The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (13 page)

Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi. Two of the principal yidams, or “personal deities,” of the Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism, used in tantric visualization practice. This statue was a shrine object of Naropa, Marpa’s guru
.

PHOTO BY GEORGE HOLMES AND BLAIR HANSEN.

What is familiar becomes a part of tantric study, because it is basic to our state of being. Our state of being is grounded in a sense of continual experience, a sense of continual landmarks of all kinds. For instance, our body is a landmark. It marks the fact that we were born on this earth. We do not have to refer back to our birth certificate to make sure that we were born. We know that we are here, our name is such-and-such, our parents are so-and-so. We were born in Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, New York City, Great Neck, or wherever. We were born, and we were raised in our hometown. We went to school and studied and did our homework. We related with other people: We began to play and to fight with the other students, and we began to develop into real boys or girls. Eventually we went to a bigger school, called a university. Then we really began to grow up: We began to take part in politics and philosophy and to experiment with life. We developed opinions of all kinds. Finally we grew up and became men and women—real individuals. Now we are people of the world. As grownups, we might be looking for marriage partners or business contacts, or we might be dropping out of the world and becoming free spokesmen, who do not believe in this crazy society. In any case, as men and women of the world, we make our statements; we develop our philosophy. In tantric language, that experience is called samaya.

Samaya
is a basic term in the language of tantra. The Tibetan translation,
tamtsik
(
dam tshig
), literally means “sacred word.” The fact of life, the actual experience of life, is samaya. Whatever we decide to do, all the trips we go through, all the ways we try to become an individual are personal experience. Fighting for personal rights of all kinds, falling in love or leaving our lover, relating with our parents, making political commitments, relating with our job or our church—all these things are the expression of samaya.

At a certain point in our life, we begin to live on our own. We may try to reject any interdependence as fast and as hard as we can. Although it is impossible to be completely independent, we still try to be so. We try to get any factors out of our system that seem to bind us. We feel that we have been imprisoned by our parents, by society, by the economy, or by our religion. So we try to get out of those prisons and we try to get into expressing our personal freedom. On the other hand, rather than rebelling, we might choose to get into a certain church or a particular social environment based on a sense of our own personal choice. That could also express our freedom, because we were never told to do that—we just decided personally to do it. When we commit ourselves to the world, whether as a reaction to constraints or as a decision to get into something new, that is called samaya, sacred word, or sacred vow.

Whether we are pushed, and we begin to give in and then slowly we get into the system, or whether we are pushed and we reject the system completely, that is an expression of independence in our personal mental functioning. Any move we make to join a society, organization, or church is based on our own personal experience rather than just tradition or history. On the other hand, breaking away from anything that we feel entraps us is also based on personal experience. Therefore, the commitments and choices that we make are called sacred word, or sacred bondage—which are saying the same thing. Samaya can be interpreted as sacred bondage, although literally it means sacred word, because we are bound by certain norms, certain processes that organize our experience. When we accept those boundaries as our own, that is the sacred bondage of samaya.

In the tantric practice of visualization, we visualize what is known as the samayasattva.
Sattva
literally means “being,” “individual,” or “person.” Samaya, as we discussed, means acknowledging connections and being willing to bow down to the experience of life. Sattva is the being who experiences the situation of samaya. So in visualizing the samayasattva we are acknowledging our experience of life and our willingness to commit ourselves to it. We acknowledge that we are willing to enter fully into life.

Visualization is a central practice of tantra. It not only encompasses visual perception, but it is also a way of relating with all sense perceptions—visual, auditory, tactile, mental—with the entire range of sensory experience, all at the same time. As well, it should be obvious from our discussion of samaya that visualization is a way of relating to our state of mind and a way of working with our experience.

In order to begin the tantric practice of visualization, we must have gone through the disciplines of hinayana and mahayana already, and we must have done preliminary vajrayana practices as well. Then when we receive abhisheka, we are given a deity to visualize, a samayasattva connected with our own makeup, our basic being. Whether we are an intellectual person, or an aggressive person, or a passionate person, or whatever we are, in accordance with our particular qualities, a certain deity is given to us by our vajra master, who knows us personally and is familiar with our particular style. The deity that we visualize or identify with is part of our makeup. We may be outrageously aggressive, outrageously passionate, outrageously proud, outrageously ignorant, or outrageously lustful—whatever our basic makeup may be, that complex of emotions is connected with enlightenment. None of those qualities or emotional styles are regarded as obstacles. They are related with our personal experience of a sense of being, a sense of existence. If we must exist in lust, let us abide in our lust; if we must exist in anger, let us abide in our anger. Let us live in our anger. Let us do it. Let us be that way.

Therefore, we visualize a deity that is connected with our own particular qualities and our commitment to ourselves and to our experience. Having visualized that deity, called the samayasattva of our basic being, then we invite what is known as the jnanasattva. The jnanasattva is another being or level of experience that we are inviting into our system; however, it is nothing particularly extraordinary or fantastic. Jnana is a state of wakefulness or openness, whereas samaya is an experience of bondage, or being solidly grounded in our experience. The samayasattva is basically at the level of body and speech, whereas the jnanasattva is an awakening quality that comes from beyond that level. Jnanasattva is the quality of openness or a sense of cosmic principle. At the same time, jnana is a fundamentally cynical attitude toward life, which is also a humorous attitude.

In this case humor does not mean being nasty or making fun of people. Instead it is constantly being fascinated and amused in a positive sense. We may be amused at how somebody eats his spaghetti. He does it in such a personal way, and the way he eats his spaghetti seems to be very healthy and, at the same time, humorous. It is not that the person is funny in a cheap sense, but that the person has the courage to eat his spaghetti in a direct and beautiful way. He actually tastes the spaghetti, and he uses it properly, productively. There is a sense of healthiness in seeing that person handle his universe properly.

Jnana is experiencing a feeling of humor and fascination about everything and realizing that everything is being handled properly—even on the inanimate level. Flowers grow, rocks sit, pine trees are there. These things are unique, personal, and very real. So the humor of jnana is entirely different from the basic bondage of samaya. With jnana there is a real feeling of upliftedness and appreciation. When we see somebody doing something, we appreciate that he is not just conducting his affairs, but he conducts them fully, artfully, and humorously.

Jnana
literally means “wisdom” or, more accurately, “being wise.” Wisdom implies an entity, a body of wisdom that we could learn or experience, such as “the wisdom of the ages.” But jnana is the
state
of being wise, a spontaneous and personal state of experience. In the term
jnanasattva, jnana
is this state of wisdom, and
sattva
again is “being.” But in this case
sattva
expresses the sense of being at a humorous and open level.

The goal in all tantric traditions is to bring together the lofty idea, the jnanasattva of humor and openness, with the samayasattva, which is the bodily or physical orientation of existence. The practice of visualization is connected with that process of combining the jnanasattva and the samayasattva. In a sense, the level of jnanasattva is free from visualization. We do not have to visualize jnanasattvas as such: They just come along. They just float down from the sky and join our own cluttered and clumsy visualization; they simply dissolve into our clutteredness.

EIGHT

Body, Speech, and Mind

A
N IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE
in the tantric tradition is the role of body, speech, and mind in our relationship with the cosmos or the world. The vajrayana teachings place great importance on these principles. In fact, the notion of vajra nature is developing vajra—indestructible—body, vajra speech, and vajra mind. We all have certain ideas about what body is, what speech is, and what mind is, but we should examine the tantric understanding, which could be quite different from our ordinary associations.

The sensory world of the body obviously includes shapes, colors, and sounds. That is quite simple. We all know that. At the same time, the body has a divine or transcendental aspect. There is a transcendental aspect because bodies are not really bodies, shapes are not really shapes, and sounds, sights, colors, and touchable objects are not really there. At the same time they
are
actually there. That kind of phenomenal play between existence and nonexistence takes place all the time, and we are pushed back and forth. In general, either we say that we are
not
there and we hold on to that particular metaphysical argument, or else we say that we
are
there and we try to hold on to
that
metaphysical standpoint. But in tantra we cannot hold on to either of those views. We cannot hold on to any of our sense perceptions or experiences.

Things are there because they are not there—otherwise they could not exist. They are there because they are dependent on their nonexistence. Things cannot exist unless they can not-exist. A white poodle crossing the highway is
not
a white poodle, because her whiteness depends on blackness. Therefore the white poodle
is
a white poodle, because the whiteness depends on blackness. A white poodle crossing the highway is definitely a white poodle because she is not a black poodle. At the same time there is no highway. It is very simple logic; in fact it is simple-minded: The crescent moon is a crescent moon because it is not a full moon. But on the basis of that very simple logic we can build fascinating and sophisticated logic: I exist because I do not exist; you exist because you do not exist; I exist and you exist because I do not exist; and you and I exist because we do not exist. To understand that type of logic requires training, but it is actually true. Once we look into that system of thinking, the sun is black because it is bright, daytime is nighttime because it is daytime, and so forth.

The experience of body or shape or form is usually such a hassle for us that we cannot solve problems of logic. At the tantric level, the logic of believing in being or form, believing in the actuality of physically existing here right now—I have my body and I am fat or I am thin—begins to become a problem, and at the same time, it becomes a source of study. The body exists because of its bodyness. That might be our psychological attitude. But when we again ask what bodyness is, we discover it is nonbodyness. We cannot find an answer, because answers always run out. That is both the problem and the promise.

The vajra mandala of body refers to that back-and-forth play: Things are seemingly there, but at the same time they are questionable. That play gives us enormous ground to work with. We do not have to work our hearts and brains to their extreme limits so that we finally become mad professors of tantra. Instead we can work and relate with that play of experience. At the level of the vajra mandala of body, our experience of the world becomes entirely phenomenological. It is a much more personal experience than even existentialists talk about. It is entirely phenomenological, and yet it transcends the notion of phenomenological experience, because the phenomena do not actually exist.

Next is the role of speech. We are considering speech from the same phenomenological perspective as body. We are taking the same logical stance, but we are approaching our experience from a slightly different angle. At the level of speech, there is much more movement, much more shiftiness and dancelike quality than in our experience of the body. The vajra mandala of speech refers to the mandala of letters, which are traditionally seen as symbols and seed syllables. Relating to the mandala of letters does not mean being literate, or being an educated person. Instead it is the notion of seeing the world in terms of letters: A-B-C-D. The phenomenal world actually spells itself out in letters and even sentences that we read, or experience.