The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (12 page)

This warning has been given hundreds of times: “Don’t get into tantra just like that. Start with hinayana, graduate to mahayana, and then you can become a tantric practitioner. If you have already done your homework and finished your basic training, then you can become a tantric practitioner. But even then, it is still dangerous.” That has been said many hundreds of times. Every book written on tantra, every commentary, every tantric text that has been recorded in the history of the cosmos, begins with that warning: “Be careful; think twice; pay respect; don’t just take this carelessly—be careful.” But interestingly enough, the more you put students off, the more interested they become.

The energy and power that exist in the tantric world are not different from what exists in the ordinary world. It is not that we suddenly wake up to a magical world. It is rather that developing a certain sensitivity exposes us to a different state of being. Often people who have taken hallucinogenic drugs claim that they have had a tantric experience, or people who have experienced extreme psychological depression or excitement claim that they have seen the tantric world. Those claims are somewhat suspicious.

When we talk about the tantric world, we are talking about
this
visual, auditory, sensory world, which has not been explored or looked at properly. Nobody has bothered to actually experience it. People just take it for granted. We may have been interested in our world when we were little children, but then we were taught how to handle it by our parents. Our parents already had developed a system to deal with the world and to shield themselves from it at the same time. As we accepted that system, we lost contact with the world. We lost the freshness and curiosity of our infancy a long time ago. And now, although the world is full of all kinds of things, we find that in communicating with the world we are somewhat numb. There is numbness in our sight, numbness in our hearing, numbness in all our senses. It is as though we had been drugged. The reality of the world—the brilliance of red, the brightness of turquoise, the majesty of yellow, and the fantastic quality of green—has not been seen properly. We have been indoctrinated, or we have indoctrinated ourselves. A state of numbness had developed, and we are not seeing our world properly.

The point of tantra is to reintroduce the world to us. Having developed a calmness of mind already in our practice of meditation, we can begin to re-view the world. We rediscover the world that exists around us, and we begin to find that this world is fabulous and fantastic. All kinds of exciting things are happening. Even people working nine-to-five jobs might find that their everyday life becomes fantastic. Every day is a different day rather than the same old thing.

The tantric approach to relating with the world is resharpening and reopening ourselves so that we are able to perceive our cosmos properly, thoroughly. We are keenly interested in and fascinated by the world. If we see a green light as we are driving, and it turns to amber and then red, it is fantastic. There is a world of self-existing messages and symbolism. For example, everybody dresses in his own colors and his own style of clothing. Some people decide to wear shirts and some people decide not to, but everybody wears a bottom part. Everybody has his own kind of hairdo. Some people wear glasses, and some do not. Everything makes sense. That is the whole point, that things make sense in their own right. Such truth does not have to be written in books—it is self-existing.

This may sound fantastic and enormously entertaining, but there is a catch. Along with that magic there is a naked sort of electricity. Once we are fascinated by this world and see the world without any filter or screen, then we are relating to the world so directly that it is as though we had no skin on our body. Experience becomes so intimate and so personal that it actually burns us or freezes us. It is not just that the world is becoming open to us, but we are shedding our skin as well. We may become extremely sensitive and jumpy people, and it is possible that we may panic more; we may react even more intensely. For instance, if we become too involved in the brightness of red, it could become poisonous. It is even possible that we could kill ourselves—cut our own throats.

The world is so magical that it gives us a direct shock. It is not like sitting back in our theater chair and being entertained by the fabulous world happening on the screen. It does not work that way. Instead it is a
mutual
process of opening between the practitioner and the world. Therefore tantra is very dangerous. It is electric and at the same time extremely naked. There is no place for our suit of armor. There is no time to insulate ourselves. Everything is too immediate. Our suit of armor is punctured from both outside and inside at once. Such nakedness and such openness reveal the cosmos in an entirely different way. It may be fantastic, but at the same time, it is very dangerous.

In addition to ourselves and the world, there is also a third element involved: the teacher who talks to us and introduces to us the possibility of such a true world. In the discipline of hinayana we relate to the teacher as a wise man who gives us constant instruction and guides us precisely. The relationship between teacher and student is very simple and clean-cut. In the discipline of mahayana, we regard the teacher as a kalyanamitra or spiritual friend who works with us and relates to us as a friend. He guides us through the dangerous and the luxurious parts of the path; he tells us when to relax and when to exert ourselves, and he teaches the disciplines of helping others. In the discipline of vajrayana, the relationship between teacher and student is much more vigorous and highly meaningful. It is more personal and magical than consulting a sage or, for that matter, consulting a spiritual friend.

The vajrayana teacher is referred to as the vajra master. The vajra master is electric and naked. He holds a scepter in his hand, called a vajra, which symbolizes a thunderbolt. The teacher holds the power to conduct lightning with his hand. By means of the vajra he can transmit that electricity to us. If the cosmos and the student are not connecting properly, the vajra master can respark the connection. In this sense the teacher has a great deal of power over us, but not such that he can become an egomaniac. Rather, the teacher is a spokesman who reintroduces the world to us: he reintroduces us to our world.

The vajra master is like a magician in the sense that he has access to the cosmic world and can work with it, but not in the sense that he can turn earth into fire, or fire into water, just like that. The vajra master has to work with the actual functions of the universe. We could say that the cosmos contains a lot of magic, and because the vajra master has some connection with the world and the happenings of the world, there is magic already. Therefore, the vajra master could be considered a supervisor of magic rather than a magician.

Relating with the vajra master is extremely powerful and somewhat dangerous at this point. The vajra master is capable of transmitting the vajra spiritual energy to us, but at the same time, he is also capable of destroying us if our direction is completely wrong. Tantra means continuity, but one of the principles of tantric discipline is that continuity can only exist if there is something genuine to continue. If we are not genuine, then our continuity can be canceled by the vajra master. So we do not regard our teacher in the vajrayana as a savior or as a deity who automatically will give us whatever we want.

The vajra master could be quite heavy-handed; however, he does not just play tricks on us whenever he finds a weak point. He conducts himself according to the tradition and the discipline: He touches us, he smells us, he looks at us, and he listens to our heartbeat. It is a very definite, deliberate process done according to the tradition of the lineage. That process—when the vajra master looks at us, when he listens to us, when he feels us, and when he touches us—is known as abhisheka or empowerment.

Abhisheka
is sometimes translated as “initiation,” but that does not actually convey the proper meaning. As we discussed earlier,
abhisheka
is a Sanskrit word that literally means “anointment.” It is the idea of being bathed in holy water that is blessed by the teacher and the mandala around the teacher. However, abhisheka is not an initiation or rite of passage in which we are accepted as a member of the tribe if we pass certain tests. In fact, it is entirely different. The vajra master empowers us and we receive that power, depending both on our own capability and the capability of the teacher. Therefore the term “empowerment” is more appropriate than “initiation,” because there is no tribe into which we are initiated. There is no close circle; rather, we are introduced to the universe. We cannot say that the universe is a big tribe or a big ego; the universe is open space. So the teacher empowers us to encounter our enlarged universe. At this point the teacher acts as a lightning rod. We could be shocked or devastated by the electricity he transmits to us, but it is also possible that we could be saved by having such an electric conductor.

In the vajrayana, it is absolutely necessary to have a teacher and to trust in the teacher. The teacher or vajra master is the only embodiment of the transmission of energy. Without such a teacher we cannot experience the world properly and thoroughly. We cannot just read a few books on tantra and try to figure it out for ourselves. Somehow that does not work. Tantra has to be transmitted to the student as a living experience. The tantric system of working with the world and the energy of tantra have to be transmitted or handed down directly from teacher to student. In that way the teachings become real and obvious and precise.

A direct relationship between teacher and student is essential in vajrayana Buddhism. People cannot even begin to practice tantra without making some connection with their teacher, their vajra, indestructible, master. Such a teacher cannot be some abstract cosmic figure. He has to be somebody who has gone through the whole process himself—somebody who has been both a panicking student and a panicking teacher.

We could say that the vajra master exists because he is free from karma, but that through his compassion such a teacher establishes a relative link to his world. However, in a sense no one is actually free from karma, not even the enlightened buddhas. The buddhas are not going to retire from their buddhahood to some heavenly realm. They have to help us; they have to work with us. That is their karma and our karma as well.

That is one of the interesting differences between the theistic and the nontheistic approach. In the theistic approach, when we retire from this world, we go to heaven. Once we are in heaven we do not have anything to do with the world. We have no obligations, and we can be happy ever after. But in the nontheistic tradition, even if we attain the state of liberation or openness, we still have debts, because the rest of our brothers and sisters in the world are still in trouble. We have to come back. We can’t just hang out in nirvana.

So the vajra master is a human being, someone who has a karmic debt to pay as a result of the intensity of his compassion. The dharma cannot be transmitted from the sun or the moon or the stars. The dharma can only be transmitted properly from human to human. So there is a need for a vajra master who has tremendous power—power over us, power over the cosmos, and power over himself—and who has also been warned that if he misdirects his energy he will be cut down and reduced into a little piece of charcoal.

It is extremely important to have a living vajra master, someone who personally experiences our pain and our pleasure. We have to have a sense of fear and respect that we are connecting and communicating directly with tantra. Making that connection is a very special thing. It is extremely difficult to find a true tantric situation and to meet a true tantric master. Becoming a true tantric student is also very difficult. It is very difficult to find the real thing.

SEVEN

Visualization

I
N TANTRA THERE
is a sense of continuity, there is a sense of existence, and there is a sense of reality. If we are deeply involved in our experience, then there is a total and profound sense of experiencing reality. Whereas if we have a halfhearted approach to experience, then obviously we get halfhearted results in understanding reality. The tantric approach is complete involvement, which begins with a basic sense of being grounded: in our body, in our house, in our country, on this planet Earth. We are not talking about taking trips to Mars or Jupiter or even to the moon. We are working right here, on this planet Earth. Whether we like it or not, we are here and we have to face that.

This suggestion might seem rather depressing, if we do not want to keep relating with the earth. Of course, the earth has been glorified by descriptions of its beauty: the beautiful flowers and greenery that the earth nurtures, the waterfalls and rivers and fantastic mountains that the earth has provided. But apart from that, the earth seems to be rather hopeless. It is just a solid lump of rock.

We may try to cheer ourselves up by saying: “Wow! Fantastic! I took a trip to the Himalayas and I saw the beautiful mountains of Kanchenjunga and Mount Kailasa.” Or we may say: “I saw the Rocky Mountains. I saw the Grand Canyon. Great!” Such remarks are just comic relief. In fact we feel that we are stuck with this earth, and therefore we should glorify it; we should appreciate it. But deep in our hearts, we would like to take off. We would like to fly away into the cosmos, into outer space. We really would like to do that. In particular, anyone seeking spiritual materialism or spiritual entertainment feels that way: “Wouldn’t it be much better if we could leave this earth, our home ground, if we could swim across the galaxies of stars? We could feel the cosmos bubbling, and we could dance in the darkness, and occasionally we would relate with the sun or the planets.” The problem with that approach is that we want to neglect our home ground and the familiarity of our highways, our plastic world, our pollution, and all the mundane happenings in our lives. But they are all part of the adornment of living on this earth—whether we like it or not.