The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  The Inner Abhisheka

  There are some references to the inner abhisheka in this tantra, but it is not explained in great detail. The idea of abhisheka is simply that your mind is completely churned into the tathagatagarbha of your particular deity, which is the expression of the purest form of your being. But in order to relate with the purest form of your being, you must also relate with the impure form of your being.

  The inner abhisheka enables you to bring your problems and your development into your visualization of particular deities. You visualize the deities in certain forms and colors as mental images, and these deities are then transmuted into a higher form of mental images. So the deities are a form of hope, and at the same time they are a way of clearly seeing your confusion. Problems are no longer problematic because they become symbols and deities. They become transcendent problems, so there are no solid problems as such. This seems to be the inner or higher form of abhisheka. The teacher recommends that you practice this, and empowers you to practice it from this point onward.

  In upayoga, the abhisheka principle is usually not so much about what you are going to become, but some hint of possibility is given to you so that you feel you are capable of becoming something. By practicing the sadhana of this yana, you develop potentiality. You are collecting enough gunpowder to shoot your cannonballs beyond the hill. So an upayoga abhisheka is about potential, about how much gunpowder you collect. That is the idea of abhisheka—encouragement and empowerment.

  FAMILIES AND MANDALAS

  There is disagreement as to the number of families in upayoga. According to the fourteenth-century historian Butön (1290–1365), upayoga can be divided into three families, based on vajra body, vajra speech, and vajra mind. Vajra body is connected with the vajra family, vajra speech with the padma family, and vajra mind with the buddha family. However, the great scholar Taranatha (1575–1684) says that upayoga includes all five buddha-families: vajra, ratna, padma, karma, and buddha.

  Those two possibilities can occur concurrently, and both are workable. Although little details like that may seem arbitrary, all the commentators agree on the importance of the symbolism; they agree that it is very powerful and alive. There is no disagreement at all on that basic point.

  In terms of the mandala principle, from upayoga onward, there is an emphasis on the importance of the inner mandala as well as the outer mandala—the outer mandala being the shrine and the physical setup outside your body, and the inner mandala being your own physical body. In contrast, in kriyayoga there was very little reference to the body mandala.

  UPAYOGA SAMAYA

  The upayoga samaya has three categories.

  The Samayas of Surrendering the Ego

  The first upayoga samaya category is the surrendering of the gross ego, which is related to relative bodhichitta, and the second upayoga samaya is the surrendering of the refined ego, which is related to absolute bodhichitta. These are the two surrenderings of the kriyayoga, which we discussed earlier.

  The Samaya of the Dharmachakra Mudra

  But a third samaya vow is added to those two, called the samaya of the dharmachakra mudra. With this samaya, you are able to see that all form is Vajrasattva’s form, all speech is Vajrasattva’s speech, and all thought process is Vajrasattva’s thought process. So there is a sense of all-pervasive intelligence, openness, and wisdom continuing all the time. This extra samaya combines kriyayoga and mahayoga, which are the previous yana and the next yana.

  The main point of upayoga is to develop further sophistication and respect for your basic being. It is like building a house on purified ground. In kriyayoga, you have less confidence in the phenomenal world because you perceive it as being dirty. But now that you have the knowledge of how to clean it up or purify it, you feel more relaxed and comfortable. So with upayoga, you have more confidence in the phenomenal world. The whole purification system is known to you, and you are capable of constructing your own building. That is why this yana is known as half kriyayogayana and half yoga yana.

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  Upayoga: Practice

  In tantra, we are unfolding the mysteries of reality, or kündzop, and that unfolding is enormous, it is endless. To really become somebody who has gained mastery of the world, someone who has learned to live in the world and to enjoy pleasure thoroughly and completely, demands enormous wisdom. It is a huge task. Yet that seems to be one of the promises of the worldliness of tantra.

  MAKING CONTACT WITH THE YIDAM

  In the vajrayana, you cannot relate with the phenomenal world as a whole from the ultimate point of view unless you relate with the details. You need to relate with a particular aspect of the world, with a certain buddha-family, symbol, or deity. In this case, the term deity has nothing to do with the idea of an external deity coming to you; a deity is an expression of reality.

  At the level of vajrayana, no experience is ineffable or nameless, and nothing is beyond description. Everything is capable of being described in a very practical way. That is why the accuracy of vajrayana is far superior to ordinary ideas of doing good, or having insight without being able to put a name to it. One of the merits of the vajrayana path is that its practitioners would never say that in order to express such and such, even the Buddha’s tongue is numb. The vajrayana practitioner would not make such a pathetic remark, suggesting that the speaker’s ignorance is to be equated with Buddha’s ignorance. In the vajrayana path, you have constant reference points. You have constant colors, images, and energies to relate with. That is why it is very powerful and very accurate.

  Regarding the Yidam as Your Friend

  An important aspect of upayoga is the attempt to make contact with the yidam through sadhana practice. In the case of kriyayoga tantra, the deity was regarded as a lord or master, but in this case the deity is regarded as a friend, somewhat on an equal level. So a sense of friendship is taking place between yourself and what you have visualized. But at this point, you still do not identify the visualization with yourself, particularly. It seems to be too early to get married; a courtship would seem to be more efficacious. Nevertheless, there is trust and friendship taking place between the deities and yourself. The yidam can accommodate all your aspects. You do not have to think in terms of the better part of you being the yidam, but all of you is included. Otherwise, you cannot have the samayasattva and the jnanasattva becoming one.

  Samayasattva and Jnanasattva

  In upayoga, you visualize the internal samayasattva in your own body, in your being, and you also invite the external samayasattva in front of you. So your visualization is in the form of two sets of mandalas: inner and outer. You are in the center of one mandala, and there is another visualized mandala on the shrine, which is the dwelling place of the yidam.

  Then you invite the jnanasattva to come to you, and the jnanasattva dissolves into the samayasattva that you are visualizing in your own body, as well as into the version that you are visualizing in front of you on the shrine.

  Inviting the jnanasattva is not like inviting a god from heaven. The transcendental aspect of your body and your shrine is invoked, which seems to help enormously in assuring that your visualization does not become just imagination, but rather is true visualization. You are inviting a feeling of that particular deity. It is very intimate.

  To take an example, you might visualize a beautiful dish of food in front of you, but at some point the whole thing looks a bit funny. You visualize so thoroughly that the whole thing becomes artificial, as if it were made out of plastic. But then you tune your mind in to a different level. You tune in to your love of food, and you bring your love of food to that particular dish that looks like plastic—and finally it becomes eatable! You actually feel that the food is alive and fresh.

  Visualization becomes much more powerful and realistic when there is that quality of feeling. Just extending your hallucination is not the point of visualization in the tantric approach. The important point about visualization is that you have a feeling of Ak
shobhya or Vairochana or whomever you are visualizing. You tune in to their emotions, their senses, their particular approach. You do not need to watch yourself, because you are completely involved. You do not have to make sure that you are doing it right, because you are there already.

  The upayoga style of visualization is said to have three principles of unification: unification of body, speech, and mind. Your body, speech, and mind are united with the yidam. In terms of the inner and outer mandalas, not only is there unification of the three principles in your physical body, but there is also unification in your visualized body or external shrine. So your physical body is the dwelling place of the yidams, just as the shrine is the dwelling place of the yidams. There is a definite sense of trust and faith that your whole setup—your physical being and the place you are living—has the characteristics of the particular yidam that you are working with.

  In upayoga visualization, the six types of gods that we discussed in kriyayoga are exactly the same: the gods of shunyata, syllable, sound, form, mudra, and mark. So the visualization is almost identical, except that in upayoga there is more confidence and more personal identification.

  JOINING PRACTICE WITH DAILY LIFE

  One of the interesting points about tantric practice is that you do not impose your philosophy or moral principles on anything. You just accept wholeheartedly the social norms that take place in society. On top of that, you color that situation by your own insight and your own craziness. So it does not make any difference where you work: you could work in a missile factory, or an atomic energy plant, or in a slaughterhouse. One of the fascinating things about tantric practitioners is that you are able to work in any of those ways, because you have a relationship with what you are doing.

  Tantric practitioners couldn’t care less about their dogma. There is no dogma, none whatsoever. The dogma is their world. They cannot change their world, and at the same time they conquer the world. It is a very powerful twist. Acceptance also means conquering. You do what you have to do. So even if your work is in a slaughterhouse, you go ahead and do it. Nothing is wrong with this work, absolutely not. You are still a tantric practitioner.

  The world can be seen very humorously and very concretely at the same time. Mahasukha comes from precisely that point. You do not have to try to fit everything into your little book of rules and regulations. The only book is your behavior. If your behavior or psychological state does not fit the phenomenal world, you are punished and you get into enormous danger. You become self-destructive or subject to execution because you have failed fundamentally, rather than because you have failed to keep to the dogma. That is the whole point. The whole thing is very direct; it is absolutely direct.

  FACADE OF RESPECTABILITY

  Kriyayoga and upayoga are more directed toward passion or desire than toward anger. There is a quality of indulgence, a sense of committing yourself in various ways and becoming one with the cosmos. But becoming completely one with what you are doing needs a certain amount of wildness in a deeper sense. In kriyayoga, as well as upayoga, there is still an element of the Indian Brahmanical tradition. That shadow of the medieval Indian approach continues. You follow certain rules and regulations, such as keeping clean or reciting mantras as you go about your life. Nevertheless, behind the whole thing, wildness and craziness take place.

  In tantra, there is not respectability all the time. You could be a respectable person, but at the same time you are slightly offbeat. Within being clean, you could be very strangely clean. You could be clean and crazy at the same time. The insight or wisdom in that craziness is based on knowing that you could tap the secret. You are not afraid of that or of anything.

  Usually when people keep very strict, very virtuous rules and regulations, they have little clue as to what they are getting into. Therefore, there is a fear of losing that clue. So they keep following those rules very puritanically. But in tantra, people do have some kind of clue, so they know that they cannot lose in any case. You may still maintain a facade of respectability, but at the same time, there is a little twist taking place because you know you cannot lose. You have gotten the hang of it. That twist is self-existing; you are not told to develop this twist. If you were told that, then you would try to manufacture it, which would be pure guesswork. But in this case, it is very simple and direct. You begin to pick up the message, the spirit of the pun.

  CRAZY WISDOM

  Someone able to do all that is a called a vidyadhara, according to this yana. Our way of translating vidyadhara is “crazy-wisdom type.” The idea of the vidyadhara, the holder of insight, begins to come along much more vividly at this point, but still very meekly. There is just a hint of it. There is crazy wisdom only to the extent that there is some connection with Vajradhara. Simply that. So the unadorned state of mind has the potential of crazy wisdom, but it hasn’t actually happened yet to the extent that it comes into play in the three higher levels of tantra. It all depends on how much you can actually unmask or unclothe your ego. It depends on how courageous you are about that. It is the same old Buddhist logic.

  The idea of the vidyadhara, of crazy-wisdom insightfulness, is that you take your own stance. You do not need help or support or any adornment, and you are quite content with that. You are somewhat direct and precise in the sense that for you, things do not need a reference point in order to be understood. Things just present themselves as they are.

  ENDLESS UNFOLDING

  Tantra is not merely a question of knowing how to indulge in sense pleasures. That is not quite enough; that is not quite tantra. We may think that we know the five colors and how they are connected with the five wisdoms, but that is also not quite enough. There are infinite varieties and profundities involved with even knowing the five colors or the five emotions. Tantra has much greater depth than that.

  In tantra, we are unfolding the mysteries of reality, or kündzop, and that unfolding is enormous, it is endless. To really become somebody who has gained mastery of the world, someone who has learned to live in the world and to enjoy pleasure thoroughly and completely, demands enormous wisdom. It is a huge task. Yet that seems to be one of the promises of the worldliness of tantra.

  YOGAYANA: THE YANA OF UNION

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  Yogayana: Complete Union

  Yogayana is referred to as the embodiment of a great prince. This embodiment does not refer to tathagatagarbha, but to self-existing bliss or joy. Joy exists on this path because the dichotomy of physical or external practice and internal practice has been solved. There is complete union, complete oneness.

  ONENESS AND POWER

  The third yana of the vajrayana is yogayana. The word yoga means “union,” and the particular importance of this yana is the experience of power and complete union. Yogayana is on the borderline of anuttarayoga, also known as mahamudra, but although there is an element of mahamudra in yogayana, it is not the full experience.

  In yogayana, the physical discipline is borrowed from kriyayoga, and there is still an emphasis on purity, but psychologically yogayana is much more mahamudra oriented. There is an appreciation of the direct simplicity of things as they are. The previous yana, upayoga, is said to combine the external action-oriented practice of kriyayoga and the internal meditation-oriented practice of yogayana. However, that is not quite regarded as real union; it is a combining together rather than a union in the fullest sense. But with yogayana, there is real union.

  Here, union is not about two pieces put together; rather, it is oneness with two expressions. That is the real meaning of union: oneness with two simultaneous expressions. For instance, we could say that our relationship to life and death is oneness, because life is death, and death is life. There is no way of keeping death and life separate, or joining them together. While we are alive, we are always approaching death, so we are dying constantly, just as we are living constantly at the same time.

  As another example, we could also say that light contains darkness within itself. It is not that ligh
t is a combination of light and dark, but light is dark; therefore, darkness becomes light simultaneously. That is what is meant by oneness. Oneness is connected with power. It has a cutting, piercing, or penetrating quality. Its power comes from not being split into an allegiance to either upaya or prajna, bodhichitta or knowledge. It comes from one-pointedness.

  In yogayana, there is no fear of mingling things together. Yogayana puts together expansion and profundity. It puts together action, practice, and the experience of shunyata. But compared with anuttarayoga or the higher yanas that are yet to come, yogayana may seem somewhat alien in that it is still trying to be kind and polite, while knowing that an eruption of craziness might take place at any time.

  THE INDIVISIBILITY OF THE TWO TRUTHS

  In yogayana, the two truths are regarded as indivisible. Phenomenal experience is not divided into either kündzop or töndam; whatever is seen as an expression of kündzop is seen as an expression of töndam at the same time. So yogayana unites kündzop and töndam, relative and absolute truth. The expansiveness of kündzop or phenomenal experience and the profundity of töndam are brought together in the practice of meditation.