The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (23 page)

There are a lot of problems with that, unless you have the umbrella notion of maha ati, which says: “It’s okay. Everything is okay. Just take a pinch of salt, a spoonful of soy sauce. Just take one shot of whiskey. Don’t rush; everything is going to be okay. You can have plenty of room if you want. Just cool it.” You don’t have to do a complete job, all at once. If you go too far, if you are too hungry, you could become a cosmic monster. That message is very courageous, but very few people have the courage to say that.

I am actually concerned and somewhat worried about how you are going to handle all this material. You could overextend yourselves and get completely zonked or completely bewildered. Or you could use this as just another clever reference point, a new vocabulary or logic to manipulate your friends and your world. What you do with this material is really up to you. I hope that you will feel grateful for this introduction to the tantric world, and I hope that you will realize from this that the world is not all that bad and confused. The world can be explored; it is workable, wherever you go, whatever you do. But I would like to plant one basic seed in your mind: I feel that it is absolutely important to make the practice of meditation your source of strength, your source of basic intelligence. Please think about that. You could sit down and do nothing, just sit and do nothing. Stop acting, stop speeding. Sit and do nothing. You should take pride in the fact that you have learned a very valuable message: You actually can survive beautifully by doing nothing.

Lord Marpa’s Praise to the Gurus

Lord Akṣobhya, Mahāsukhakāya,

United with Vajrāḍakinī,

Chief of ḍākas,

Śrī Heruka, I praise you and prostrate.

Collector of commands and secret mantras,

Possessor of the Secret,

Propagator of the holy dharma in the world of men,

Lord Nāgārjuna, father and son, I praise you.

You who bring down the overwhelming vajra thunderbolt,

The kind one who protects from fear,

Tilopa, lord of the three levels,

Who has attained supreme siddhi, I praise you.

Undergoing twelve trials attending the guru,

All the piṭakas and tantras

You realized in an instant;

Lord Buddha in human form, I praise you.

Indestructible form of mahāmudrā,

Possessing the uncontrived primordial essence,

Realizing the truth of the bliss of simplicity,

Lord Prince Maitrīpa, I praise at your feet.

Expounding the doctrine of the command lineage,

Attaining the siddhi of the profound Guhyasamāja,

You are endowed with compassion and wisdom,

Jñānagarbha, I praise at your feet.

Dwelling in charnal grounds, solitudes, and under trees,

A kusulu savoring potency,

Possessing the miracle of traveling in space,

Kukkurīpā, I praise you.

Having realized the truth of abundance,

Possessing the potency of moonbeams,

You satisfy and bring bliss to those who see you,

Yoginī, I praise you.

Resting in the shade of the excellent umbrella

Adorned with golden ribbons,

Seated in the sky, attaining mastery over the sun and moon

Jetsüns of Nepal, I praise you.

Overcoming the worldly attachment of grasping and fixation,

Possessing the benefit of attending the guru,

Holding principally to the practice of enlightenment,

Preserving the learning of mahāyanā,

Clearing away obstructions as well as obstacles caused by agents of perversion,

The friend who introduces one to the good guru,

Guiding masters, I praise you.

The merit of praising the guru

Is equal to offering to the buddhas of the three times.

By this merit of praising the masters,

May all beings attend spiritual friends.

“Lord Marpa’s Praise to the Gurus” is excerpted from
The Life of Marpa the Translator,
translated by the Nālandā Translation Committee under the direction of Chögyam Trungpa
, ©
1982 by Diana J. Mukpo, published by Shambhala Publications, Inc
.

T
HE
L
ION’S
R
OAR

An Introduction to Tantra

Edited by
S
HERAB
C
HÖDZIN
K
OHN

Editor’s Foreword

T
HE TWO SEMINARS
that make up this book were given by Vidyadhara the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in May 1973 in San Francisco, and December 1973 in Boulder, Colorado, respectively. Each bore the title “The Nine Yanas.”
Yana
is a Sanskrit word meaning “vehicle.” It refers to a body of doctrine and practical instruction that enables students to advance spiritually on the path of buddhadharma. Nine yanas, arranged as successive levels, make up the whole path. Teaching nine yanas means giving a total picture of the spiritual journey.

To give this total picture in 1973 meant a new departure for the Vidyadhara Trungpa Rinpoche in his teaching in the West. It meant introducing tantra, or vajrayana, because the last six of the nine yanas are tantric yanas. Until the San Francisco seminar, though students understood that the Vidyadhara’s ultimate perspective was tantric, and though he often spoke in general terms about the tantric approach, specific details were taboo. He turned aside prying questions about tantra with humor, derision, intimidation, evasion, or whatever other means was handy.

Then he embarked on a new phase in his teaching. In May he gave the San Francisco seminar, introducing tantra for the first time as a level of teaching that could actually become available to his students if they worked through the preceding levels. In the fall he taught the Vajradhatu Seminary, the first in a long series of yearly three-month practice-and-study intensives that took the form of detailed instruction on the nine yanas. The seminaries were not public. Here students who had already received appropriate training were prepared to enter upon tantric practice. Immediately after that first seminary, in December, the Vidyadhara taught the nine yanas to the public again in Boulder, once again holding out the possibilities of the complete path. This time, after each of his own talks, he had one of his students fresh from seminary explain something of what he had understood and experienced there.

Tantra is an astonishing doctrine. It seems to come out of primordial depths of experience and run at all kinds of odd angles to convention and conceptual thinking. It eludes these two would-be stabilizers of human experience; therefore the presentation of it is shocking and raw. One of the slogans that comes out of the tantric Buddhist tradition of Tibet is
tampe tön ni jikpa me
, which the Vidyadhara chose to translate, “The proclamation of truth is fearless.” He made that the motto of Vajradhatu, the religious organization he founded, and that motto strongly characterizes the seminars we have before us.

Traditionally the elements of a situation in which the dharma is transmitted are enumerated as the right teacher, teaching, place, time, and students. All five shape the event. The last three factors shaping these two seminars can be evoked most simply by recalling that this was the time in America of hippies and the “spiritual supermarket.” It was a period that was a crack between periods. One social minibubble of manners and outlooks had been punctured and let, another had yet to inflate. It was a moment of openness, of exuberance and candor.

Perhaps these elements provide a partial explanation of the extraordinary qualities of the Vidyadhara Trungpa Rinpoche’s teaching. In it, there is a near absence of protective reserve. Guarding and cherishing the essence of tradition, he steps beyond its stone walls to meet his students on open ground. He does not rely on established doctrinal formulations, but speaks from a nonconceptual, essential understanding of things and explains them in terms experiential for his audience. After he has already made an experience clear, he might say, “In fact the traditional metaphor is . . .” or “The traditional term for this is . . .” He sometimes referred to his unique style of displaying the inner heart of the teaching without focusing on its outer details as “finger painting.” This book is an excellent example of how his “finger painting” can directly communicate insight far beyond the pale of conventional understanding. He does not present us with airtight rehearsals of doctrine. To any audience, then or now, such presentations can become like displays in a glass case in a museum, remote though perhaps fascinating. Instead, here, the complete teachings of buddhadharma are presented fresh and raw, with their odor intact, as personal experience. They are the mighty roaring of a great lion of dharma. Many of those who first heard them are tantric practitioners today.

In this book I have put the Boulder seminar first, because it seemed to provide an easier leg-up for the general reader than the San Francisco one. Chronological purists may want to read them in the other order. I have provided a few explanatory notes for the general reader. Readers with some specialized knowledge can skip them without loss.

May the sound of the great drum of dharma

Eliminate the suffering of sentient beings.

May the dharma be proclaimed

Through a million kalpas.

S
HERAB
C
HÖDZIN
K
OHN

Nova Scotia, 1991

Part One

NINE YANAS SEMINAR

BOULDER

DECEMBER 1973

ONE

The Journey

T
HE
B
UDDHIST JOURNEY
is a journey from beginning to end in which the end is also the beginning. This is the journey of the nine yanas, the nine stages that students go through on the path.
Yana
means “vehicle” or “mode of transport.” Once you get onto this particular bandwagon, it is an ongoing journey without reverse and without brakes. You have no control over the horse that is pulling this carriage. It is an ongoing process. Beginning this journey is committing yourself to a particular karmic flow, a karmic chain reaction. It is like being born. When you are born, nobody can say, “That was just a rehearsal,” and take the whole thing back. Once you are born, you keep on growing up, growing up, getting older, becoming aged, more aged, and then finally you die. When you are born, there is a certain amount of commitment involved—to be born as a human child from a mother’s womb, with parents, with a house, and so on.

This journey is a very definite one, absolutely definite, and that is why it is called Buddhism. Although
-ism
is a rather ugly suffix, it is a definite “ism.” It is a “Buddha-ism,” because we are trying to imitate Buddha’s journey. And when we try to imitate Buddha’s journey, it just so happens that what we are doing becomes an “ism.” It is a real journey, and it involves a real commitment. It also involves some kind of dogma. It means associating yourself with a certain doctrine, a certain formulation of truth. We are not embarrassed to call ourselves Buddhists. In fact we take pride in it, because we have found a way, a path, that makes it possible for us to associate ourselves with Buddha, the Awakened One.
Awakened
here means highly awakened, fully awakened, awakened to the point of being entirely sane, to the point where there is no neurosis to confuse our journey. Ours is a completely sane approach. Thus there is room for pride, room for dogma, room for real commitment. That is the quality of the nine-yana journey.

There is a subtle difference between doctrine or dogma or commitment that is based purely on one’s own interest in awakening and the same based on defending oneself against somebody else’s belief. Buddhism’s approach is the former, and in that respect it can be called a path of nonviolence. We are not interested in putting down any other spiritual journeys taking place elsewhere in this universe. We concentrate on the journey we ourselves are taking.

If we were driving on a highway and became fascinated by the oncoming traffic on the other side of the highway, we might become blinded by the glare of headlights coming toward us, lose track of our own steering, and end up in an accident. But we are interested in this one, direct journey. We keep our eyes on the dotted white line that goes with our direction. We might change lanes, of course. There are faster lanes and slower lanes, but we do not try to get on the
other side
of the road. That is unlawful. There are no U-turns allowed.

So the journey is definite, absolutely definite, definite to the point of being dogmatic. It is dogmatic in the sense that there is no room for insanity or confusion.

You might ask, “If there is no room for confusion, since we are all confused, how can we go on this journey? Are you saying that there is no hope for us to travel on this path? Do we have to get rid of our confusion first in order to embark on this journey?” As far as I know, the answer is no, you do not have to get rid of your confusion first. Precisely because of your confusion, because of your bewilderment and the chaos that you experience, this is the most unconfusing journey you can ever take.

If you are utterly confused, you are confused to the point of seeming to yourself to be unconfused. This is what we call “spiritual materialism”—you have your ideas of the good way, the higher path, and so on, and you think you are beyond confusion.
¹
In that case, you might try to cross over to the other side of the road, make U-turns. Because you think you are an unconfused person, you presume you have all kinds of leeway. But in our case, since we know we are confused, we stick to our one journey. Since we know we are confused, this becomes the true confusion, which you can walk on—drive along—as the true path. Working on confusion is the basic point. Since we are highly confused, we have a better chance of getting into this kind of direct and real path. Since we are so very confused without a doubt, we have a big chance, tremendous possibilities. The more confused we are, single-mindedly confused, the more we have one direction, one path, one highway.