The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  In vajrayana Buddhism, the quality of light or brilliance and the quality of sacredness are brought together. That sense of sacredness comes about from the continuity of tantra. When our body, speech, and mind are synchronized, we are fully here. Because we are fully here, we cannot help experiencing natural warmth, natural isness, and natural brilliance. Our experience of life is like gold, diamonds, and beautiful perfume put together. Light and warmth are connected with the idea of being true to yourself. If you are true to yourself—if you are here, with your body, speech, and mind joined together—that kind of reality begins to dawn on you.

  Some traditions say that these kinds of experiences will happen to you after you die. They say that if you are a good boy or a good girl, when you go to heaven you will find such things. But in Buddhism, we say that you can find them right here, before you go to heaven, if there is such a thing as heaven at all. That richness, regal quality, and profundity, that beautiful fragrance, good feeling, and basic well-being, can occur by understanding vajrayana properly and fully.

  Such experiences are transmitted from teacher to disciple by means of the teacher’s skillfulness, precision, and accuracy. The teacher actually speaks the true dharma on the spot to those who are worthy of it and to those who are ready for it. I am afraid that I have to repeat this again and again and again: the teacher teaches the vajrayana to those who have been tamed and pacified by means of hinayana, and those who have become generous to themselves and others by means of mahayana.

  According to the Buddha, the definition of dharma is “passionlessness.” Passion refers to anxiety and anger of all kinds, and passionlessness means that when there is no anxiety and no anger, you become more clearheaded. You become clear and precisely on the dot. You become a good practitioner, a good listener, and a good student; and at the same time, you also find out whether your teacher is suitable for you or not.

  TAMING ONESELF

  The fact that you are encountering these teachings means that you are karmically connected with the teachings of the Buddha. Your birth in a particular time and place has coincided with this presentation of the vajrayana, which is a wonderful coincidence. Therefore, you should place even greater importance on bringing yourself up as a person who pays attention to individual salvation and to taming yourself through shamatha and vipashyana. That is very important. By entering into the vajrayana, you are not departing from that approach and going to something more slick or sophisticated. In fact, you are going back. By understanding the vajrayana, you can begin to understand more about the basics of Buddhism. That is why we study the vajrayana. We appreciate that we have to build a solid foundation in order to have a golden roof.

  DISCOVERING A GIGANTIC WORLD OF AWARENESS

  In the vajrayana, along with faith and devotion, we find that relative bodhichitta manifests everywhere, and we also discover that absolute bodhichitta manifests everywhere. Basically, relative bodhichitta is benevolent compassion that is projected out in all directions, without exception. This kind of compassionate benevolence brings with it a notion of wakefulness, which is the product of vipashyana experience.

  In vipashyana, awareness begins to be reflected throughout your life, throughout your day. You realize that the process of awareness is not based on your individual struggle or effort; rather, objects of awareness come to you and you acknowledge them. There is a gigantic world of awareness and mindfulness beginning to happen everywhere around you. That gigantic world continues whether you are sitting on the toilet, eating a meal, taking a shower, walking, driving, talking to people, doing business deals, or studying. So in whatever you do, an element of vipashyana, or awareness, is always taking place. That is a very important point for your understanding of the vajrayana.

  NATURAL GENTLENESS AND WARMTH

  When you begin to develop a thorough and complete awareness of everything around you, wherever you are, that awareness is not purely mechanical; it also contains softness and warmth. It is as if the temperature around you rises slightly, so the whole area is always warm and pliable. Instead of eating cold food off a cold plate, you eat warm food off a warm plate. That kind of natural hospitality arises whenever a person has fully accomplished basic awareness practice. There is invitation everywhere, completely, so you begin to feel a quality of warmth and hospitality.

  That hospitality and warmth automatically invites compassion and gentleness. Because of that warmth, you begin to trust situations more than you usually do. All of this is purely a product of your own mindfulness and awareness; it stems from your shamatha-vipashyana experience. As a practitioner, you begin to feel that, on the whole, the world is not filled with hostility. You see that in spite of its problems, the world is filled with possibilities of being genuine and opening up. So when we talk about devotion, we do not mean devotion to the teacher as someone who is on your side, as opposed to the rest of the world, which is attacking you: we mean a complete absence of warfare.

  Because of that warmth, situations become pliable. You can sink your teeth into things without any problem or fear of the phenomenal world at all. Because such gentleness has developed in yourself, you begin to do a double take on the world: you begin to realize that there is warmth and gentleness in the phenomenal world as well as in yourself. You begin to realize that there is something very sacred about it.

  COMPLETE INVOLVEMENT

  As we continue on our path, we commit ourselves to the vajrayana. We want to transform not only our state of thinking, our emotions, and our behavior patterns alone, but we want to change our entire existence altogether. We want to involve our body, speech, and mind completely in the approach to reality known as buddhadharma, the enlightened way of dealing with reality properly. Since we have come this far, we want to go further by committing our behavior patterns, our communication patterns, and our style of thinking.

  The vajrayana will not give you a quick and sudden antidote of any kind; there has to be a base for it. Likewise, you might want to find a quick way to cure your sickness by getting a pill from a physician. But first, you have to be in the town where the physician lives; then you have to make an appointment with the physician; and having scheduled an appointment, you have to talk to the physician—and after all that, the physician might finally give you that good pill. In this analogy, being in that physician’s country or town is like the hinayana; calling the physician and meeting with them is like the mahayana; and the physician finally giving you the pill is like the vajrayana. You cannot get a pill just by dialing the telephone; it is a three-stage process.

  It may seem as if the vajrayana is doing the same things as the earlier yanas all over again, but in the vajrayana we are dealing much further with the negative and neurotic world. In the hinayana, the approach is to withdraw from the passion-and-aggression provoking world, and in the mahayana, it is to exchange self for other with tonglen practice. But in the vajrayana, we talk about vajra nature as an expression of being willing to relate more with the phenomenal world. Vajra nature is less a question of how high the state of existence is, and more about the workability of others. In the vajrayana, we are more than bodhisattvas; we work harder. We are willing to work with people’s confusion more and more, further and further. So it is a much-expanded notion of the bodhisattva ideal.

  Some people think the vajrayana approach is one in which you suddenly have an outburst of craziness, and manifest as a funny yogi or go naked in the middle of a big city. But that is complete nonsense. You may like that idea because there is not very much happening and the world is very dull. It is somewhat of a police state, and there are regulations and restrictions for everything. But you cannot expect any new entertainment to come out of your study of the vajrayana. You have to continue working from within.

  1. A reference to the unraveling of the interdependent karmic chain reaction. For more on the cycle of the twelve nidanas, see volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 9, “The Painful Reality of Samsara.”

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bsp; Uncovering Indestructible Goodness and Wakefulness

  In the vajrayana, your state of being is transformed into the highest level of shamatha mindfulness and meticulousness and the greatest vipashyana awareness put together. Your loving care for yourself and the greatest caring for others are put together, which allows you to perceive a greater world altogether.

  IN THE Vajrayana, you make a certain discovery—the discovery of buddha nature—and once you discover such a thing, you find that there are a great many possibilities, particularly in following the path. Buddha nature is twofold: one part is tenderness, and the other part is wisdom. Here, wisdom is discriminating-awareness wisdom, wisdom that can see situations very clearly and thoroughly. We could say that such higher awareness is the ultimate bodhichitta principle.

  Traditionally, buddha nature is known as sugatagarbha in Sanskrit, or dewar shek-pe nyingpo in Tibetan, which means “gone beyond with bliss.” Sugatagarbha, or actually the realization of sugatagarbha, is the starting point. You have a little glimpse of an experience that is very bright and luminous, and as you continue on the path, you begin to prolong or sustain that flash. You begin to realize that you are not so bad after all, but you have potential and you deserve some realization. So you begin to cheer up and smile.

  VAJRA NATURE

  Out of the momentary experience of sugatagarbha, you also begin to develop what is known as vajra nature, or dorje kham in Tibetan. Dorje, or vajra in Sanskrit, means “indestructible” or “adamantine,” and kham means a “realm” or a “state of being”; so dorje kham means “indestructible being” or “vajra nature.” Vajra nature is a somewhat path-oriented concept, but at the same time it is a glimpse of your capability.

  Vajra has many meanings. Vajra can refer to overcoming obstacles; and having overcome obstacles, it allows you to receive a glimpse of something indestructible and pure. Vajra can also mean awake and precise. Colloquially, it means not barking up the wrong tree. Precision, purity, luminosity, and clarity bring us to the realization of vajra-ness. When you take a photograph, if you do not focus properly on the object that you want to photograph, that photograph is non-vajra. Taking a vajra-like photograph is based on seeing the sharp corners and precise outlines. Vajra is as precise as a razor’s edge.

  WORKABILITY

  Out of vajra nature, the notion of workability, or lesu rungwa, develops. Le means “action,” su means “for,” and rungwa means “possible,” “suitable,” or “appropriate”; so lesu rungwa means “action that is possible.” The total feeling is that there are possibilities. We could say that lesu rungwa is the proper way of working with meditation and postmeditation experiences. The point of lesu rungwa is that whatever we experience could become worthwhile and workable. This leads us to the idea of Samantabhadra.

  COMPLETE GOODNESS / SAMANTABHADRA

  Samantabhadra is a Sanskrit term; in Tibetan it is küntu sangpo. Küntu means “completely,” and sangpo means “good”; so küntu sangpo means “completely good.” “Basic goodness” might be a rough translation of that particular state of being. Samantabhadra is connected with the ideas of sugatagarbha and vajra nature.

  The state of being of küntu sangpo is inside of us and outside of us at the same time. When we look up at the sky, we find goodness, precision, cheerfulness, and purity existing there. When we look up at our ceiling, we could say the same thing; when we look at our rugs, we could say the same thing; when we look at the back of the person in front of us, we could say the same thing. When we eat food, when we drink, when we take a shower, when we rest, when we fall asleep, we could say there is basic goodness there. These are all expressions of küntu sangpo, or Samantabhadra.

  The primordial Buddha, Samantabhadra, in union with Samantabhadri.

  Five Types of Samantabhadra

  There are five types of Samantabhadra: all-good path, all-good ornamentation, all-good teacher, all-good insight, and all-good realization.

  ALL-GOOD PATH. The first type of Samantabhadra is lam küntu sangpo, which means the “path is all good.” Lam means “path,” and küntu sangpo, as before, means “completely good” or “all good”; so lam küntu sangpo means “all-good path.” It refers to postmeditation experiences.

  ALL-GOOD ORNAMENTATION. The second type of Samantabhadra is gyen küntu sangpo, which means “all-good ornamentation.” Gyen means “ornamentation”; so gyen küntu sangpo means “all-good ornamentation.”

  There are lots of attributes or ornamentations connected with the possibility of attaining the küntu sangpo state, or the küntu sangpo environment. But the basic attribute is that no matter what occurs in apparent phenomena, we begin to experience that there are not really any obstacles; we begin to regard everything as a further step on the path.

  ALL-GOOD TEACHER. The third type of Samantabhadra is tönpa küntu sangpo. Tönpa means “teacher” or the “shower of the path”; so tönpa küntu sangpo means “all-good teacher.” This type of Samantabhadra provides us with such clarity and precision that the phenomenal world itself becomes a teacher to us. The more we fall down into our mud, confusion, and pollution, the more the phenomenal world becomes our teacher.

  ALL-GOOD INSIGHT. The fourth type of Samantabhadra is called rikpa küntu sangpo. Rikpa means “insight”; so rikpa küntu sangpo means “all-good insight.” With all-good insight, you are seeing things as they are, without any cloudiness or problem.

  ALL-GOOD REALIZATION. The fifth type of Samantabhadra is tokpa küntu sangpo. Tokpa is “realization”; so tokpa küntu sangpo means “all-good realization.” Tokpa küntu sangpo means not having any hesitation about situations. Even when you are confused, there is no hesitation about working with that confusion. If your automobile breaks down on the highway, instead of calling the mechanics to fix your car, you do it yourself. You fix your car and then drive it home. You realize that you are self-sufficient. You begin to perceive that your day-to-day life situations are not all that distant from the reality of Samantabhadra, which is all good.

  LETTING GO

  Vajra nature and Samantabhadra come about naturally. They may come about by seeing the vajra master, but it is mainly a question of letting go. It depends on how much you preserve yourself as a samsaric person as opposed to how much you let go, so that you can face toward enlightenment. Letting go is relaxation, but it is a painful process as well. It is the tearing apart of the biggest part of yourself, which is the holding on to your ego. It is the tearing apart of your heart, tongue, and eyes, but at the same time it is pleasant. It is not a bad operation because nobody is at home, and there is no home; you are floating in space. That is why you can actually get into such a situation, why you can actually jump in. Nobody is there to jump in, but at the same time, there is a reference point. Ultimately, there is nobody, but we still seem to have somebody there.1

  DIAMOND WAKEFULNESS

  Wakefulness is very important in vajrayana. Vajrayana wakefulness is indestructible, strong, and powerful, like the vajra scepter of Indra.2 It is indestructible, like a diamond. It cannot be defeated, fractured, or destroyed. In the vajrayana, your state of being is transformed into the highest level of shamatha mindfulness and meticulousness and the greatest vipashyana awareness put together. Your loving care for yourself and the greatest caring for others are put together, which allows you to perceive a greater world altogether.

  Vajrayana is not an ego trip. You have to give up a lot in order to become a vajra-like person. In order to become hardened like a diamond, you need to develop mindfulness, awareness, softness, and gentleness. This process is very much like the case history of a diamond itself. Originally a diamond is soft, but then it is compressed in the earth by environmental pressure. Vajrayana practice is like that sheer environmental pressure. Because vajra sanity is needed so badly, and because it is so rare, there is a need for that kind of pressure. We need to be compressed into diamond. In that way, as a vajrayana student, you cannot help but become diamond yourself. You could call yourself a diamond pe
rson.

  Here, diamond means that you cannot be hampered or influenced by any form of klesha. You are completely free from kleshas because of your intense devotion to your vajra master and your intense practice throughout the three-yana journey. You have good personal manners as a result of hinayana, and you have good social manners as a result of mahayana, so you are fundamentally trustworthy. That two-yana journey is what makes vajrayana possible.

  In order to be like a diamond, you have to understand indivisibility and egolessness. You have to understand that you cannot always have little kindnesses pumped in here and there, like intravenous feedings. Once you are a diamond, little things cannot be pumped into you; you are either there or not. You are strong and invincible, and because you are self-contained, you are ready to work for others. A diamond also has maitri and a great sense of humor. That quality of maitri and of humor shines right through. If you look at a diamond early in the morning, it shines, and if you look at it in the middle of the night, it still shines. A diamond is always glowing and glittering.

  You may be uncertain whether you want to be a diamond, but if you look at hinayana discipline, you see that it already has that diamond-like quality. In the hinayana, you are trying to work with specks of dust and to overcome any dirt. Everything is crystal clear, pure, precise, and on the spot. Because of that diamond-like quality, the hinayana would be the best ground from which to hear the vajrayana. But the hinayana is coming up from below, which would be slightly difficult to maintain. The vajrayana is like a diamond ceiling coming down from above, or like a diamond umbrella, so there is a quality of confidence in vajrayana realization. With the vajrayana, you have a diamond umbrella shining in all directions, crystal clear, powerful, and strong.