The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  In spite of the love of my guru, there was something terrible happening. Jamgön Kongtrül was not actually looking at me. He should have felt me approaching and welcomed me, but he didn’t. He was just lying there talking and laughing his head off. I was very irritated. There was something funny about the whole thing.

  Later on, this incident came up in conversation, and he said, “I do talk behind your back, and I do lie down and make myself comfortable drinking tea, and I do have a good time.” It was okay with him. I think that was a very kind mother’s curse. And things worked out appropriately for me.

  I remember another instance of a mother’s curse that occurred with Jamgön Kongtrül of Shechen. He was very upset with a monk who, though claiming to be a teacher, misinterpreted the Prajnaparamita Sutras. The monk was a student of Khenpo Gangshar, who was Jamgön Kongtrül’s spiritual son. Jamgön Kongtrül was so upset with the monk that he could not be gentle, and he began to physically beat up the monk, telling him, “You’re wrong! You’re wrong!”

  The monk asked, “How do you know you are right?”

  Jamgön Kongtrül answered, “Because I have vajra pride!”

  The monk said, “That doesn’t mean anything. I could say that as well.”

  So they did not connect, and the monk left with a group of people, traveling toward the monastery where he studied. He was wearing a Tibetan raincoat made out of felt, which covered his monk’s robe. When bandits came along, although they usually did not shoot at monks, his layperson-style raincoat made them think he was a merchant, so he was shot right in the forehead.

  There is another story, this time about Jamgön Kongtrül the Great. Jamgön Kongtrül the Great was invited to the southeastern part of Tibet by the people there, who were very devoted to him. The chief of that area felt threatened by his coming to teach; nevertheless, Jamgön Kongtrül the Great came and taught, but he never visited the chief.

  When the chief received reports of how powerful, how wonderful, and how great Jamgön Kongtrül was, and how many people got instructions and benefits from his teachings, the chief was actually very frightened about the whole thing. He felt that he was Jamgön Kongtrül’s opponent.

  Instead of going to Jamgön Kongtrül and asking for his help, the chief became so angry that he raided the monastery where Jamgön Kongtrül had created a library, burning not only the books but also the woodblocks used for printing books. He destroyed the whole monastery, and afterward he made a big speech. He had decided that he needed to make up something extraordinary, because he felt rather guilty. At the same time, he was uncertain about what mystical power might strike him. So he said that if Jamgön Kongtrül had real power, if his teachings were true, then the chief himself would be killed by falling not from above to below, but from below to above; and instead of blood coming out of his mouth, milk would come out. The chief said that if that happened, he would regard Jamgön Kongtrül as a great teacher and his teachings as good, but failing that, he would prove that his own beliefs were right and Jamgön Kongtrül’s were wrong.

  Jamgön Kongtrül was very concerned. But when people asked him to do something to show the chief his power, he said, “I don’t want to do anything to him, particularly. That seems to be wrong.”

  What happened was that the chief ’s words actually came true. One day he was inspecting oxen, which were part of the tax payment of the local people, and checking to see if they were suitable for plowing the fields in the early spring. Before he did so, he had a drink of yogurt and milk. According to this story, one of the oxen got loose and threw him. He landed on the roof, and milk came out of his mouth, and he died on the spot. That is a very interesting example of a mother’s curse.

  Offering and Praise to the Worldly Deities: Subjugating National Ego

  The seventh logos is called the offering and praise to the worldly deities, or chötö. It is another way of visualizing herukas, this time in the form of working with national ego, and subjugating national ego in order to teach.

  THREE TYPES OF NATIONAL EGO. There are three types of national ego: the life force of dwelling place, the life force of clarity, and the life force of name.

  Life force of dwelling place. The life force of dwelling place is connected with the ego of taking personal pride in a physical place.

  Life force of clarity. The life force of clarity is connected with the ego of taking pride in philosophical and religious doctrine.

  Life force of name. The life force of name is connected with the ego of national pride.

  In order to encounter those three types of ego, you have the dwelling place as the physical visualization of the heruka, the clarity as the utterance of mantra, and the name as the meditation on the shunyata principle of the deity. In praising the deity and making offerings, you are subjugating the national ego, and at the same time you are presenting it as an offering. The general approach is one of making a link with the world in the fullest sense.

  Wrathful Mantra: Fearlessness

  The eighth logos is the wrathful mantra, or trag-ngak. Wrathfulness is based on the idea that the mantra is no longer regarded as your savior. The power of the mantra demands a certain attitude. It demands that you are no longer centralized in your basic being, as “me,” “myself,” egohood, ego, or entity. With this logos, the power of the mantra is expected. It is invoked as a servant or attendant, as your subsidiary person.

  This seems to be one of the basic tricks that we failed to see in the three lower yanas. Previously, we regarded mantra as something highly sacred that we should bow down to, and something that we should ask for its power and help. The eighth logos is the opposite of that. The power of mantra is no longer something that you should bow down to. Instead, you could ask for it; you could demand it. You could complain that it did not arrive in time to perform your wish. So there is a quality of directness and fearlessness.

  WORKING WITH THE EIGHT LOGOS

  The eight logos are connected with visualization practices. Through these practices, you develop various personal experiences of magical power, such as the power connected with alcohol or amrita, with the dagger, with the mother principle, with the three neighs of a horse, or with the four wheels. All these practices are very visual and very artistic. When you perceive the world in accordance with the eight logos, you begin to see all kinds of directions, understandings, and relationships without any difficulties.

  All the deities here are wrathful. There is less need for seducing people into tantra at this point, for people are into it already. They can take a direct message very simply. And that direct message is wrathful, not as anger but as energy. The vajrayana is sympathetic to samsara. It accepts the ugliness of samsara and wears it as an ornament. The vajrayana is never embarrassed by samsara. Using the fear of the intensity of vajrayana as inspiration is part of the vajrayana psyche. You get the psychic feeling of the environment being unfriendly, alien, and terrifying, so there might be a tendency to close down from the intensity. You feel as if you are about to be raped.

  The eight logos are connected with the accomplishment of siddhis, or powers. In addition to the eight logos, you have the guru manifesting as the heruka. But the guru does not give any siddhi except enlightenment itself.6 The eight logos practice is very much a step toward the maha ati experience of complete openness. Without some understanding of the eight logos, you will have difficulty understanding maha ati because those eight experiences cover all life situations: domestic, emotional, spiritual, and physical. They are some of the best visualization techniques you could ever receive, as far as self-existing visualization techniques are concerned. The eight logos approach has enormous scope.

  All eight logos work in terms of a personal relationship between the student and the teacher. For instance, the amrita could turn into poison, and the penetrating kilaya could hurt you, and instead of spinning the wheels against others, you could hurt yourself. There are many such consequences built in, which happen constantly. That is one of the characteristi
cs of vajrayana. You may not be an accomplished magician, and as a student you may know nothing at all about this particular type of magic, but once you are included in the lineage, you realize that you have some power by the very fact of your being included.

  You are exposed to such possibilities by these ideas and by the words that say there are such possibilities. This constitutes some kind of transmission from the lineage. With this transmission you become a suitable student and magician, suitable not only because you could hurt others, but because you could hurt yourself as well. That is why the vajrayana is dangerous in many ways. You are given a weapon that you cannot handle if you are taught before your time. There is danger physically to your life, and beyond that, there is the danger that you might end up being Rudra. What makes for a student becoming Rudra, basically, is destroying your teacher. It is thinking that you have learned something from the teacher, but then concocting your own style out of the whole thing. And when you go back to your teacher and they say, “No, that is not my teaching,” you either kill the guru or reject their teaching, thinking that yours is better.

  Higher and Lower Logos

  The first five logos are connected with the higher approach, and the last three are related with the samsaric or lower approach. In this case, “higher” or “lower” is purely a matter of how fundamental that logos is, or how pragmatic. So when we talk about lower, it is the pragmatic aspect of your practice, and when we talk about higher, we are talking about the fundamentality of the whole thing.

  These last three logos are not connected with particular buddha-families, although they are placed on appropriate areas of the mandala when big sadhanas are held. They are regarded as a kind of fringe, as somewhat trivial. From the sixth logos on, you are beginning to get in league with the dakinis. You are trying to play their games. This is regarded as a very dangerous thing to do, because it might create chaos. You might catch the flu, or get into little accidents, or experience other little things like that. It may lead to inflicting pain on yourself, in order to remind you that you are going astray, or it may lead to inflicting pain on others, in order to remind them that they have gone astray.

  Tuning In to the Rugged Power and Ordinariness of the World

  It may seem that mahayogayana is quite enough, and that there is no need to go beyond it. When we work on this yana, it seems to be quite complete. If you would like to know what real living visualization is all about, this yana gives you some kind of clue. Visualization does not have to be just thinking about an image, but you pick up on the environment and the feeling of the whole thing. You see that there are real experiences happening: there is penetrating, and there is the anti-death potion. So you do not have to hypothesize that someday you are going to be saved, but there is a kind of instant liberation. At the same time, that liberation is part of the path, rather than being the final goal.

  The idea is that if you function beautifully, that is enlightenment. It is a very tantric approach. You are already in the realm of sambhogakaya, and this practice is already a part of you, so your samsaric projections are another form of visualization and symbolism. Without them, you could not visualize. You would not know what we meant by “knife” if you had never seen a knife, and you could not visualize blood if you had never seen blood, or semen if you had never seen semen. It is a very living thing.

  This is why vajrayana has been feared, and why it has been known to create enormous panic. It is also why vajrayana is regarded as so dangerous, because it says very dangerous things about the phenomenal world. It says that there is nothing great or magical about anything at all. But that reinterpretation or re-look at the phenomenal world is so rugged, so ordinary, so raw and precise, that an ordinary piece of rock will feel shy if a vajrayana person describes it. That rock will crack because it is so shy about having its rockness talked about by a vajrayana person. It will be reduced into something else. It will want to become sand and not remain a rock.

  If you ask where these powers come from, you could say they come from the power of truth. Things are said precisely as they are, and as a result there is no room left for conning or deceiving. That kind of truth becomes mantra, and it has enormous power behind it. It is precisely what the wrathful mantra is.

  Mahayoga tantra is vast, and it includes a whole range of practices. It may not be necessary to know all the practices, but knowing the meanings behind the subtle details of the eight logos and other aspects of mahayoga will give you the feeling of the whole thing. Such meanings are not just historical, and they are not particularly liturgical. You may think you can just get in touch with the basic energies, but if you have only a rough idea about mahayoga teachings, you will miss a lot. That kind of fixed idea might block your awareness of other much subtler areas.

  1. Terma, or “treasure teachings,” refer to teachings hidden by Padmasambhava or other masters in order to be discovered when the time and conditions were right. Those who make such discoveries are known as tertöns. Perhaps the most well-known terma text is The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thötröl). Kama refers to teachings passed on orally from teacher to student, over many generations. After terma are discovered, they are taught in the same way as other teachings—orally, from master to disciple.

  2. The wheel of life is a traditional depiction of the realms of samsaric existence and the karmic chain held within the jaws of death, or Yama. For a discussion of the wheel of life, see volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 9, “The Painful Reality of Samsara.”

  3. Possibly a reference to the ten powers: the powers over life, deeds, necessities, devotion, aspiration, miraculous abilities, birth, dharma / teachings, mind, and wisdom.

  4. Haya mean “horse,” and griva means “neck” or “mane”; so Hayagriva means “Horse-Neck,” or more loosely “Horse-Headed.”

  5. The various sadhanas seem to differ in their portrayal of the correspondences between the buddha-families and the five ingredients.

  6. The siddhis include both ordinary siddhis, which consist of various magical powers, and supreme siddhi or buddhahood.

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  Mahayoga: Nondual Practice

  In visualization, any concept we use to label the phenomenal world is being transmuted. Because of that, there is more room for simplicity and directness. Visualizations from this point of view are not separate from the reality that we experience in ordinary, everyday life.

  PRACTICING THE THREE POISONS

  As far as practice is concerned, mahayoga tantra recommends the three poisons: passion, aggression, and ignorance. In mahayoga you are not trying to boycott the three poisons, but instead you are trying to tread on them. That is, you work with emotions rather than dispelling them. A student develops a much greater sense of crazy wisdom in this yana. There is a greater level of craziness, and there are also more opportunities and possibilities. The eight logos principles are a similar approach, in that each of them is very vivid and very obvious as far as the practitioner is concerned.

  VIVIDNESS

  In mahayoga, the experience of visualization is much more vivid. The nature of visualization here and in the two remaining yanas is not as much of a personal trip, and it does not involve as much personal imagery or concepts as the three earlier yanas. Rather, mahayoga visualization is based on realizing that magic and reality exist in the phenomenal world; they exist on the spot. The hotness of fire, the wetness of water, the encompassingness of space, the solidness of earth, and the moving-expansiveness of air are all included. So you are much more in contact with reality, and you are able to appreciate the magical aspect of the phenomenal world. That makes visualization much more vivid, much more realistic, and much more genuine. Visualization becomes natural to you. So although the specific visualizations still take the form of various deities, such as herukas and dakinis, you still have a sense of reality taking place.

  SYMPATHETIC CONTINUITY

  In visualization practice, you can produce the jnanasattva within yourself because you hav
e the potential; eventually you are going to become one yourself. You have buddha nature, so you have the blood in you, in any case. Otherwise, it would be ludicrous to say that the jnanasattva and samayasattva dissolve into one other. If you try to combine two conflicting chemistries, it does not work. But in this case, because there are sympathetic chemistries, you can join them together. Some kind of continuity exists in you that is jnanasattva in nature, although this continuity is not apparent.

  In appearance, you try to visualize yourself, which is called samayasattva. You create a sort of fake jnanasattva. Then, having visualized the fake jnanasattva, the true jnanasattva comes and accepts your fakeness, and you begin to become one. The idea is that there is a sympathetic continuity. The basic idea of ground tantra is that you are already enlightened, so there is no need for you to do anything. Because of that, what you are doing is just a needless job. But at the same time, you must associate with what you actually are, rather than what you might be.

  The jnanasattva is the wakeful aspect, and the samayasattva is the first glimpse of things as they are. If you see that you are just about to be run over by a car, the first shock is the samayasattva level. When the car suddenly stops half an inch away from you, you have the wakeful aspect, which is the jnanasattva. You begin to see your yidam there in the form of a motorcar, a road, paranoia, or shakiness.

  At this level, sound and vision and thought processes are all operating at once. How you experience all this depends on where you are with your yidam. It is quite specific. You may be faced with the doorkeeper of the mandala, or you may be faced with one of the messengers, or gauris. You may be faced with a member of the entourage, with the inner circle of yidams, or even with the central deity itself. Anything is feasible. There are endless possibilities.