The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  We could say quite safely that students who hear the vajrayana for the first time, or enter into a vajrayana-like atmosphere after being involved in the hinayana and mahayana, would like to depart from that vajrayana world. They would naturally have some thoughts of escape, thoughts of relaxation or relief from the feeling of being oppressed and squeezed into a corner. That is not particularly problematic. But when you begin to actually exert the effort and energy to try to escape, you are cutting your own throat, which is not such a good idea. Such a situation, in which you would like to give up abruptly and throw off everything, is like murdering your own parents.

  If there is no devotion, there are no yidams. If there is no devotion, there is no dharma. If there is no devotion, there is no sense of expansion or the kind of visionary approach toward the phenomenal world that brings about personal creativity. Without devotion, you become depressed about the yidams, the vajra master, the dharma, and your life. You begin to complain about every inch of everything that you possibly can. If there is no devotion, you cannot have chaggya chenpo: you cannot have the chak of mahamudra, or the basic vision of emptiness; you cannot have the gya, or the freedom from the fetters of samsara; and you cannot have the chenpo, the unification of those two, which is the attainment of coemergent wisdom.

  The manual work that exists in shamatha-vipashyana discipline is rather homey and safe, but the vajrayana is quite unlike that. It is not homey and safe at all. Rather, it stirs up a lot of possibilities. At the same time, it also settles a lot of possibilities. If you did not get an upset stomach, the doctor would not have a chance to examine you. But once the doctor looks at you, that doctor has a chance to settle your stomach for the rest of your life, until you dispossess your body at the end.

  TAKING DELIGHT IN THE VAJRA MASTER

  Mahamudra cannot be born in individuals who are without devotion. Such devotion is not particularly political; it refers rather to a personal appreciation of the teachings, the spokesperson of the teachings, and the atmosphere that such teachings produce around you. It is impossible for mahamudra to be born in your heart if there is no sense of delight. Mahamudra cannot be born in somebody who is highly depressed by the impossibility of themselves and the teacher and the teachings. There has to be a feeling of delight and cheerfulness taking place; and cheerfulness can only begin to take place by relating with the vajra master, who represents and symbolizes the vajrayana teaching altogether. Out of devotion toward the vajra master, appreciation of the teachings begins to evolve as well, because the vajra master is somebody who lives the teachings. The vajra master is living teachings. And at some point, the whole thing turns back around to you, saying that now you have to do the whole thing.

  The idea of taking delight in the vajra master does not mean that you have to shake hands with the vajra master each time you are confused. That would mean that you shake hands with the vajra master constantly, over and over again, just to reassure yourself, which would become rather complicated. In the same way, when you go to the American embassy, you are not working with the president himself, but with his agent. Actually, people get more messages from the radiation than from the radiator. The radiator is too blunt and too domesticated. The vajra master possesses two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two ears, and all the rest of it. But the radiation does not have any face; it is just radiation, just light. So it is much more pronounced, and at the same time it is much more realistic. That atmosphere gives more messages than the actual little person sitting in the middle of the office.

  ENCOUNTERING THE INTIMIDATING POWER OF THE DHARMA

  The point is that the atmosphere of dharma is all-pervasive. When an all-pervasive dharmic atmosphere begins to occur, a lot of people naturally get overwhelmed. But the problem is that the feeling of being overwhelmed is translated as rejection rather than as an including process. It is like relating to the sun. You feel that the sun is too bright, so you buy venetian blinds and dark shades to cover yourself up. In that way, it seems as if the sun does not really have power over you. But that is an expression of patheticness. It is pathetic that you have to ward off the sun, to cover your little eyes with dark shades and use venetian blinds to block the sun and create a dark room.

  So in dealing with the vajrayana and with the vajra master, there is room for intimidation, but it is important to realize that this does not mean you are being cast out. However, if you cast yourself out, and then others cast you out, and your teacher casts you out as well, that goes beyond just intimidation.

  Intimidation is what happens when you are beginning to enter the vajrayana. You may never have experienced this, but if you go to an American embassy to apply for a visa, the minute you enter the door there are all sorts of intimidating things, such as the president’s photograph and the eagle holding little weapons in its claws. All sorts of Americanisms begin to overwhelm you and make you feel like you want to go away. But still you walk in. That is your first introduction to how you can handle America.

  Then you go and sit at the desk and apply for your visa to the United States of America. You fill in your forms in all sorts of ways, and finally you either get your visa or you don’t. But still you have entered into the American world, and wherever you go, all the walls and corners are part of that American world. Encountering the all-pervasive atmosphere of dharma is that kind of experience.

  You might find it rather intimidating that you have to let yourself be stabbed and confiscated and claustrophobia-ed. But subjecting yourself to such measures is better than huffing and puffing in cosmic madness, which does not do much of anything except bring further pain, further stupidity, further passion, and further aggression. We have done that before, in any case, and we know what it is all about.

  SHARING THE WORLD OF THE VAJRA MASTER

  In order to cut the fetters of samsara, to escape the clutches of the samsaric whirlpool that goes around again and again continuously, we have to stop somewhere. We have to stop in order to start, and we have to start something in order to stop. We have to start with delight and celebration that at last the wonderful dawn of Vajrasattva has occurred, and the wonderful living vajrayana is heard. The message of mahamudra is actually being uttered on our land, and it is a very moving experience.

  Now that such a thing has happened, what are we going to do about it? We are going to commit ourselves to it, whatever the cost may be. The cost of commitment is not so much a financial cost as a psychological and physical cost. It is like the chicken-and-egg story. We realize that our sense of delight brings about our appreciation of the vajra master, and the vajra master brings about the delightfulness of situations, back and forth.

  If you are traveling on a rainy day or in a hailstorm, it is as if you are journeying together with the vajra master, sharing his heroism. Every time a drop of the rainstorm hits you, it hits the face of the vajra master, too. You are sharing together that gray world of the rainstorm. If you are traveling on a sunny day with fantastic light that makes everything brilliant, you are sharing the same light that hits the face of the vajra master and all the dharmakayas, sambhogakayas, and nirmankayas who exist. The same light shines on your face. You are sharing that real vajrayana world on earth in every possible way. You are using the same brand of toilet tissue, and you are getting the same splinters in your hands from the same kind of wood that the vajra master touches.

  At this point, the experience of devotion begins to become very real, very powerful and exquisite. The yidam and the vajra master and you have a common world that you share together. On one hand, the vajra master cannot have any students; on the other hand, they could have a universe of students. The world could be full of their students because the idea of one and many does not apply. It is more of an atmosphere. Everything is an equal world, a unified world, a one-flavored or one-taste world. And within that one-taste world, you are able to practice and go about your job properly.

  Without devotion or affection, you are actually unable to practice and to realize real ma
hamudra. If you ask, “What is real mahamudra?” we could say that real mahamudra is devotion. We could say that real mahamudra is one flavor. But what kind of one flavor is it? It is one flavor in that you and your resistance, which have dissolved together, are sharing the vajra world of the vajra master and the vajrayana. That seems to be the basic point.

  Without that sharing, you are unable to do anything. Everything becomes mere philosophy, mere conceptualization, mere rationalization. Books talk about vajrayana, but that does not mean very much; they are just books. We do not have any good vajrayana philosophers, either. One reason is that philosophical interpretations do not help very much. A person may have studied linguistic philosophy, but they still get confused as to what is what.

  INDESTRUCTIBLE TENDERNESS

  The mahayana cultivates a quality of gentleness, which brings you finally to the softness of mahamudra. The final gentleness is to yield—beyond your parents, beyond yourself—to the vajra master. The final lust and passion is to yield to the vajra master, because that person is not only the vajra master, but they are also the embodiment of the lineage, of the entire teachings, of whatever you have heard and experienced.

  If there is no gentleness, no sympathy, no softness, and no tenderness at the beginning, you cannot become hardened afterward. When the tenderness begins to click with itself and mature, it matures to the extent that it becomes indestructible. That is the idea of devotion becoming vajra nature. Human devotion, human emotionalism, basic ordinary devotion and longing become something greater.

  The whole process is very natural and ordinary: at the beginning, there is a need for a lot of tenderness in the mahamudra, and in the end that tenderness begins to become petrified or diamond-like. You then begin to inherit what is known as the vajra mind of the vajra master. But before you do that, you have to have gentleness.

  DEVOTION, LUSTY DEVOTION, AND COEMERGENCE

  As far as basic mahamudra is concerned, devotion is not much different from coemergent wisdom. One flash of mind simultaneously contains devotion and the transcendent part of devotion, which you could almost say is lusty devotion. Lusty devotion is bright red. It is transcendent because lust is much more direct. True lust has a quality of longing rather than hunger. That is true, genuine devotion. In true lust, there is somehow hunger and satisfaction at the same time. You also get a feeling of empty-heartedness, which is the nondwelling aspect. You begin to lose your reference point of who is doing what.

  All these things are happening at once, which is known as coemergence. Everything emerges together, so you never again have to put labels on who did what or what did who. Everything happens at once, which is a very constant, concentrated experience. It is all happening at once. That is mahamudra.

  THE EXAMPLE OF TILOPA

  Having already laid out some basic ideas about the meaning of tantra, I will briefly tell you the story of Tilopa. This story is very much connected with my lineage and with other tantric traditions as well, so we can begin by looking at how this lineage started.

  It is said that in the beginning, there was no male and no female. Then that which experiences itself fell in love with itself and created a relationship. It began to create a partner, it fell in love with its partner, and things went on from there. So in the beginning, there was the unoriginated, the unborn. Nobody had a guru, nobody had a teacher, nobody had to relate to anything at all. Then a very conveniently beautiful accident happened: the unoriginated guru became an originated guru, and from that point on, the lineage was passed along from one person to the next.

  The great siddha Tilopa.

  In that way, the Kagyü lineage is said to have been passed down directly from Vajradhara to Tilopa. As a result of Tilopa’s encounter with Vajradhara, the unoriginated guru, Tilopa became the first person in the Kagyü lineage. But Tilopa did not receive teachings from Vajradhara alone. Having already exploded his mind by meeting Vajradhara, Tilopa studied with other teachers. By working with these human teachers, Tilopa learned to speak in traditional terms. The idea is that when the teaching begins to happen, it is an experience—but experience needs language, and at the same time, language needs experience.

  The story of Tilopa is not all that dramatic or extraordinary, but he is the direct link to Vajradhara, who is the dharmakaya buddha himself. The story tells us that Tilopa was born in East India in a place called Jago, somewhere in Bengal. Before he was born, his parents first had a daughter, and they were praying to have a son to continue their family lineage. Having failed many times, they invited both Hindus and Buddhists to perform ceremonies to grant them a son in the family, and finally a son appeared. As Tilopa was being born, there was a radiant light covering all of East India, so they decided to call him “Ösel,” or “Prabhasvara,” which means “luminosity.” So Tilopa was named Ösel.1

  The family, being Brahmans, invited a Brahman soothsayer to tell the future of the child. The soothsayer said that he was uncertain which buddha this child was, but that in any case, they better take care of the child and wait for new signs to come along.

  One day when Tilopa was about eight years old, he was sitting with his mother on the balcony and suddenly they saw a black shadow. An ugly woman appeared, huffing and puffing and holding a stick in her hand. She was extremely ugly and dark. Tilopa’s mother was fearful that this might be a vampire of some kind that was going to eat her son or destroy his life. She cried out, “Don’t you kill my son!”

  The old lady said, “However much you lovingly take care of him, there is no way that you can avoid his ultimate death.”

  Then Tilopa’s mother asked the old lady, “What can I do to save him from death?”

  The old lady said, “Make him take care of your herds of cows, and teach him how to read and write.”

  So Tilopa began to study reading and writing. He also began to learn preliminary hinayana practices and doctrines, and he started to study mahayana practices and doctrines as well. And he spent part of his time taking care of the cows.

  Then the same woman appeared to Tilopa again, this time in the meadow where he was taking care of the cows. She asked him, “What is your name? What are you doing? Who are you, and who is your sister?”

  Tilopa replied, “I was born in a place named Jago. My mother’s name is so-and-so, my father’s name is so-and-so, my sister’s name is so-and-so, and my name is so-and-so. I am practicing reading and writing in order to learn the dharma, and I am taking care of the cows in order to develop our future wealth.”

  The woman was extraordinarily angry and outraged, and she contradicted the little child by saying, “No. Your country is not Jago. It is Uddiyana, the land of the dakinis. Your father is not your father; your father is Chakrasamvara. Your mother is not your mother; your mother is Vajravarahi. Your sister is not your sister; your sister is the dakinis. Your name is not Ösel; your name is Panchapana. And you are not taking care of ordinary animals, but you are taking care of the animals of experience in the jungle of bodhi trees.”

  The little boy was rather bewildered. He did not know how to relate with all that, and he said, “How can I know that what you say is true?”

  The old woman answered, “If you do not know, or if you are curious about what I have to say, then you have to go and seek the charnel ground of Salabehari. You have to look for a guru.”

  Tilopa was so curious that he decided to run away from home. He did not even return home to relate his experience with the old woman and what he had been told. He just escaped from his home and ran away to the charnel ground.

  The Salabehari charnel ground was dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, and all the local corpses were presented there. It was a big charnel ground, the place of outlaws, where no ordinary human being would go, let alone a little child.

  Tilopa entered the charnel ground and met a guru called Krishnacharya, who took care of him and sent him to Nagarjuna, who was meditating in a reed hut nearby. Nagarjuna was instructing the gandharvas or nature spirits about prajnap
aramita. There for the first time, the young Tilopa received complete instruction in the hinayana and mahayana.

  Later, having practiced, grown up, and developed a great deal, Tilopa went back to the charnel ground to see his guru Krishnacharya. There he received instructions on dream yoga. He also received instructions from Nagarjuna on the yoga of the illusory body and on the Guhyasamaja Tantra.2 Then he was sent by Krishnacharya to a nearby city to visit a guru called Lavapa. Lavapa had fallen asleep for twelve years in the intersection of the city, and when he woke up he attained mahamudra experience. In this city Tilopa received the instruction in ösel, or luminous mind, from the siddha Lavapa.

  Having studied with these four gurus,3 Tilopa was still not very satisfied with what he was learning and with the instructions he had received. He wanted to get to the heart of the matter. So he asked all of his gurus, “How can I go further? How can I go beyond this?”

  They all said, “You cannot get the spotless, ear-whispered lineage. It is only possessed by the dakinis. You cannot get it.”

  Tilopa was very indignant about that, and he said, “I am going to get it, wherever it is.” Then the four of them gave him directions on how to go about receiving this instruction.

  So Tilopa went to Uddiyana, the land of the dakinis, which was originally known as Swat, in Afghanistan. (It is in Pakistan today.) Although his gurus had recommended that he not go, they said that if Tilopa really wanted to go and if he had a strong conviction to go, he should take three things with him: a bridge made out of precious stones, a knife in the form of a diamond hair, and a key made from a blade of kusha grass. Once he made up his mind, Tilopa could not be convinced to change his plan. He had already developed an enormous appreciation and vajra pride that he actually was Chakrasamvara, so receiving this teaching was just a matter of collecting his debt, rather than receiving instruction from a higher realm, particularly.