From the guru’s point of view, any blame that you would like to impose on the guru will be accepted with delight. They are willing to accept fully any kind of blame that comes to them—all or none whatsoever, whatever you desire. But if you put the blame on the guru all the time, you will not be able to make any kind of forward movement. The whole thing will begin to become a vicious circle.
For example, practitioners in Western society often feel inadequate; they think that they cannot practice. At first they blame themselves, and then they begin to put more blame on the circumstances of the teaching environment and the demands of the organization they are a part of. Finally, they begin to blame the teacher, the one who created that organization. But that kind of resentment seems to become unnecessary at this point. You can use these descriptions of the role of the vajra master as an antidote for all that.
To introduce a fourth lojong slogan, basically the whole thing boils down to: “Drive all blames into one.” At this point, you have to develop further vision, rather than just complaining all the time; and that further vision comes from having driven all blames into yourself. When you have done that, you begin to feel that some kind of freshness, lightness, and openness can take place in your life. For one thing, your mother sentient beings are regarded as objects of compassion and kindness.3 Beyond that, you acknowledge the guru: the one who taught you to be kind to your mother sentient beings and to yourself, the one who taught you to drive all blames into yourself.
So as your lojong practice begins to work and to take effect, it creates a heightening of compassion for other sentient beings and a further appreciation of the guru, who is the author of that particular teaching. But appreciating the guru is not hero worship. You do not worship the guru for their looks or for their great standing; you simply appreciate what that person teaches and what they exemplify as the living dharma.
APPRECIATING THE TEACHER AND THE TEACHINGS
There are five factors for developing appreciation for the teacher and the teachings: trust, faith, devotion, complete openness, and daringness.
Trust
With appreciation of the dharma, you begin to develop a greater feeling not only of openness, but of longing. You develop utter appreciation, which brings about a trust in the teachings. You trust that what the teachings say is true and workable.
Faith
Then, because of your trust in the teachings, you begin to develop faith in the teacher. This is an important point. In Tibetan, faith is tepa, which means “accepting what is there” or “accepting what has been taught.” So with a nontheistic approach, faith is unselfish; you simply appreciate the teachings. But if you approach faith from a theistic perspective, although you still appreciate the teachings, at the same time you are always thinking about what you can get out of them.
Devotion
One step beyond faith is devotion to the teacher. The idea of devotion is one of opening, like a flower. When rain falls on a flower, if the flower is humble and open, it can receive the rain; but if the flower has no longing for the rain, it does not open. So devotion is somewhat emotional. It is a longing to receive the truth that has been taught by the teacher—to receive it thoroughly. So a student with devotion is like a flower that is open to the rain: the flower allows rainfall to drop into it, and the rain makes the flower beautiful and gives it long life. The thunder and rain are connected with the teacher, and when the student opens up to that, the student can be alive and exist without neurosis. Therefore, devotion is very important.
This whole process is based on understanding the value of the truth that has been taught to you, rather than depending on blind faith. You feel that what has been taught to you makes sense, and that it is beginning to work on you. It does not matter whether it feels painful or pleasurable. Still, the teachings are beginning to crack you down to the possibility of non-ego.
Complete Openness
Having developed devotion, the next level is what is called lo-te lingkyur in Tibetan. Lo-te means “trust.” It refers to having a kind of trust that is a mixture of faith and devotion, and to having a firm commitment. Ling means “completely,” and kyur means “abandoning” or “letting go”; so lo-te lingkyur means “to trust completely and be willing to let go.” In other words, once you develop trust in the teacher and the teachings, you do not check your insurance policy. You may or you may not have an insurance policy, but in any case, you let go of that.
With lo-te lingkyur, you are actually trying to put your hand through your rib cage in order to take out your heart and hand it over to your guru. You hope that your guru will take care of your heart, both for yourself and for your guru. And having taken out your heart, you still survive beautifully. It is an extremely personal experience.
Surrendering to the guru is not necessarily confirmed by the teacher alone. You also begin to realize your own existence, your own space, your own situation. By surrendering, you become worthy of receiving further knowledge. It is a pragmatic approach, not particularly philosophical; it is an idea that comes through practice.
This type of devotion is very important, and quite ordinary, actually. When you are willing to take a chance and invest a million dollars with somebody, you have to trust that person. You sign your name on the dotted line, and you come up with the money. You say, “Here is my million dollars; I am going to invest it with you. Let’s work together.” Working with anybody or with any situation in any society is connected with that idea of trust. Becoming involved with major deals of any kind, handing over responsibility to someone else, spreading out your responsibilities, or working with anybody at all, is based on trust.
If you accept a ride in somebody’s car, you are handing your life over to them. Likewise, you hand over your life to the pilot each time you fly in an airplane. You usually take that kind of thing very lightly. You couldn’t care less who the pilot is. If you were really being careful, you would find out. But although you might be willing to jump into somebody’s car even though you know they are a crazy driver, and you might even think that you are going to have a fantastic time by doing that, you do not usually regard spiritual situations in the same way. However, if you are willing to lend your life to some crazy driver, you should actually be able to trust a sane driver: the guru.
In any situation where you are not actually in control, you are signing your life away to someone else. That kind of trust happens all the time. But with the vajra master, you are facing the person to whom you are signing over your whole being. Although that situation is not particularly different, it seems to make a difference. So in relating to the vajra master, the idea is to develop trust, faith, devotion, and complete openness.
Daringness
So there are several factors that enable you to bring the teacher into your life. And along with factors such as faith and devotion, you also need daringness. Daringness is more tricky. It is letting go of your own personal collection, the things that you have been holding on to for a long time. You have built a stronghold within yourself, a sand castle with guards and weapons and communication systems, so that nothing can ever jeopardize your project of holding on to the survival of your ego. So you might begin to panic about whether you are willing to give in, give up, or more likely, give out.
Letting go of that whole system is very daring, even threatening in some cases. But without making such a daring move to accomplish egolessness, any achievement of enlightenment is impossible. That is actually the definition of liberation: being liberated from yourself. It means that you are liberated from arrogance, panic, and deep-rooted attachment. So basically, what we are talking about here is that you have to tear open your heart. You do not literally need to commit seppuku, but psychologically it is very close to that. The possibility is there.
Having given up, having surrendered totally, thoroughly, and properly, you find yourself in a delightful situation: “What a relief! Whew! I got away from myself. I managed to abandon myself.” In the process, you might swe
at, you might shake, you might stutter—but it is a good stutter, a good shake, a good panic. Because you have been released from that particular imprisonment, you find yourself so meek. You begin to feel very humble. Therefore, you can actually relate with the vajra master.
At that point, you begin to find that there is no barrier between you and the teacher. You feel that finally your windows and doors have been opened, so that at last you can experience fresh air, which is so refreshing, so natural, and so good. You feel quite humble, but at the same time you feel so delighted. At last you can smile without pretense, and you can see your world in a different light. Such possibilities always exist.
DEVOTION AS A MEANS OF RELATING TO THE VAJRA WORLD
Through devotion, you can let go of resistance and aggression and grow the seed of buddha nature.
Letting Go of Resistance
Devotion allows you to relate with the vajra world, but usually, you would like to withhold something. You would like to maintain some kind of resistance, because you like your little corner, your little nook. That little corner may not be pleasurable, and it could even be quite painful; nevertheless, you have become so accustomed to your own pain that it feels almost comfortable to you. It is as if you have been living in the same one-room apartment in the same city for twenty years, and you begin to like your dirt, your dust, and your cockroaches. If somebody tells you to move out of your apartment—even if they say, “I’m going to give you a mansion”—you freak out. You may not particularly like your apartment, but you have become accustomed to it, to your roots. It is like having bad teeth and not wanting to have them pulled out.
So it is not so much that you do not open up because you want to stick with pleasure, but the pleasure comes from being accustomed to your pain. It is at least convenient and familiar, so the possibility of stepping out of that pain is a revolution indeed. The vajrayana approach of complete devotion is to not hold onto your little corner of privacy. It is very straightforward. Your hidden corners have to be given up.
Dropping Aggression and Discovering Sacred Outlook
Aggression is thinking that your world is right and that others are wrong. But when you begin to project sacred outlook, there is no separation at all between this world and that world, so everything is pure. Aggression comes from not having developed enough awareness in relating with your shamatha-vipashyana practice. You want to remold your world to fit your version of things rather than just looking at your world, and when things do not go your way, you feel pissed off. But if you develop shinjang and vipashyana awareness completely, you begin to see the world very clearly and thoroughly. Then no attacks come to you: the world is hospitable as well as being a manifestation of the guru, which is saying the same thing.
Awareness produces gentleness and softness, and because awareness is not regarded as labor, all sorts of things develop: compassion, first of all, and beyond that, sacred outlook. The world is already sacred; otherwise, you could not discover this. You would be manufacturing the whole thing. But you are not manufacturing anything; you are just seeing clearly what the whole thing is all about. That is why we say that prajna comes out of awareness, or the vipashyana principle. With prajna, you begin to see clearly what the phenomenal world is like. That is how sacred outlook is discovered.
Growing the Seed of Buddha Nature
In order to rouse buddha nature, you need two things: the first is the teacher, and the second is yourself. And according to various teachers, including the Tibetan scholar and historian Taranatha (1575–1683 CE), you not only have buddha nature, but you actually have a buddha inside you, alive and well. In order to rouse that buddha nature, you need two things: the first is the teacher, and the second is yourself. So you have a seed, which is yourself, and because you have this seed, the teacher causes the seed to grow properly. That teacher may be inside of you as well as outside of you. Relating to the teacher is like seeing the bright sun. If you are blind, you cannot see the bright sunshine, so the sunshine depends partly on your perception, and at the same time, the sun exists in the sky as the other.
When you plant a seed in the ground, in order to grow your seed, you need a certain atmosphere and weather. The vajra master is like the weather: rain, sunshine, and wind are all embodied in the teacher, who in this case is also the earth itself, as well as the gardener. The vajra master ripens the seed that you have planted, which in this case is somewhat fully blossomed already.
So the vajrayana style of relating with the teacher, or vajra master, is quite unusual or extraordinary, compared with the hinayana or mahayana. It is necessary for you to have a teacher who not only teaches but who creates an entire atmosphere. Good devotion combines the three yanas together. The main point of devotion is that in both your thoughts and behavior, you should follow the teachings of the vajra master.
THE PROCESS OF OPENING UP
Basically, we are talking about expanding, or opening up, your body, speech, and mind so that they can become vajra body, vajra speech, and vajra mind. We are doing so with the help of the first three slogans we discussed, and beyond that, we are doing it with the ideas of devotion, longing, and openness. It is very simple logic, and very straightforward.
Because what you have been taught works, you begin to trust that there is some connection already. Out of that kind of trust, you develop faith. You realize that guidelines such as shamatha-vipashyana practice are actually beginning to work in your existence, your whole being, and so you develop faith in the teachings. From that, you begin to realize that the one who teaches those teachings is valid as well, and you begin to feel a fantastic connection with the teacher. Therefore, you develop devotion. And having developed devotion to the guru, you begin to experience an atmosphere of complete openness.
The same logic applies to any situation. With Indian food, for example, at first you hear that Indian food is good. Then you go to an Indian restaurant, and you meet the chef, who cooks you a good meal. Since you like the food, you invite the chef to your home, and finally you ask the chef to stay with you and be your chef for the rest of your life. Your devotion to the chef is not so much because that chef is a great man or a great woman, but because they are a good cook. A chef produces good food in the same way that a teacher produces good teachings. So you can relate with the whole thing very naturally. You finally begin to open up in that way. Then there is a further situation, which is that your cook begins to become your boss! Your cook begins to tell you what to eat. But that comes much later.
On the whole, if you want to become completely soaked in vajrayana discipline, there is no other way than by surrendering or giving in to the vajra master. There is no other way, because without that, the magic and openness could not occur. If there is no devotion, no magic, and no openness, then the rest of the vajrayana is irrelevant.
Once this magic happens in your life, a little effort is needed, but most of the process is based on mutual understanding. As a person entering the vajrayana journey, you have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to do it. It is like flying in an airplane. Once you walk in and take your seat, you realize that there is nothing else for you to do except fly along with the captain. In that sense, the whole thing is incredibly simple. We make it very complicated, but it is actually very simple.
1. In this discussion, Trungpa Rinpoche is looking at mahayana mind-training slogans from a vajrayana perspective. For more on mind training (lojong) and the fifty-nine related slogans, see Chögyam Trungpa, Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003) or volume 2 of the Profound Treasury, part 7, “Mind Training and Slogan Practice.”
2. The four kayas refer to the interconnected facets of enlightened manifestation. For a discussion of this slogan and the four kayas (the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya, and svabhavikakaya) in the mahayana context, see volume 2 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 38: “Point Three: Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Path of Enlightenment.”
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A Total Surrendering of Samsaric Logic
In order to enter the vajrayana, it is necessary to have a vajra master. Moreover, self-indulgence has to be cut through by means of vajrayana discipline. In other words, in order to wake up, in order to wake the human mind of hinayana and mahayana, it is absolutely necessary to have an object of surrender beyond logic and beyond any philosophy, even beyond a measure of kindness.
VAJRAYANA MIND protection can only occur when you have a vajra guru. Then you and the vajra guru in combination perform particular vajrayana disciplines, and as a result of having done them, you attain utter final enlightenment.
TRANSFORMING THE THREE GATES
In vajrayana discipline, the emphasis is on working with body, speech, and mind. These are known as the “three gates” of entering into the vajrayana. Physical existence or body is the first gate; speech or intellect is the second gate; and consciousness, or mind and memories, is the third gate. Basically, human beings possess those three gates as three different aspects of their psychological existence.
The body looks for physical comfort and for confirmation of its existence. Speech provides further territory; it is a means of communication by which you can actually tell somebody to go away or ask them to come back to your home. Mind or consciousness provides a quality of manipulation whereby you can function in a world where some people love you and others hate you, and you love and hate other people as well. By working with body, speech, and mind together, you can conduct all of your business, whatever comes up. That is our ordinary state of being, the ordinary way we work with body, speech, and mind.
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