The Preparation for Tantra

SINCE OUR TIME is too limited to take a slow, extended journey through the nine yanas, we are going to make a jump. We are going to discuss now the preparation for tantra, which is the mahayana path. First we prepare ourselves in such a way that we have a chance to know just ourselves. Then we begin to know otherness, and then we know everything in mandala perspective.

This approach is based on a sense of individuality and on a sense of egolessness at the same time. What happens with the sense of our individuality here is that, in giving up hope, in reaching a state of hopelessness, complete and total hopelessness, a sense of openness begins to develop simultaneously [which contains an element of egolessness]. Because we have given up hope completely, utterly, totally, there is a sense of opening. That particular sense of

openness is called faith or devotion. We have completely tired ourselves out, exhausted ourselves beyond our hopefulness. We realize that life is hopeless and that any effort we put in to gain further experience is also hopeless. Then we get into a real understanding of the space between us and our goal. That space is totally and completely full. And that fullness is what is called faith.

Let me give you a Buddhist-dictionary definition, the definition of faith. Faith here means dedication to and conviction in one’s own intelligence, which permits one’s own intelligence to begin to manifest as one’s guru, teacher, spiritual friend. You have trust in the basic truth of what you are, who you are. You have some understanding of that, and therefore there is tremendous trust. Trust in oneself in turn radiates further trust toward the other. In

this case, the other is your spiritual friend, guru, your master, your teacher. The other acknowledges your existence, and you acknowledge the other’s existence and that provides a very solid base of security and well-being. There is a sense that finally you are completely and fully taken care of. That is the definition of faith.

Let me go over that to clarify it further. The definition of faith is: You recognize your existence, which is in turn based on somebody else acknowledging your existence at the same time. This is not a matter of blind faith. It is awakened faith, real faith. You have pain, you are hopeless, and you have somebody else who says, “That’s you.” This validates your hopelessness. As a result of the agreement that happens between you and the other—your spiritual friend or guru—you realize that something constructive is happening.

It is not purely guesswork. There is a sense of faith based on realizing your hopelessness and having that hopelessness acknowledged by your spiritual friend. You feel secure in the absence of security. There is a sense of trust there. This is the mahayana path we are discussing here.

Then we have a second category after faith, which is called vigor. The Tibetan word for that is tsöndrü.2 Vigor here has the sense of energy. You are not tired of yourself and you are not tired of working with your spiritual friend or the rest of your friends either. Out of the hopelessness comes inspiration, which brings vigor and a sense of joy—after all, there is something out there that is workable. So you have a feeling of inquisitiveness, an

interest in rediscovering your hopelessness [from a different angle]. You have faith in your hopelessness and the communicative relationship you have established with your spiritual friend. In other words, you have devotion. And then beyond that, there is a sense of energy. You are intrigued by the whole thing. You feel something highly intriguing: “Maybe after all there is something in this.” It is true, maybe there is something happening. Something’s cooking. This sense of intrigue or mystery also ignites your energy, your vigor.

This is like a mad archaeologist who finds a spot to dig. He digs faster and faster and faster. He employs more people to help him. He thinks, “Maybe I’m going to discover gold or a tomb, a temple or a hidden city.” It’s possible. Here’s actually something taking place. But this doesn’t turn out to be so much on the fantasy level. There is something realistic happening.

That’s vigor. Virya is the Sanskrit word for this. The definition of virya, our second Buddhist-dictionary term, can be understood like this: A person becomes highly inspired, therefore highly inquisitive; therefore he does not become tired of his task. He’s inspired, intrigued, tickled. That’s the definition of virya, tsöndrü.

The great Indian teacher Shantideva talks about tsöndrü in his writings.3 His definition of it is “taking delight in the virtue of rediscovering oneself.” There is this sense of delight and inquisitiveness.

The next category, number three, is trenpa in Tibetan, which means awareness, intelligent awareness. At this level [the mahayana] one practices the six perfections or transcending actions (Skt. paramita), which are generosity, discipline, vigor (energy), patience, meditative awareness, and knowledge. All six of those happen with awareness. In talking about awareness, we don’t mean that you have to meditate on a certain thing you’ve been told to meditate on.

It is not a question of sitting down and gazing at a candle in order to try to develop awareness, or sitting listening to the traffic trying to daze yourself with that sound. Awareness here is pragmatic awareness of what is actually taking place in the realm of your consciousness, in the realm of your intelligence connected with your sense of being.

You are what you are. You have sense consciousness, six of them according to the Buddhist tradition. The sixth one is mind-consciousness, and the other five are sight, sound, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. The sixth one, mind-consciousness is also regarded as a sense organ—brain and heart work together. And the sense of being takes place there. The awareness that we are talking about here is definitely connected with that sense of being.

As you sit listening to me talk here, you also realize that you are sitting on the floor, which is padded with cushions. The temperature of the room is agreeable. It does not distract your attention. There is no distracting noise to keep you from listening, no traffic sounds, no babies crying. You have a sense of being here, which is also a sense of well-being. You feel well clothed; your clothes are appropriate and suited to the temperature. You can sit

here and listen with that sense of well-being, which is awareness. There’s an overall awareness of a relaxed state. Things are physically okay, psychologically conducive.

You might feel a bit overstuffed from dinner, or somewhat hungry, looking forward to going home and eating. But those discomforts and desires have become relatively distant, and your main fascination and intrigue can function properly here in this room. That is awareness of well-being that is happening to you right now.

If we want to define that for our Buddhist dictionary, we could say that awareness means a person can tune himself in to certain mental objects and also to a sense of being, or well-being, thoroughly and without distraction. The Sanskrit for the Tibetan trenpa is smriti. Literally it means “recollection.” This is not particularly recollection in the sense of going back to the past. It has more to do with renewing one’s habitual patterns, habitual patterns that do not require your further attention. You can be as you are in your basic form. There is a sense of relaxation, which is necessary in order to proceed on the bodhisattva path.

The next is number four, meditation; in Tibetan, samten. Here meditation is an extension of the sense of well-being, or awareness, that we’ve been talking about. There is a feeling of understanding and a feeling of security, which enables you to let go of your mind. The definition of meditation here is the ability to be as you are without further contrivances to make yourself comfortable. The definition of meditation is just a sense of being, a sense of isness that is happening.

Here you are listening to me, listening to this particular “broadcast.” You are listening to Radio Peking. You are listening to Radio Peking, but suppose you turn off your radio. Then you find yourself suspended somewhere. You were listening, then that radio was turned off that you had become accustomed to listening to, and you are still there listening to the silence.

It’s like television watchers late at night, who will watch up till the very little last dot that appears on their screen. They will watch up till the last little thing when the whole thing dissolves. (In England, an announcer tells you not to forget to turn off your set when the broadcast is over—a very domestic touch.) You turn off your set and you’re suspended somewhere, still inquisitive and awake and watchful. That is the state of meditation that we

are talking about here. Having turned the set off, you’re still watching, but watching nothing. You know you have turned off your set, but you are still there, very awake and ready for something. At the same time, you know that you are not going to get into any entertainment anymore. You’ve had enough of it. That sense of suspension and of vacancy. Meditation in this sense is like that vacant aftereffect of watching television or listening to the radio. The set is off, and you are still fully awake and fully there.

Suppose I said now, “This lecture is over. This is the end. I bid you good night.” The moment you heard those words, you would have a sense of your antennae beginning to retract into your basic being. “Wow, the whole thing’s gone, finished.” And you’d have a sense of well-being taking place. That is the meaning of meditation, samten.

The Sanskrit word for this is dhyana, which is the equivalent of zen, a sense of meditative absorption without anything in your mind at all to grasp on to. Your television set is turned off, your antennae are retracted: no further entertainment. Yet you are there, definitely there.

There is something very ironical, very funny about this. There is some kind of humor involved here. One catches a glimpse of one’s own seriousness: “Now I have turned off this set, and I am still here.” You are very serious—something very real is taking place. Empty space. There is a sense of beingness that takes place there that is the essence of meditation. It is not a matter of getting into a spiritual absorption, a higher trance, or anything of that nature. It’s a sense of being there, and then being there providing no ground. No entertainment. Blank.

Number five, the fifth category, is prajna, which means “knowledge.” Jna means “intelligence” and pra means “premium,” “higher,” “greater.” That’s the Sanskrit word, and the Indo-European word comes from that. [Know, gnosis, cognition, etc., are etymologically related to jna.] Prajna is the premium knowledge, the highest and greatest knowledge of all. It’s premium in the sense of premium gas that you can ask for at the gas station. There is a gas shortage these days, but I’m sure there is no shortage of prajna. It’s ongoing stuff. Prajna, discriminating knowledge.

Prajna, to make a further entry in our Buddhist dictionary, is a process of looking. It is the highest way of looking at reality. It is like making an acquaintance (in the sense of picking a colleague, a fellow worker). You are working hard enough so you hire your own intelligence to work with you. You create a colleagueship with yourself, you make an acquaintance to work with you—knowledge.

We run into a conflict here with the Christian tradition concerning mystical wisdom. According to the Christian tradition, or any theistic tradition, wisdom comes first and knowledge comes afterward. But in Buddhism, knowledge comes first and wisdom comes later.

Once I watched a television program on Italian classical art—Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and so on. It was beautifully done. It was presented by some English lord or other, who spoke very beautifully. A point he made was that in order to understand art in the Western world, you have to look in order to see. That is the approach of a theistic mystical experience: Look in order to see. Seeing is regarded as a discovery; looking is the primary method. It

seems obvious: If you want to see, you have to look first. Very sensible; very scientific. Before you draw conclusions, you gather information with the computer. When the computer says thus-and-such and so-and-so is the case, then you begin to see. You look in order to see. But in the nontheistic traditions, such as Buddhism (and at this point, the only nontheistic traditional religion we have in this universe is Buddhism), the idea is to see in order to look. Looking is regarded as much more important, because you can’t abandon the world, you can’t abandon relationships.

First you have to see. Projections are necessary in order for you to work with yourself. Having related with your projections properly—clearly and thoroughly—having seen things as they are, you start to scrutinize, you start to look. When you look, you discover all kinds of subtle qualities of things as they are, subtleties upon subtleties, fantastic details of things as they are, fantastically colorful.

Saying that you have to see in order to look is a tantric statement. It is very subtle and very precise. What might happen to us is: We look in order to see. We look first and have a flash of something fantastically beautiful. We look at something and get dazzled by it. We get dazzled and begin to see psychedelic visions of the universe. Fantastic! Wow! Then we are supposed to see whatever it is. But seeing isn’t important anymore, because we have already looked. We lost so many subtle little details, because we looked. The Buddhist approach toward perceiving phenomena is to see in order to look, not look in order to see.

This is a definition of prajna that leads toward tantra. Understanding this is important when it comes to translating certain terms. We translate jnana as “wisdom” and prajna as “knowledge.” A lot of scholars translate prajna as “wisdom” or prajnaparamita as “wisdom gone beyond.” The idea of seeing in order to look is closer to Don Juan’s teaching, the American Indian approach.

First you see things, perceive things. I see a lot of faces here. Heads without glasses, heads with glasses. Then I look to see who they are. They are listening to this talk.

Castaneda talks about seeing a jackal or a coyote. Don Juan placed a white cloth somewhere, then later moved it, and in doing so removed a whole landscape. It had something to do with the coyote principle. It’s very interesting, very close to tantric Buddhism. The whole thing is based on seeing. For instance, in relation to the idea of choosing a spot, a place where you are going to sit and be yourself. In doing this, once you begin to look, you become very awkward. If you see a spot, you should arrange yourself suitably in it and then begin to look. That seems to be the point in discussing prajna as a preparation for discussing tantra. The pertinent experience of prajna also takes place on the mahayana level.

Looking is demanding, if you look prematurely. But seeing is undemanding if you do it properly. The sense of well-being that we talked about takes place. Having accomplished faith, vigor, awareness, meditation, and prajna, then we begin to become somewhat proud of ourselves. We feel good. There is a sense of well-being. We do not have to reduce ourselves to the level of bullshit. We are Mount Meru.4 We are the great mountains of the Himalayas. We are worth

being proud of. We have understood faith, energy, awareness, meditation, and knowledge. We have gone through all those with the help of the six paramitas. We now begin to feel that maybe we could stick out our necks again, once more. We are noble sons and daughters of Buddha. We are Buddha. We have Buddha in us. Why should we crunch ourselves down and deform our state of being? Why don’t we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being? We have

perceptions and energies and inspirations. We have everything. We have a spiritual friend, we have the teaching. We have everything. What more do we want? We have everything in this whole universe. We have everything there. We have intelligence and understanding and the materials to understand. We have everything. We can afford to extend ourselves a bit more. That is why this approach is called the mahayana, the great vehicle, the bodhisattva path.5 It is heroic.

We beat the drum of dharma, sound the trumpet of wisdom and compassion, celebrate the feast of intelligence. It is very joyous. And the reason that it is so joyous is because the whole thing is so hopeless. It doesn’t provide us with any hope. Once we become hopeful, we are taking the approach of poverty. We are adopting a penniless mentality. We are locking ourselves into the ghettos of the samsaric world.

We have an enormous sense of delight. There are wonderful things taking place in us. That is the sense of the bodhisattva path. That is also connected with tantra, because in tantra, the whole thing is based on pride, vajra pride, as we call it, indestructible pride, adamantine pride. An enormous sense of delight begins to take place. There is no room, absolutely none whatsoever, for misery.

This has nothing to do with being “love-and-lighty.” We don’t have to furnish ourselves with goodness, whiteness, cleanness. We don’t have to adopt the conviction that finally we are good and beautiful, loving and lighting. Rather we are what we are. We are sons and daughters of noble family, in the direct line of the Buddha. We have our heritage, our lineage. We can take pride in ourselves. It’s fantastic.

That is the preparation for tantra. I suppose we could talk about it in terms of looking. We have seen already; then we begin to look. Student: I didn’t quite get the difference between seeing and looking. It seemed that looking involved discrimination and seeing didn’t. Is that the distinction?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Looking is premature discrimination, and seeing is discriminating wisdom. But you can look once you have seen. Student: How do you see if you don’t, at some point or other, make the effort to look?

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t deliberately try to see. That would be looking. You perceive, you just perceive. And having perceived things as they are, as we say, you begin to find yourself looking at them. It’s very much like buying an antique. You don’t look at the details of the piece you want to buy. If you start looking, you’re going to be a loser. You’re going to make wrong decisions. If you want to be a good buyer, a competent buyer, you see the antiques.

You see antiqueness. You just see it, you feel it. Seeing is feeling. Then, having seen it, you begin to look. You begin to question the state of that particular antique—whether it is worth buying, whether it has been corrupted, restored, whatever. You see the piece, then you look at it, then you buy it. If you go to an antique auction and you look at the pieces, you make the wrong choices. You bid at the wrong time. You hit yourself, hurt yourself. When you go to an antique auction, don’t look, see.

Student: Seeing is more panoramic, Rinpoche?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Yes.

Student: It’s intuition as opposed to thought?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Well said.

Student: If you don’t get sucked into looking—you know, it does occasionally happen that you don’t—and you find yourself seeing instead, at that point are you still in the five skandhas?6

Trungpa Rinpoche: I think you are.

S: In?

TR: Yes, both. You are in and out.

S: Could you expand on that?

TR: You are already subject to the skandhas. But there is the possibility of being free from them at the same time.

S: In other words, it’s like life and death happening continuously.

TR: Continuously, yes.

S: Do you find you yourself personally in and out of the skandhas all day long?

TR: Sure. As long as you have a body. As long as you have to shit and eat and make love.

Student: The hopelessness is about certain goals, isn’t it? It’s not a total hopelessness about yourself.

Trungpa Rinpoche: Whenever there’s hopefulness about yourself, there’s also a problem related to a goal. Hopelessness is hopeless all over. But there are some gaps. What’s the Jewish word for that? Chutzpah, yes. There’s still chutzpah.7

Believe it or not, hopelessness is encouragement. It’s fantastic. From our point of view, it means we are starting on a new dimension of reality. With vigor, virya, chutzpah. Student: Isn’t that because you have nothing left to defend, so you have nothing left to fight against?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Yes, that’s right.

S: So you can do anything you want.

TR: Precisely, sure, yes. It’s your universe. It’s your world. Let’s celebrate.

Student: But still you have to keep an awareness all along of being in an ocean of gray shit? If you began to think that you weren’t in it, then you would begin to fear falling back into it. You’d be back in hope and fear again. So do you have to continue to be aware that you’re in the gray shit anyhow?

Trungpa Rinpoche: And take pleasure in it. I’m afraid the whole thing is as gross as that. It’s far from the three H’s: happy, healthy, and holy.

Student: Is there any separation between daily life and art in terms of seeing?

Trungpa Rinpoche: No. Everybody’s an artist.

Student: Do you learn to trust yourself from feedback you get from people and situations around you, or does it just come from yourself?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Both. You relate to situations as well, obviously; otherwise you have no reference point. Your guru is your situation as well.

Student: I still don’t understand about seeing and looking.

Trungpa Rinpoche: Do you see me?

S: I think so.

TR: You do see me. Unless you’re blind, you see me. But you haven’t looked yet. Until you look, you’re color-blind.