion of the mandala principle and the charnel ground, see chapter 25 of this volume, “The Sphere of Self-Born Wisdom.”

  3. A kilaya is a three-bladed dagger used symbolically to cut through passion, aggression, and ignorance. The deity Vajrakilaya (“Indestructible Dagger”) wields such a dagger in order to destroy deceptions and obstacles to the path of awakening.

  Part Six

  THE MANDALA PRINCIPLE

  25

  The Sphere of Self-Born Wisdom

  The experience of self-born wisdom, or the awakened state of mind, is the transmission you receive from the teacher when you receive abhisheka. That is when your superficial ordinary mind ceases to exist, and therefore, your further ordinary mind becomes powerful.

  CENTER AND FRINGE

  Having presented an overview of samaya, we can discuss the mandala principle. Mandala means a “society” or “group”; it means a “complete world.” The Tibetan word for mandala is kyilkhor. Kyil means “middle” or “center,” and khor means “fringe,” “surroundings,” and also “circling” or “revolving around”; so kyilkhor means “center and fringe” or “revolving around the middle.”

  The word khor has many meanings. It is the word for “wheel,” as in shingta khorlo, which means “wagon wheel.” Khor is also found in the word khorwa, which means “samsara,” or that which spins around itself continuously. The idea is that when you are confused, you also make others confused. Therefore, we also have a term called trülpa pangwa. Trülpa means “going astray” or “delusion,” and pangwa means “giving up”; so trülpa pangwa means “giving up delusion.” So altogether, the mandala principle works like a wheel; but in this case, when the wheel rotates, your delusions can be transmuted into wisdom. So hopefully, the khor of kyilkhor is a better message than the message of samsara.

  We are not going to discuss all the mandalas that exist in the vajrayana tradition. Goodness knows, we have thousands of abhishekas and mandalas, and it would take many pages to discuss all of them at great length. So I am simplifying this for the readers’ sake, to make sure you do not get overwhelmed.

  SELF-ARISING WISDOM

  Another definition of mandala is rangjung gi yeshe, which means “self-arising wisdom.” Rang means “self,” and jung means “coming into existence” or “arising”; so rangjung is “self-arising” or “self-born.” Gi means “of,” and yeshe, again, is “wisdom”; so rangjung gi yeshe means “self-born or self-arising wisdom.” And if you ask what self-arising wisdom is, the definition of self-arising wisdom is the “awakened state of mind.”

  The basic understanding of mandala principle is stated in one particular Tibetan phrase, nangsi yeshe kyi khorlo shepa, which means the “knowledge that all phenomena are included in the sphere of wisdom.” Nang means “phenomena,” si means “existence,” and yeshe means “wisdom”; so nangsi yeshe means the “existence of all phenomena within yeshe.” Kyi means “of,” khorlo means “wheel” or “sphere of the mandala,” and shepa means “knowing”; so altogether, in discussing the mandala principle we are talking about
knowing that all phenomena are included in the sphere of wisdom. That is one definition of mandala.

  Self-arising wisdom has two qualities: it is free from speculation, and it is unchanging and therefore spontaneous. This means that your metaphysical concepts cannot change what you perceive. This statement might surprise you. When you first study Buddhism, for example, the concept of the five skandhas1 may seem to be a metaphysical concept that can very much change your perception. But if you look beyond the concept, you begin to realize that the experience is real, rather than purely metaphysical. It is not secondary, but it is real, it is physical. When you experience the skandha of form, you really have form; when you experience the skandha of feeling, you really have feeling.

  At the beginning of our studies we are learning things by theory. It is like wearing a coat with pockets but having no idea where to put things. The very first time you put the coat on, you had no idea it had pockets, but then somebody told you there were pockets to put your things in, and you realized that you were actually wearing a coat with pockets. At first, the idea that you could put things in pockets was just a theory; then you actually began to put things in the pockets; and after a little while, your pockets become real to you rather than theoretical.

  The experience of self-born wisdom, or the awakened state of mind, is the transmission you receive from the teacher when you receive abhisheka. That is when your superficial ordinary mind ceases to exist, and therefore your further ordinary mind becomes powerful. Because you forget or stop the functioning of past and future concerns, and because you are no longer in the present, your mind is no longer anywhere. Therefore, you are self-born wisdom. You do not need any reference point of where, when, or how you got there. It doesn’t matter. Self-existing yeshe can be realized or experienced in a body that is a result or leftover of karmic cause and effect, but you do not have to hang on to that solid concept of body. Self-existing yeshe does not come out of ignorance, and it does not need a potter’s wheel to spin. It does not have to spin; it just blossoms out.

  THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE MANDALA

  The mandala’s iconography breaks down into three separate parts: the charnel ground, the center deity palace, and the four directions.

  The Charnel Ground

  The mandala principle involves a lot of symbolism. To begin with, the ground of the mandala is the charnel ground, a place of births, deaths, old age, and sickness.2 Most readers will never have seen a real charnel ground, because the Western world is so tidy and cleaned up. The closest thing to the charnel ground in the West might be a hospital, since it is where many people are born and die. However, you can imagine an actual charnel ground as the place where you leave your dead, or where you bring placentas when you have finished giving birth. Such charnel grounds did exist in India, other parts of Asia, and South America, as well as in other parts of the world.

  Photo 11. The Kalachakra mandala, an example of a three-dimensional mandala.

  The concept of a charnel ground is a place where you have no room for conceptualization, no possibilities of going anywhere. It is the place where life begins and ends; it is that which sustains the whole universe, as well as that which kills everything. The iconography depicting the charnel ground includes rivers, trees, dancing skeletons, sages, pagodas, and wild animals tearing apart bodies. From the outside, a charnel ground seems rather gloomy and unpleasant; but from its own point of view, it is self-existing, extremely rich and fertile. So the mandala begins with the charnel ground.

  The Center of the Mandala

  In the middle of the charnel ground, there is a big palace or castle for the yidam or deity. This castle has a wall around it and four gates, one in each of the four cardinal directions. Inside, it has little cubicles for the various attendants or servants of the central deity, and there is a central chamber where the deity abides. So it is a palace-like structure, and the central figure, whoever it might be—such as Avalokiteshvara, Vajradhara, or Chakrasamvara—abides in the middle.

  The central figure represents your basic, natural, self-existing wisdom; it represents your bodhichitta. In this case, bodhichitta literally means a seed of enlightenment; it is where you begin. You are in the center of the mandala, and from there you see the East, South, West, and North. From there you see the sun rise. It is very simple and straightforward. The center is wherever you are; you are always in the middle of the palace.

  The Four Directions of the Mandala

  The four directions are also important, and each is colored differently. The East is white,3 and refers to the dawn of vision or the first sight of mandala power. The South is yellow, and represents richness. The West is red, and represents magnetizing or comforting and a sense of joy and pleasure. It is the subsiding of phenomenal desire or samsaric thoughts. The North is green, and represents action. It is complete fearlessness and the willingness to ward off any obstacles to the path wherever they happen to occur. That is how the mandala of natural phenomena is structured.

  The iconography of the mandala is not just somebody’s concept or clever idea. It developed through twenty-six hundred years of tradition. People have actually experienced and realized such situations. They have gone inside the mandala and witnessed the charnel ground. They have also witnessed the guardians at the doorways of the four directions. The mandala principle is like another world, but it is not like another country that you can travel to—it is right here, right now. Quite possibly you are already sitting in it. And if you are thinking of running away from it, it may already be too late.

  SEEING THE WISDOM IN SAMSARA

  Although the mandala principle is very available to us, we should understand that the samsaric world is definitely not a mandala-type situation. There is no such structure in samsara, no such hierarchy. Instead, everything that happens is very casual. The only samsaric mandala is that of the six realms, a linear situation in which you go up and down.4 That is the closest thing to a mandala in the samsaric world.

  Photo 12. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama ritually slashing through a painted-sand Kalachakra mandala. After these elaborately constructed mandalas are used in an abhisheka, they are dismantled and offered into a flowing stream or over the edge of a cliff.

  However, when you are introduced to the mandala principle, you actually can see the whole world as mandala and work with that. You can see the potential in the samsaric world. It begins to join in and participate in the mandala principle. Once you develop your rangjung gi yeshe, your self-born wisdom, you begin to see that there is an undercurrent of mandala existing in the world already. In that sense, there is wisdom in samsara.

  It might seem as if all this is a long way from the beginning of the path as we have described it. It seems a long way from the first experience of shamatha practice and a little glimpse of a gap, to the experience of becoming the central figure of the mandala. The iconography of the mandala is so full-blown and seemingly solid, compared to that original gap, that little glimpse. In some sense, however, the full-blown-ness of the mandala principle is already present, and it is in relationship to this full-blown-ness that you experience a glimpse or gap. You need to have something to have a gap from. Otherwise, you would not have any place to breathe. So mandala possibilities exist already.

  When you sit, you should be thankful that you have a front, a right side, a back, and a left side. When you sit on your meditation cushion, you are already sitting in the middle of the mandala. So with the first gap of shamatha, the sense of being in the middle of the mandala is already there. Front, back, left, and right are everywhere. So you are your own mandala. That is precisely where shamatha and vipashyana come together.

  From the point of view of sacred outlook, the whole world could be seen as mandala. Let’s say you see a samsaric situation that is full of suffering; this could be seen as the mandala of the first noble truth. When the Buddha sits in the middle, and the arhats sit around him, this is also a mandala of its own. So you could have a hinayana mandala with
the four gates and everything, and all sorts of bodhisattva-like mandalas could happen, too.

  In the vajrayana, when suffering happens, the experience of the sufferer and the suffering become one at some point. You do not separate them into two. You are right in the middle; you are already the central deity. So in the vajrayana, we see the world as sacred, as a sacred mandala. And as long as we are humble and understanding to others, then even people who have not heard about the dharma can tune in to this experience as part of the mandala principle.

  SHAMATHA-VIPASHYANA AS INDIVISIBLE EMPTINESS AND LUMINOSITY

  The experience of the mandala principle is based on having received abhisheka. It is based on realizing the nonduality of shamatha and vipashyana as the body, speech, and mind of the guru, and recognizing that as indivisible vajra nature. So in discussing the mandala principle, it is most important to realize that the discovery of ultimate wisdom derives from the indivisibility of shamatha and vipashyana.

  Shamatha-vipashyana is sometimes referred to in vajrayana terms as the indivisibility of emptiness and luminosity. Emptiness is connected with shamatha, for slowly but surely, by means of shamatha practice, we try to eliminate the things that are not necessary to us. Discursive thoughts are not necessary, so we try to avoid them; therefore, we attain emptiness, or vacancy of some kind. Luminosity is connected with vipashyana. It means seeing brightly and clearly. By means of vipashyana, awareness begins to pick up what needs to be done.