The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  THE GREAT EAST AND THE SETTING SUN

  Fear is positive in the sense that it gives you more dignity, more awareness, and more sharpness. The mandala arises out of the setting sun of the West, out of death, out of the charnel ground. Around the mandala is the setting sun, the Occident, which is death, and the center of the mandala is the Orient, which is enlightenment. One cannot exist without the other; you have to have both the setting sun and the rising sun.

  In the center of the mandala, everything is birth, and on the edge of the mandala, everything is death. So if there is enough death-ground where the mandala is built, then there is enough birth taking place. Occident comes from the Latin word occidere, which means to “fall” or “go down,” as in the sun going down. So the Occident is the area or the direction in which something falls down, and Orient simply means “rising.”

  The fear of the setting sun, of one’s confusions and conflicting emotions, is a healthy situation. However, the fear of the death of one’s ego is a very Occidental experience. We do everything we can to try to survive that death of ego. We adopt various psychological points of view, and we import all sorts of pretty teachers from the Orient to try to help us, so that our egos do not die. That is what is called spiritual materialism. The Occident, which is death, tries to borrow from the rising sun in every possible way that might enable it to survive.

  In the vajrayana, we are not worried about the setting sun; we are actually more worried about the rising sun. We might have problems working with the rising sun. We have to keep up with the possibilities of sanity, or the rising sun, all the time, so we might tend to feel inadequate.

  CRUSHING FEAR ON THE SPOT

  The mandala principle is bounded by fear. There is no relief at all; there is energy and uncertainty. Yet that very fear is also known as the instrument of awakening. In the abhisheka ceremony, that fear is represented by the teacher holding a golden stick with which to open your eyes. It seems as if the teacher is going to put the golden stick through your eyes in order to open them. So there is some kind of fear.

  But fear may not be such a good word. You could say airiness rather than fear. You have not actually seen the whole thing, but you are about to do so, so there is airiness, as if you have not quite landed on earth. There is that dot of waiting, the pins-and-needles feeling of something waiting for you elsewhere. But you are not particularly waiting for something else to happen; it’s happened already. It is as if there is the possibility of being shot, but you have not actually made an enemy of anyone, so you never know where that shot could come from. It is that kind of airiness, which is not quite fear.

  Airiness means that you feel you are already awake. You do not want to curl up, but you would like to stick your neck out. It is the dawn of a fresh, cold winter morning with icicles hanging outside, and you can’t go back to sleep. It is as if a cosmic porcupine is about to roll onto you, which is a very delightful experience, actually. I have had it myself. You feel so awake and so good to begin with, which is fantastic—but on top of that, you never know. Something is actually happening somewhere, including below you, so you cannot actually say “Whew!” and relax.

  Something is about to happen, but you are not trying to defeat it. There is a sense of reality somewhere, a sense of Tai Tung, the Great East. Great means that when you sit up, there is a quality of wakefulness and delight taking place, a feeling of being on pins and needles all the time throughout your life. It is very powerful, but there is no fight involved. East means that when you wake up, you assume your posture of wakefulness, sanity, and dignity beyond psychosomatic and neurotic problems. You hold your posture in any case. You need to have continual devotion, faith, and respect. You even have to make physical gestures of having such devotion; you have to hold your hands together and as an expression of your openness.1

  The obstacle of fear manifests on all sorts of levels, in the form of diseases, colds, and sicknesses, as well as psychological depressions, but these manifestations can be crushed by the experience of the preparatory practices, or ngöndro. When such obstacles and doubts have been crushed, a student is able to receive abhisheka. Fear, doubt, and feelings of inadequacy are all part of the abhisheka process, but when you experience them, they should be crushed on the spot. You can do so by means of the unified power that comes from the mandala and the vajra master being one. Together the mandala and the vajra master form a scepter of power, a vajra in your hand; and with that vajra, your uncertainty, fear, and resentment are crushed as obstacles to the path.

  As a student approaches transmission, a lot of things begin to come out. There is so much happening in the minds of the students: there is so much longing, so much trying to reach, and so much trying to maintain. The students begin to regard the vajra master as the only vajra master, whether by power of suggestion, by personal understanding, or whatever else. They begin to form attitudes toward the vajra master, very fixed attitudes. They have all sorts of fixations, and all of them have to be popped like fat ticks. When you start to crush fear and other obstacles on the spot, it means that something has happened to you. You are suddenly so absolutely resentful about the whole thing that you cannot wait, or you cannot wait because you are so touched. Somebody has tickled your heart, and it creates either hate or love. It is tough, but those things have to be crushed.

  Every tantric student has to fall in love with the vajra master fully and completely. Some love affairs are personal, and other love affairs are ways of trying to reach something. There is both push and pull: push is trying to reach, and pull is also trying to reach. The love for the vajra master occurs in different styles, and the idea is to pop all of these styles of fixation like ticks that are fattened by too much blood. Until those things are popped completely, you cannot receive transmission utterly and fully.

  Having popped, there is further devotion and further love. It is like when you make love to someone, and the two of you have a mutual orgasm. When the vajra master meets with the student, it is the same kind of clicking. The manifestation of illusion has occurred already, so the joke is on you: on the vajra sangha and on the vajra master at the same time. A mutual orgasm takes place, and after that there is no problem. Love has already manifested; it is already apparent. The flower has already blossomed; the sun is already shining.

  But we have to be very careful when we talk about illusion in the vajrayana. We do not mean “illusion” in a pejorative sense; when we say that everything is illusion, we are talking on a complimentary level. Everything is real as illusion, which is good. Illusion refers to the goodness, softness, and transparency of everything.

  When students have finished the four stages of ngöndro and are doing their guru yoga practice, their fixations have to be popped and crushed. As a result of that squashing, or that squashedness, they begin to find a new aroma, a new sense. A new feeling begins to dawn, which is a sense of the yidam. It is very real and personal, absolutely personal. When that energy of letting go has happened, it is possible to perform the abhisheka.

  So in the vajrayana, everything is based on the idea of transmission, which basically has two levels. The first level of transmission is the idea of popping your previous reserves. When you have popped those, there is a quality of messiness and interaction. So the second level of transmission takes place at that point of interaction and messiness. That is when you are introduced to your own freshness and ordinariness; ordinary mind is introduced at that point.

  SHARING THE REALITY OF BUDDHA’S WORLD

  The idea of abhisheka is to further bind you and your vajra master together. In abhisheka, you share the utmost sacred and secret of mandala possibilities or principles between you. It is as if the vajra master were you, and you were the vajra master. It is in that sense that the vajra master shows you the innermost secrets of everything. Namely, the vajra master shares with you their attitude toward form, speech, and mind.

  In terms of form, you are shown the actual physical reality, or form, as the vajra ma
ster sees it. You are shown how the deities of the mandala see form. In terms of speech, you are shown speech as the vajra master uses it. You are shown how the incantation of words and symbolism can be uttered and experienced in the most powerful way. In terms of mind, you are shown how the mind of the vajra master works, and how the mind of the particular mandala setup feels.

  While performing abhisheka, the vajra master is bestowing Buddha into the student’s hand. The student is receiving Buddha in the palm of their hand completely. At that point, what the student actually experiences, sees, and feels becomes real, the utmost reality. The student is sharing the reality of the Buddha’s world from the beginning to end. The world of Vajradhara is completely shared, completely experienced, and thoroughly felt. Abhisheka is the only way to convince you to experience the actual miracle that exists on the spot—this very experience, this very spot.

  The discipline of abhisheka is connected with samaya bondage. In samaya, you are binding together your personal experience of reality, the experience of reality of the vajra master, and the experience of reality of the deities of the mandala. At that point, every possibility of help is given, and every wakening process is exercised and formed. So you have no other way of speaking but in a straightforward direction.

  Abhisheka is further sunrise, further East, further dawn of Vajrasattva, further Tai Tung. Abhisheka enables you to be among the tathagatas and sugatas, the Victorious Ones, and their sons and daughters of the bodhisattva path. It enables you to join together the invincible powers that exist: the vajra, ratna, padma, karma, and buddha possibilities. That strength and way of conquering the universe can only be realized by receiving abhisheka. Without receiving abhisheka, there is no power. Without receiving abhisheka, studying the vajrayana is purely paying lip service.

  Receiving abhisheka is proclaiming that in the future, you will be “So-and-So Tathagata,” or “Lord of the Universe So-and-So.” Those who receive abhisheka are the future candidates for being “Lord of the Universe” of the various buddha-families. Because these students are completely unified, and because they have given their complete devotion, understanding, and service to affirming the teacher’s wish, therefore the will of vajrayana power has been fulfilled. In other words, receiving abhisheka means that you have become, finally and completely, one with the will of the vajrayana. You no longer exist as an independent little person, but you have become a part of the vajrayana altogether.

  TAKING PRIDE IN VAJRA TRAINING

  In the same way, I myself always feel that I am no longer a person, no longer a human being at all. I realize that I am a subhuman being, a subindividual. I am the lowest of the lowest of the fleas, and I have the youngest flea’s mentality. I do not exist. I am a mere vehicle. I possess the body of a human being in an Oriental form, and I have been able to receive the wisdom of the Great East. I use my existence here as nothing other than a vehicle of the dharma. Other than that, I am the lowest of the lowest beings. I cannot even add numbers well enough to be a good busboy. I could be the lowest of the lowest slaves of the universe, but at the same time I rise up as the universal emperor. This is possible only because I possess the teachings; without them, I would be nothing.

  Photo 17. Khenpo Gangshar and Trungpa Rinpoche.

  I have been blessed, confirmed, and acknowledged as such a ruler purely because I am just a human being, not anything else. Being such a naive, basic, Tibetan highland peasant has provided me with lots of strength and power—just because I am so insignificant. I was called Abi by my mother before I was recognized as a tülku. I was just little Abi, a tiny little person, a sweet little baby. Because of such a humble upbringing, because it was so delightfully simple and basic, Chökyi was able to rise as the Ocean of Dharma. Because of that, I was worthy enough for transmission to take place.2

  My teachers were kind to me because I was so confused, and at the same time, very smart. Because I was so confused, I was more smart. They thought I was great because I was able to catch every angle. I was able to defend every aspect of my life, and my teachers took advantage of every defense mechanism I could bring up while I was studying and learning. I was so smart and at the same time so stupid, defending every corner of myself. Every one of my teachers, and especially the two main people in my life—Jamgön Kongtrül of Shechen and Khenpo Gangshar—were always able to catch me.3 Whenever I came up with little spikes or sparks of every possible way of making myself well-known and maintaining my ego, they would throw a web or net of some kind over me. At the time it was very miserable and painful. I felt that instead of such torture, why didn’t they just execute me on the spot? I requested them to do so many times, but they said, “You will be more useful later on if we don’t kill you.” It seemed sadistic, but it became true.

  More recently, the Nalanda Translation Committee and I were working together, and I was very moved by the whole thing. I was able to understand every sentence with heartfelt understanding. Every word that we translated had very profound meaning to me. So I feel very moved and appreciative of the savage and crude discipline that people like Jamgön Kongtrül of Shechen, Khenpo Gangshar, my tutor Apho Karma, and all the rest laid on me personally. They were very powerful and helpful to me.4

  I remember one time when I was doing my calligraphy, writing Tibetan strokes, and I had a cut on my finger. My thumb was infected and beginning to swell up because I had touched a naked, sharp knife and cut myself. It was a very wet winter with snow falling outside all the time, and I was practicing calligraphy with my sore thumb. Then in addition, I touched the fire and burnt my middle finger so that I couldn’t hold my bamboo quill. But I still had to practice calligraphy and hold the quill in my hand. I could not make the strokes properly. I was drawing two strokes that are known as kum and she. The kum stroke is a corner design, and she is a cut design, or a drawing down. I was unable to do those things properly, and I felt so stupid and clumsy. Actually, I felt more clumsy than stupid, with my hurt fingers and the winter so cold that the ink was beginning to freeze into a layer of ice that I had to dig into with my quill.

  I was in my study trying to do all those strokes with my bamboo quill, and I felt so painfully inadequate. Not only inadequate, but I felt that since my tutors wanted me to do the strokes perfectly, why couldn’t they choose another situation in which my thumb and middle finger were not hurt? But still they made me go on, and whenever I made a mistake, my tutor went wham! At one point he picked up the whole ink bottle and hit my head. The ink bottle was made of four carved snow lions holding a pot of solid silver, and it was very heavy. So the ink poured all over my face and the silver hurt me so badly that I couldn’t even sleep that night or rest in order to draw my next calligraphy stroke. Such was the discipline I received, and that kind of discipline is very meaningful.

  Nowadays, students do not have to go through that kind of individual discipline. For example, at our seminaries we have only general disciplinary guidelines, and even with that level of discipline, students can follow these guidelines or not. If students feel bad or depressed, they can always go to their bedroom. They know they are not supposed to, but they still can do that. Nobody is pushing them back, and nobody is hitting them with an ink bottle to make them do a stroke of calligraphy.

  At this point, Westerners are babies. They receive all the best treatment everywhere. When they go to theistic teachers, they are fed with milk and sugar all the time. But you could tighten up your discipline. Fundamentally, you need to tighten up your mental discipline so that there is no room for doubt and no room for joking around with yourself. Everything has to be included. You need to tighten up the possibilities of poetic indulgence, psychological indulgence, humanistic indulgence, and the fixation on having a good time. Everything needs to be tightened up completely. That actually works, but you have to take it step-by-step as you go on.

  I wanted to describe what I myself have gone through personally, because although it is not great, not fantastic, I think it is also adequate for you
to go through. I want you to share that level of discipline. There is a lot of pride involved with such discipline. The pride we are talking about here is not chauvinism, but a positive arrogance. It is absolutely necessary to take pride in order to enable the vajrayana to continue in the West. In spite of the untrustworthy smiles of politicians, we could continue the vajrayana in this land. We must take pride so that transmission can take place in this land properly and fully. We must take pride so that some kind of real smile takes place here.

  1. A reference to a traditional gesture of respect in which the hands are held together in front of the heart, as in the Western prayer position or in the Indian greeting of namaste.

  2. One of Trungpa Rinpoche’s names is Chökyi Gyatso, which means “Ocean of Dharma.” The name “Chögyam” is a contraction of Chökyi Gyatso.

  3. Khenpo Gangshar Wangpo (b. 1925) was one of Trungpa Rinpoche’s primary teachers. For more on Khenpo Gangshar and his teachings, see Khenchen Thrangu, Vivid Awareness: The Mind Instructions of Khenpo Gangshar (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2011).

  4. In his autobiography, Born in Tibet, Trungpa Rinpoche tells many stories of his strict tutelage under the direction of Apho Karma and others.

  35

  Entering the Vajra Mandala

  The one and only binding factor that allows you to be so fortunate as to receive abhishekas at all is that you begin to realize that you are in the service of sentient beings. All the abhishekas develop because of this basic principle. . . . So in receiving abhisheka you no longer hold territory purely for yourself; your territory is completely gone. Your attachment to little personal pleasures has also disappeared. That is why what is known as enlightenment is possible—at last! Whew!