The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (14 page)

Through the mandala of speech, the world is seen as a world of syllables, a world of letters. My friend is made out of
A
. My lover is made out of B-X. My sister is made out of B-B. My brother is made out of B-A. Everybody has his own symbol. Everything stands for its own point of reference, which we can read. But at the same time it is a subtle language. Today is a B-day because the sun is shining and it is hot. Tomorrow might be an X-day if it is raining. The next day might be a Y-day if it is partly cloudy and partly clear. Or, today is an extremely K-day because it is so cold and snowy. Hopefully tomorrow will be an N-day, which is partially warm and partially cold. The entire world, every experience, is made out of letters from that point of view. According to tantric Sanskrit literature, the world is made up of fourteen vowels and thirty-three consonants. But we have to have a personal experience of that.

Understanding the mandala of speech is basic to how we raise children. From the beginning of their infancy, children begin to read us. They read mommy, they read daddy, and they read how we handle ourselves. They read us opening a bottle or a can. They read how we undo a box of chocolates. They can read the world in the same way that we do. The whole process starts right at the beginning, in infancy. We were all children once upon a time. In fact we still may be children in some sense, because we are all learning to read the world. We learn to read books; we learn to read highways; we learn to read motorcars; we learn to read our own minds. Reading takes place constantly. Because we read a face, the next time we see someone we recognize that person; because they also read us, they know who we are as well. In the same way that we read books, we read each other. We read constantly.

But a problem occurs when we do not have any new reading material and when the reading material that we already have has been memorized by heart. When something is interesting or challenging to us, we don’t just skip over it quickly; we pause to read carefully. But when we find that we are reading something familiar, we are dying to get on to the next paragraph, and we rush. We are constantly looking for entertainment. We don’t really want to read the pages of life properly and we panic; we actually panic tremendously. From the tantric perspective, that panic is called neurosis. We run out of reading material and we panic. Or we begin to find spelling mistakes. When we finally become smart enough to notice them, we cease to take a humorous attitude and we begin to panic. We begin to criticize the editor of the journal of the world.

On the spiritual level, when people experience the neurosis of speech, sometimes they think they have opened their sound chakras: “Now I can be verbose and accurate in what I have to say, and I can speak very fast.” But there is some kind of problem with that approach; it is actually a reading impediment. When somebody has opened his sound chakra, he does not have to speak so fast. He does not have to write poetry suddenly or become a completely verbose person. There is something fishy about that, something sacrilegious. That is disregarding the world-mandala of letters and syllables.

Next is the level of mind. Mind in this case is very simple; in fact, it is simple-mindedness. We are not talking about the mind that thinks, but the mind that feels in a haphazard way. Such mind does not depend on whether we are educated or not. We are simply talking about the mind that feels different things in different ways. On the naive or ignorant level, the functioning of mind brings an experience of nonexistence in the negative sense. We are afraid, and we do not have enough guts to realize that the phenomenal world is magical. At the tantric level, the positive experience of nonexistence comes about when the mind is completely turned into the magical possibilities of life. At the level of the vajra mandala of mind, subconscious gossip, or the continual background chatter and ongoing commentary of our thoughts, is completely cut through. Mind is completely open. This vajra experience of mind creates a continuous celebration in dealing with life directly and simply. At the vajra level of mind, every situation takes place very simply, on its own, and mind relates with whatever arises quite simply.

NINE

The Five Buddha Families

T
ANTRA IS
extraordinarily special, and extremely real and personal. The question in this chapter is how to relate our own ordinary existence or daily situation to tantric consciousness. The tantric approach is not just to make sweeping statements about reality and to create calmness and a meditative state. It is more than learning to be creative and contemplative. In tantra we relate with the details of our everyday life according to our own particular makeup. It is a real and personal experience. But in order to relate to our lives in the tantric fashion, there are certain technical details of tantric experience that we have to understand.

The tantric discipline of relating to life is based on what are known as the five buddha principles, or the five buddha families. These principles are traditionally known as families because they are an extension of ourselves in the same way that our blood relations are an extension of us: we have our daddy, we have our mommy, we have our sisters and brothers, and they are all part of our family. But we could also say that these relatives are principles: our motherness, our fatherness, our sisterness, our brotherness, and our me-ness are experienced as definite principles that have distinct characteristics. In the same way, the tantric tradition speaks of five families: five principles, categories, or possibilities.

Those five principles or buddha families are called vajra, ratna, padma, karma, and buddha. They are quite ordinary. There is nothing divine or extraordinary about them. The basic point is that at the tantric level people are divided into particular types: vajra, ratna, padma, karma, and buddha. We constantly come across members of every one of the five families—people who are partially or completely one of those five. We find such people all through life, and every one of them is a fertile person, a workable person who could be related with directly and personally. So, from the tantric point of view, by relating directly with all the different people we encounter, we are actually relating with different styles of enlightenment.

Vajra and ghanta (bell)
.

PHOTO BY GEORGE HOLMES.

The buddha family, or families, associated with a person describes his or her fundamental style, that person’s intrinsic perspective or stance in perceiving the world and working with it. Each family is associated with both a neurotic and an enlightened style. The neurotic expression of any buddha family can be transmuted into its wisdom or enlightened aspect. As well as describing people’s styles, the buddha families are also associated with colors, elements, landscapes, directions, seasons—with any aspect of the phenomenal world.

The first buddha family is the vajra family, which literally means the family of sharpness, crystallization, and indestructibility. The term
vajra
is superficially translated as “diamond,” but that is not quite accurate. Traditionally, vajra is a celestial precious stone that cuts through any other solid object. So it is more than a diamond; it is complete indestructibility. The vajra family is symbolized by the vajra scepter, or
dorje
in Tibetan. This vajra scepter or superdiamond has five prongs, which represent relating to the five emotions: aggression, pride, passion, jealousy, and ignorance. The sharp edges or prongs of the vajra represent cutting through any neurotic emotional tendencies; they also represent the sharp quality of being aware of many possible perspectives. The indestructible vajra is said to be like a heap of razor blades: if we naively try to hold it or touch it, there are all kinds of sharp edges that are both cutting and penetrating. The notion here is that vajra corrects or remedies any neurotic distortion in a precise and sharp way.

In the ordinary world, the experience of vajra is perhaps not as extreme as holding razor blades in our hand, but at the same time, it is penetrating and very personal. It is like a sharp, cutting, biting-cold winter. Each time we expose ourselves to the open air, we get frostbite instantly. Intellectually vajra is very sharp. All the intellectual traditions belong to this family. A person in the vajra family knows how to evaluate logically the arguments that are used to explain experience. He can tell whether the logic is true or false. Vajra family intellect also has a sense of constant openness and perspective. For instance, a vajra person could view a crystal ball from hundreds of perspectives, according to where it was placed, the way it was perceived, the distance from which he was looking at it, and so forth. The intellect of the vajra family is not just encyclopedic; it is sharpness, directness, and awareness of perspectives. Such indestructibility and sharpness are very personal and very real.

The neurotic expression of vajra is associated with anger and intellectual fixation. If we become fixated on a particular logic, the sharpness of vajra can become rigidity. We become possessive of our insight, rather than having a sense of open perspective. The anger of vajra neurosis could be pure aggression or also a sense of uptightness because we are so attached to our sharpness of mind. Vajra is also associated with the element of water. Cloudy, turbulent water symbolizes the defensive and aggressive nature of anger, while clear water suggests the sharp, precise, clear reflectiveness of vajra wisdom. In fact, vajra wisdom is traditionally called the mirrorlike wisdom, which evokes this image of a calm pond or reflecting pool.

Incidentally, the use of the term
vajra
in such words as
vajrayana, vajra master
, and
vajra pride
does not refer to this particular buddha family, but simply expresses basic indestructibility.

The next buddha family is ratna. Ratna is a personal and real sense of expanding ourselves and enriching our environment. It is expansion, enrichment, plentifulness. Such plentifulness could also have problems and weaknesses. In the neurotic sense, the richness of ratna manifests as being completely fat, or extraordinarily ostentatious, beyond the limits of our sanity. We expand constantly, open heedlessly, and indulge ourselves to the level of insanity. It is like swimming in a dense lake of honey and butter. When we coat ourselves in this mixture of butter and honey, it is very difficult to remove. We cannot just remove it by wiping it off, but we have to apply all kinds of cleaning agents, such as cleanser and soap, to loosen its grasp.

In the positive expression of the ratna family, the principle of richness is extraordinary. We feel very rich and plentiful, and we extend ourselves to our world personally, directly, emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually. We are extending constantly, expanding like a flood or an earthquake. There is a sense of spreading, shaking the earth, and creating more and more cracks in it. That is the powerful expansiveness of ratna.

The enlightened expression of ratna is called the wisdom of equanimity, because ratna can include everything in its expansive environment. Thus ratna is associated with the element of earth. It is like a rotting log that makes itself at home in the country. Such a log does not want to leave its home ground. It would like to stay, but at the same time, it grows all kinds of mushrooms and plants and allows animals to nest in it. That lazy settling down and making ourselves at home, and inviting other people to come in and rest as well, is ratna.

The next family is padma, which literally means “lotus flower.” The symbol of the enlightened padma family is the lotus, which grows and blooms in the mud, yet still comes out pure and clean, virginal and clear. Padma neurosis is connected with passion, a grasping quality and a desire to possess. We are completely wrapped up in desire and want only to seduce the world, without concern for real communication. We could be a hustler or an advertiser, but basically, we are like a peacock. In fact, Amitabha Buddha, the buddha of the padma family, traditionally sits on a peacock, which represents subjugating padma neurosis. A person with padma neurosis speaks gently, fantastically gently, and he or she is seemingly very sexy, kind, magnificent, and completely accommodating: “If you hurt me, that’s fine. That is part of our love affair. Come toward me.” Such padma seduction sometimes becomes excessive and sometimes becomes compassionate, depending on how we work with it.

Padma is connected with the element of fire. In the confused state, fire does not distinguish among the things it grasps, burns, and destroys. But in the awakened state, the heat of passion is transmuted into the warmth of compassion. When padma neurosis is transmuted, it becomes fantastically precise and aware; it turns into tremendous interest and inquisitiveness. Everything is seen in its own distinct way, with its own particular qualities and characteristics. Thus the wisdom of padma is called discriminating-awareness wisdom.

The genuine character of padma seduction is real openness, a willingness to demonstrate what we have and what we are to the phenomenal world. What we bring to the world is a sense of pleasure, a sense of promise. In whatever we experience, we begin to feel that there is lots of promise. We constantly experience a sense of magnetization and spontaneous hospitality.