As you go up toward atiyoga, you are beginning to lose your ego. You have realized egolessness already at the hinayana and mahayana levels; that is already understood completely. At the anuyoga level, the only problem is that, having realized that there is no self, you then begin to realize that selflessness needs a companion. You think, “I have to visit my friend.” But such companions are also expressions of egolessness. The fact is that you cannot constantly relate to your basic nature all the time, because you need a reference point. You need others to begin to come along as you work on yourself. While you are treating yourself well, at the same time you need others to comment on how you are doing. That is how the natural relationship with the other, or the world, forms: by collecting lots of lovers as you go through the different stages of relating with yourself.
In anuyoga, you are getting into an area with no ground, which is the greatest ground of all. At the same time, you need to manifest yourself in order to reignite the flame of compassion. But whenever the idea of compassion or dedication to sentient beings arises, you are creating a problem—you are creating another self, a selfless self. If you try to create another selfless self or egoless self, you find it very difficult to relate to the confusion of the space that the other is going through. This reminds you of your previous selfishness all over again, so you begin to panic. You think, “Maybe I do have a self. Maybe I do have an ego.”
However, if instead of that doubt you feel enjoyment and pleasure in uniting with sentient beings and with your world as lover, that is the final and fundamental act of compassion. Even the trip of selflessness and nonduality has been destroyed by prajna, by discriminating awareness. We refer to this as prajna rather than jnana, or wisdom, because wisdom is not a companion; wisdom is just being. At the anuyoga level, prajna is the other, from the point of view of the lover. So prajna is not only discriminating awareness, but the product of discriminating awareness as well, which is the consort.
RELATING WITH THE DUALISTIC WORLD
At this point you are refining your taste, and you are learning how to relate to the reality of the samsaric or dualistic world. Throughout all the yanas, you have had a problem with reality, with the world. You tried to reject the world and you tried to be nice to it. You tried to be charitable and relate to the world with compassion—and none of those approaches worked. They were just phases you went through. And now that you have reached the vajrayana level, you still have that project hanging around your neck. So you decide to plunge into the world and to work with it without any fear, and with no division between right and wrong, good and bad. You just approach the world based on what you think is sane or insane. There’s at least that much discrimination involved: sanity and insanity are present as clear seeing and obscured vision. There is always that measure of how sharp your vision is. It is not so much whether you are blind or whether you can see; rather it is that even if you are not blind, there are different levels of how far you can see.
In the vajrayana, you begin reconstructing yourself along with the world, which you have destroyed already. So the vajrayana approach to the world is a real reconstruction of the world. With the vajrayana teachings, you are finally actually making a relationship with the world, which includes the dualistic or ego approach. You are finally making heads or tails out of the world, and you begin to make love to it.
This process of dissolution and reconstruction is free from birth and death because you have no notion of right and wrong; this means you have no notion of good karma or bad karma, and so you are free from karmic debt and karmic creation. You have no notion of samsaric rebirth as a debt cycle, so you are completely outside that ego area. But finally, strangely enough, you find that there is a nirvanic samsara world beyond karma. That is the problem here—and in anuyoga, you are transcending even this kind of nirvanic samsara that you created.
At the ordinary layperson’s level, we did not rebuild the world properly, but we just messed around with it. And when we got into the hinayana and mahayana paths, we were resentful, and we tried to kick the world around some more. In that process, nothing was actually related with at all. Even the experience of shunyata was some kind of trip. But the vajrayana is so big that there is no reference point. It is beyond question. It is so much there; who could pass judgment on it? The vajrayana is getting to the level of actual experience without any religious frame of reference or any notion of actual practice.
So in the various yanas, you are working with different levels of unveiling. In the hinayana, you are working with your clothes on; in the bodhisattva path, you are working as a naked body; and in the vajrayana, you are thrown into it naked, without even your skin.
FINAL ATTAINMENT
The fruition or final attainment of anuyoga is known as the upaya of conquering. You become a king; and if you are really a king, you become like the sky. You become fire; and if you are really fire, you become like water. At this level, there is the experience of no boundary. You are not biased toward any one particular conceptual idea. This lack of boundaries or sameness is the final statement of fearlessness.
ATIYOGA: THE GREAT COMPLETION
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Atiyoga: Continuous Awake
Vajrayana discoveries do not depart from the training of hinayana and mahayana, but the three yanas are all tied together very closely. Therefore, the vajrayana, including maha ati, is regarded as the pinnacle of all the teachings.
THE NINTH yana is maha ati, or dzokchen. It is also referred to as atiyoga or as the atiyogayana. Maha means “great,” ati means “ultimate,” and yana means “vehicle”; so maha ati yana means “ultimate vehicle.” In Tibetan it is called dzokchen or dzokpa chenpo. Dzokpa means “final” or fini, like at the end of a movie, and chenpo means “great” or “big”; so dzokpa chenpo means the “great final,” the “great essence,” or the “great completion.”
We have received criticism from scholars for calling this yana “maha ati,” but maha ati is our direct translation of the Tibetan term dzokpa chenpo. Maha, like chenpo, means “great,” and ati, like dzokpa, means “basic” or “final”; so maha ati means “great final.”1
In the term ati, a is the basic syllable in the Sanskrit language, and it is also the last letter in the Tibetan alphabet, so a is the basic syllable or final letter. A is the transparent vowel that is present throughout the entire Sanskrit alphabet; the letters of the alphabet all contain the sound of a. That is, whenever you say i, u, e, or o, there is always an a in it. So a is ubiquitous, and at the same time it is also the final sound.
In the same way, at the maha ati level, there is a sense of awake continuously. A expresses “awake” or the first breath you take, and ti indicates “ultimate” or the “final thing.” So at this point, there is a much greater East and a much greater dawn. You do not even need Vajrasattva anymore. All cardinal directions become East at once; maha ati is utterly awake, ultimately awake all the time.
The imperial yana of the maha ati tradition brings together the teaching of coemergent wisdom and a further dissolving process beyond coemergence. There is a point where the concept of coemergence begins to dissolve into a larger space. That particular larger space is regarded as no space, or space that does not accommodate any space.
ORIGINS OF DZOKCHEN
The original dzokchen teachings come from the early Nyingma tradition, which was introduced to Tibet in the eighth century by Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra, and practiced for a long time. Later, in the early eleventh century, during the time of the Norman invasion of Britain, Marpa went to India and received mahamudra teachings, and an upsurge of mahamudra practice took place.
As the mahamudra tradition developed through Milarepa, Gampopa, and others, it organically took its place in the natural geography or organization of the educational system of Tibetan Buddhism. From the practitioner’s point of view, everybody came to the same conclusion: if you want to make yogurt, first you have to milk the cow, then you have to boil the milk, then you have to put i
n your culture, and finally you make your yogurt out of all that.
That organic process of mahamudra became very prominent at the time of Gampopa, and definitely by the time of the second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi (1203–1283 CE). At that time, the great maha ati masters who lived in Tibet also practiced the mahamudra being taught by the Kagyü tradition of the New Translation school. It became very natural for them to do that, for the very reason that they were also a practice lineage. By the time of the fourth Karmapa, Rolpe Dorje (1340–1383 CE), it had become very natural for practitioners to join their appreciation for mahamudra practice with their appreciation and respect for the dzokchen teachings that were brought into Tibet by the blessings of Padmasambhava, King Trisong Detsen, and Shantarakshita.
That combination of mahamudra and dzokchen was the general basis on which Tibetan monasticism was built, and it became the natural heritage of all the Tibetans, who appreciated both traditions so much. Early translations of anuttarayoga tantras, done in the eighth century, as well as translations of various tantras from the early Nyingma tradition, were used as references for putting mahamudra and dzokchen together. So the Kagyü mahamudra tradition was accepted and became a part of the maha ati path. In fact, the Kagyü and Nyingma became one stream of teachings at some point.2
We have an expression in Tibet, which says that in the same way that we do not make a point of which eye we are using to see with, the mahamudra and maha ati practices are equal in terms of liberation. Our right eye and our left eye work together; we do not emphasize them differently. That is the symbol of the unity of the two traditions.
BACK TO BASICS
Before going further in our discussion of dzokchen, it would be good to go back a little bit and review what has brought us to this point. To start with, the discipline and energy that you put into shamatha practice provides the basis for vajrayana discipline. The principle of shinjang allows you to relate with conceptual mind throughout the journey. Beyond that, vipashyana practice provides a quality of awareness, which allows you to develop softness and gentleness. Going further, the tonglen practice of exchanging oneself for others allows you to realize that you no longer have to hang on to yourself as an individual entity. In turn, you become worthy of developing good devotion.
In the analogy of the house, we speak of the vajrayana as the roof of the building, the hinayana as the foundation, and the mahayana as the walls. But in maha ati, you do not dwell anywhere other than the roof. Maha ati is the imperial yana, and when you have an empire, you cover all areas of the kingdom. So if you are able to relate fully to the maha ati teachings, the world that dawns will very much manifest the hinayana and the mahayana principles as well.
Both the hinayana and the mahayana are geared directly toward the basic idea that you do not have to be self-centered, that you do not need to have “me-ness” happening all the time. You can begin to relax, to take a holiday from yourself. In that way, you can relate with the world outside of you. You can relate with the phenomenal world. You can relate with your enemies, your friends, and those who are indifferent to you. You can relate with any external situation without constantly having to refer back to yourself. You do not have to be “me” all the time. The accomplishment of the mahayana provides the possibility of egolessness, which seems to be the key point.
Once that happens, the path of vajrayana is already laid out. You are able to understand and realize the threefold-mandala principle of the external world, your physical body, and your state of mind. Out of that comes further appreciation and cheerfulness, because you have entered into the mandala already. That provides the ground mahamudra of devotion, and out of that you develop still greater awareness; you realize the greater mandala of the guru’s world. And out of that, coemergent wisdom begins to dawn on you, with the experience of tremendous bliss and intoxication.
Lodral: The Process of Disarming
Because of all that, you begin to shed your conceptual mind, which hangs on to you as territory or as the occupants of territory. You begin to learn how to wipe out your ranges and ranges, or oceans and oceans, of piledup concepts that you have been accumulating since very early on. You begin to wipe out all those clingings and hangings on, and you begin to develop what is known as lodral. Lo means “thought pattern,” “conceptualization,” or “mind,” and dral means “free from that” or “without it”; so lodral means “free from conceptualization.”
With lodral, you begin to realize that, without exception, without any question, you have to lay down all your arms, including your broomsticks. You have to shed any weapons that you might cherish or try to hold on to in order to maintain your ego or protect yourself from being attacked. Because you have some understanding of ultimate sacred outlook, you can disarm yourself completely and thoroughly. You do not need to hold on to any possibility of warding off the vajra world. So lodral is an expression of bliss, in a sense.
Sepa: Ego Defenses Used Up
Having disarmed, what comes next is sepa. Se means “used up” or “run out,” and pa confirms the run-outness of it; so sepa means “used-up-ness.” When ego’s defense mechanisms and ego’s weapons have been laid down altogether, then you experience sepa. At that point, you have used up, or run out of, any form of defending yourself, including your fists. Your mind has completely run out of any possible defense mechanisms, any way of holding on to your ego: those defenses are completely used up, completely transcended. This heightens the possibilities of bliss. When you do not have the hassle of maintaining your weapons, or possible weapons such as fists and stones, you are invincible. You are victorious over your samsaric kleshas and your neurotic hang-ups.
All Dharma Agrees at One Point
Last but not least, we once again have the important Kadampa slogan: “All dharma agrees at one point.”3 It means that all apparent phenomena are bound by the dharma of wakefulness or awake. This slogan is connected with the benevolence and compassion of the bodhisattva, as well as with surrendering your ego. But at this point, it is acknowledging the nonexistence of your ego, rather than surrendering. The weapons that are ego’s best credentials have been laid down, and potential passion, aggression, and ignorance have run out. Therefore, all dharma agrees at one point. That one point is the pinnacle; it is the highest realization in the Buddhist tradition. This pinnacle is atiyoga, the ninth yana, in which all dharmas are regarded as final. Atiyoga is the final conclusion, or the ultimate possibility.
By means of shamatha mindfulness, vipashyana awareness, and the mahayana practice of tonglen, you arrive at the experience of having tremendous appreciation of the teacher and the teachings. Therefore, you are completely fulfilled. It is like collecting vegetables from the garden and bringing them into the house. Collecting vegetables from the garden is connected with the shamatha principle; bringing them into the house is connected with the vipashyana principle; cooking them is connected with shinjang and with the mahayana principle of tonglen. Finally, the vegetables make a good meal; they are consumed and appreciated. That is the vajrayana.
In the vajrayana, there is nothing to regret. It is a celebration. There is an appreciation that things actually happened in this way, which is worth celebrating. Along with that, there is the understanding that you, your vajra master, your deity, and your sanity are bound together by the basic commitment of the samaya principle.
Because of that bondage, you experience tremendous freedom. You realize that freedom is bondage, and bondage is freedom. First you are bound by neurosis, and you are looking for freedom. But when that bondage is broken, there is a still greater bondage. Because you are unbound by neurosis, a greater or unbound bondage takes place. If we could use an analogy, when darkness falls, you fall asleep and snore; but when the sun shines, you wake up. So you have awakened from one type of sleep, but then you are sleeping in the sunlight, so you get the best sleep of all, which is bliss. That, I’m afraid, is a vajrayana riddle.
“All dharma agrees at one point” means that any possible
source of confusion is used up. Confusion has run out of supplies altogether. Therefore, the vajra master, you, and your practice are bound together by that run-outness of your supplies. At this level, even awareness could be said to be no awareness. When you say “awareness,” that actually ties you down, but when you say “no awareness,” it is the best awareness, because you are not attaching yourself to any particular angle of cosmic, spiritual, or phenomenal possibilities. You cease to be attached; therefore, you are attaching completely. The possibility of hanging on does not exist; therefore, you are completely rooted in fundamental sanity, the best sanity altogether. You are awake, therefore you are asleep; you are asleep, therefore you are awake. You are sober because you are so drunk; and because you are drunk, you are so sober.
“All dharma agrees at one point” is magnificent. With this slogan, you can free yourself from any traps. It is like actually becoming the sun and moon yourself, rather than just looking at them. Such discipline comes only from developing prajna, which comes from the vipashyana experience. You should not forget that. There is also a gentle and soothing quality to this, which comes from the shinjang experience, which is like swimming in a milk lake.
So vajrayana discoveries do not depart from the training of hinayana and mahayana, but the three yanas are all tied together very closely. Therefore, the vajrayana, as well as maha ati, is regarded as the pinnacle of all the teachings.
LUMINOSITY AND THE DISCOVERY OF FATHOMLESS SPACE
According to the vajrayana, there are two ways of developing your attitude: changing your basic existence, and not changing your basic existence. Changing your basic existence is known as samsara, because you always want to edit your experiences according to your own particular fashion. Not changing your basic existence is known as nirvana, or enlightenment, because you allow things to permeate or evolve. That brings an experience of luminosity. By luminosity, we are not talking about electricity, but about natural brilliance and the discovery of fathomless space. That space is known as vajradhatu; and a second stage in the discovery of fathomlessness is known as dharmadhatu.
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