The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
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VAJRADHATU SEMINARIES
Vajradhatu Seminary training exemplified Trungpa Rinpoche’s emphasis on the value of understanding the fundamentals of the Buddhist tradition before embarking on more advanced teachings. The Vidyadhara put a lot of thought into how to structure the seminary experience, and particularly into how to shape the seminaries into a proper environment for transmitting the vajrayana. In a conversation with the translator Larry Mermelstein, the Vidyadhara remarked, “The seminary is my most important achievement.” Larry asked if this was because of the way the seminary combined shedra and drubdra, or study and practice, along with the work of daily life, and the Vidyadhara replied, “Exactly. In Tibet, we never put them all together. They were always separate.” Larry asked, “So what made you think of putting them together?” The Vidyadhara replied, “My teacher, Khenpo Gangshar Wangpo, put them together for me. I lived with my khenpo and he put them all together.”
The seminary schedule, which alternated weeks of intensive meditation practice with weeks of intellectual study, and included the intimate connection Trungpa Rinpoche had with each of his students, created a powerful and protective container for his presentation of the vajrayana teachings. Throughout his seminaries, scholarly learning was joined with direct meditative experience in a creative fusion of the intellect and intuitive understanding. In the seminary environment, lectures by the Vidyadhara, group discussions, practice periods, kitchen and cleaning duties, and informal encounters all had a quality of direct dharma transmission.
Photo 1. 1975 Seminary: Trungpa Rinpoche wearing a cowboy hat and armed with a pea shooter.
Trungpa Rinpoche taught thirteen seminaries in all, and each year he added new teachings, building on both his previous seminary presentations and on the teachings that students were expected to study prior to attending the three-month program. While at seminary, students went on to study not only what was being presented in the seminary they were attending, but the teachings of all the previous seminaries as well. In describing this process, the Vidyadhara said that he intended to extend the teachings of the previous seminaries year by year so that eventually the whole collection would become a powerful bank of dharma. Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged his students to study the previous years’ transcripts, making the point that “If you can study them clearly and properly, we will not even have to mention those basic principles again.” (1975 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 22)2
Although different topics were introduced at each seminary, the basic structure of all the seminaries remained the same: a progression through the three yanas. In describing this approach, Trungpa Rinpoche said, “Each year that we have a new seminary, we can build from a different perspective of the three-yana principle. This has certainly inspired me, and I think that the students will also find it very stimulating.” (1974 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 22) The Vidyadhara encouraged his students to work with the three yanas as a unified whole, a single coherent path. He never seemed to tire of reminding his students in one way or another not to forget the hinayana, not to bypass the mahayana, and not to pick and choose tidbits of dharma, but rather to always approach the three yanas as a whole.
THE 1973 SEMINARY
At the first Vajradhatu Seminary, held in 1973 at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Trungpa Rinpoche made the decision to open his vajrayana teachings to his Western students. He considered this a step of great significance that he was not undertaking lightly, and he expressed great delight in finally being able to present these teachings. In speaking of this decision, the Vidyadhara said, “I’ve been waiting to discuss this topic for a long time, in fact practically since I’ve been in this country. I am tickled by the idea of presenting a complete understanding, as far as my communication style and your communicational openness go, and there’s no guarantee of course. In any case, it is a very mirage-like situation, and our dreams are extraordinarily powerful, which might dilute somewhat the essence of the vajra teaching.” (1973 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 20)
During the 1973 seminary, the Vidyadhara stressed the power of the vajrayana, the danger of misinterpreting its teachings, and the importance of secrecy. When this first group of vajrayana students had completed their seminary training and were about to leave, he told them, “I hope you will be able to relate what you have studied and learned to others, but there is an exception: I would like to keep the tantric things that we discussed private. . . . As you know, there are no terribly embarrassing things contained in it. It is just the same old Buddhist stuff in many ways. But somehow the whole basic thing creates a lot of power, and it contains an enormous amount of magic and energy. We should be very careful.” (1973 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 27)
SECRET TEACHINGS
In the vajrayana, there is a tradition of secrecy. In the West, we tend to think of secrecy as something negative, indicating that someone has something to hide. We may view secrecy as a technique of obfuscation, or as a way of separating an elite in-group that possesses special knowledge. But in the context of vajrayana, secrecy has none of those implications.
Establishing a Proper Foundation
According to Trungpa Rinpoche, in the vajrayana the need for secrecy is not based on having anything to hide. Instead, the point is that without first establishing a proper foundation and without proper guidance, a person encountering the vajrayana teachings could find them misleading and even harmful.
The vajrayana teachings, like all Buddhist teachings, are an expression of wisdom and compassion. However, these powerful teachings could be corrupted into further fuel for ego and its thirst for power. To prevent such possibilities, the Vidyadhara said that a degree of caution and secrecy made sense.
Self-Secrecy
As an extension of this notion of secrecy, Trungpa Rinpoche also introduced the concept of self-secrecy, which is the idea that the vajrayana has inherent mechanisms that protect it from being corrupted and that avoid misleading students who are not ready for it. The idea of self-secrecy is that although many traditional tantric texts and many books on various aspects of the vajrayana are freely available, one needs direct instruction from an accomplished master in order to really understand them. The tantric guru holds the key to unlock the treasury of the vajrayana teachings.
Protecting the Purity of the Transmission
The Vidyadhara also talked about the role of secrecy in protecting the purity of a student’s transmission experience. He said that secrecy is valuable because it allows vajrayana transmission to work its power without being impeded by a student’s concepts and preconceptions. That is, a student’s reliance on conceptual understanding could weaken the ability of the transmission to shock that student into a more immediate and profound realization. Trungpa Rinpoche pointed out, “Sometimes the notion of secrecy is very helpful. If things have been kept secret from people, then when they do begin to receive the teachings, luckily they have not had any kind of warning. They do not have any preconceptions because they have not come across any literature or experiences of that nature. Then transmission can be direct and sudden, without preconceptions. It is like sneezing: the only warning you get is a few seconds before you sneeze. That is an important point. If people have heard too much already, they won’t be shocked. That would be too bad.” (1983 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 13)
THE DECISION TO OPEN THE TEACHINGS TO WESTERNERS
Given the Vidyadhara’s respect for the tradition of secrecy, opening the vajrayana oral teachings to Western students was a powerful statement for him. From our current vantage point, it may seem odd that Trungpa Rinpoche was so adamant about the special quality of these teachings. After all, even in the early seventies, more and more books on Tibetan Buddhism were being translated and published, a number of teachers were traveling widely in order to perform blessings and ceremonies, and the highest vajrayana teachings were becoming freely available to the public. But Trungpa Rinpoche was deeply concerned about the power of spiritual materialism. He was unhappy to see the vajrayana teachings being peddled as tho
ugh they were milk in a market place. The Vidyadhara had no interest in feeding the Western fascination with the exotic East, Tibetan cultural trappings, or religiosity. So he took a conservative approach, and he placed high demands on his students. He was determined to present the dharma in a proper setting, with careful consideration and preparation every step of the way.
Trungpa Rinpoche was also well aware of the many traditional Tibetan Buddhist guidelines on when to present the vajrayana teachings and to whom they can be taught, which may be why he took such precautions. Referring to the idea of samaya, or the vow to protect the integrity of the teachings, he said, “According to one of the samaya vows, teaching vajrayana to those who are not ready for it is a violation; and according to another samaya, holding back from teaching vajrayana to those who are ready for it is also a violation. At this point I have decided to go along with the second of those vows. I have received so much encouragement from our lineage and from my teacher, and I have followed my personal intuition about the readiness of my students.” (1981 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 21)
Once Trungpa Rinpoche made the decision to go ahead with the vajrayana teachings, he did not hold back. He allowed his students to determine if they could handle what he was presenting, saying, “The only problem in presenting the vajrayana teachings could be that when I spell out the whole thing—can you hear it? It is up to you. As far as I am concerned, there is no holding back. . . . So as far as my presentation is concerned, there is no censorship. The only censorship that could take place is in your own mind. It is like Montezuma’s revenge: if you can’t handle Mexican food, you get diarrhea. (1981 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 21)
VAJRAYANA TRANSMISSION AND PRE-TRANSMISSION TEACHINGS
For students of the Vidyadhara, in order to become a tantric student, one first had to complete a Vajradhatu seminary, make a commitment to the vajrayana path, and request to be accepted as a student. If accepted, the Vidyadhara would then give the student vajrayana transmission, and authorize them to begin the ngöndro. Finally, after receiving vajrayana transmission and completing the ngöndro, a practice that could take several years, a student could request to take part in an empowerment ceremony, or abhisheka, and be formally entered into the vajra mandala, the circle of vajrayana practitioners.
The Vidyadhara placed great emphasis on the study of the collected seminary teachings not only as the foundation for beginning the ngöndro, but as a support for deepening one’s understanding as one progressed along the path. Since the seminary teachings were given prior to receiving transmission and beginning vajrayana preliminary practices, they could be considered to be pre-transmission teachings. They are just a beginning. The Vidyadhara compared listening to these vajrayana teachings to hearing about the existence of a fish: “It is as if you had just heard that such a thing as a fish existed. You still have to talk to the fisherman, and the fisherman has to catch the fish. And not only that, but then you have to cook the fish and eat it. So far, you have just heard that such a thing as a fish exists.” (1983 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 14) Trungpa Rinpoche made it clear that in his seminary teaching he was simply introducing the theory of tantra; these teachings were a vanguard to actually launching into the vajrayana. In his teachings altogether, Trungpa Rinpoche stressed that before making a commitment to pursue spiritual training in any tradition, it was important to first study the teachings of that tradition in order to have some idea what such a commitment actually involved.
The first few seminaries laid the groundwork for vajrayana transmission, but they did not actually empower students to enter into vajrayana practice and training. But several months after the end of the first Vajradhatu Seminary in 1973, the Vidyadhara empowered his first batch of students so they could begin the vajrayana preliminary practices. In later seminaries, Trungpa Rinpoche offered vajrayana transmission at the very end of each seminary. In order to qualify, students were expected to have completed their seminary training and to have taken both the hinayana refuge vow and the mahayana bodhisattva vow. After completing the vajrayana portion of a seminary, some students chose not to request transmission, or felt they were not yet ready for such a step. Other students were not accepted for transmission, or were encouraged to focus more on the hinayana or mahayana, or were told to wait.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HINAYANA AND SHAMATHA-VIPASHYANA PRACTICE
The Vidyadhara repeatedly stressed the critical importance of the hinayana path and the ongoing cultivation of mindfulness and awareness as the essential underpinning of vajrayana practice and understanding. Throughout his teachings, he kept coming back to the need for grounding in shamatha (mindfulness) and vipashyana (awareness). By alternating weeks of intensive shamatha-vipashyana with weeks of study, Trungpa Rinpoche’s seminary training gave his students a feel for the dynamic way in which meditation could inform study, as well as how study could enrich meditation. The practice atmosphere created by the days of group meditation created the kind of container that made it possible for students to hear the dharma in a deeper, more personal and heartfelt way. The power of such an atmosphere made it possible for a meeting of minds to occur between the teacher and his students.
THE NEED FOR MAHAYANA BENEVOLENCE AND THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN
Trungpa Rinpoche also emphasized that in order to enter the vajrayana properly, it was essential to understand the mahayana teachings of openness, benevolence, and compassion, and to engage in mind-training practices such as tonglen, or sending and taking. He stressed the importance of progressing from an attitude of self-help to the mahayana attitude of helping others, or at least opening to others, as essential preparation for the vajrayana. According to the Vidyadhara, by combining hinayana and mahayana training, students could create something for others and for themselves at the same time. He remarked that by training in this way, “You can build a solid foundation for tantra. It is like building a house out of rock: you get a lot of exercise and good health, but the house is built for somebody else rather than for you. Of course, you might occasionally walk into the house once it is built, but it is not yours. It is for all the people and is as limitless as the sky. We are going in that direction.” (1974 Seminary Transcripts, Talk 27)
THE NEED FOR GUIDANCE
The dharmic path is laid out in the three volumes of The Profound Treasury in terms of a progression through the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana, but it is in fact one continuous journey. How one approaches this journey is unique for each individual. It is personal, it is intimate, and as the Vidyadhara said, “It is up to you, sweetheart!” Some people prefer the straightforwardness and simplicity of the hinayana path; some are attracted by the benevolence and wisdom of the mahayana; others are drawn to the profundity and power of the vajrayana. But at whatever level you aspire to practice the teachings, working with an experienced guide is invaluable.
Working with a guide is particularly important in the vajrayana. There are many books on Buddhist tantra, more than any one person could ever read, but at heart the vajrayana is an oral tradition that is passed on directly from teacher to student. It is through that kind of interpersonal connection that the subtlety of these teachings can be imparted. As a traditional chant says, “The guru opens the gate to the treasury of oral instructions.” It is fortunate that so many great teachings are available, and it is fine to leap into the dharma and begin to practice, but if you are inspired and want to go further, it is essential to work with an experienced guide, someone who can manifest what these teachings are all about and show you how to proceed.
Photo 2. Trungpa Rinpoche teaching from a Tibetan throne, holding a Japanese fan, and wearing a Western suit.
THE STRUCTURE OF VOLUME THREE
Below is a brief overview of the structure of this volume, starting with the transition from the mahayana into the vajrayana, continuing with a discussion of different aspects of the vajrayana view, and culminating in a description of the vajrayana path from beginning to end.
Approaching the Vajrayana
/> This volume begins with a discussion of the transition from the mahayana to the vajrayana path, and the implications of entering into the tantric path. In this section and throughout the three volumes, over and over, Trungpa Rinpoche stresses the necessity of the hinayana and the mahayana, and the importance of seeing the three yanas as one continuous journey. In particular, he stresses the power of shamatha and vipashyana. Trungpa Rinpoche then looks at different aspects of the vajrayana, both through traditional Tibetan Buddhist lenses and through the lens of Shambhala vision and the symbol of the Great Eastern Sun.3 He introduces the concepts of basic goodness and the creation of enlightened society, and he also presents definitions of the tantric path and basic characteristics of the vajrayana approach.
The Teacher-Student Relationship
Here the notion of the tantric teacher or vajra master is introduced. Trungpa Rinpoche elucidates the role of the vajra master, and the central role that the guru-student relationship plays on the vajrayana path. He also introduces the concept of sacred outlook, and the idea of the three roots: guru, yidam, and protector. Throughout this section, Trungpa Rinpoche makes it clear that in order to progress on the vajrayana path, one needs to work with an experienced teacher and cultivate devotion and trust. He shows how vajrayana practice transforms one’s conventional view of the world into sacred outlook, which is characterized by expansiveness and freedom, gentleness and warmth, and has no struggle or aggression. He then traces the development of sacred outlook back to the mahayana and the practice of lojong, to the absence of grasping and fixation, and to the power of devotion. He also discusses the development of vajra body, vajra speech, and vajra mind.