The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (66 page)

In the vajrayana relationship, the guru is more like a warrior who is trying to show you how to handle your problems, your life, your world, your self, all at the same time. This function of the guru is very powerful. He has the majestic quality of a king, but at the same time, the power he generates is shared with the student. It is not as if the king is looking down on his subjects as dirty and unworthy peasants. He raises the student’s dignity to a level of healthy arrogance, so to speak. But the most important point is to develop an appreciation of the teachings and not to allow any kind of doubt or hesitation to prevent putting them into practice.

LM:
You have indicated that it might take twenty to thirty years before the advanced vajrayana visualizations could be done in the West. In what practical ways are the foundations of tantric sadhana established in your present work with students?

CTR:
Vajrayana is very easy to understand. It is very straightforward and direct, and it actually speaks to your heart. But just because of its simplicity and directness and power, it might be difficult for people to understand without some kind of preparation. Hinayana practice is valuable because it constantly raises people’s sense of mindfulness. They become more aware and appreciative of the world around them. At the mahayana level, a sense of generosity and warmth is developed. People begin to relate to the world with openness rather than fear. This is necessary preparation for the vajrayana level. Even in Theravadin countries where vajrayana is not incorporated into Buddhist teachings, highly accomplished Theravadin students and teachers may also go through a similar kind of journey. We can say that the student of Buddhism is being led ultimately to vajrayana, whatever form of Buddhism he is practicing.

LM:
Are any of your students involved in vajrayana practice at this time?

CTR:
People have to pass through many hours of sitting practice before they are ready for that. But much more important is a sense of dedication and total development in their state of being. At the moment we have something like four hundred committed members here in Boulder, out of which there are about a hundred tantric students. Those hundred are still at the beginning of the beginnings, so you can’t really call them tantra practitioners yet.

LM:
Is it possible for an American student to pass through the various stages of spiritual development as quickly as someone who is born into the tradition?

CTR:
Yes and no. Sometimes people born in native Buddhist countries encounter a different kind of cultural obstacle. Either they form a lot of preconceptions about spirituality as they grow up, or the language has become so technical that they have difficulty relating to it. So in some ways I think Americans are more fortunate. The language I use had to be created specifically to translate Buddhist ideas into English in a way that makes real sense to people. So Americans can be free of cultural preconceptions. On the other hand, it is much easier to be led astray if you have no idea where your practice is leading and you feel completely at the mercy of the teaching or the teacher. So it can be somewhat difficult and tricky.

LM:
Apart from all the fascinating content, what is the real process that tantra represents?

CTR:
The important thing is what’s known as lineage, not so much the books or traditions handed down. There must be a transformation, some actual experience that people begin to feel. And that is happening all the time. Individuals begin to pick up new experiences from a teacher who has also experienced these things. So there is a meeting of the two minds. This makes the tantric tradition much more powerful, superior to any other tradition. Tantra doesn’t depend upon any kind of external particularity. It is a very direct experience transmitted from person to person.

LM:
A friend once told me about attending a session in which you ceremonially manifested the consciousness of your lineage. Some people had visions of Marpa and Milarepa, and he personally felt a rather extraordinary force being communicated. That transmission was obviously a real event in this guy’s life. How is the transmission of the lineage communicated?

CTR:
Well, I’m rather suspicious about visions of that nature. [
Laughs
] But in students who are committed, I think it is a matter of choicelessness. Choicelessness is having no room to turn around or retrieve anything from the past. Things get very clear when you are cornered but not held captive or imprisoned. When you don’t have any choice you begin to give up. The student probably doesn’t know that he or she is giving up, but something is let go. And when letting go begins to take place, there is some of that complete identification with the practice. It is not so much a matter of becoming certain of the truth of Buddhism or vajrayana as it is the awakening of your own understanding.

At this point, perhaps for the first time in the individual’s life, he begins to realize immense new possibilities. But it is a matter of waking up. You cannot borrow it from somewhere. There is a tremendous sense of richness and power. So the individual becomes appreciative of the teachings and the teacher because they created that situation for him. Even so, it wasn’t done deliberately. It was natural, and that particular event took place.

LM:
What has to go on in a person’s life in order for this letting go to be a real event instead of a contrived effort?

CTR:
At the beginning of practice, even your sitting and meditation on your zafu is a pretense of meditation rather than the real thing. Whatever you do is artificial. There is no starting point except simply doing it. Then you begin to feel all kinds of restlessness. There is subconscious gossip, frustrations, and resentment. But at a certain point you find that you are no longer pretending. You are actually doing it. There is no particular moment in which this change occurs. It is just a process of growing up. You begin to realize that you are immersed in your own neurosis. You cannot really reject it. It is with you. At some point you give up hope of being able to get rid of that. You begin to accept it rather than trying to dispel it. Then something begins to happen. You just have to let go. You give in.

LM:
In order for that to take place, doesn’t there have to be a certain persistence in the ongoing basic practice?

CTR:
Definitely. At this point we aren’t talking about intellectual speculation. It has to be a real thing. [
Laughs
] I don’t speak to people about themselves analytically. I don’t suggest what things should happen to particular people or what is wrong with them personally. In our community we make it very direct: “Get a job.” I ask people, “How much are you sitting? What are you studying? Where are you working?” I conduct occasional seminars, but they do not involve much interpretation or analysis. I try to highlight what students can relate to their own experiences.

LM:
I have read about the practice of tummo, which evidently involves higher forms of realization than simply melting snow through the generation of extraordinary body heat. Is this kind of technical, intricate, advanced, and characteristically Tibetan form of yoga something that you see taking place in the West?

CTR:
I think so. There is no particular limitation as long as the endurance and devotion of the student continues. There is no reason for the teaching to stop halfway through.

LM:
Your writings indicate that the mahamudra is not the highest form of Buddhist realization. Is this because it tends to lock into shunyata as a final experience?

CTR:
Intuitive realization is the backbone of the whole thing. But intuitive realization of shunyata without any application to the world is helpless. There is no way to grow without it. So those two go hand in hand. Mahamudra is one of the first levels of tantric spiritual understanding. It was known as the new school of tantric tradition. We also have an old school, in which there is a further understanding, which is called ati, maha ati. In maha ati, that shunyata experience is brought directly to the manifest world. So that also needs to be applied practically. Tantra is basically defined as continuity, the continuity of play within this world, the dance within this world. So those two, intuitive realization of shunyata and skillful means of application in the world are like the two wings of a bird. You cannot separate them.

LM:
The maha ati realization is the return to ordinary life in the world rather than relying on that intuitive realization exclusively?

CTR:
Suppose you have a glimpse of the space inside a cup, and you build larger and larger cups in order to appreciate more spaciousness. Finally you break the last cup. You know the outside completely. You don’t have to build a cup to understand what space is like. Space is everywhere.

LM:
Is this kind of breaking of the cup brought about through any specific visualization?

CTR:
The breaking through takes place all the time. There is no particular time or situation. It is like learning how to balance on a bicycle. Nobody can actually tell you how to do it. But you keep on doing it and you keep falling off. And finally you can do it. It is a stroke of genius of some kind. [
Laughs
]

GLOSSARY

T
HE DEFINITIONS
given in this glossary are particular to their usage in this book and should not be construed as the single or even most common meaning of a specific term.

abhisheka
(Skt., “anointment”): A ceremony in which a student is ritually introduced into a mandala of a particular tantric deity by a tantric master and is thus empowered to visualize and invoke that particular deity. The essential element of abhisheka is a meeting of minds between master and student.

amrita
(Skt., “deathless”): Consecrated liquor used in vajrayana meditation practices.

arhat
(Skt.): A “worthy one” who has attained the highest level of hinayana.

bardo
(Tib., “in-between state”): A state between a previous state of experience and a subsequent one in which experience is not bound by either. There are six bardos, but the term is most commonly used to designate the state between death and rebirth.

bodhichitta
(Skt.): “Awakened mind” or “enlightened mind.”

bodhisattva
(Skt.): One who has committed himself or herself to the mahayana path of compassion and the practice of the six paramitas. The bodhisattva vow is one of relinquishing one’s personal enlightenment to work for all sentient beings.

buddhadharma
(Skt.): The Buddha’s teaching; Buddhism.

chakra
(Skt.): One of the primary centers of the illusory body. Most often, five are distinguished: head, throat, heart, navel, and secret centers.

chandali
(Skt.; Tib.
tummo
): A vajrayana term for a kind of psychic heat generated and experienced through certain meditative practices. This heat serves to burn up all types of obstacles and confusion.

dakini
(Skt.): A wrathful or semiwrathful female deity signifying compassion, emptiness, and transcendental knowledge. The dakinis are tricky and playful, representing the basic space of fertility out of which the play of samsara and nirvana arises. More generally, a dakini can be a type of messenger or protector.

dharma
(Skt.): The Buddha’s teaching, or Buddhism; buddhadharma. Sometimes
dharma
is also used to mean “phenomenon.”

dharmadhatu
(Skt.): The “space of things” or “space of phenomena.” The all-encompassing, unoriginated, and unchanging space or totality of all phenomena.

dharmakaya
(Skt.): One of the three bodies of enlightenment. See note 1 for part one, chapter 5, of
The Lion’s Roar
.

dharmata
(Skt.): The ultimate nature of reality; suchness.

dhyana
(Skt.): Meditation, one of the six paramitas.

duhkha
(Skt.): “Suffering.” Duhkha satya, “the truth of suffering,” is the first of Buddha’s four noble truths. The term refers to physical and psychological suffering of all kinds, including the subtle but all-pervading frustration we experience with regard to the impermanence and insubstantiality of all things.

five buddha families
: A tantric term referring to the mandala of the five sambhogakaya buddhas and the five fundamental principles of enlightenment they represent. In the mandala of enlightenment, these are five wisdom energies, but in the confused world of samsara, these energies arise as five confused emotions. Everything in the world is said to be predominantly characterized by one of these five. The following list gives the name of each family, its buddha, its wisdom, its confused emotion, and its direction and color in the mandala: (1) buddha, Vairochana, all-pervading wisdom, ignorance, center, white; (2) vajra, Akshobhya, mirrorlike wisdom, aggression, east, blue; (3) ratna (jewel), Ratnasambhava, wisdom of equanimity, pride, south, yellow; (4) padma (lotus), Amitabha, discriminating-awareness wisdom, passion, west, red; (5) karma (action), Amoghasiddhi, all-accomplishing wisdom, north, green. Some of these qualities differ slightly in different tantras.

four noble truths
: The basis of the Buddhist teaching. The four noble truths are (1) the truth of suffering, (2) the truth of the origin of suffering, (3) the truth of the cessation of suffering, (4) the truth of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.

guru yoga
(Skt.): A devotional practice in which one identifies with and surrenders to the teacher (guru) in his or her vajrayana form as a vajra master and representative of the lineage of ultimate sanity.

heruka
(Skt.): A wrathful male deity.

hinayana
(Skt.): The “lesser” vehicle, in which the practitioner concentrates on basic meditation practice and an understanding of basic Buddhist doctrines such as the four noble truths.