The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  So you have no chance of forgetting your awareness, because your awareness is built on using the resistance or the poison. Elements that are seemingly destructive, or the opposite of the path, are being used as reminders, and such natural reminders are happening constantly. So forgetfulness becomes mindfulness at the same time. In path mahamudra discipline, whatever needs to be subdued is subdued, and whatever needs to be taken care of is taken care of. That seems to be the general approach.

  FEAST PRACTICE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF RUDRA

  In connection with samaya, one of the practices that has been developed is called a feast offering, or tsokkyi khorlo. Tsok is “feast,” kyi means “of,” and khorlo is “chakra” or “wheel”; so tsokkyi khorlo means “wheel of feast” or “feast offering.” Vajrayana practitioners are supposed to do a feast offering on the tenth day and the twenty-fifth day of the lunar calendar, the tenth being the day of the herukas, and the twenty-fifth being the day of the dakinis.1 On those days, you must offer a feast connected with the sadhana that you are practicing.

  The process of a vajra feast is to collect food and purify it, and then invite your vajra brothers and sisters into the feast to share your experience. You also invite the tathagatas and herukas and dakinis as guests. You visualize them approaching you, and you give them offerings from the feast. This offering is called the select offering. If you have gone against the samaya vows, you make a second offering, called a confession offering, as an amendment of your vows. For the third part of the feast, you make a final offering, called a destruction offering. With this offering some food is taken out and put into a triangular black box in order to invoke Rudra, who is then destroyed or killed on the spot. The killing of Rudra is the third part of the feast. After the ceremony is completed, the students and masters who took part in it share the feast food and drink. At the time of Naropa, feast practice was not all that formalized, so feast practice was more like a seemingly ordinary party. But these offerings and the destruction of Rudra were already a part of the whole thing.

  There are two important ingredients to be included in a feast offering: meat and alcohol. Alcohol is connected with passion, and meat is connected with aggression. These are the higher ingredients, and you cannot prepare the feast offering without them. Then you can collect fruits or grains or other food to create a meal.

  Indulgence plays a very important part in tantra. However, feast practice seems to have become a rather corrupted situation in Tibet. For example, if somebody wanted to have a good drink, or to eat meat although they were vegetarian, they could put their meat and drink on the shrine table and have an excuse to have a good time. Because it was now vajra food, they figured it would not be breaking their vows.

  An ordinary person who has not received abhisheka and has no awareness or respect for the vajrayana approach should not be invited to participate in feast practice. In feast practice, poison and medicine are very close. People with no understanding of vajrayana would have a problem with that. Since they would have no idea of the vajrayana meaning of sacredness, it would seem to them to be a contradiction to have a sacred party going on where everybody was eating and drinking and enjoying themselves. They would think that there must be something wrong. But feast practice is a very deliberate practice. It is not just about having a good old party; that would not quite be a vajra feast. True feast practice is overwhelmingly powerful. Students who were not used to such a vajra practice probably could not keep up with it.

  Working with the Samsaric Physical Body

  The meaning of the feast offering is to encourage the yogins and yoginis to take care of their bodies, so that their wisdom is not neglected. The yoginis and yogins of the vicinity join together to make sure that they are working with the samsaric physical body. By working with the samsaric physical body, you also work with the greater mandala-realm world at the same time.

  As the Hevajra Tantra says: “Great wisdom abides within the body. Therefore, one should give up any questions completely. That which pervades all things comes from the body and the sense organs, but at the same time it does not come from the body and sense organs.” This means that the body is the source of the path, and that without the body, you cannot have the path and the journey.

  So the body should be treated well. But you do not do so just to make the body a good solid ladder, to just maintain it so you can tread on it. You should respect the body as the inner vajra mandala. The idea is that the body is very sacred, and it is also the property of the herukas of the mandala.

  NOT HESITATING TO APPLY THE FOUR KARMAS

  Another principle connected with the samaya vow is that of the four karmas: the actions of pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and destroying. Pacifying, or exposing yourself to intellectual disciplines, is connected with the vajra family; enriching, or being generous, is connected with the ratna family; magnetizing, or helping people, is connected with the padma family; destroying, or showing people the way by means of destruction, is connected with the karma family.

  A further vow is that you should not hesitate to apply those basic principles. You should not hesitate to magnetize people, physically, psychologically, or spiritually. You should not hesitate to destroy people physically, psychologically, or spiritually. Having already gained an understanding of your own basic energy, you should not be fearful of the karmic consequences. Furthermore, you should have trust in your yidam, herukas, deities, and so forth. You should take care of your body with good clothes, good food, and pleasurable objects. You should enjoy the sense perceptions and sense indulgences. We could go on, but if we went into tantric vows in great detail, we would have something like seventy-five thousand details.

  VOWING NOT TO TAKE A LUKEWARM APPROACH TO LIFE

  Anuttarayoga practice combines the previous yanas and brings them together as personal experience. It works with the lukewarm quality that is our ordinary, everyday approach to life. In the hinayana you are renouncing your background, and in the mahayana you are working with sentient beings, but that lukewarm quality has not really been challenged. You still can keep your lukewarm attitude.

  Cold is death, and hot is birth, so lukewarm is between birth and death. This lukewarm life-flow is localized in what is known in Tibetan as uma, or in Sanskrit as avadhuti. The uma is a central channel in your body, both physically and psychically. It is that which maintains the lukewarmness—the feeling that you have not quite died, and you are also not quite living, but still you are maintaining your life force. That lukewarmness is regarded as the essence of ego.

  You could write all kinds of poems and praises about lukewarmness. You could write music about that or express it in sculpture. It goes something like this: “How fantastic to be alive! This lukewarm threshold of my life is so beautiful. It is keeping me in contact with the hotness of my father and the coolness of my mother. This particular lukewarm thread is providing me with the possibility of brewing a child, my own descendant. How fantastic to be lukewarm! I don’t actually have to die; my descendants will continue me. And if I am reborn again, I can rejoin my lukewarm stuff.” That is what we usually do; it is our usual approach.

  With that lukewarm approach, we think: “Let us be thankful for the books, let us be thankful for the music! Let us be thankful for the fantastic poetry that has been written in this world! Let us be thankful for the great warriors who have been in this world! Let us be thankful for the great saints and saviors who have come to this world with their vision and power and inspiration! Thanks to all of that and all of them, I am able to maintain the lukewarm tube that runs through my spinal cord! Thank goodness that, although my umbilical cord has been cut, I can still hang on to the brahmarandhra, my aperture of Brahma! Thank God that we have the sun shining! When the sun shines, it is glorious and fulfills all purposes. And when the sun doesn’t shine, we have the full moon or the crescent moon to be praised. And even if they did not exist, there would still be the galaxies of stars and the dawns and the dusks, the grass and the coc
kroaches that exist in our world, reminding me of the life force.”

  Such an attitude is related with a superficial approach to life force, because the life force is regarded as lukewarm. You might say, “I went to the restaurant and appreciated the waiter’s red apron. He brought delicious wine and served it with a beautiful smile. How delicious the steak was, and the music was sweet.” That is an example of what lukewarm life is all about. Life shouldn’t be too hot, because you can’t stand it; life shouldn’t be too cold, because you also can’t stand that. So your avadhuti tube usually is filled with the lukewarm fluid of convenience, and that is a problem.

  THE FOUR BASIC VOWS FOR OVERCOMING LUKEWARMNESS

  In anuttarayoga, the highest yoga of the New Translation school, it is quite rightly said that you should commit murder and theft, and that you should lie and have sex. Those are the four basic vows or principles for how you should conduct yourself in order to deal with your lukewarm quality—which is so lukewarm, it is terrible.

  Murdering

  The first vow is the vow to commit murder. By means of the practice of formless practice, or sampannakrama, your basic strength—your air or breath—should be prevented from planting further seeds of life. You prevent it completely from planting further ego seeds in your central channel. Therefore, you are committing murder.

  Lying

  The second vow is the vow to lie. Since you have seen the cosmic patterns of relationship as they are, since you relate with the dharmas of reality properly, you seem to be always telling a lie. For unwise or unpracticed people, things-as-they-are is not what appears to be happening, so from their point of view you are telling a lie. Furthermore, truth is shifty. So if you told the truth of now, it would be the lie of yesterday or tomorrow or the next minute.

  Stealing

  The third vow is the vow to steal. By capturing the wisdom and power of the Buddha, without anybody requesting you to do so, you are stealing that wealth.

  Sexual Intercourse

  The fourth vow is the vow to engage in sexual intercourse. Since the nature of dharmata, the world as it is, has been understood and seen as it is, you are indulging yourself in the world of isness, which is a form of sexual intercourse. In this case, it is more like rape, because that world does not want to be seen as it is. It would like to play with further glamour, to play further tricks on you, but you are not playing that particular game, so it is rape.

  These four vows are basic to the realization of anuttarayoga. In anuttarayoga, in order to overcome lukewarmness, you vow to commit murder, tell lies, steal, and rape. These four vows are repeatedly referred to in Jamgön Kongtrül the Great’s work, as well as in the work of Longchen Rabjam. They both agree that there should be room to commit crimes. And by crime, we are talking about transcendental crime. We are trying to overcome that lukewarmness, that fake reality or fake poetry.

  GUHYASAMAJA TEACHINGS ON WHO IS SUITABLE FOR SAMAYA

  There are many texts on the different kinds of samaya, the persons suitable to practice the teachings, and the different disciplines those people are involved in. One such text is the Guhyasamaja Tantra, which has been translated into English by Francesca Fremantle.2 The following section is about what kind of people are suitable to practice tantra.

  Being beyond Dualistic Thought

  Then Vajradhara the King, the body, speech, and mind of all Tathagatas, All Highest Lord of the World, spoke about the nature of the practice of the true meaning of the Dharma, the best of all practices.

  The families of passion, hatred, and delusion which exist beyond dualistic thoughts cause the attainment of ultimate siddhi, the matchless supreme way. Those who are despised because of birth or occupation, and those whose minds are bent on killing, succeed in this supreme way, the matchless Mahayana.3 Even great evildoers, beings who have committed irrevocable sins, succeed in the way of the Buddhas, this great ocean of Mahayana. But those who blame in their hearts the teacher never succeed in sadhana. Those who destroy life and delight in lying, those who covet the wealth of others and are attached to sensual desires, those who eat excrement and urine, all these are worthy of the practice. The sadhaka who makes love to his mother, sister, and daughter attains perfect siddhi, the dharma nature of the supreme Mahayana. Making love to the mother of the Lord Buddha, he is not defiled, but that wise one, free from dualistic thought, attains the Buddha nature.

  To begin with, the idea of being beyond dualistic thought seems to be an important point. It is what we might call ordinary-extraordinary experience. When you are awake, or when you are prepared to be awake, or when you are willing to be awake, you have exposure to freedom, to free activity.

  Nondualistic Activity and the Perpetuation of Freedom

  The next lines speak of the samaya vow as an expression of freedom rather than imprisonment. Usually anything dirty, anything sinful, anything confused is regarded as perpetuating the lower realms, which is true. There is a big question of whether or not such activities should take place at all. But in this case, those activities are perpetuating something else, because you are approaching them from a nondualistic direction.

  Here is the secret rite by which all disciples request the great Vajra. As the Vajra of Enlightenment bestowed the supreme worship on the Buddhas, bestow it now upon me, O Vajra Space, for my salvation. Then he should bestow consecration upon him with a joyful mind; he should place the Lord in his heart, through union with the deity’s image, and reveal the mandala to the wise disciple, and tell him the secret samaya proclaimed by all the Buddhas.

  Kill living beings,

  Speak false words,

  Take what is not given,

  And live with women.

  He should set all beings on this Vajra Path, for this is the everlasting samaya law of all Buddhas.

  The person who kills their father is one who ruthlessly destroys the father of all, which is aggression and rudra. The person who makes love to their mother is one who makes love to the mother of all, namely Prajnaparamita, the mother of all the buddhas and of all the knowledge that has ever been brought forth into this world. So in tantric language, making love to your mother means becoming one with the teachings and with your teacher.

  That is the definition of samaya in anuttarayoga. It means to relate with your father, aggression, completely, and with your mother, passion, completely. You need to get into them and relate with them.

  1. The day of the herukas corresponds to the tenth day of the waxing moon, and the day of the dakinis corresponds to the tenth day of the waning moon.

  2. This translation by Francesca Fremantle has not yet been published, and is a work in progress.

  3. Here Mahayana does not simply mean the second of the three yanas (hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana), but refers to the vajrayana path as a whole, which encompasses all three.

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  The Divisions of Anuttarayoga

  There are a billion pores on your body, and each pore forms a nest for a mandala. So the intricate details that exist in the phenomenal world are completely saturated by the Kalachakra principle. There is no room to breathe, except for the breath of Kalachakra going in and out. It is the ultimate claustrophobia, which at first brings enormous panic, but then brings a sense of trust; because if Kalachakra’s breath is what you are breathing, you are not breathing pollution.

  IN ONE way, anuttarayoga is very aggressive; in another way, it is very definite and self-indulgent; and in a third way, it is very transparent. Because of those three principles, it is divided into three families, or three categories of tantra: father tantra, mother tantra, and nondual tantra.

  In Tibetan, these three categories are pha-gyü, ma-gyü, and nyi-me gyü. The union of the three is called la-me gyü, which means “none higher,” or in Sanskrit, anuttara. So we have aggression tantra, passion tantra, and ignorance tantra, and putting all three together gives us la-me gyü, or none higher.

  The idea is that once you enter into a particular tantra, you are entering i
nto a certain realm, a total experience. Depending on your psychological makeup, you either join the father tantra, mother tantra, or nondual tantra. It does not make that much difference which one you enter; it is not linear. Anuttarayoga contains all of them, so which one you enter depends on which one you are suited to.

  MOTHER TANTRA

  The Kagyüpas are particularly known for mother tantra, because it is the tradition of devotion, emotion, and passion. For instance, in the songs of Milarepa, there are lots of references to his passion for the guru, and there is a quality of indulgence in passion. Kagyü lineage holders are basically padma people, passionate people, so we have the mother tantra as our lineage, our inherited tantra. But that does not mean that we purely have to stick to that tantra; we could branch out into the others. As practitioners of mother tantra, the Kagyüpas specialize in Chakrasamvara practice, but they also have exposure to father tantra and to all three divisions of anuttarayoga.