The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Identifying with what is happening in this way can take place, if you actually understand what you are practicing. That is why Jamgön Kongtrül the Great, Longchen Rabjam, the third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje, and the entire lineage place enormous emphasis on students having an intellectual understanding of tantra. You need at least some understanding of tantra in order to have a way of identifying yourself with such deities and situations. It is absolutely important; otherwise, you are completely lost. You cannot just operate on high hopes; you do not just receive an abhisheka and hope for the best. That does not make any sense.

  THE INDIVISIBILITY OF PERCEPTION AND EMPTINESS

  Another outstanding idea of this yoga is that all dharmas are seen as mind manifestations, or as the miracle of the indivisibility of perceptual experience and emptiness. So there is a sympathetic attitude to the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world is no longer sacred or mysterious, nor for that matter is it secular. Any ordinary thing that we do is in itself sacred. So nothing is regarded as an exclusively secular or worldly experience, and nothing is regarded as exclusively sacred, either.

  In the experience of mahayoga, the phenomenal world is seen as its own entity and in its own way, because its own way is straight, simple, and uncomplicated. Therefore, it is possible to apply the principle and philosophy of visualization, and the visualization of perceptions or concepts. In this way, the fact that we have labeled our world is something that could fit into the visualization as well, as part of a gigantic mandala of workability. At this point, tantrikas are able to sink their minds completely into nonduality. Therefore, it has been said in the texts that mahayoga is superior to the lower or external yoga practices that we discussed.

  FORMLESS PRACTICE

  The attitude to visualization in mahayoga is not devoid of the meditative aspect, the sampannakrama or formless practice. Even the samayasattva visualization that ordinary people start with is highly influenced by the meditative state. Since the samayasattva is highly soaked in nonduality already, there is no need for a sense of separateness between the jnanasattva and samayasattva. Instead, there seems to be an emphasis on the indivisibility of the meditative state and visualization.

  According to mahayoga, the meditative state and the visualization are completely one, so bringing the jnanasattva into the visualization is no big hassle. There is no confusion or conflict. Even anuttarayoga makes a big deal out of the jnanasattva’s blessing of the samayasattva. But in the case of mahayoga, there is very little problem with that transition.

  The notion that the ordinary has been made into the sacred is much less prominent here, because even at the ordinary level, a nondualistic attitude has developed. That is actually a source of vajra pride. Even on the level of samayasattva, a sense of sacredness is evolving. Because that is already happening, there is no problem in developing self-existing wisdom or simplicity into vajra pride. Things are already developing in that direction, so one does not have to change or to feel belittled.

  VISUALIZATION AND EVERYDAY LIFE

  Mahayoga visualization practice is related to your everyday life and to very domestic things. For example, you visualize the herukas or yidams in union with their consorts, eating and drinking, treading on the enemy, and so forth. But unlike everyday life, in visualization everything happens at once. Everything that we do in our life, the deities manage to do simultaneously. From the samsaric point of view, if we could do everything at once, it would be delightful. It is the essence of our wishful thinking. But since we only have one body and one state of mind, we can only do one thing at a time, which makes us very tired and regretful some of the time, and very confused at other times. I think that is why the deities use samsaric images on a nirvanic level, on a type of ambidextrous or all-pervasive level.

  In visualization practice, the emotions and energies are all concentrated at one level, which is an outrageous idea. It is an extremely perverted idea in many ways, which is why it is a secret. You cannot understand what it is all about. You cannot be all that outrageous; nobody would dare to do it. People are usually very cowardly about their own habits, their own wishful thinking. So if you are actually able to get into this by means of transcendental practice, it is extraordinarily refreshing and crazy at the same time. Finally you are able to actually make some sense out of your life and your emotions and your longings and your pains and your pleasures and everything. That seems to be the basic point.

  Visualization practice is right to the point of our life, rather than trying to replace our life with some cosmic livelihood. That is the essence of visualization, and that is why we can identify with all the herukas and yidams. That is why there is this possibility. The deities are not protectors and they are not objects of worship, but they are states of mind that we can identify with. All our hopes and fears, all that we want, is embodied in those particular images.

  When you are visualizing, usually your eyes are closed; but when you are meditating, your eyes are usually open. In the case of meditation, if you close your eyes you begin to get caught in fantasies of all kinds, whereas if you open your eyes, you just see the naked world. However, in the case of visualization, if you open your eyes you begin to project superimposed hallucinations on your rug, your pillow, or your wall. That is why your eyes are closed; you close them so you can have a completely clean world. The purpose of both techniques is the same, but they are done in opposite ways.

  In postvisualization practice, you do not see the herukas serving tea or driving your cab, but you have a sense of their presence constantly. It is similar to the way we always experience things. When you feel depressed, you see everybody as depressed; when you are drunk, you think that everybody is drunk with you; and when you are angry, you feel that everybody is mocking you. You have that kind of attitude toward the deities in the visualization.

  The visualization is part of your daily activities, the daily experience of your life. It is not so much that since herukas are clad in human-skin shawls and tiger-skin skirts and wearing bone ornaments, you are trying to hallucinate everybody wearing tiger-skin skirts and running around in bone ornaments. But there is a very personal and experiential sense of the presence of various herukas. So the visualization is happening in the postmeditative state as well.

  It is essential to know the various philosophical and experiential attitudes regarding one’s practice and one’s phenomena. If a person does not have a great deal of understanding in terms of utpattikrama and sampannakrama, if the visualization practice and the meditative practice are not properly done, these practices may become dangerous. It has been said that they are even more dangerous as you get into higher tantra. If those two practices, visualization and formless meditation, are not combined together properly, you will be creating a seed to become Rudra, and it is said that the teacher as well as the student will be heading for trouble.

  ANUYOGA: THE YANA OF PASSION

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  Anuyoga: Joining Space and Wisdom

  Anuyoga is connected with the epitome of prajna, the wisdom flame. So the style of relating with the phenomenal world in anuyoga is very passionate, like a flame. Ordinary passion is like water that is sweeping you along uncontrollably. But fire is clean-cut passion. In anuyoga, instead of drinking water to satisfy your thirst, you drink fire.

  UNIFYING THE FIRST EIGHT YANAS

  Anuyoga is known as the yana of passion, or the passionate yana. It is also referred to as the upayayana. In fact, all the tantras are based on the idea of upaya, or skillfulness, which is why tantra is superior to the sutra teachings.

  The skillfulness of anuyoga is based on passion and joy. There is a passionate aspect within the upaya or masculine approach, and you are able to use that passion and to apply it. So the skillful aspect of anuyoga is in the application of passion; embryonic passion and complete passion are combined as skillful means. This is the last yana of Buddhism in which we could discuss passion and sexuality and the relationship of that and this. Of all the tantras in G
autama Buddha’s teachings, anuyoga includes the highest form of karmamudra. Later, in atiyoga, something else comes up.

  In the Nyingma tradition, people practice mahayoga and atiyoga a great deal, but few seem to practice anuyoga. Somehow this yana has been bypassed. There is very little encouragement for anuyoga practice, except in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is practiced by everybody, and is one of the few anuyoga texts that we have.

  In vajrayana, the basic idea is that after the bodhisattva path, you can choose to practice any of the six tantric yanas. It depends on your teacher. Your teacher is usually an expert in one of the yanas, so you begin by doing the particular practice that your teacher is most confident in. You get completely soaked in that practice, go through it completely, and maybe get just a little bit of siddhi. Then, because you now have a foothold in tantra, you can go back and survey the rest of the tantric yanas. For instance, if you have a teacher who is an expert on kriyayoga, then from kriyayoga, you can study atiyoga as well. However, since kriyayoga is the lowest of the tantric yanas, this example may be problematic due to kriyayoga’s hang-ups with physical cleanliness and diet.

  At the anuyoga level, you are still relating with the physical vajra master. But at this point, there is a further understanding of the importance of samaya and of the guru principle: the guru has become so big and cosmic that you are the guru, and the guru is in you.

  Anuyoga is progressing toward the yana of conquering, or the imperial yana of maha ati. Therefore, this yana can also be referred to as the upayayana of conquering. Conquering makes the definite statement that you are looking back to the previous yanas—you are looking completely and thoroughly. So anuyoga is very important in terms of unifying the first eight yanas. Unifying the yanas is a way of developing a more panoramic vision by means of upaya, passion, and joy.

  Often we have the misunderstanding that when we talk about passion, we mean a driving force alone. Lust or passion is viewed as an uncontrollable energy that exists in us. But in this case, when we refer to passion, we are talking about the end product as well as the process of passion. The end product is joy and bliss, and the process, which is based on the inspiration of the end product, is also joy and bliss. So passion is very much the reference point here. That is why this particular yana is called the joyous yana or the passionate yana.

  Passion is like a rain cloud that is completely filled with the potential of rain. You begin to see dark dramatic clouds, and such clouds begin to proclaim that there is going to be rain. In a sense, that is a much more powerful statement than the rain itself. The preparation for rain is much more dramatic than the end product. There is resounding thunder, dark clouds gathering, the wind blowing around, and the feeling of potential rain. Similarly, in anuyoga, there is a sense of the powerful quality of passion. And passion, in this case, is the attraction toward the phenomenal world and the entities or nonentities that exist around the world.

  PRIMORDIAL ENLIGHTENMENT

  The attitude of anuyoga to the phenomenal world and oneself is that you exist as primevally enlightened, as a primordial enlightened being. So enlightenment does not need to be sought after or looked for. Therefore, anuyoga has the quality of a mandala of bodhi mind, or the awakened state of being. The idea is that enlightenment does not need to be sought with particular hardship. In fact, the approach from this yana onward is that, instead of searching for enlightenment or freedom by stepping out of samsara, you search for independence and freedom by stepping in. So stepping in is the more enlightened way, rather than trying to find a way out.

  SPACE AND WISDOM

  In anuyoga, two definite principles are emphasized: unbornness and intelligence, or space and wisdom. Space is connected with the unbornness, with not having an origin and not having birth. Wisdom is connected with intelligence. So the basic outlook of anuyoga is the combination of space and wisdom.

  The notion of space and the notion of shunyata are alike. In fact, they may be the same, but there is a question of how to view their sameness. In the shunyata experience of mahayana, you still have a measurement, you still have a volume; but in this case, there is no measurement and there is nothing to measure with. So there is no way to detect the difference between emptiness and space. There is no ruler, and even if you have a ruler, it is like rubber: you can stretch it as much as you like. It is purely dancing with phenomena.

  Space is workability. It is openness in the sense of not having any handles to latch onto. Therefore, it is unborn, nonexistent. However, it may be slightly misleading to say “nonexistent,” for when we say something is nonexistent, we regard it as a nonentity, which is not quite the idea here. The point is that you do exist in a sense, but you are not born. At the same time, this does not mean that you exist eternally, which also seems to be a wrong outlook. It means that you never have been born; therefore, you have space; and because of that, there is also intelligence. Because you are not born, because you do not exist eternally, there is a sense of self-existence, which is the jnana principle of all-pervasive wisdom or intelligence.

  This distinction between nonexistent and unborn is connected with the distinction between shentong and rangtong.1 According to the shentong view, there is room for duality and richness, rather than having to wipe out everything completely. Anuyoga talks about the unborn and unoriginated much more than the previous yanas. It talks about dissolving boundaries. Dissolving boundaries is an aspect of nonmeditation, but you still have something to dissolve, which makes it a subtle form of meditation rather than nonmeditation.

  BOUNDARIES AND NONDUALITY

  What separates anuyoga from the previous yanas is that the previous yanas were situations set up in order to attain certain understandings, whereas this yana is self-existing. In anuyoga, there is an element of much greater craziness. In terms of the next yana, or atiyoga, there is not really any separation. The anuyoga relationship with atiyoga is one of dissolving the boundary. You begin to see that the whole world is made of a gigantic candy machine, or a lake of honey.

  When you have dissolved all boundaries, there is a greater version of duality. So dissolving boundaries brings us back to the question of duality. But at this point, duality is no longer a hang-up or a problem; it is an expression of wisdom. In terms of duality, the first truth is that the phenomenal world is seen as empty. The second truth is that the phenomenal world is seen as empty because of its dual purpose, because vision and emptiness are dancing together. When the phenomenal world is seen as empty, there is a quality of complete unity, but you can still have greater duality along with the dissolving of boundaries. They work together, in some sense, so there is no particular problem.

  Eating is a very simple example. If you consume food, when the food is inside you, you are united with the food; but you develop a greater duality between the food and yourself, because you are satisfied with the food. Without duality, there would be no satisfaction and no joy. If the indivisibility can be part of the separateness, then there is something to be indivisible from. So separateness brings more space, and more space brings nonduality.

  MAHASUKHA

  Mahasukha, or the great joy principle, also exists here, because you are able to grow up and develop all the faculties without being born, which is the state of nowness. This nowness or thisness does exist. The past is purely a nonexistent myth; therefore, you exist in nowness. Not only do you exist, but you exist with great joy. You do not need any handles, you do not need any encouragement, you do not need any case history. So the great joy comes from looseness. Looseness means that no leash is attached to you, and no family trees are attached to you. You exist because that is the way you are.

  Whether you sit or eat, whether you follow particular social norms, or whatever you do, what matters is what happens in your mind. So sitting practice is recommended, even at this level. There are sadhana practices where you obviously have to sit. You cannot do them in a taxicab, but you have to set aside time to do them. But in anuyoga, the attitude is th
at in sitting practice, nothing happens but an exaggerated feeling of well-being, with the addition of a little bit of drunkenness and the feeling that you are in love with the cosmos.

  This is like the experience of being in love. If you are able to fall in love with somebody completely, it gives you physical sensations. When you are in love with somebody, you feel that you are bouncing in a bed of rose petals. This is that same kind of feeling. It is as though the sweetness of honey is beginning to seep through the pores of your skin—with a slight touch of alcohol in it. You are immersed in this gigantic, fantastic sensation; you are oozed into something really nice.

  That is the kind of great joy we are talking about here. It makes you really feel that nothing is begun; it is there already. There is no origin, there is no going, and there is no coming.

  LIBERATION AND CONVICTION

  In anuyoga, prajna is considered to be the messenger of liberation, and upaya is considered to be the path of conviction. The upaya path of conviction is a meditative state like the mahamudra experience we discussed already. Mahamudra awareness comes from samsaric experience, but the anuyoga upaya path regenerates the whole thing in a much more sophisticated way than the mahamudra of the lower tantras. In anuyoga, the liberation of prajna is not discriminating in the sense of rejecting the bad and accepting the good, but rather in the sense of knowing the lover and the lovemaker, the feminine and the masculine, as separate entities, and enjoying the realm of wisdom and space. That realm of space and wisdom includes the experience of total conviction and resourcefulness, and the discovery of all kinds of upayas.