The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Because of this, it is said that in kriyayoga there is appreciation, rather than the vajra pride that comes from complete identification with the deities. Therefore, kriyayoga has sometimes been described as having no joy. Although there have been various disagreements about the approach to visualization practice in kriyayoga, several esteemed teachers, including Karma Trinlepa, Karmapa Rangjung Dorje, and Jamgön Kongtrül the Great agree that practitioners of kriyayoga should not visualize themselves as deities.4

  Kriyayoga is complementary to the preexisting tantra of Hinduism, and kriyayoga is generous in trying to work with Hindu tantra, but that kind of generosity may also bring a kind of primitiveness. It may lead to the flaw or limitation of not being able to identify yourself with the deities in the later tantric yanas. You are simply a spectator of all those happenings, which reflects a quality of inadequacy. You just watch the deities, but you never think of doing such things yourself. According to kriyayoga, if you think of yourself and how you should handle yourself, that is too ego-centered. You should not think about who you are at all. But this approach ignores or forgets that you are also one of the deities.

  The reason there is no visualization of yourself as the deity is based on the same principle as vegetarianism. That is, you should not indulge in the forms of divinities in the same way that you should not indulge in eating flesh. You have the deities out there, and you simply worship them and watch what is happening. So kriyayoga seems to be an utterly devotional approach, based on outer devotion. The vibrations of the bijas (seed syllables) and the sounds of mantras give you some kind of benefit, but you yourself do not jump into the visualization and enter into that world. The phenomenal world in kriyayoga takes place by itself, without your being in it. Kriyayogins would say that when you are excited by watching a movie, you do not jump into the screen and dance with the forms there—you just sit and watch. You do not get carried away, which is sensible. This is a way of defining the boundary between imaginary reality and you. In kriyayoga, that boundary should be respected.

  KRIYAYOGA VISUALIZATION PRACTICE

  The visualization practice of kriyayoga includes the same six types of gods, or divine beings, that we described earlier in terms of the steps of giving birth to a visualization.5 In all these cases, you do not visualize yourself as the deity, but you watch these things happen as if you were gazing at them on the full moon. You take advantage of seeing the pleasure of the buddhas.

  The Divine Beings of Shunyata

  The first divine beings, the divine beings of shunyata, represent the principle of shunyata and the practice of meditating on bodhichitta. Here the understanding of bodhichitta is slightly different from that of the mahayana. In kriyayoga, bodhichitta has a sense of appreciating that you can see the real world as it is. There is a hint of mahamudra in the kriyayoga understanding of bodhichitta.

  The Divine Beings of Syllables

  The second divine beings, the divine beings of syllables or letters, represent the bija mantras, or seed syllables. Practitioners of kriyayoga are usually very artistic. When they visualize the seed syllables of the three transcendent kriyayoga buddha-families (tathagata, padma, and vajra), they may visualize the syllables alone, or they may visualize the full moon with the seed syllable sitting in the middle of it. They take a syllable such as OM, or whatever seed syllable they are using, and put it on the full moon. The full moon is very much connected with bodhichitta, the awakened state of mind; it is connected with openness and being completely, fully all right.

  We actually had this kind of practice presented to us in 1971 at our retreat center Tail of the Tiger (which was renamed “Karmê Chöling” by the sixteenth Karmapa in 1974) when Professor Yoshito S. Hakeda visited.6 He made all of us visualize the full moon, and we put the symbol AH in the middle of it. Later, he told us that we could put any symbol we liked on it. So there is definitely a living kriyayoga visualization practice in Shingon Buddhism.

  The Divine Beings of Sound

  In terms of the divine beings of sound, having established your syllable on the moon, the moon echoes that syllable, and the sound of the syllable vibrates and repeats its own mantra as a part of your visualization.

  The Divine Beings of Form

  With the divine beings of form, having visualized the seed syllable on the moon, you radiate light out from the syllable in order to alleviate the sufferings of all sentient beings, and to make offerings to the buddhas of the past, present, and future. After that, the light comes back, having fulfilled all its purposes, and you begin to visualize the form of the deity.

  The Divine Beings of Mudra

  With the divine beings of mudra, after you have visualized a particular deity sitting in front of you on the full moon, you create what are called mudra deities or armor deities. That is, you make certain hand gestures or mudras that go with the visualization, which represent what is called putting on a suit of armor. By means of these mudras, you offer protection to the psychic centers of the central deity’s body by visualizing little deities sitting on the appropriate parts of the central deity’s body: the forehead center, throat center, chest center, navel center, genital center, and so forth.

  The Divine Beings of Mark

  With the last deity, called the divine beings of mark, or the divine beings of seal or symbol, you dissolve the visualization back into emptiness, back into the nonexistence of confusion. When you dissolve the visualization into shunyata, that visualization is no longer solid. Dissolving the visualization into shunyata is a way of reducing the visualization into nowhere.

  At the same time, there is subtlety in the approach to shunyata that is present in kriyayoga. Shunyata has dissolved the visualization, but pride of some kind continues. You begin to see that the deities exist independently without being visualized. You see that your friends are the form of Vairochana or some other deity, and that your friends’ speech is the mantra echoing. You see that your thought patterns happen within the realm of that deity. So the divine attitude of mark is a kind of meditation in action. The deity is being felt and seen and thought of in the same way as you feel and see and think of your friends around you.

  Samayasattva and Jnanasattva in Kriyayoga Practice

  VISUALIZATION PRACTICE. In the kriyayoga tantra, although you do not identify with the deities by visualizing yourself as one of them, you still have the two sattva principles: samayasattva and jnanasattva.

  Samayasattva is the basic visualization. You begin by understanding the symbolism and creating the visualization. You visualize the deity as a samayasattva outside of you, in front of your body. Then the jnanasattva descends on the samayasattva and becomes united with it, and the samayasattva is blessed by the presence of the jnanasattva. The empowerment you receive from your guru during the abhisheka is what makes the jnanasattva listen and accept your invitation to descend. In the abhisheka, you actually have a chance to meet a jnanasattva properly for the first time.

  The jnanasattva is the reality or the wisdom of that which has been invoked. So as you visualize, you suddenly invoke the jnanasattva, which is the actual experience of the enlightened principle in the form of a sambhogakaya buddha, and the jnanasattva dissolves into the visualization, or samayasattva. At that point, the visualization becomes powerful energy. In kriyayoga, you just witness all this in front of you. In your purely ordinary body, you watch these things taking place.

  The relationship between samayasattva and jnanasattva changes throughout the various tantric yanas. As far as kriyayoga is concerned, the practitioner regards the samayasattva as a personal creation. That actually remains the same throughout the yanas, but the relationship to the jnanasattva changes. In kriyayoga, relating to the jnanasattva is like relating to something outside of oneself. You regard yourself as a servant, and you regard the deity that you invoke as lord or master. That attitude is actually very helpful in this underdeveloped level of vajrayana. Otherwise, you could trip out completely.

  At this stage, it is nece
ssary to develop humility. Kriyayoga is the first yana beyond mahayana, and it is a great exposure to the vajra world, which is fantastic. But you need to keep it cool. The idea is to be humble; the things that you see are not actually yours. You are merely an observer who still remains wretched in spite of your purity. You are just a clean little thing watching those visualizations happening over there. You are relating with the jnanasattva principle as lord or master. By regarding the jnanasattva like that, you transcend unnecessary obstacles of ego-boost and rudra-hood.

  You also begin to receive all kinds of miraculous powers. But at this point, you do not wait for or look toward realization or the attainment of miraculous powers. Realization, final vision, final insight, or final liberation is not particularly regarded as a highlight or the “real thing.” You are completely satisfied with your clean pure life—with your clean body, clean speech, and clean mind. You are that purity anyway, since you are relating with these deities. So the approach to visualization in kriyayoga is one of integrating the higher realm of thinking with the lower realm of thinking.

  POSTMEDITATION PRACTICE. In kriyayoga we almost always talk about the jnanasattva in terms of practice, but the jnanasattva exists in the postmeditation experience as well. Actually, that is usually when the jnanasattva is present. The samayasattva and jnanasattva are more separate during the meditation itself, when you are doing sadhana practice, than in everyday life. In daily life, the experience of jnanasattva would be somewhat the equivalent of a sense of humor, in that the jnanasattva enlivens experience and gives you a fix of reality. It could be an experience of space, or a breathing space, or it could be very claustrophobic, because you cannot get out of it. It is haunting, but at the same time it is immensely spacious and fantastic.

  MANTRA

  There are two types of mantra in kriyayoga tantra: secret mantra and knowledge mantra.

  Secret Mantra

  The first mantra is sang-ngak in Tibetan, or guhyamantra in Sanskrit. Sang means “secret,” and ngak means “mantra”; so sang-ngak means “secret mantra.” Secret mantra is based on the idea of invoking the magical aspect of purity.

  Knowledge Mantra

  The second mantra is a necessary accompaniment to the first one. It is called rig-ngak in Tibetan, or vidyamantra in Sanskrit. Rig means “knowledge” or “insight,” and ngak, again, means “mantra”; so rig-ngak means “knowledge mantra.” It is quite the opposite of the guhyamantra. Here, trust is not based on the magical aspect alone, but on intelligence and on the suddenness and spontaneity of the mahamudra experience.

  PEACEFUL ACTION WITH A HINT OF CRAZINESS

  Kriyayoga involves pacifying. The act of pacifying is something you do. It is not passive, but you are pacified. You pacify as much as you can in kriyayoga, and anything that is still left to pacify is dealt with in the coming yanas. As you go on to further yanas, you actually become more and more aggressive. You become more thought provoking, more powerful, and more angry. In the case of kriyayoga, there may be a more timid or tiptoey quality. Nevertheless, it is very genuine and very powerful.

  You might think that such a timid or peaceful quality makes it almost contradictory to call kriyayoga the yana of action. But there is no problem with that. In kriyayoga, action is peaceful action. If you eat a vegetarian diet, you just do it—flat. You take three showers a day—flat. You have visualizations—flat. That is one of the characteristics of kriyayoga tantra.

  At the same time, even though in kriyayoga it seems that you are trying to be sane, there is still craziness. Your eccentricity in kriyayoga has a seed of enlightenment in it. Although kriyayoga is just the entrance to the vajrayana, there are already mahamudra-like experiences at this level. This does not mean, however, that the practitioner of kriyayoga is someone who already has experience with anuttarayoga. It means that although you could begin the path of tantra with kriyayoga, your experience will still have an element of anuttarayoga. Kriyayoga is tantra, and if you are practicing tantra, you always automatically have some mahamudra aspect taking place.

  1. In some commentaries, this list is given as dung, urine, tears, snot, and saliva.

  2. Trungpa Rinpoche also referred to the second worldly family as the family of hungry ghosts.

  3. Mamaki is more often associated with water and with pacifying.

  4. Karma Trinlepa (1456–1539) studied with the seventh Karmapa and was one of the eighth Karmapa’s teachers; Rangjung Dorje (1284–1339) was the third Karmapa.

  5. See chapter 38, “Visualization and Sadhana Practice.”

  6. Professor Yoshito S. Hakeda was one of the elite scholar-priests sent abroad after the Second World War by the Japanese Shingon sect. He came to visit Tail of the Tiger from New York City, where he lived for many years and taught as a professor at Columbia University.

  UPAYOGA: THE YANA OF CONDUCT

  44

  Upayoga: Unadorned Perception

  Upayoga involves greater compassion and greater individual salvation at the same time. . . . There is a quality of purity, openness, and diligence in practice, related with seeing things clearly. . . . That is, compassion is not something you are taking on as a further burden, but it is a stripping away of your own burden—and the more you take away your burden, the more compassionate you become.

  THE TRANSITION FROM KRIYAYOGA TO UPAYOGA

  The second tantric yana is upayoga. Upa refers to conduct, so upayoga is the yoga of application or practice.1 The Tibetan word for upayoga is chögyü. Chö is “practicing” or “performing,” and gyü means “tantra”; so chögyü is the “practicing tantra.” You are continuing the purification practices of kriyayoga tantra, and at the same time you are practicing ideas borrowed from the next yana, or yogayana. In upayoga, half of its practice is identical to the practice of kriyayoga, and half of its practice is like that of yogayana.

  The qualities of appreciation and psychological clarity become much greater at this point, because you have been thoroughly trained in kriyayoga. Kriyayoga has made you more aware of the phenomenal world, and its purity and impurity are completely known. This automatically allows you to turn your attitude more inward than outward. You develop further confidence and free-flowing trust in the yidams. To relate with them and work with them becomes very important. Kriyayoga is like buying the land and dealing with the water and sewage system, and upayoga is like constructing a house. Upayoga has greater vision, but this greater vision cannot develop unless you know who you are and what you are. The practicalities have to be worked out in detail.

  At the level of kriyayoga and upayoga, there is a quality of great surprise rather than great joy. If you are involved with these two yanas, you find yourself enormously refreshed. It is as if you were traveling in a new country and discovering all the different aspects of that particular country. You may not know who you are or how you are doing, but a quality of spaciousness is always there, which is very refreshing. You feel somewhat alien and cultureless, and at the same time you are pushed into corners. You are not certain whether you can get into this new culture or not, which helps enormously. That is one of the most interesting aspects of this particular yana. I am afraid that when you get into the next yana, the culture changes its flavor, becoming perhaps too concrete and too hospitable, too fascinating and realistic.

  As far as purity is concerned, upayoga is very close to kriyayoga, but a kind of mental carelessness is taking place, so you are transcending kriyayoga. Therefore, fewer mudras are practiced. Here, mudras are just a delicate way to handle the deities’ hands so that the deities are not clumsy or crude. In upayoga, deities are expressing the delicacies of enlightenment, but they still have solid earthiness. They are like well-bathed princes who are also peasants. In upayoga, the purification itself is the earthy element. You are getting rid of dirt, but you also have more connection with dirt. It is like being a farmer: if you are plowing, harvesting, or threshing, you tend to collect more dirt, and you take more baths for that reason, not just because t
aking a bath is pleasurable.

  In upayoga, practical living situations such as a vegetarian diet and taking showers are not regarded as the main point, but more as helpful suggestions. In contrast, in kriyayoga tantra, purification is very important. It is not just matter-of-fact, not just trying to get rid of your dirt, but it is the main principle and your main occupation or practice. But in upayoga, the practice of purity is not your main occupation. Purity is just a side credential that you have inherited from the previous yana. In upayoga, you combine purity with carelessness. That carelessness brings purity: you can be careless and clean at the same time. Just focusing on being clean does not seem to be the point, and for that matter, casualness is not the point. But you bring them together, so you have relaxed cleanliness. That is the approach of this particular yana.

  The upayogayana brings an uplifting quality that tends toward anuttarayoga and maha ati. Those yanas are yet to come, but somehow this practice is closely related. There is no ambition, but you keep purification as part of your behavior. That is what one generally does anyway. If you have finished eating your dinner, you wash your plate so you can eat on it again in the future. You clean up every night and every morning, you vacuum the floor and tidy up your room because you want to use it again. There is a concern about the future, and a sense of an ongoing process taking place.