The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (59 page)

There is a widespread misunderstanding of tantra, which sees tantra as pop art. People have heard that the tantric approach is to accept samsara fully. The idea has developed that therefore we are declaring everything—sexuality, aggression, ignorance—as legitimate and pure, that we accept the crudeness as a big joke. “The crudeness is the fun.” Therefore, the idea runs, we can jump into tantra by being crude and dirty: “Since we have to live with the crudeness, let’s consider it beautiful.” But visualizing Mahavairochana is far different from the gesture of stealing a “Rue Royale” street sign in Paris and sticking it up on our wall. The whole idea of tantra is very different from joining a club formed by tantric teachers in which it has been agreed to regard the mess of confusion as something livable and workable, to pretend that our pile of shit is nice, fresh, earthy soil that we are sitting on. This is a great misunderstanding.

The misunderstanding seems to be that tantra comes into being out of some kind of desperation, that since we cannot handle the confusion, we accept the convention of tantra as a saving grace. Then the shit of our confusion becomes pictorial, artistic—pop art. Supposedly tantra acknowledges this view eagerly and formally. But there is something very crude about this idea. If tantra merely acknowledged that samsara had to be put up with, without seeing the absolute purity and cleanness of it, tantra would be just another form of depression, and devoid of compassion.

Actually, far from beginning by exalting crudeness, the introduction to tantra is fantastically precise and pure, clean and artful. It could be said that the kriyayogayana is to the vajrayana what the Yogachara approach, which underlies Zen, is to the mahayana. There is a pronounced artful quality, a great appreciation of purity and cleanness.

Just as bodhisattvas embodying the magnificent vision of the mahayana are good citizens, tantric yogis are also extremely good citizens. Tantric practitioners are the good mechanics in garages, who know the infinite details of the functioning of machines with clean and precise mind. Tantric practitioners are good artists, who paint good pictures that do not try to con one. Tantric practitioners are good lovers, who do not take advantage of their partners’ energy and emotion, but make love precisely, accurately, purely. Tantric practitioners are good musicians, who do not fool around banging away at random, but play precisely, musically. Tantra is by no means to be associated with marginal lifestyles, Bohemianism, where one is intensely critical of convention and takes pride in being rugged and dirty.

The right understanding of tantra is crucial for the practice of visualization. One Nyingma teacher said that undertaking the practice of visualization is like going to bed with a pregnant tigress. She might get hungry in the middle of the night and decide to eat you. On the other hand, she might begin to nurse you, creating the furry warmth and texture of basic space. Certainly practicing visualization without the proper understanding is extremely destructive. A kriyayoga text, the
Vajramala
, says that the practitioner of wrong visualization, instead of attaining the complete openness of Vajrasattva, attains the complete egohood of Rudra, the ultimate spiritual ape. The tantric scriptures abound with warnings about wrong visualization.

Generally, wrong visualization takes the form of intensifying ordinary mental objects. One creates an image out of wishful thinking. For example, in the middle of one’s meditation practice a sexual fantasy arises and one decides to carry it out in complete detail—stage one, stage two, stage three, and so on. This same approach can apply to visualizations of tantric material. Even in visualizing Mahavairochana, a child sitting on a lunar disk, one might be re-creating one’s ego projection. The result is the ultimate ape: “I am Mahavairochana, I am one with him; let no one challenge this.” There is a sense of the beast, a great powerful chest, the cosmic gorilla.

There is a precise attitude and understanding of visualization corresponding to each level of tantra—kriyayoga, upayoga, yoga, mahayoga, anuyoga, and maha ati. The student’s understanding evolves organically from one stage of tantra to the next. But for the student to arrive at any proper understanding of visualization at all, it is absolutely necessary to have gone through all the previous stages of the path. He had to have developed the hinayana understanding of suffering, impermanence, and egolessness and insight into the structure of ego. He must have attained the understanding on the mahayana level of the shuntata principle and its application in the paramitas, the six transcendental actions of the bodhisattva. It is not necessary to have completely mastered all of these experiences, but the student must have had some glimpse of their significance. He has to have used up his mental gossip or at least taken out a corner of it. Their must be some sense of having trod on the path of hinayana and mahayana before embarking on the tantrayana.

If one has done this, then rather than coming as a reinforcement of ego’s deception, visualization will be inspired by a sense of hopelessness or, to say the same thing, egolessness. One can no longer deceive oneself. There is the despair of having lost one’s territory; the carpet has been pulled out from under one’s feet. One is suspended in nowhere or able at least to flash his nonexistence, his egolessness. Only then can one visualize. This is extremely important.

According to tradition, one of the principal masters who brought the vajrayana teachings to Tibet from India was Atisha Dipankara. Atisha prepared the ground for vajrayana by teaching surrendering. In fact he was known as the “refuge” teacher because of the extent to which he emphasized taking refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Taking refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha is a process of surrendering. Tremendous emphasis was laid by Atisha on surrendering, giving, opening, not holding on to something.

People who live in New York City have very vivid and definite impressions of that city—the yellow cabs, the police cars, the street scene. Imagine, for example, trying to convey this to a Tibetan living in Lhasa. If you wanted to teach him about America starting with New York, you could say: “New York City goes like this. There are streets, skyscrapers, yellow cabs. Visualize all that. Pretend you are in it.” You could expound Newyorkcityness on and on and on, explain it in the minutest detail; but he would have tremendous difficulty visualizing it, actually having the feeling of being in New York City. He would relate to New York City as being 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. Americans simply have not had that kind of experience. So how is it possible to bridge such a gap? Precisely by going through the three levels of Buddhist practice. Without the basic mindfulness practices and the development of awareness, there is no way at all of beginning the visualization practice of tantra.

It is through these fundamental practices that one can begin to see why such emphasis is placed on purity and cleanness, on the immaculate quality of the Mahavairochana visualization. Because of those preparatory experiences, the infant born from a seed syllable, sitting on the lunar disk, becomes impressive, highly impressive. This sambhogakaya buddha becomes beautiful because one has developed the possibility of unbiased experience. One can relate directly, egolessly; then a principle arising out of this unbiased level of experience, Mahavairochana, for example, becomes fantastically expressive. This is complete purity, purity that never had to be washed. If one tried to produce this kind of purity by using Ajax to clean up one’s dirty image, one would simply create a further mess. The purity of tantric experience is real beyond question. The practitioner does not have to think twice: “Is this really happening or am I imagining it?” The experience beggars uncertainty.

Visualization is a prominent part of tantric practice. One identifies with various iconographical figures—sambhogakaya buddhas, herukas, dakinis. This is done to develop vajra pride. Vajra pride is different from ordinary stupid pride. It is enlightened pride. You
do
have the potentialities of the deity; you are him already. The magic is not particularly in the visualization, but there is magic in your pride, your inspiration. You
are
Mahavairochana. You are absolutely clean, immaculate, and pure. Therefore you can identify with your
own
purity,
your
purity rather than that of an external god who is pure, rather than some kind of foreign element coming into you. You are awakening yourself.

So tantra is not magic in the sense of conjuring or involving oneself in a myth. Tantra is the highest level of a process of personal evolution. It is the ultimate development of the logic that runs through the entire Buddhist path.

Kriyayoga places particular emphasis on mudras, or hand gestures, as well as on visualization. In these practices you are, in a sense, competing with the buddhas and deities. You are making their hand gestures, behaving like them, trying to become one. But again, it is not really a question of trying, but of thinking that you
are
one. Vajra pride is the pride that you
are
Buddha.

That one
is
the deities, one
is
the buddhas is a big point for beginners in tantra. The problem may arise that one does not think one actually is. So one thinks: “I am supposed to think that I am Samantabhadra Buddha, I am Mahavairochana. Therefore I had better crank myself into that role.” This remote approach, instead of the directness of actually
being
that deity, is considered cowardice or stupidity. In order to develop vajra pride, one has to relate directly to the pain of situations, in this case the pain of actually being the deity, and see the value of it. Then that pride has something valid to be proud of.

It is in connection with the development of vajra pride that kriyayoga makes its strong emphasis on purity. You are spotlessly pure because there is no room for doubt. This is associated with the view of the phenomenal world in mahamudra. The phenomenal world is seen as completely colorful, precisely beautiful
as it is
, beyond acceptance and rejection, without any problems. You have seen things in this way because you have already cut through your conceptualized notion of a self and you have seen through its projections. Since that is the case, there is nothing that could come up that could be an obstacle in your handling the situation. It is totally precise and clear.
As it is
.

NINE

Empowerment and Initiations

I
WOULD LIKE TO
speak about the initiations or abhishekas, to put them in proper perspective in terms of how they apply, when they come, and what is meant by them. In order to understand this intricate pattern, we must have a picture of the whole gradual process of spiritual development in Buddhism.

The situation in which spiritual development takes place is represented visually in the tantrayana as a mandala. A mandala is understood as a center which is beautiful because of its surroundings which are present with it. It represents a whole situation in graphic form. There is the center which stands for the teacher, or more esoterically, for the guru. The guru is never alone, but exists in relation to his surroundings. The surroundings are seen as the expression of a new orientation in relation to this center. The mandala is set up in terms of the four cardinal points of the compass. These points symbolize an orientation in which all aspects (directions) of the situation are seen in relation to the guru and therefore have their message. The whole situation becomes, then, a communication on the part of the guru or teacher. It depends on our level of spiritual growth whether we see the guru only concretely as a person or can also see him symbolically.

The mandala has a certain specific quality in that each situation is unique and cannot be repeated. Only similarities can obtain. The mandala also has its own time factor which cannot be equated with the passage of time as we ordinarily understand it. It has a quality of simultaneity of all aspects which goes beyond our ordinary understanding of sequence. If properly understood, the mandala leads us back to seeing what the spiritual path is, back to the possibility of becoming more related to our own being without identifying it with this or that. Even the understanding embodied in the mandala is traditionally surrendered and offered up as a guard against reification.

The Buddhist path, which leads to seeing one’s situation as a mandala, begins with taking refuge. We take refuge in the three jewels—the Buddha, the dharma, the sangha. This can happen on various levels. There is the ordinary physical level of just repeating the formula. But this also involves a process happening within us. Regarding this inner level, we have the instruction to take refuge in something which is abiding, something which can actually offer refuge. We can only take refuge in something certain; otherwise taking refuge would be a pure fiction and would not provide the security we want. So, on the inner level, taking refuge means surrendering to those forces of which we ourselves are, so to speak, the last transformation. These forces have, in a way, become frozen in us. Taking refuge thus means to commit ourselves to a process of unfreezing, so that life’s energy, or whatever we want to call these forces that operate through us and somehow get blocked, can flow freely.

Beyond this, taking refuge can relate to still deeper layers, until we come to the point where the distinctions, differentiations, and separations that are introduced by our ordinary thinking no longer apply. At this level, when we speak of taking refuge in the three jewels, it means taking refuge in something which is unitary in character. We only speak in terms of three aspects in an effort to describe it.

So the first step in tantric discipline is to take refuge and understand it properly, not just as an outer performance which may in some way be beneficial, but as a ceremony that is meant to awaken the basic forces which are dormant within us. The ceremony can only be effective in this way if there is also present in us something known technically as an
attitude
. This means here an attitude we have developed which has as its aim to permit all that is within us to reach its fullest range of play.