The Crazy-Wisdom Holder and the Student

WE ARE GOING TO TRY to go further with our understanding of vajrayana, or tantra. Something has been missing so far in our discussion of tantra. The tantric experience can only come about through a transmission from your guru, from a vidyadhara (which means a holder of crazy wisdom). Such a transmission can take place but involves enormous trust and enormous sacrifice. This sense of trust and sacrifice can come about at the time of receiving an abhisheka.

Abhisheka is a Sanskrit term that is usually translated “initiation.” But initiation here is not just the idea of being accepted into a tribe by going through a certain ceremony. Here there is a sense of complete and total surrender. Surrendering in this way is very unreasonable from an ordinary point of view; but this sacrifice and the bond that arises from it have to be established before we can trust the universe as a potentially enlightened situation. From the tantric point of view, we have to go through this in order to be enlightened. And in order to get enlightened, one has to go through tantric training in any case. And enormous surrendering and enormous trust are involved.

Trust on this level means one cannot maintain one’s ego. One cannot maintain one’s basic existence as “myself.” This self has become completely dedicated, it has completely opened up in surrendering to the world created by the guru. The world that the guru creates is not particularly a pleasant one. It might be very unpleasant, horrific. It might also be beautiful at the same time. The reason the world created by the guru tends to be an irritating one is that the guru goes beyond the role of spiritual friend at this point and begins to act as a dictator. He minds your business completely; he minds every inch of your life.

Your guru has the ability to do such a thing, because he knows every inch of your life, of your state of consciousness. He knows the tiniest fragments of your subconscious gossip, he knows all the little freckles in your mental functions. The guru has a complete understanding of all this. Therefore you are highly exposed, fully exposed.

For this reason, the tantric tradition is considered very dangerous. The traditional format is that you can either make love to your guru as a divine being or kill him. The analogy is that of a snake in a bamboo tube. When you put a snake in a bamboo tube, the snake has to face either up or down. Relating with the guru is very powerful, too powerful. It is too much having somebody mind your business in that fashion. From that point of view, it is extremely horrific. Nevertheless, at the same time it is an extremely delightful gift.

Tantric transmission cannot take place without a guru, without a spokesman of the mandala perspective. That is a very basic point that we should be very clear about. Entering tantra is hellish, shall we say. When the guru begins to manifest himself as somebody minding your business two hundred percent, you are bound to feel extraordinarily claustrophobic. He not only minds your business, he minds the business of your business. He sees inside out, outside in. This is a very powerful and a very paranoid situation.

Without the guru’s consent, without his acknowledgment of you as a good vessel for the vajrayana, you don’t get anything out of it at all. The guru acts as a channel for both creative and destructive happenings. He can destroy you instantly or instantly build you up. And this becomes very obvious, very definite.

When you approach tantra, you are approaching the magical aspect of the cosmos more and more. Magic in this sense has nothing to do with miracles as such. There is magic in the sense of certain energies, certain mysteries, that you have never tapped before. You haven’t understood them, or you haven’t had enough gaps in your experience to relate to them. Now you are getting into tantra, and your guru is going to initiate you into the tantric situation. You are going to begin to tap untapped areas, which we usually leave alone, which we usually daren’t work with. You are getting into a very powerful situation here.

In this powerful role, the guru is referred to as he who presents the samaya vow. Samaya is a Sanskrit word that is translated in Tibetan as tamtsik (dam tshig). Samaya is a certain kind of bond that is like the kind of electric fence that’s used to keep cows in. In this case, it is highly electrified, and if you touch it or begin to play with it, you are going to get a shock. And if you try to get out of it, you’re going to get destroyed.

Destruction does not mean just death. You will end up in what’s called vajra hell, which is a very powerful hell. From there, even the greatest spiritual strength cannot rescue you. That hell is neither up somewhere nor down somewhere. It is self-existing imprisonment in which your neuroses are vibrating constantly, all the time. You’re trapped in that hell, and there’s no remedy and no freedom at all. Pleasure and pain both become part of the imprisonment. That is why tantra is regarded as a very dangerous thing and very powerful thing to get into.

Only tantra can produce enlightenment in one lifetime. There is no other doctrine or teaching in Buddhism—including the sudden teachings of Zen, which is part of the mahayana tradition—that can deliver enlightenment in one lifetime. Tantra is the only path that enables us to attain enlightenment in one lifetime. That’s true.

Getting into tantra is like taking a supersonic jet. Either it will destroy your life because it is so fast, or it will deliver you to a more advanced place. You have breakfast in Tokyo and lunch in London and dinner in New York. It’s very fast and powerful. If it destroys you, you won’t even have a chance to be aware of your death. You’re just dead on the spot, in midair.

I am not going to explain all the aspects of how it is powerful, but you can find out.

The holder of such a doctrine is also very powerful. The holder of the doctrine is in league with death. At the same time, he is in league with Buddha. Not just an ordinary buddha, but the highest of all the buddhas, the dharmakaya buddha.1 The vajra guru has enormous power over your life and complete control over the phenomenal world. He has the power to destroy you or make you an enlightened person, so it is a very powerful commitment one makes when one enters tantra.

I say this, because I want people to think thrice about getting into it, if it is even possible for them to get into it at all. It is very dangerous, and without having gone through hinayana and mahayana discipline, getting into it is completely out of the question. But even if you go through hinayana and mahayana, it is still dangerous to get into this vajrayana discipline, and very powerful, magnificently powerful.

Committing oneself to the vajrayana teaching is like inviting a poisonous snake into bed with you and making love to it. Once you have the possibility of making love to this poisonous snake, it is fantastically pleasurable: You are churning out anti-death potion on the spot. The whole snake turns into anti-death potion and eternal joy. But if you make the wrong move, that snake will destroy you on the spot.

During the early years of my teaching in America, I was very hesitant even to discuss the subject of tantra. I felt I should be conservative and keep to basic Buddhism. But the development of my students has provided me with a lot of hints [to go ahead]. They are beginning to stick their necks out and their eyes are beginning to light up. Maybe it is time to proclaim the vajrayana victory. I feel very fortunate to be able to discuss this subject. I feel we are making headway toward establishing one hundred percent Buddhism in this country. Without vajrayana we don’t have a head. Hinayana is the feet. Mahayana is purely heart. But Buddhism without a head is dead. Therefore I feel very happy about the possibility of sharing my understanding with you. It is like discovering a new friend. It is a very moving situation for me personally.

Nevertheless, we should be very careful of the danger we are getting into, which is enormous. I am not going to take the responsibility alone. Everyone of you is going to take the responsibility, if I may say so.

What we are discussing is one of the most secret and sacred things ever heard on this earth. It is very dangerous and powerful. People think the atomic bomb is powerful. Maybe physically it is. But we are talking about a psychological atomic bomb, which is millions of times more powerful than the physical bomb. I want you to appreciate this and become terrified of this opportunity. It’s a very serious matter.

You are in a unique position having the opportunity to hear this teaching, which has never been proclaimed in this country. You should regard yourselves as very fortunate people. I am not saying this because I want to intimidate you particularly, but I want to share my responsibility with you. I feel that I can relate with every one of you, within your understanding, in terms of the complete teachings of Buddhism.

Another aspect of this is what is know as “open secret.” This teaching is self-secret. You may not be able really to hear it or understand it because of your own trips, your speed, your confusion. That is a safety precaution that has already been developed. If you are not ready to hear such a thing, you don’t hear it. What I have to say becomes purely gibberish.

Let us discuss the remaining three yanas of vajrayana.

The next three yanas are described as the ultimate yanas. These yanas are as far as we can go as far as Buddhism is concerned, as far as enlightenment is concerned altogether. They are called mahayogayana, anuyogayana, and atiyogayana. These yanas provide the most advanced teaching Buddhism can ever present to you. They are the dead-end point at which you should attain enlightenment. It is demanded of you: You are required to be enlightened at that point. You are guaranteed to be enlightened once you reach the highest point of atiyoga. You have no choice. And you will become enlightened in the fullest way of all.

As an analogy for the lower tantric yanas, we talked about bathing, getting dressed, and putting on ornaments. At this point, in the mahayogayana, you no longer put on ordinary clothes: It’s more like going back to ape instinct. Instead of putting on a crown of jewels and gold, now you put on a headdress of skulls. Instead of an ordinary skirt, you wear a tiger-skin skirt. Instead of an ordinary shawl, you wear a shawl of human skin. You begin to change your perspective on the world and get back to a more organic approach.

There is a hint of savagery, a hint of craziness. A hint of crazy wisdom begins to appear. Having bathed, purified, now you wear skins and bone ornaments. At this level of mahayogayana, consciousness begins to change. Some kind of dignity begins to appear—fearlessness. Fearlessness of blood, fearlessness of earth, fearlessness of human skulls and skin. We strip away all kinds of purified levels that we have gone through before in previous yanas.

Previous yanas have taken a very genteel approach. We tried to make ourselves into an emperor or king. We bathed, we wore beautiful clothes and jewelry of all kinds. Now we develop a sense of reality of a different nature. Neurosis as such is no longer regarded as bad at all. It is regarded as an ornament, a delightful ornament, a real ornament. We can wear such ornaments, we can adorn ourselves with all sorts of neuroses that we have. This is a fantastic proclamation of sanity in fact.

This approach explains why vajrayana is very dangerous, very freaky. Nevertheless, here it is. At this point, we are willing to swim in the shit pile once again, willing to adorn ourselves with bones and skulls and skins. It is very organic. We might even say it is macrobiotic in the ultimate sense. We begin to realize, totally without fear, that we are divine beings.

The next yana is anuyogayana. Here the sense of indulgence just described has become a trip. Abiding in the fermented manure of neurosis becomes a problem. Maybe we have indulged ourselves too much in the organic trip. Now we don’t even care about that. We take off our costumes, strip. There is no need to dress up as vampires or imitate them. We begin to lose that kind of perspective. We begin to relate more with our heart and brain. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes how the wrathful herukas come out of your brain and the peaceful herukas come out of your heart. This takes place now. More coordination is developed between the vajra type of heart and brain. You develop an enormous sense of being the conqueror of the whole universe. You transcend apeness altogether, or maybe you become a transcendental ape. It is very powerful. You see a panoramic openness and there is a fantastic sense of already having conquered. The conquering has already taken place and you’re just revealing it.

The next and last level is atiyogayana. At this level you don’t need any kind of outfit at all. Dressing or undressing is irrelevant. Once again you expose your naked body. No clothes at all, none whatsoever. You don’t even have to bathe anymore—you are what you are. The only relationship that you have at this point is to your sense perceptions of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Those sense perceptions become guidelines. When you hear a sound, you relate with that very simply as part of a reminder. When you see colors, you see them that way, very simply. This is an extraordinarily high level of perception. There we are. We have come back to where we were, back to square one. We realize that the journey never need have been made. All the journeys are a way of fooling ourselves. The journey becomes an endless journey, so there is no point in making journeys at all.

Student: Rinpoche, you talked a great deal about the dangers that attend the vajrayana path. I am very puzzled by that, since the whole exercise is supposed to be about getting out of and annihilating ego, and in that case, what dangers can there be? As I see it, the only dangers there can be would relate to what’s left of the ego.

Trungpa Rinpoche: You said it. The only danger is getting back to ego and ego’s being fortified by all kinds of techniques that you acquired. S: I read a chö ritual in which you offer yourself, your flesh and your bones, to the hungry ghosts.2 And apparently there’s a possibility you might freak out, but that is a danger only to ego.

TR: The danger is that, having performed such a sacrifice, you might feel self-congratulatory about this magnificent act of yours. Student: What you said about atiyoga seems to have been that you see what you see and you hear what you hear. But it seems to me that we can do that right now.

Trungpa Rinpoche: Sure, we could do it right now, but we don’t want to believe in that. Therefore we need a path to lead us to that. S: We need to develop courage, get rid of doubt?

TR: You need some kind of feeling that you have put in enough energy to arrive at that point.

Student: You spoke of the vajrayana path as one that could lead to enlightenment in this lifetime. Yet in the bodhisattva vow, we vow not to enter enlightenment until all sentient beings have become enlightened. That seems to present a contradiction.

Trungpa Rinpoche: I don’t think so at all. That’s the trick of the mahayana path; it helps you to give up. You’re not going to attain enlightenment at all; you’re going to work with sentient beings. And the idea in vajrayana is that you’re going to attain enlightenment in one lifetime. Both work together. In mahayana, the idea that you’re not going to attain enlightenment cuts your speed, your ambition. In the vajrayana, you develop pride, vajra pride, and dignity. Actually, both amount to the same thing. You can’t become buddha in any case at all. Youless, unyou, nonyou, is going to attain enlightenment. That logic holds true all the way along. You can’t attain enlightenment. Maybe nonyou can attain enlightenment. Good luck!

Student: I think you said you can only get enlightened by going through tantric transmission. Have enlightened people from the Zen tradition gone trough tantric transmission?

Trungpa Rinpoche: In some cases. Sure. I think so.

S: In that case, would you say that Suzuki Roshi was a tantric master?

TR: Absolutely. Good for him.

Student: You suggest thinking thrice. About what? What’s the other choice besides the path?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Nothing.

Student: Have you experienced vajra hell? Trungpa Rinpoche: Sure. But I’m not in it. I experienced enough to tell people what it’s about. Which is very hair-raising.

S: But you said that once you got in, no amount of spiritual strength could get you out again. TR: Yes. True.

S: So you’re still in it, then.

TR: You can experience a glimpse of it. But once you get into it, nobody else can rescue you. You’re stuck there. Student: You said that the hinayana and mahayana were prerequisites for tantric practice. You also labeled the American Indians’ spirituality tantric. But the American Indians haven’t heard of hinayana and mahayana. How does that work?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Very simple. The terms don’t matter, really. The American Indians have an equivalent discipline of basic sanity in their domestic affairs and in their tribal life. You know: Be on the earth, learn how to cook a good meal on a fire, learn how to share with your fellow tribesmen. It’s very simple. They don’t have to relate with the terms hinayana and mahayana, which are purely labels.

S: Okay. You say tantra is the only way to attain enlightenment in this lifetime. How can we know what we’ve been doing in previous lifetimes? TR: In previous lifetimes, you may have been working toward this. Maybe that’s why you’re here. Maybe that’s why you’re one of the fortunate persons who has had the opportunity to hear the dharma properly. Maybe in a previous life you were a good cat who heard the dharma. Or maybe you were a dumb kid who heard the dharma at his parents’ knee. And now you’re here. It could be anything. But there is no reason why you are not here, because you are here. Student: At what level do you transcend birth and death?

Trungpa Rinpoche: At the level of no speed. Speed is karmic relational action.

Student: Rinpoche, why are you telling us this?

Trungpa Rinpoche: This what?

S: This doctrine that we can’t understand.

TR: The point is, if you can’t understand it, that’s the beginning of your understanding.

S: Yes, you could tell us about something that’s only one or two steps ahead of where we are and we still wouldn’t understand it.

TR: But it’s still good. It holds true because you don’t understand it. The point here is that you have to tap your own potential. If there were no possibility of that, you wouldn’t be here. You might even fall asleep on the spot. I’m telling you these things for the very reason that you have not fallen asleep here.