The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  In terms of an understanding of relative truth, it has been said that those who have a rudimentary understanding of kündzop are ready for kriyayoga; those who have more understanding are ready for upayoga; those with more understanding still are ready for yogayana; and those who have complete understanding are ready for anuttarayoga.

  In terms of the emotions, ignorance is connected with kriyayoga, aggression is connected with upayoga, uncertainty or random movement among those emotions is connected with yogayana, and passion is connected with anuttarayoga

  In still another approach, a person appreciative of cleanliness and purity belongs to the first category, or kriyayoga; a person who tends to relate with the dharmata, or the absolute, and who is not concerned with external rituals belongs to the second category, or upayoga; a person who is prejudiced directly against practicing external rituals and is highly dedicated to the inner practice belongs to the third category, or yogayana; and a person who is highly open to the samaya of indulgence and to applying skillful means and knowledge in their life belongs to the fourth category, or anuttarayoga.

  BYPASSING THE EARLY YANAS

  Traditionally, the early tantric yanas are not taught unless a particular teacher feels that a person should receive more training, or should be slowed down in getting into the higher yanas. What usually happens instead is that, having gone through the mahayana experience, a person then comes directly to the higher tantras, in other words, to the mahamudra or maha ati level. They just bypass all the rest of it.5

  It is possible that an ordinary person who is not even a bodhisattva could practice anuyoga or even atiyoga, but they would need to have some kind of three-yana training. Training in the three yanas is linear, but this does not mean that a person has to attain the tenth bhumi before they can practice tantra. A person on the path of accumulation with an advanced state of mind could also practice tantra. A person with good practice in shamatha and vipashyana, or good practice in shunyata and prajna, could practice tantra. Such a person could make a kind of nine-yana journey within the path of accumulation. They could make a sort of mini-journey, but with the same kind of experience and understanding.

  That is the tradition, but some people are diligent enough to go through all the yanas. Such a practice would probably take about eight years in retreat. In the first part of the retreat, or kriyayoga, you lead a vegetarian life and you don’t wear any leather products. Then as you go on, you begin to change your diet and your outfit, and you begin to wear clothes made from animal skins. So you start with kriyayoga, but you gradually go beyond that level. That has been known to be done, but not very frequently.

  As I have said before, it is very important to have the hinayana and mahayana as a foundation before moving on to vajrayana. But somehow, once you have the tantric approach, it does not make all that much difference where you begin. You do not first need to develop the lower tantric yanas as a foundation. You can build anything on bodhichitta and the experience of shunyata, because you have already experienced transparency. If you started from the hinayana, skipped mahayana, and then tried the vajrayana, you would have absolute chaos; but if there is a real understanding of shunyata experience, there is no particular problem.

  Tantra is not regarded as a linear process. You begin with hinayana and go on to mahayana, but when you get to the third yana, or vajrayana, you could choose whichever tantric yana you feel directed toward, so there is some freedom. Particularly in the three higher yanas, it is very much pick and choose. You can choose what particular sadhana to do directly from the bodhisattva level. But kriyayoga makes an enormous impact on people, so it is sometimes recommended that students who have already developed an understanding of the practice of mahamudra or maha ati go back to do a few months of kriyayoga practice. It is regarded as an interesting contrast. In that case, although you do the kriyayoga visualizations and meditation, it is highly influenced by maha ati practice.

  Even though the lower yanas are not taught that often, at the same time it is necessary to study each yana in detail. This is absolutely necessary because, in order to understand the vajrayana, you have to get a feeling for the experiences of the different tantric yanas. You not only have to learn the vocabulary and the concepts, but you have to pick up the feeling, particularly the element of craziness that exists in each yana. It is important to pick that up, and to do so, you have to practice.

  The higher yanas of mahayoga, anuyoga, and atiyoga also have their way of dealing with beginning students. It is not just a big bomb, and it is not just at the level of yes or no, but there is a gradual way to begin to adapt yourself and get used to that level. And depending on the particular yana you enter, once you are in it, you can build on it. If a traveler arrived at lunchtime, you would not make them eat breakfast, but they would be served lunch. If that traveler arrived at night, you would serve them dinner. You would not try to serve them breakfast and dinner and lunch, just because that traveler was a newcomer.

  Altogether, the idea is that once you have experienced shunyata, you are free to embark on any of the yanas. You might start at the atiyoga level or you might start at the kriyayoga level—it doesn’t really matter. It depends on your personality or your state of being.

  In discussing the tantric yanas, there will be lots of references to the union principle, or yoga, which is very powerful. Sometimes the emphasis on union causes problems, because people would like to see things as being completely one. The idea of union or being united with something may also bring with it the idea of separateness. That creates an object of the various emotions, which can become a problem. But that problem is dealt with in tantra.

  GROUND OF MAHAYANA

  The mahayana tradition deals purely with very abstract ideas. It is concerned with things such as paramitas, ethical codes, and shunyata, and focuses on understanding the nature of reality and one’s relationship to the world, rather than on forms and symbols. It could be said that the mahayana approach to understanding the phenomenal world, or buddha mind, is like buying a caldron to boil water in; whereas the approach of kriyayoga and the other tantric yanas is not just to buy a caldron, but to buy a pot with a handle. The vajrayana approach is based on the realization that when you have boiled the water, you are going to pour it out as well, so a pot with a handle is more practical than a caldron. The practicality of the vajrayana is very powerful.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF KÜNDZOP / RELATIVE TRUTH

  In vajrayana, the relative or primary truth is the most important truth. According to the vajrayana, you cannot attain enlightenment by rejecting the relative world or relative truth, but you need to work with phenomena. When a person is involved with the primary truth, there is a lot of conviction, which is somewhat on the level of prabhasvara in Sanskrit, or ösel in Tibetan, which means “luminosity.” There is a quality of interest or inspiration that manifests as luminosity. This comes from realizing that experiencing the fullness of the manifested world has more truth than looking at it as empty. So in the vajrayana, you have to review the absolute and the relative truth all over again.

  In the mahayana, kündzop is seen through, and töndam, or shunyata, is attained. In the Mind-only, or yogachara tradition of mahayana, you might see the world as your mental projection, and at the same time you view the world as real, workable, artistic, definite, and colorful. However, there is still an enormous emphasis on mirage or illusion. The difference between the mahayana approach and the vajrayana approach is that in tantra, there is no notion of mirage or illusion. Relating to the relative truth, or kündzop, is not a problem; in fact, kündzop is more important than töndam. It is absolutely important. So in terms of the two truths, the kriyayoga attitude toward the world is different from that of the maha yana.

  The function of kriyayoga is to abandon the notion of töndam as something to be attained or looked forward to. Instead, you pay homage to kündzop, and try to relate with its usefulness. You try to relate with the insightfulness of the phenomenal world properly a
nd fully. You can take water as water, and it cleans you inside and out, including your psychological problems. The point is that you need to drop any hesitation about actually getting into kündzop. So kriyayoga’s commitment to kündzop is very powerful. It is more than a commitment; it is an inspiration. In kriyayoga, you realize that kündzop is no longer problematic.

  Kriyayoga is one of the best ways of seeing things as they are. Water really means water; water is water; it has everything in it as waterness. Water could clean anything you could think of. That trust in reality is one of the very refreshing points of kriyayoga. The only problem would be if you overemphasize the sacredness of reality and make it into a trip of some kind. But in the original practice of kriyayoga, the sacredness is not quite the point: the point is precision.

  TWO APPROACHES TO KÜNDZOP

  There are two aspects to the kriyayoga approach to kündzop: purity of action and purity of attitude.

  Purity of Action

  The first aspect of the kriyayoga approach stresses purity of action. Your body and your speech are regarded as manifestations of deities, of divine beings, so you are offering your body and speech in ultimate, complete purity.

  In order to meet that particular demand and to satisfy that vision of purity, you are supposed to bathe three times a day, change your clothes three times a day, and eat what is known as white food—that is to say, just milk products and no meat. You are also supposed to eat sweet food. Traditionally, this means foods sweetened with brown sugar, white sugar, or honey. So the approach here is somewhat similar to that of Hindu kriyayoga, with its focus on being vegetarian and leading a clean and pure life.

  The reason for doing all that is to connect with the inherent purity that exists already. You lead that kind of clean life in order to meet the demand of inherent purity, in order to actually get close to it, to attain that level. This is not a particularly far-fetched idea, although we could say it may be somewhat pedantic or too literal.

  Purity of Attitude

  The second aspect of the kriyayoga approach to kündzop has to do with the importance of attitude. The importance of attitude is explained in terms of three categories: form, speech, and mind.

  ATTITUDE TOWARD FORM. The first category is your attitude toward form. All the forms that exist—tables, chairs, vases, pillows, ceilings, floors, rugs, and whatever you have in the world—are regarded as expressions of kündzop. It is real kündzop, pure kündzop in its own purity, without any hang-ups, without any room for dualistic fixation. It is just simple, pure, good kündzop. Table is table; chair is chair.

  Having been trained in hinayana and mahayana, students already have an understanding of the logic of shunyata. Since they have gone through their training of completely transcending dualistic fixations with regard to kündzop, they now have a fantastically fresh and absolutely powerful vision. So the tendency in the previous yanas of trying to kill kündzop or make it into a crude truth no longer exists in kriyayoga. Everything is fine. Fundamentally, there is no problem with kündzop at all.

  The approach of kriyayoga is one of trusting kündzop completely. It is one of loving kündzop: loving pure food, loving pure clothes, loving a pure body. But the acceptance of kündzop is not naive or “love-and-lighty.” On the level of form, we relate with kündzop as tangible things, the solid things that we have in our world. The basic, very solid and resounding things that exist around us are not regarded as a hassle anymore. They are regarded as expressions of purity, expressions of their own dignity. Vajra nature exists in the form aspect of kündzop, so we want to seize onto form completely. We want to relate with the images of the deities or sambhogakaya buddhas, because basic principles exist in those forms.

  In kriyayoga, you no longer have a fixed idea of the one or the many; you transcend that. If you have as your reference point the idea that one thing is clean and another is dirty, then you have lost your vision of cosmic purity completely. On the other hand, if you think everything is clean, there is too much security, and too much make-believe, goody-goody thinking. Even the vision that everything is clean is actually a further dirtying. Therefore, you transcend both the one and many. You begin to see, without the qualifications of one or many, that this world is simply a clean world, a pure world. You are no longer talking in terms of pollution or dirt, but in terms of the intrinsic purity that exists in this world. This understanding can only come to be by trusting kündzop, the phenomenal world. Relative truth in itself is right and clean and pure. There is vajra nature in relative truth.

  ATTITUDE TOWARD SPEECH. The second category in the importance of attitude is the attitude toward speech. This category is connected with transcending intellect. However, although the power of sound or voice transcends intellect, it does not mean that you are opposed to intellect. In particular, speech transcends the four logical possibilities of existence, nonexistence, both, and neither—the four extremes that you tend to get into when you have uncertainties about reality. When you are uncertain about something, you usually say it is yes, or it is no, or it is both, or it is neither.

  To transcend those extremes, you need pure emotion, pure speech, pure voice. You have to manifest properly without being entangled with those four problems. To do so, you need trust or conviction in the power of voice to transcend those extremes. If you utter something, you utter it with a true voice rather than falling into one of those categories. True speech is unhesitating.

  This kind of pure voice is called vach in Sanskrit. It is also called shabda, or “sound.” Shabda is the idea of cosmic sound, which has nothing to do with the tangible world particularly or, for that matter, with the intangible world. Basically, the idea of vac is that everything you hear is the sound of the teachings. We could also say that everything you hear is the sound of mantra—or the sound of Atisha’s mind-training slogans. Shabda is that which, through combining together the body and the mind, produces utterance in the phenomenal world. There is a quality here of divine utterance or cosmic utterance as an expression of pure energy. Kriyayoga makes a big deal about shabda.

  ATTITUDE TOWARD MIND. The third category of attitude is concerned with the thought process. It is said in the tantric texts that thoughts are the scepters of the tathagatas, the divinities of a particular mandala. Scepters are signs of authority. For instance, a king holds his globe and his staff, which mark him as king. An editor might have a pen and paper on her desk as her scepter; a general might hold a stick or whip; a murderer might hold some kind of weapon. Scepters are reminders, marks, highlights. All thoughts that exist have that character; thoughts are our scepters, rather than just merely our thoughts.

  We do not actually have thoughts all the time, but we have thoughts whenever we need them. So our thoughts of this and that change our manifestation all the time. Thoughts are regarded as scepters or symbols from that point of view. At the same time, thoughts go on continuously, and those thoughts are regarded at this point as perfect meditation, perfect awareness. All thoughts are equally pure. Dirty or clean thoughts, or whatever thoughts you have, are all regarded as perfectly pure and ordinarily insightful. Thoughts have the quality of the vision of the nidanas in the higher sense, as the expression of the interlocking of different situations taking place all the time. Thoughts are also expressions of vajra nature. They are pure and sacred.

  THE SACREDNESS OF ORDINARY PHENOMENA

  Sacredness in kriyayoga is related to purity, but purity does not particularly refer back to sacredness. Sacredness is regarded as purity, because when things are sacred, they are inherently faultless. They stand on their own; there is no question about that. In kriyayoga, there is an appreciation that whatever appears in the way of ordinary phenomena turns into perfect purity, and therefore whatever appears is very sacred.

  The emphasis on the importance of vegetarianism and other expressions of purity in this yana is not a neurotic hang-up or a food trip. It is not an ideology that you try to lay on other people because you yourself still feel unclean. I
n kriyayoga, nobody is forcing you to eat anything. Rather, whatever you do and however you live, that life is fundamentally pure and grand, clean, magnificent, and dignified. That is the kind of purity in kriyayoga—unconditional purity without condemnation. Nobody is condemned as being a bad girl or a dirty boy, but even the dirt itself is regarded as inherently pure dirt. So you cannot use the kriyayoga philosophy of the Buddhist tradition to impose your ideas of ecology, antipollution, or anything like that, which is a great relief.

  THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURITY

  We can discuss the development of purity through relative bodhichitta, absolute bodhichitta, and the union of relative and absolute bodhichitta.

  Relative Bodhichitta

  From the kriyayoga point of view, the experience of relative bodhichitta is like something entering into your system. You feel that you are relating with a definite intelligence, as opposed to an abstraction. There is a feeling of real ground, which comes from having experienced an absolute division between pure and impure, and the possibility of making a choice. There is a quality of purity in following all the rules and disciplines of conduct that are given to you. So the whole approach seems to be based on not taking in anything impure. Any impurity you take in is regarded as bad or unhealthy, and a cause of further pain. So instead of taking in any impurity, it is best to clean any impurity out.

  Absolute Bodhichitta

  The experience of absolute bodhichitta entering into you is said to be similar to taking the refuge vow. You feel that some kind of belief or conviction has entered into your system. At the beginning of the path, you have a belief that calls you to become a refugee or a follower of the Buddha. Then in the refuge vow ceremony, as you are repeating the last of the three refuges—“I take refuge in the sangha”—the element of refuge enters into your system.