The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (42 page)

According to tradition, when the vajrayana teachings were brought to Tibet, to begin with there was great emphasis on the teaching of surrendering. The teacher Atisha Dipankara,
⁴
an Indian master who established Buddhist practices in Tibet, was known as the refuge teacher because he placed so much emphasis on surrendering, giving, opening, giving up holding on to something.
⁵

Taking this point of view of surrendering, before we start visualization, we have to use up all our mental gossip, or at least take out a corner of it. This doesn’t mean that we have to achieve a state of mind in which there is no mental gossip at all, but at least we have to be approaching it. The starting point for achieving this is
anapanasati
, as it is called in Pali,
smriti-upasthana
in Sanskrit, which is mindfulness of breathing. The development of mindfulness and awareness,
shi-ne
and
lhakthong
in Tibetan
[shamatha
and
vipashyana
in Sanskrit], and
trenpa nyewar jokpa
, are important.
⁶
Without awareness of resting your heart, trenpa nyewar jokpa—
trenpa
literally means “recollection” or “reflection”;
nyewar jokpa
means “complete resting”—there’s no way of beginning basic tantric visualization practice at all.

Having those basic foundations makes it possible for a person to realize why such emphasis is placed on purity and cleanness in the kriyayoga tantra. The immaculate quality of the visualization of Mahavairochana, born from a seed syllable and sitting on the lunar disk, becomes more impressive, highly impressive. That particular sambhogakaya buddha becomes so beautiful because you are unbiased to begin with.
⁷
If something comes out of unbiasedness, then the whole thing becomes so expressive, so fantastic. It’s double purity, or 100 percent purity, shall we say. This is purity that never needed to be washed, bathed, cleaned. It never needed to go through a washing machine.

If you try to apply Ajax to clean up your dirty image to a state of purity, then you create a further mess. The purity of the tantric view is fantastically real. The visualizer does not have to question, “Am I imagining this, or is it really happening?” That question doesn’t apply anymore at all.

People who live in New York City have a very vivid and definite recollection of yellow cabs or police cars. But it would be impossible to convey this to a Tibetan in Tibet who never had the experience of being in New York City. If you wanted a Tibetan to visualize New York City, you would have to say, “New York City goes like this. There are streets, there are skyscrapers, there are yellow cabs. Visualize them. Imagine you are in that scene.” You could explain the minute details as much as you are able. You could expound New-York-Cityness to an infinite level. Still, Tibetans would have difficulty visualizing it, actually having the feeling of being in New York City. They would have tremendous difficulties. At the same time, they would also feel that New York City was some kind of mystery land. There would be a sense of novelty.

Teaching Americans to visualize Mahavairochana is like teaching Tibetans to visualize New York City, because they have never gone through that experience at all. So you might ask how we do that. We do it precisely by going through the three major stages of Buddhist practice: hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana, or tantra. There is the hinayana practice of trenpa nyewar jokpa, the practice of recollection; and there is the bodhisattva sense of shunyata and of warmth and compassion. Those have to be gone through. Then you can begin to realize the quality of purity and cleanness and immaculateness of Mahavairochana Buddha.

Visualization is one of the basic points. The reason why it is a basic point is that through it you identify yourself with certain herukas or sambhoghakaya buddhas. This brings the reassurance of vajra pride. Vajra pride is not just stupid pride; it is enlightened pride. You do have the potential to be one of those figures; you are one already. It is not so much that there is magic in the visualization; there is magic in your pride, or inspiration, if you prefer to call it that. You
are
Mahavairochana, absolutely immaculate and clean and pure. Therefore you are able to identify with your own purity rather than that of an external god who is pure and who comes into you as a separate entity, as a foreign element. You are reawakening yourself as your basic purity is awakened.

A basic point about tantra is that it is not regarded as myth or magic. Tantra is the highest evolutionary process there is, and its whole logic applies to every step that you go through. That is extremely important.

There is tremendous emphasis on visualization in the kriyayoga tantra and also tremendous emphasis on mudras, hand gestures of all kinds. Executing mudras is trying to compete with the buddhas, trying to become one, trying to behave like them. Not in fact trying, but thinking you are one of them.

Vajra pride in Tibetan is
lha yi ngagyal. Lha
means “god,”
ngagyal
means “pride.” The idea is to develop the pride of being a buddha. You are one in fact; there’s no doubt about that.

It is a very important point at the beginning that you
are
the gods, you
are
the deities, you
are
the buddhas. There’s no question about that. But before you develop this pride, there might be a problem. If you don’t think you are one of them, then you probably will think, “I am supposed to think that I am a god, that I’m Mahavairochana Buddha—I am supposed to think in that way. This is my goal. This is the message they’re giving me. Therefore I should try to pull myself up.” An approach like that is regarded as cowardly or stupid. It’s quite flat.

In order to develop vajra pride, one also has to realize the pain—the vajra pain, so to speak—that is involved. Samsaric pains, indestructible pains, are also involved. So that pride has some valid point to be proud of.

In kriyayoga tantra, a lot of emphasis is made on a sense of purity. Things are fundamentally immaculately pure, because there’s no room for doubt. At the same time, from mahamudra’s point of view, the phenomenal world is seen as completely colorful, precisely beautiful
as it is
, without any problems. Things are seen that way because you have already cut through your conceptualized notion of self, the projector, and the conceptualized notion of other, the projection. Therefore there’s no reason you can’t handle the situation. It is precisely clear as much as it possibly could be—
as it is
.

I suppose one of the fundamental points that we have to understand is that tantra is by no means pop art. It’s very clean-cut, clear-cut. Tantric practitioners are also good citizens rather than agitators or hippies. Tantric practitioners are real citizens who know [what is happening]. They are the good mechanics in the garage, who know the infinite details of how machines function. They have a clean mind, a precise mind. Tantric practitioners are good artists who paint good pictures—they don’t try to con you. Tantric practitioners are good lovers who don’t try to take advantage of their partner’s energy, emotion, but make love precisely in a clean-cut way. Tantric practitioners are good musicians who do not fool around banging here and there; they make music precisely, as it should be made. Tantric practitioners are artistic poets.

Tantric practitioners are in the world, but in the world in a different way than just getting lots of help by being critical of others and being dirty oneself. That seems to be the problem with bohemian artists. They get away with their approach by criticizing other people’s purity. They are dirty and rugged and they take pride in that. People have some kind of respect for them because their criticism of purity is so intense, people can’t be bothered to challenge them. Or they leave no room for a challenge. So people [tend to be impressed] and they say, “What you say is good, okay. Come into our society. You seems to be a powerful guy. You are dirty enough, and we accept you. We take pride in your being dirty. Let’s create a poster of you. Don’t wash your face. Let’s put it up with you ‘as you are,’ as they say. Let’s put up that poster and take pride in it.”

The approach to tantra seems to be entirely different from that. It’s not sloppy, the way you might think. It is very pure, very clean, very definite, very precise, very well thought out.

And there’s an introduction to tantra for you.

Student:
You talked about a type of intensity and purity that emerges out of unbiasedness, but the visualization you described seemed to have something cultural about it. When I heard your description, it was really nice, but I got a sense of a Tibetan or Buddhist ritual. Would such an image be able to arise spontaneously in an unbiased fashion in me if I’d never heard you describe it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, there is a tantric iconography that has already developed [so you don’t have to generate it spontaneously]. And it should be easy for us to identify with the tantric figures, particularly the peaceful ones, because they originated in the Indo-European culture. They’re neither particularly Indian nor particularly Western. They are in the classical style of the golden age of the Middle Eastern kingdoms, from which Western culture is also partly derived.

In any case, it is precisely the point that a pure and complete image is necessary. The idea is for you to visualize something that is pure and clean and complete to begin with, when you are introduced to tantra. Later on, you will encounter wrathful deities of all kinds, very gory things. But to begin with, you have to realize how pure you can be in your visualization, how complete, how absolutely complete—even if it means that the idea of purity has to be purified as well when you first begin to visualize. This purity is the ideal goal. The tantric tradition recommends the inspiration of ideal purity, clean and precise. Moreover, there should also be something like regal qualities. You’re pure, clean, and majestic at the same time. That is why this is called vajrayana, the diamond vehicle, as opposed to the mahayana, which is just the big vehicle.

Student:
Do you think that the visualization is implanted by particular conceptions of Buddhism, or is it something that emerges on its own?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think it’s cosmic. The features of the figure you visualize do not have to be Oriental; it does not have to have slitty eyes or anything like that, you know. There is just the idea of royalty. It is definitely necessary for you to associate yourself with a king. And in fact the vajrayana is sometimes known as the imperial yana.

Student:
It seems kind of like the figure of the samurai the way it is portrayed in the movies. The samurai always seems to appear in immaculately clean dress and is immaculately together with his situation.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so, yes. It seems it’s all right for him to be uncompassionate, but nevertheless he is clean and precise. The interesting thing about watching samurai films is the way they clean the blood from their swords. It’s very beautiful. It is as though a work of art is being practiced rather than there is a bloody mess on the stairs that has to be gotten rid of.

Student:
What is the difference between vajra pride and the pride of Rudra?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That seems to be quite basic. The pride of Rudra consists in trying to overpower the other. Vajra pride is identified with the pride of self rather than being worried about the consequences of the pride. There’s no sense of conquest involved. Just being yourself is pride. In the case of Rudra, there is territory involved, as if you were a jealous king trying to conquer your territory. Whereas if you are a universal monarch already, you don’t have to conquer your territory. Being yourself is being king, and you take pride in that.

S:
Is vajra pride more than just an attitude, then?

TR:
It’s more than just an attitude, yes. It involves emotion and intuition as well. You feel you are the cosmic conqueror, and by logic you are, because there are no other worlds to compete with you. And by intuition, why not?

S:
So it’s something that will happen to us, rather than something we can create?

TR:
Well, you can use the visualization as a means to feel that you are a king. All the sambhogakaya buddha visualizations are of kings. They always wear crowns and are dressed in royal costumes. You are trying to compete with a king. You
are
the king of the universe, in any case. There are no visualizations of subordinate figures; I can’t imagine such a thing. All the visualizations of herukas are known as lords or kings.

Student:
That sounds quite dangerous.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s why it is said that wrong visualization will lead you to Rudrahood. Precisely. Yes, you could become an egomaniac. That’s precisely why the whole thing is said to be very dangerous. If you do it wrong, you can become the cosmic ape king.

Student:
If it’s so dangerous, requiring that you work through hinayana and mahayana before getting into tantra, why are we talking about it like this? Even in the lecture about egolessness, suffering, and impermanence, I didn’t feel like I understood anything you were talking about. And then you talk about tantra and refer to it as a spiritual atomic bomb. I really don’t understand why this seminar is taking this direction.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s a good question, an extremely good question. I’m glad you asked it. You see, it’s like this: Suppose I was kidnapped in Tibet and blindfolded and put on an airplane. When my blindfold was taken off, I found myself in Berkeley, California. Then I was told, “This is your world. You have to stay here. Work with your world, work with the people here as your friends.” I would have no working basis. I would have no idea what America is, what Americans are. I’d be bewildered. I’d be completely, totally freaked out. Whereas if somebody approached me in Tibet and said, “You’re going to go to America. This is the map of America. These are the mountains, these are the rivers. These are the cities: There’s New York City, there’s Boston, there’s Chicago, there’s L.A. And there’s San Francisco. You’re going to San Francisco, which is here. The population is so-and-so.” In that case, if I took a plane here and landed at this airport, I would feel more able to relate with my environment.