Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

The impulse to believe the absurd when presented with the unknowable is called religion. Whether this is wise or unwise is the domain of doctrine. Once you understand someone's doctrine, you understand their rationale for believing the absurd. At that point, it may no longer seem absurd. You can get to both sides of this conondrum from here.

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:59 am

2. Hopelessness and the Trikaya

THE SENSE OF HOPELESSNESS is the starting point for relating with crazy wisdom. If the sense of hopelessness is able to cut through unrealistic goals, then the hopelessness becomes something more definite. It becomes definite because we are not trying to manufacture anything other than what there is not. So a sense of hopelessness could provide the basic approach to nonduality.

The sense of hopelessness connects directly with the practical level of our everyday lives. Life on the practical level does not contain any subtle philosophy or subtle mystical experience. It just is. If we are able to see that isness, so to speak, then there is a sense of realization. We experience sudden enlightenment. Without a sense of hopelessness, there is no way to give birth to sudden enlightenment. Only giving up our projects brings about the ultimate, definite, positive state of being, which is the realization that we are already enlightened beings here and now.

In discussing the details of this state, we could say that even in experiencing a sense of buddha-nature, we still have to have that experience, which is connected with the samsaric, or confused, part of our being in that it is dependent on the experience of something. Experience involves a sense of duality. You have an experience and you relate with that experience; you relate with it as something separate; there is a separation between you and what you experience. You are dealing with a subject matter, experience.

Though there is still a sense of separateness, of duality, nevertheless it is an experience of being awake, of realizing buddha within us.
So we begin to develop some sense of space between the experience and the projection of the experience. There is a forward-moving journey of trying to catch some particular aspect in us that is sane. And making that effort, becoming involved in that particular relationship, brings our sense of space somewhere.

It is like when we are just about to say something. First we have to experience the unsaid things.
We feel the space of what we haven't said yet. We feel the space, and then we say whatever we say, which accentuates the space in a certain way, makes it into a definite perspective. In order to express space, we have to draw the boundary of space.

That kind of sense of openness that happens when we are just about to say something or just about to experience something is a kind of sense of emptiness. It is a sense of fertile emptiness, pregnant emptiness. That experience of emptiness is the dharmakaya.
In order to give birth, we have to have an accommodation for giving birth. The sense of the absence of that birth before giving birth is the dharmakaya.

Dharmakaya is unconditioned. The leap has already been made. When we definitely decide to leap, we have leapt already. The leaping itself is somewhat repetitious or redundant. Once we have already decided to leap, we have leapt.
We are talking about that kind of sense of space in which the leap, the birth, is already given though not yet manifested. It is not yet manifested, but it is as good as already manifested. In that state of mind in which we are about to experience, say, drinking a cup of tea, we have drunk a cup of tea already before we drink it. And we have said things already before we actually say them on a manifest level.

That kind of pregnant, embryonic, fertile ground that happens in our state of mind constantly is also unconditioned [i.e., as well as pregnant with something].
It is unconditioned in relation to my ego, or dualistic mind, my actions, my love and hate, and so on. In relation to all that, it is unconditioned. Thus we have that kind of unconditioned glimpse happening in our state of mind constantly.


The dharmakaya state is the starting point or ground of Padmasambhava. The embryonic manifestation here is the dharma, the dharma of possibilities that have happened already, existing things that exist in nonexistence. It is the sense of fertility, complete fullness yet intangibility, in our daily experience. Before the emotions arise, there are preparations toward that. Before we put our actions into effect, there are preparations toward that. That sense of occupied space, self-existing space, is dharma. Kaya is form, or body, the statement that such dharma does exist. The body of dharma is the dharmakaya.

Then we have the second level of manifestation of Padmasambhava, the sambhogakaya, in our state of being. This is the borderline between fullness and emptiness. There is the sense that the fullness of it becomes valid, because it is emptiness. In other words, it is a kind of affirmation of the existence of emptiness. There is the spaciousness where the emotions begin to arise, where anger is just about to burst out or has burst out already, but there still needs to be a journey forward toward giving final birth. This [forward movement] is the sambhogakaya. Sam means "complete," bhoga means "joy." Joy here is occupation or energy, rather than joy in the sense of pleasure as opposed to pain. It is occupation, action existing for itself, emotions existing for themselves. But though they exist for themselves, they are rootless as far as basic validity is concerned. There is no basic validity, but still emotions occur out of nowhere, and their energy springs forth, sparks out, constantly.

Then we have nirmanakaya. Nirmana in this case is the emanation, or manifestation -- the complete manifestation or final accent. It is like when a child has already been born and the doctor cuts the umbilical cord to make sure that the child is separate from its father and mother. It is now an independent entity. This is parallel to the bursting of the emotions into the fascinated world outside. At this point, the object of passion or the object of aggression, or whatever, comes out very powerfully and very definitely.

This does not particularly refer to applying the emotions; for example, using anger as an influence for killing a person or passion as an influence for magnetizing a person. Still, there is a sense that, before actual words are spoken or actual bodily movements have occurred, the emotions have occurred; there has been a final definition of the emotions and they have become separate from you. You have officially cut the umbilical cord between you and your emotions. They have already occurred outwardly -- they have become a satellite already, your satellite already, a separate thing. This is final manifestation.

When we talk here about anger or passion or ignorance/bewilderment, whatever we talk about, we are not speaking in moralistic terms of good and bad. We are speaking of tremendously highly charged emotions that contain the energy of their vividness. We could say that our lives consist of this tremendous vividness all the time: the vividness of being bored, being angry, being in love, being proud, being jealous. Our lives consist of all these kinds of vividness rather than of virtues or sins created by those.


What we are talking about here is the essence of Padmasambhava. There is this vividness of Padmasambhava manifesting in our lives constantly through the process of giving birth: experiencing a sense of space, then manifesting, then finally concluding that manifestation. So there is the threefold process, of the dharmakaya as the embryonic space, the sambhogakaya as the forwarding quality, and the nirmanakaya in which it actually finally manifests itself. All those situations are the vividness of Padmasambhava.

It seems that before discussing the eight aspects of Padmasambhava, it is important to understand the three principles of the trikaya. Unless we realize the subtleties of the energies involved in Padmasambhava's life, we have no chance of understanding it. Without understanding the trikaya, we might think that when Padmasambhava manifests in the different aspects it is like one person wearing different hats: his business hat, his hunting hat, his yogi hat, his scholar hat, and so on. It is not like that. It is not like one person changing costumes; rather it has to do with the vividness of life.

In talking about Padmasambhava, we are not referring purely to a historical person: "once upon a time, there was a person Padmasambhava, who was born in India." Somehow that does not really make sense. If we were doing that, we would just be having a history lesson. Instead, what we are trying to point to here is that Padmasambhava is our experience. We are trying to relate with the Padmasambhava-ness in us, in our state of being. The Padmasambhava-ness consists of those three constituents: the dharmakaya, or open space; the sambhogakaya, or forward energy; and the nirmanakaya, or actual manifestation.

We might say to ourselves at this point: "This is supposed to be crazy wisdom; what's so crazy about those things? Energy happens, space is there; is there anything about this that is unusual, anything crazy or wise?" Actually there is nothing -- nothing crazy about it and nothing wise about it. The only thing that makes it extraordinary is that it happens to be true. We are infested with Padmasambhava in ourselves. We are haunted by him. Our whole being is completely made out of Padmasambhava. So when we try to relate with him "out there," as a person who lives on a copper-colored mountain on some remote island off the coast of India, that does not make sense.

It would be very easy to relate with him that way, because then we could have a sense of ambition. We could feel that we would like to go where he is, or find out whether he is a purely mythical being or actually does exist. We could take a plane, we could take a boat; we could find out where those places are where Padmasambhava is still supposed to be living. Trying to invoke Padmasambhava, to bring him about in our being from the outside, is like waiting for Godot. The result never happens.

There was a great Tibetan siddha called the Madman of Tsang. He lived in Tsang, which is in East Tibet, near a mountain called Anye Machen, where my guru Jamgon Kongtrol visited him. This was about five years before I met my guru. He used to tell us the story of his meeting with the Madman of Tsang, who was an ordinary farmer who had achieved the essence of crazy wisdom. He had these very precious things stored in his treasury, bags and bags supposedly full of valuable things. But the bags turned out to contain just driftwood and rocks. My guru told us that he asked the Madman of Tsang, "How should we go about uniting ourselves with Padmasambhava?" The madman told him the following.

"When I was a young student and a very devout Buddhist, full of faith, I used to want my body to become one with Padmasambhava's body. I did countless recitations, thousands and millions of mantras and invocations. I used to shout myself half to death reciting mantras. I even felt that I was wasting my time by breathing in during these recitations. I called and called and called to Padmasambhava, trying to make my body one with his. But then suddenly I just realized: I am -- my body is -- Padmasambhava. I could go on calling on him until my voice breaks down, but it wouldn't make any sense. So I decided not to call on him any more.Then I found that Padmasambhava was calling on me. I tried to suppress it, but I couldn't control it. Padmasambhava wanted me, and he kept on calling my name."

This is the kind of situation we are discussing, I suppose. Instead of our looking out there for him, he is looking in at us. In order to make these things real and ordinary in our lives, it seems that we need some kind of conviction in us. We have to realize that there is a sense of energy that is always there, and that that energy contains totality. That energy is not dualistic or interdependent; it is a self-existing energy in us. We have our passion, our aggression; we have our own space, our own energy -- it's there already. It exists without any dependency on situations. It is absolute and perfect and independent. It is free from any form of relationships.

That seems to be the point about Padmasambhava here. The principle of Padmasambhava consists in freedom from any speculative ideas or theories or activity of watching oneself. It is the living experience of emotions and experiences without a watcher. Because we are Buddha already, we are Padmasambhava already. Gaining such confidence, such vajra pride, gives us a further opportunity. It is not hard to imagine that when you know what you are and who you are completely, then you can explore the rest of the world, because you don't have to explore yourself any more.

STUDENT: Rinpoche, if the dharmakaya is a pregnant state already, or a fertile state already, does that mean that there isn't any completely empty dharmakaya that doesn't apply to anything? Are you saying that the dharmakaya always has some sense of application already?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: You see, the dharmakaya in this case is similar to experience. It's quite different from the dharmadhatu, the greater dharmadhatu. When you refer to it as dharma and kaya, it is, in some sense, conditioned. It's conditioned because it's pregnant already. [3]

S: So does that mean that the dharmadhatu is theoretical, purely a matter of theoretical background?

TR: I wouldn't even say it's theoretical. It hardly has a name at all. Talking about dharmadhatu makes us more self-conscious, so then dharmadhatu becomes self-conscious; or rather, inventing words about it makes dharmadhatu more self-conscious from our point of view.

S: Is dharmadhatu experientially different from dharmakaya?

TR: Yes. Dharmadhatu is no experience.

S: And that's the space in which the kayas --

TR: Take place, yes. Dharmakaya is already experience. Dharmakaya is referred to in Tibetan as tangpo sangye, which means "the primordial buddha," the buddha who never became a buddha through practice but who is realization on the spot. That is the nondualism of the dharmakaya. Whereas the dharmadhatu is total accommodation of some kind that doesn't have its own entity at all.

You see, the dharmakaya is, so to speak, a kind of credential. Somebody has to have a credential of some kind in order to be dharmakaya. That is why it is pregnant. But this sense of credential should not be regarded in a pejorative or negative way at all. The exciting things happening with the samsaric world are part of that manifestation. The dharma itself, as a teaching, is part of it; the teaching wouldn't exist unless there were somebody to teach. It's that kind of situation.

S: What does Padmasambhava have to do with the dharmadhatu?

TR: Nothing.

S: Well, what is the difference then between the sense of possibility in dharmakaya, the sense of a pregnant situation, and expectation in the negative buddhist sense of desire, of looking forward to something? In other words, you spoke of dharmakaya as a sense of possibility as if you had your tea before you even drank it. How does that differ from wanting a cup of tea in the grasping way?

TR: There's no difference at all. If we look at grasping in a matter-of-fact way, it's actually very spacious. But we regard grasping as an insult to ourselves. That's why it becomes an insult. But grasping as it is, is actually very spacious. It's a hollow question. Very spacious. That's the dharmakaya itself.


S: Is there a momentum that brings it beyond the sense of potential or pregnancy of the dharmakaya stage to the point where it is actually moving toward becoming something?

TR: There is momentum already, because there is experience. Momentum begins when you regard experience as something experienceable. The momentum is there already, so dharmakaya is a part of that energy. That's why all three kayas are connected with energy. There is the most transparent energy, the energy of movement, and the energy of manifestation. Those three kayas are all included in that energy. That's why they are called kayas.

S: It seems as though within the pregnant space of the dharmakaya, there is also sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya.

TR: Yes.

S: It seems to me that in the journey from dharmakaya to nirmanakaya, if the manifestation is going to end up to be something samsaric and the dharmakaya is already pregnant with it, then there is a samsaric factor that is already part of the dharmakaya. For instance, if we have the cup of tea before we actually drink it, then there is all the conditioning from past tea-drinking experiences that are part of determining that experience.

TR: You see, the whole point when we talk about Padmasambhava is that Padmasambhava is the trikaya principle, which is made out of a combination of both samsara and nirvana at the same time, so any conditions or conditioning are valid. At this point, as far as that experience is concerned, samsara and nirvana are one within the experience. What we are concerned with here is that it is purely free energy. It's neither conditioned nor unconditioned, but rather its own existence is absolute in its own way. So we don't have to try to make it valid by persuading ourselves that there is nothing samsaric that is part of it. Without that [samsaric element], we would have nothing to be crazy about. This is crazy wisdom, you know.

S: What's the nirmanakaya part?

TR: The sense of relating with the tea as an external object, which is like cutting the umbilical cord. Relating with the tea as the teaness out there is the nirmanakaya. But this does not necessarily mean physically doing it, particularly. Rather it's that there are three types of solidification of experience related with tea, the threefold states of being of the mind.

S: So the nirmanakaya is the sort of "ness."

TR: Yes, it's the cupness and potness and teaness.

S: So what's the sambhogakaya?

TR: The sambhogakaya is the sense of slight separateness, as opposed to the abstract idea of having tea. There's some journey.

S: There's some sense in experiencing the potness and cupness that they might become exiled from the whole process of birth, cut off from the experiencing process that bore them in the first place?

TR: That's happened already. Once you are pregnant, it is already a statement of separation, and it is a further expression of separation when you give birth; then the final statement is when you cut the umbilical cord; that is the final state of separateness.

S: And you accept that separateness fully?

TR: Yes. Otherwise it becomes very confusing in terms of the partnership with nirvana, or whatever you would like to call it -- sanity, nirvana.

STUDENT: I don't see how this relates with hopelessness. I mean, I don't see how these first two lectures go together.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, hopelessness comes from the fact that this process we have been describing does not bring any comfort. We could say that dharmakaya exists, sambhogakaya exists, nirmanakaya exists, and each has its functions. But so what? Still there's no recipe for how to make yourself happy. At this point it has nothing to do with bringing happiness into our lives, or goodness or comfort or anything else like that. It's still a hopeless situation.

Realistically, even if you know the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya from back to front, what does that mean to you? You will just understand the energy principle and the independence and potency of your energy. But apart from that, there's no medication. It's still hopeless.


STUDENT: Rinpoche, is seeing things as they are still experiential?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Yes, we could say that seeing things as they are is not quite crazy enough.

STUDENT: Rinpoche, you've described the movement from dharmakaya to sambhogakaya to nirmanakaya as a movement of energy outward. Could that process be reversed? Does the energy also go from nirmanakaya to sambhogakaya to dharmakaya?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: That also happens constantly. It's sort of recycling itself. That's no big deal.

STUDENT: You've said that we have a choice between gradual and sudden realization.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Yes.

S: Yet hopelessness is there all the time.

TR: Yes.

S: Well, what is it that we could do, then?

TR: There is an old saying that the path is the goal and the goal is the path. You make your journey, you get to your destination, and arriving at that destination brings on another question: how to proceed from there? In that way each goal itself becomes the path. Particularly from the tantric point of view, you don't achieve anything except path. Discovery of the path is achieving. You see what I mean?

S: Well, what's sudden about it?

TR: It's always sudden.


S: All the time.

TR: All the time, yes. Until you give up the path -- and the goal -- there's still sudden enlightenment all the time. So the only final sudden thing is that you have to give up sudden discovery. That's very shocking. And very sudden.

S: But that sudden flash that goes on all the time, you're saying, is different from the gradual path?

TR: Yes, definitely. The nature of the gradual path from this point of view, if I may say so, is that the gradual path regards the goal as the goal and the path as the doctrine. And the sudden path regards the path as the goal as well as the goal as the path. There's no room for doctrine. It is just a matter of personal experience all the time. If you had to give an Oxford dictionary definition of the difference between gradual and sudden enlightenment, that could be it.

STUDENT: Rinpoche, does this process of solidification from dharmakaya to nirmanakaya and the attitude toward it also apply on the psychological level to the process of projection -- to your projections becoming more solid and your attitude toward that?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Naturally. The whole existence of the three kayas is a kind of projection in which you manufacture the projections. So in other words, the very existence of the dharma itself is a projection. Insanity or sanity both are projections. And since everything is done that way, the whole thing becomes a projection and solidity at the same time.

STUDENT: In the story of the man worshiping Padmasambhava with so many mantras and recitations, I wasn't sure of the point. Is that kind of devotional practice purely a waste of time? Or is there some value in it?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, both are the same thing in a way. In order to gain valuation of time, to begin with you have to waste time, which is part of gaining valuation of time.

S; So he was wasting time?

TR; But he understood something out of it. He realized, finally, that he was wasting time, by wasting time.

S: Is that all that was happening there?

TR: Yes.

S: It doesn't sound like a waste of time at all.

TR: That's up to you. That's what I'm saying.

STUDENT: When you say the journey need never be made, do you really mean that? We don't have to make the trip?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: But then you don't know what the trip is.

S: Why do we need to know that?

TR: To realize you need never make it -- it's a seamless web.


STUDENT: Is there a certain determinism involved in the dharmakaya? Is there a kind of inevitability in the progression from dharmakaya to sambhogakaya to nirmanakaya?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: I think probably the only determinism on the part of the dharmakaya is the self-consciousness of its own existence, of its own pregnancy. And that's the first expression of dualism.

STUDENT: What's the relation between the three kayas and the charnel ground you mentioned? Is there a relation?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Each time you develop a manifestation, you create your own stuff -- right at the beginning. Dharmakaya creates its own existence and its environment as well. The environment is the charnel ground -- a place to dissolve, a place to manifest.

STUDENT: I don't see that strong a difference between the sambhogakaya and the nirmanakaya. The dharmakaya seems to have parent status, so to speak, and the sambhogakaya seems to be like giving birth -- you know, first expression. And I don't see where the final step from the sambhogakaya to the nirmanakaya comes in. It seems that both of them represent completion of some sort.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, the sambhogakaya is acknowledging the energy, you could say, and the nirmanakaya is executing, like the analogy of cutting the umbilical cord. Apart from that, there's no difference.

S: But the sambhogakaya, you said, was analogous to giving birth. That also seems pretty final.

TR: The sambhogakaya is acknowledging the energy in the sense of the receptiveness of reality. It is acknowledging that your projections are separate, definitely separate; and then what you do with the separateness, your projections, is handled by the nirmanakaya. The nirmanakaya could be described as the domestic matter of how to handle your kitchen-sink problem, whereas the sambhogakaya is like getting married to begin with to create the kitchen-sink problem. And the dharmakaya is like courting; it contains those possibilities, is already fraught with all kinds of possibilities.

S: Before, I thought you said that this process of the trikaya, looked at in the context of the self, would be samsaric, whereas in the context of the dharmadhatu, it would be nirvanic?

TR : We never discussed the nirvana aspect of it, because for one thing it becomes too idealistic. For another thing it becomes inaccurate, because we never see it. So we are speaking from the samsaric point of view of enlightenment at this point.

S: Why don't we see it?

TR: We still want to have answers and conclusions, which is an experience of separateness, which is samsaric. You want logic, and logic depends on samsaric mind.

S: It seems that this three-kaya process is a different perspective on the same process as the twelve nidanas and the six realms of the world and the different pardo states. Is that so?

TR: Same thing.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:00 am

3. Fearlessness

HAVING ALREADY DISCUSSED the three-kaya principle by way of preparation, we might now consider Padmasambhava as a representative of crazy wisdom as opposed to any other type of manifestation of a vidyadhara. We might say that the unique quality of crazy wisdom in Padmasambhava's case is that of sudden enlightenment. The eight aspects of Padmasambhava are not a lineal process, they are simultaneous. In fact, the traditional expression is "eight names" of Padmasambhava rather than "eight aspects."

What is the name principle? Why is it called a name rather than aspect? When we refer to aspects, usually we are referring to differences in basic being. We might speak of a man's father aspect, his teacher aspect, his businessman aspect. In this ordinary usage, there is the idea of a change that goes with the different roles. This usual idea of different aspects -- which would imply that Padmasambhava transformed himself, entered into different parts of his being, or manifested different expressions -- does not apply to Padmasambhava. Rather, his having different names is connected with the attitudes of his students and of other beings toward him. The different names have to do with the different ways other people see Padmasambhava rather than with his changing. So name here has the sense of title. The Tibetan phrase is guru tsen gye, "the eight names of the guru." Tsen is the honorific Tibetan word for "name." Some people might see Padmasambhava as fatherly, others as brotherly, and still others might see him as an enemy. The views imposed by the way people see him are the basis for the eight names of Padmasambhava. Nevertheless, his only manifestation is that of crazy wisdom.

A description for a crazy-wisdom person found in the scriptures is: "He subdues whoever needs to be subdued and destroys whoever needs to be destroyed." The idea here is that whatever your neurosis demands, when you relate with a crazy-wisdom person you get hit back with that. Crazy wisdom presents you with a mirror reflection. That is why Padmasambhava's crazy wisdom is universal. Crazy wisdom knows no limitation and no logic regarding the form it takes. A mirror will not compromise with you if you are ugly. And there is no point in blaming the mirror or breaking it. The more you break the mirror the more reflections of your face come about from further pieces of the mirror. So the nature of Padmasambhava's wisdom is that it knows no limitation and no compromise.

The first aspect of Padmasambhava is called Pema Gyalpoor, in Sanskrit, Padma Raja. Padma Raja was born in the Himalayan region between India and Afghanistan, in a place called Uddiyana that has since been called Swat. It was a very beautiful place surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The whole area resembled a man-made park. There were lakes and lotus ponds; the air was fresh, the climate ideal. One of the lakes was called Dhanakosha, or also, Lake Sindhu. It was covered with the leaves and petals of lotuses. One particular lotus was unusually huge and did not follow the usual pattern of changing with the seasons. It appeared at the beginning of the Year of the Monkey and continued its growth straight through the seasons. Winter came, spring came, autumn came, and summer came, and the lotus never opened. At last, on the tenth day of the tenth month of the Year of the Monkey, the lotus opened. There was a beautiful child inside, sitting on the calyx of the lotus. He had the appearance of a child of eight. He was dignified and inquisitive. The bees and birds congregated about this beautiful child, praising him. The sound of music without a player was heard. The whole place was pervaded with a sense of wholesomeness, health, and mystery.

The child looked like a well-looked-after prince. Could that be possible? He had no fear and seemed to be amused by his surroundings, constantly fascinated by the world outside.

That was the birth of Padmasambhava.

The whole point here is the infant quality of Padmasambhava. He was an aged infant -- this is a contradiction, of course -- a beautiful grown-up infant, an infant who was wise and powerful, an infant who did not nurse on milk or eat any other food, but who lived on thin air. It is because of this youthfulness that he is known as Padma Raja, "Prince of the Lotus."

We have that element of youthfulness in us as well. We have that beautiful infantlike quality in us. The experience that has taken place in our life situation is like the mud surrounding the roots of a lotus at the bottom of a lake. There is desire, passion, aggression, neurosis of all kinds. Nevertheless, out of these, some quality of freshness comes up always: that infant quality in us, completely young, youthful, inquisitive, comes up.

The inquisitiveness of that infant aspect in us is not neurotically inquisitive, but basically inquisitive. Since we want to explore the depth of pain, since we want to explore the warmth of joy, doing so seems natural. This is the Padmasambhava quality in us. We could call it buddha-nature or basic enlightenment. We would like to pick up a toy, hold it in our hands, explore it, drop it, bash it around, see it falling apart, unscrew it, put it together. We always do that, just as an infant does. This infant quality is the quality of enlightenment.

When people talk about enlightenment, they usually have the idea of someone old and wise. An enlightened person, they think, is one who has been aged by experience and has thus become wise; in fact, learned. He has collected hundreds of millions of pieces of information. This makes him old and wise, trustworthy and good -- enlightened. But from the point of view of crazy wisdom, enlightenment is entirely different from this. It doesn't particularly have anything to do with being old and wise. It is more like being young and wise, because it has tremendous openness toward exploring the experiences that go on in our lives -- toward exploring them psychologically, on the relationship level, on the domestic level, on the practical level, on the philosophical level, and so forth.

There is also a quality of fearlessness in enlightenment, not regarding the world as an enemy, not feeling that the world is going to attack us if we do not take care of ourselves. Instead, there is tremendous delight in exploring the razor's edge, like a child who happens to pick up a razorblade with honey on it. It starts to lick it; it encounters the sweet taste and the blood dripping off its tongue at the same time. Simultaneous pain and pleasure are worth exploring, from the point of view of the sanity of crazy wisdom. This [natural inquisitiveness] is the youthful-prince quality of Padmasambhava. It is the epitome of noncaring but at the same time caring so very much -- being eager to learn and eager to explore.

Probably the word learn is wrong here. It is not learning in the sense of collecting information; rather, it is absorbing what is happening around us, constantly relating to it. In this kind of learning, we do not at all learn things so that we can use them at some point to defend ourselves. We learn things because they are pleasurable to learn, fantastic to learn. It is like children playing with toys. They discover toys out of nowhere: they are not educational toys, but just things that are around.

Padmasambhava was born from a lotus without parents, because he had no need to be educated. He had no need for parents to bring him up to responsible, sensible adulthood. It is said that he was born from a lotus as though already eight years old. But we could say he was born from a lotus as though already eighty years old. There's no age limit. Whatever his age, he would still be a young baby, or let's say an old baby. Both amount to the same thing.

One of the most important points here is a sense of exploration of our state of being that is independent of education and information-collecting. We just explore because we are delighted, like children playing with toys. That childlike quality is always in us, constantly. That is the quality of Padmasambhava.

Once again, this quality also contains fearlessness. The problem we have with fearlessness is that our samsaric way of approaching things prevents us from exploring freely. Although we have a tremendous yearning toward it, we feel that we might get hurt if we explore too much. That is fear. The infant quality of Padmasambhava is fearless, because he is not concerned with being hurt. It is not that he is masochistic or sadistic at all. It is just that he has a sense of appreciation, a sense of complete openness in relating with things -- simply, directly. He does not relate with things because they are educational, but just because they are there. The relationship just happens, it develops.

The young prince born from a lotus was discovered by Indrabhuti, the king of Uddiyana. For a long time, King Indrabhuti had been praying to be granted a son, but he had been unable to have one. One day one of his court attendants went to Lake Dhanakosha to collect flowers for the royal household and discovered the mysterious lotus. It had opened, and a young and funny, inquisitive and beautiful child was sitting on it. The attendant reported this to the king, who decided to have the child brought back to the court and to adopt him as his son, as the future king.

Padmasambhava explored the pleasurable situations in the royal palace. After some time food and wealth and comforts of all kinds began to bore him. Indrabhuti decided to arrange a marriage for Padmasambhava with the daughter of a neighboring king so that Padmasambhava would have a playmate. The marriage took place and Padmasambhava continued to explore things. He explored sexuality, companionship,food, wealth, and so on.

One thing I would like to make completely clear here is that this whole situation was not just a matter of Padmasambhava having to grow up or gain information about life. Padmasambhava's becoming a prince -- even the very fact of his being born in a lotus -- was not his trip, so to speak, but Indrabhuti's trip. Indrabhuti's version of Padmasambhava had to be given food and clothes and the companionship of women. Padmasambhava then broke through that hospitality by dancing on the palace roof holding a trident and a vajra. He was dancing around up there, and as if by accident, he let go of his two scepters and they fell from the roof. The trident pierced the heart of a minister's wife who was walking below, and the vajra landed on her son's skull. Both mother and child died instantly.

What do you think happened next? Padmasambhava was expelled from the kingdom. His deed was against the law. Murderers were not allowed in the kingdom. Everything in the kingdom was done properly, in accordance with law, so even that mysterious child born from a lotus had to leave -- which is what Padmasambhava was asking for. He was going to cut through that situation and continue his explorations of all kinds.

Of course, we as students do not necessarily have to follow Padmasambhava's style exactly. We do not necessarily have to go through all the processes that he went through. In fact it would be impossible; our situation would not permit it. Nevertheless, his example of exploring passion and aggression is a very, very interesting one -- one worth relating to, worth exploring. However, being able to explore depends on fearlessness. Our degree of fearlessness should be, so to speak, the speedometer of our sanity [i.e., the indicator of how far we can go]. The awakened state of mind is shining through [and to the extent that it is, we go ahead]. As the scriptures say, an ordinary person should not act like a yogi, a yogi should not act like a bodhisattva, a bodhisattva should not act like a siddha, and a siddha should not act like a buddha. If we go beyond our limit, if we decide to get wild and freak out, we get hurt. We get feedback: a very strong message comes back to us. If we go beyond our limit, it becomes destructive.

So the idea of crazy wisdom is not just getting wild and freaking out. Rather, it is relating with your fear. How much you explore depends on how much fundamental fear has been related with -- I wouldn't say conquered. If you do it in accordance with how much fundamental fear you have related with, then you are not going beyond your limitation.

So, strangely enough, it could be said that crazy wisdom is very timid or cowardly. Cowardice breeds crazy wisdom. Discretion is the better part of valor.

Crazy wisdom is unlike any of the other notions of the path we have discussed elsewhere. For example, in the bodhisattva path you age or grow up from the first bhumi to the second and so on up to the tenth, and then, finally, the eleventh, the enlightened state. The teaching concerning the bodhisattva path is based on aging, growing old, gaining more and more experience. You collect one paramita after the other. You gain information, understanding, and by building yourself up higher and higher, you become a great scholar as well as a great buddha in some sense. But as far as Padmasambhava's example is concerned, there is no notion of enlightenment and realization coming about through collecting stuff, experiences. Padmasambhava's style is one of purely experiencing life situations as a spontaneously existing infant, and being willing to be an infant forever. One of the terms developed in the maha ati tradition for this principle is shonu pum ku, "youthful prince in a vase."

The vase represents an embryonic situation -- embryonic but at the same time youthful. Breaking the vase is reversing the trikaya principle. You have gained dharmakaya; when the vase is broken, you come back down to sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya; you come back down to earth.
A similar process is symbolized by the Zen oxherding pictures. After the point where there is no more ox and no more oxherd, you return to the world.

So the main focus here is the youthfulness of the enlightened state of being. This youthfulness is the immediacy of experience, the exploratory quality of it.

"But wouldn't exploring age us, make us old?" we might ask. We have to put so much energy into exploring. Do we not become like a traveler who grows old through traveling? From the point of view of crazy wisdom, this is not the case. Exploring is no strain. You might have to do the same thing again and again, but each time you discover new facets of it, which makes you younger.

Discovery is related with energy that feeds you constantly. It brings your life to a very full, healthy state. So each time you explore, you gain new health. You constantly come back to a sense of being up to date in your experience of the world, of your life. So the whole thing becomes constant rejuvenation.

Now that the Padma Raja, the beautiful child, has been kicked out of his kingdom and is wandering somewhere in the suburbs of Indrabhuti's city, experiencing charnel grounds and wastelands with their poisonous snakes, tigers, and so on, let us pause in our story.

STUDENT: The "prince in the vase" already has the dharmakaya quality. When you break the vase, that begins his movement back toward nirmanakaya?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Yes. It is reversing the trikaya.

S: Padmasambhava was born already dharmakayalike?

TR: Yes. Then he comes down to earth. The gravity pull is compassion. Once you are dharmakaya, you can't just stay there. You return to the world by means of the sambhogakaya and the nirmanakaya.

STUDENT: I encountered the metaphor you used of licking honey from a razor blade in The Life and Teaching of Naropa. [4] There it appeared as a simile connected with the Four Noble Truths, that is, portraying suffering that ought to be avoided or that an enlightened person would avoid, knowing it was there. Does your use of it here mean that from Padmasambhava's viewpoint the Four Noble Truths are no longer true?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It's a different way of approaching the Truths -- or not exactly different, but authentic, we might say. Here suffering is not regarded as something that you should avoid or abandon; rather, it should be regarded as truth. See what I mean?

S: It's what you taste.

TR: It's what you taste, yes, while exploring the subtleties of everything as an infant would.


S: Does that exploration have to be painful?

TR: Pain is arbitrary at this point. Experiences are not particularly regarded as painful or pleasurable. They just are.

STUDENT: You said that the child was fearless. And then you said that cowardice is the path. Aren't those two contradictory?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: They both amount to the same thing at this point. You are fearless because you don't go beyond certain limitations; you are fearless "as it is," and therefore you are a coward at the same time. That may be very difficult to grasp.
I don't know whether I am making myself clear.

STUDENT: I have the same question. When you tell us, "It's up to you," it seems that we have a choice about what our limitations are, almost as though we created them ourselves.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: I don't see why not, because your limitations are your limitations.

S: They don't feel like my limitations. They're something that I discover as I go along.

TR: Well, you had to discover them, so you manufactured them as you went along.

S: You mean to say, if I wanted to, I could discover other limitations instead?

TR: Precisely! That's the whole point.

S: What's the point about going beyond them? You seemed to say that crazy wisdom discouraged going beyond them.

TR: Yes.

S: Going beyond them would be like going into some realm of utter fear or something?

TR: Well, this is very simple -- kindergarten level. Going beyond your limitations is making things up rather than actually going beyond your limitations. It's manufacturing a dream world.

S: Are you making a distinction between made-up limitations and more real ones?

TR: Sure.

S: And you shouldn't try to go beyond the more real ones?

TR: You can't go beyond them anyway. They're real ones. You can't. You can't relate with them. You'd be going beyond your strength.

S: Then there's no danger of going beyond the natural limitation?

TR: Well, one tends very often to try to explore it.

S: Then what's the difference between exploring it and going beyond it?

TR: The difference is, if you go beyond your own limitation you get hurt. You get some message.

S: So how does fearlessness apply in this situation?

TR: You see, the point is, we do not even trust our own abilities. Usually we don't. That's where fearlessness could play an important part -- in exploring the complete realm of your strength. But then going beyond that is frivolous; if you do that you're subject to destruction. So fearlessness is not a matter of doing something outrageous outside of your realm, but of exploring the complete range of your whole strength.

S: What would keep a fearless person from exploring beyond his own strength?

TR: Some message will come back to that person.

S: Would that really prevent a person who is fearless from going beyond, from exploring everything?

TR: Fearlessness is still a conditional situation; such a person wouldn't be fearless of everything.

S: Is this the use of cowardice as intelligence?

TR: Yes.

S: Is that the wisdom part of crazy wisdom?

TR: Somewhat. If you regard crazy wisdom as just being completely outrageous, that's not particularly good or healthy. You are letting yourself in for destruction. That's the usual idea people have, you know: if you're trying to freak out, just push more, push more.

S: It seems that such boundaries presuppose a structure that is independent of oneself -- a structure of boundaries out there beyond which a person shouldn't really venture.

TR: Not quite. It is dependent upon one's relationship with the structure.


S: The message that I get out of all this is, one should try to be aware of one's limitations so as not to step over them and get hurt.

TR: Not exactly. It's a question of being cautious.

S: How do you know when you're being cautious? This seems to be the point. How do you know when you should run back or when you should go forward?

TR: You have to relate to what's happening in the whole process. When you begin to notice a deceptive attitude like "Maybe I could try something better than this," then you have begun to develop fear already because you haven't actually ventured into that area before. A warning comes from the sense of self-deception.

S: How do you become aware of that deception?

TR: It's very obvious. Only we know ourselves. We are the closest person to ourselves that we have. We know when we are deceiving ourselves and when we are not. There's no demonstration needed for that. That's something that's understood between you and yourself.

S: Probably a teacher is very helpful to encourage you in certain areas.

TR: You have your areas already. You already have the possibility of rediscovering your strengths and abilities. Teachers can't follow you, live with you, be your bedfellows all the time. Your teacher cannot always be there to guide you, but your self-deception guides you all the time.


STUDENT: Does karma begin to form in the dharmakaya?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: We run into different philosophical opinions of different schools on this point. Some people say
that no karma develops at that point, and some say that there is karma in the dharmakaya, because the dharmakaya is also a separate entity and has an allegiance toward nirvana. Longchen Rabjam, the great maha ati teacher, would say that karma has developed already; so our school would say that karma has developed already at the dharmakaya level.The dharmakaya brings you a message of sanity because of the insanity that you have already. So that is a relational action; relational action has already happened. In other words, the potter's wheel of the second nidana has already developed.

STUDENT: Why does Padmasambhava choose such a dramatic means of expressing his dissatisfaction with living in a palace? Why does he have to throw a trident and drop his vajra, piercing a heart and cracking a skull? Why doesn't he just walk out?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Walking out sounds like a copout. For him just to disappear and just be discovered as missing sounds like the action of a very transparent person who's afraid to communicate with anything and just flees.
Padmasambhava is much more heavy-handed than that.

STUDENT: Is fear something other than just projections?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Fear is the message as well as the radar. It is usually a relationship situation. It's not absolute. It's not independent of dualism. I think the crazy-wisdom approach to fear is not regarding it as a hangup alone, but realizing it is intelligent. It has a message of its own. Fear is worth respecting. If we dismiss fear as an obstacle and ignore it, then we might end up with accidents. In other words, fear is a very wise message.

S: My experience of fear is that it seems to be a really major manifestation of my confusion. One of the daily experiences is that it's a lie and a trap, a tremendous energy trap. I just try to keep from getting caught up in the impulse of it.

TR: Well you see, the point is, you can't con fear or frighten fear. You have to respect fear. You might try to tell yourself that it's not real, that it's just false. But that kind of approach is very questionable. It is better to develop some kind of respect, realizing that neurosis also is a message, rather than garbage that you should just throw away. That's the whole starting point -- the idea of samsara and nirvana being one. Samsara is not regarded as a nuisance alone, but it has its own potent message that is worthy of respect.

S: I'm far from throwing it away, but at the same time, I don't want to centralize it as an issue, to make a mystery out of it. So it's a very fine balance between not throwing it away and trying to let it go.

TR: Well, you have experience already and you don't have to question the experiencer on how to handle it diplomatically.

S: There doesn't seem to be much choice. The fear has such tremendous power.

TR : Well, that's fine. Then you have no chance to think about it or strategize it. Just leap.

S: There's a kind of fear that's a threat to the ego, when it's one of your illusions that feels threatened. Is there a difference between that kind of fear and the fear of going beyond your real limitations?

TR: There seems to be one, yes. There is the fear of not being able to handle what you have, and there's also a sense of needing something more than what you have. Hesitation to deal with what you have can be conquered by a leap, but needing to improvise further entertainment is a deception.

S: The deception of going beyond your limitations.

TR: Yes.

S: Can you take a leap without worrying about your limitations?

TR: Well, if you can, leap. Otherwise, you can't leap either. If you can, take a leap. Then, as you leap, you come back naturally [to the proper relationship to your limitations]. Unless you try to take a sensational leap. In that case, you don't even know what you're doing, but you do it because you want to entertain yourself. It's like taking an overdose.

STUDENT: Is the sense of discovery you talk about the same as keeping your space open, or is it a different idea?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, that seems to be it. Discovery doesn't have to be a manifestation of something. It's an attitude of being willing to accommodate whatever comes along. It is somewhat a sense of the duality of something.

S: Quite often in spiritual trips, particularly when they have spectacular practices, there's a tendency to want some practice that you don't know anything about. Would you think of that as a case of helpful inquisitiveness or discovery?

TR: Not if you don't know what you're getting into. There's a difference between exploring what is there and exploring what isn't there. When a child is playing with the razor's edge, the razor is there and the honey is there on the razor's edge. But if the child is exploring something outside, beyond the edge of the balcony, there's nothing beyond the balcony except a sheer drop. That is suicidal.

STUDENT: When one comes to crazy wisdom, why does one man become like the Madman of Tsang and another become a person like your guru?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: I think it just depends on our manifestation and our way of viewing things. It's a question of what we are ready for. My guru was the audience for the Madman of Tsang, and I was the audience for my guru. I wasn't all that crazy at the time, so he wasn't very crazy. But the Madman of Tsang was as crazy as he was because my guru was crazy enough to relate with it.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:00 am

Image
Nyima Oser

4. Death and the Sense of Experience

THE YOUTHFUL PRINCE'S EXPLORATION of life situations is connected with a sense of eternity. Exploring life situations is making friends with the world, and making friends with the world consists of regarding the world as trustworthy. [It becomes trustworthy because] there is something eternal about it. When we talk about eternity, we are not talking about the eternity of one particular entity continuing on and on, as in the philosophical beliefs of the eternalists. In this case discontinuity is also an expression of eternity. But before discussing eternity, it might be good to discuss death.

Death is the desolate experience in which our habitual patterns cannot continue as we would like them to. Our habitual patterns cease to function. A new force, a new energy, takes us over, which is "deathness," or discontinuity. It is impossible to approach that discontinuity from any angle. That discontinuity is something you cannot communicate with, because you cannot please that particular force. You can't make friends with it, you can't con it, you can't talk it into anything. It is extremely powerful and uncompromising.

This uncompromisingness also blocks expectations for the future. We have our plans -- projects of all kinds that we would like to work on. Even if we are bored with life, we would still like to be able to recover that boredom. There is constant hope that something better might come out of the painful situations of life, or that we might discover some further way to expand pleasurable situations. But the sense of death is very powerful, very organic, and very real.

When you are about to die, it may be that your doctors, your relatives, or your closest friends won't tell you you are going to die. They might find it difficult to communicate this to you. But they communicate an unspoken sympathy, and there is something behind it.

In the conventional world, people do not want to relate with a friend who is dying. They do not want to relate to their friend's experience of death as something personal. It is a mutual embarrassment, a mutual tragedy that they don't want to talk about. If we belong to less conventional circles, we might approach a dying person and say, "You are dying," but at the same time we try to tell him: "After all, this is nothing bad that's happening to you. You are going to be okay. Think of those promises about ongoing eternity you've heard. Think of God, think of salvation." We still don't want to get to the heart of the matter. We don't talk about purgatory or hell or the tormenting experience of the pardo. We are trying to face the situation, but it is embarrassing. Though we are brave enough to say that someone is going to die, we say: "But still, you're going to be okay. Everybody around you feels positive about this, and we love you. Take the love that we feel toward you with you and make something of it as you pass from this world, as you die." That's the attitude [of avoidance] we have toward death.

The actual experience of death, as I have already explained, is a sense of ceasing to exist. The normal routine of your daily life ceases to function and you turn into something else. The basic impact of the experience is the same whether you believe in rebirth or not: it is the discontinuity of what you are doing. You are leaving your present associates behind. You will no longer be able to read that book that you didn't finish. You will not be able to continue the course you were taking. Maybe people who are involved with the doctrine of rebirth might try to tell you, "When you come back, you will finish this book. You'll be back with us. Maybe you'll be one of our children. Think of those possibilities." They tend to say those kinds of things and make promises of all kinds. They make promises about being with God or coming back to the world and continuing with things you have left behind.

In this kind of talk, there is something that is not quite open. There is some kind of fear, mutual fear, even in spite of beliefs about eternity or reincarnation. There is fear or embarrassment about relating to death. There is always a feeling of something undesirable, even if you are reading your friend a chapter from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, [5] or whatever. You might tell your friend, "Though something terrible is happening to you, there is a greater thing. Now you are actually going to have a chance to get into those experiences described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. And we'll help you do it!" But no matter what we try, there is this sense of something that can't be made all right, no matter what kind of positive picture we try to paint.

It seems, quite surprisingly, that for many people, particularly in the West, reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead for the first time is very exciting. Pondering on this fact, I have come to the conclusion that the excitement comes from the fact that tremendous promises are being made. Fascination with the promises made in the Book of the Dead almost undermines death itself. We have been looking for so long for a way to undermine our irritations, including death itself. Rich people spend a lot of money on coffins, on makeup for the corpse, on good clothes to dress it up in. They pay for expensive funeral systems. They will try any way at all to undermine the embarrassment connected with death. That is why The Tibetan Book of the Dead is so popular and is considered to be so fantastic.

People were very excited and celebratory about the idea of reincarnation in the same way. A few decades ago when the idea of reincarnation became current for the first time, everybody was excited about it. That's another way of undermining death. "You're going to continue; you have your karmic debts to work out and your friends to come back to. Maybe you will come back as my child." Nobody stopped to consider that they might come back as a mosquito or a pet dog or cat.

The type of approach to death we have been discussing is very strange, extremely strange.

When we discuss the discovery of eternity by Vajradhara, as the next aspect of Padmasambhava is called, we are not looking at it as a victory over death or as a replacement for the irritations of death or anything of that nature. Eternity in this sense is connected with a true vision of the facts of life. Pain exists and pleasure exists. A negative aspect of the world does exist. Yet you can still relate with it. Fundamentally, developing this kind of sense of eternity is making friends. We might regard a certain person as a good friend in spite of his threatening qualities. In fact, that is the reason we become friends.

Relating with eternity in this sense is becoming a king of life, a lord of life. And if the lord of life is really a lord, his empire extends to death as well. So the lord of life is the lord of life and death. And this lord of life is known as Vajradhara.

The young prince who has just fled from his kingdom suddenly decides to adapt to the savagery of the charnel ground and to the fundamental principle of eternity, which is often known as the mahamudra experience. The mahamudra experience here is the experience that relates with the living quality of phenomena. That is to say, the whole scene in the charnel ground is real. There are skeletons, pieces of bodies, wild animals, ravens, jackals, and so forth.

In the charnel ground, the young prince discovers a new approach to life, or rather, a new approach to life discovers him. We could say that at this stage Padmasambhava becomes a solid citizen, because the sense of eternity brings indestructibility, indestructibility in the sense that nothing can be a threat and nothing can produce comfort. That is the kind of eternity we are referring to here. Death is no longer regarded as a threat. Padmasambhava's experience of death is an experience of one of the aspects of life. He is not concerned with perpetuating his personality and existence. We could say that this approach is more than the yogi's or siddha's approach. This approach is more that of a buddha, since these experiences are not regarded as achievements of any kind -- they are not discoveries, victories, or forms of revenge. These experiences simply take place; and because they happen, Padmasambhava tunes in to them. So Padmasambhava as Vajradhara becomes the lord of life and death, the holder of the vajra, the holder of indestructible energy -- a sambhogakaya buddha.

The next journey that Padmasambhava makes is connected with his wanting to explore all kinds of teaching situations and wanting to relate with the great teachers of the world of that time. He visits one of the leading teachers of the maha ati tradition, Shri Simha, who supposedly came from Thailand, Siam, and was living in a cave in another charnel ground. Vajradhara, the sambhogakaya aspect of Padmasambhava, went and asked him how to destroy the sense of experience. And Shri Simha reduced Padmasambhava to the syllable HUM, which is penetration. You don't try to dissolve experience or try to regard it as a fallacy. You penetrate experience. Experience is like a container with lots of holes in it, which means that it cannot give you proper shelter, proper comfort. Penetrating or puncturing this is like puncturing a comfortable hammock hanging underneath a tree: [once it is punctured,] when you approach it and try to sit in it, you find that you end up on the ground. That's the penetration of the seed syllable HUM. Reducing Padmasambhava to HUM, Shri Simha swallows him through his mouth and shits him out through his anus. This is bringing him to the nirmanakaya experience of being able to penetrate the phenomenal world thoroughly and completely, of being able to transmit a message to the phenomenal world.

Having destroyed his own sense of survival and achieved a sense of eternity, Padmasambhava now develops a sense of penetration. (Of course, he isn't really developing anything, he is just going through these phases. We are telling the story of Padmasambhava in accordance with how we have manufactured him, rather than trying to express that he did all those things.) This is when Padmasambhava became known as the great yogi who could control time, who could control day and night and the four seasons. This yogi aspect of Padmasambhava is called Nyima Oser. Nyima Oser penetrated all the conceptualizations of time,
day and night, the four seasons. In his iconography, he is seen holding the sun still, using its rays as a tether.

The idea here is not that some achievement of a subtle experience can bring you to such complete absorption that you cease to experience the distinctions between night and day and the four seasons. Rather, the conceptualized attitudes toward day and night and the four seasons -- or toward pain and pleasure or whatever -- are penetrated through. Usually day and night and the four seasons bring us comfort by giving us the feeling we are relating with reality, with the elements: "Now we are relating with summer, now we are relating with autumn, now we are relating with winter, and now we are relating with spring. How good to be alive! How good to be on earth, man's best place, his home! It's getting late; it's time for dinner. We could begin the day with a hearty breakfast." And so forth. Our life-style is governed by these concepts. There are lots of things to do as time goes along, and relating with them is like swinging in a hammock, a comfortable bed in the open air. But Nyima Oser punctured this hammock. Now you can't have a good time swinging and having a comfortable snooze in the open air. That's the penetrating quality here.

STUDENT: You are having a comfortable snooze in this hammock. Then you penetrate the comfortable appearance of this hammock. So where does that leave you -- standing up?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: You find yourself on the ground.

S: But alert somehow?

TR: Yes. One of the qualities seems to be a sense of awake rather than absorption.

STUDENT: If Padmasambhava is the great yogi who controls time, does that mean that time doesn't control him the way it does us?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It's not really a matter of controlling time; or not being controlled by it. It's discovering timelessness. If you translate this into a kind of peasant language, then you could say "controlling time."

STUDENT: You have repeatedly emphasized that Padmasambhava doesn't learn anything and in a sense knows everything. I don't understand why we can't look upon him as an ordinary human, like any one of us, who has learned various things at various stages.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: We could equally well relate without own stages in this way. Our process of spiritual development, or whatever you want to call it, is an unlearning process rather than one of collecting new experiences. Padmasambhava's style is unmasking, unlearning -- layers and layers of phenomenal covering are gradually removed.

S: The unmasking, or unlearning, process seems to be like a series of deaths. Why does that have to be so painful? Why can't it be like a kind of liberation and have a kind of joyous feeling?

TR: Well, it is joyous, and maybe we are complaining too much. We are more aware of the intensity of the darkness than of the brilliance of the light.

S: It seems that the proper way to relate to death is without any strategy. Do you have to give up your fear before you can be without a strategy? Or can you just relate to your fear?

TR: Fear is a very interesting thing, actually. It has insight as well as the panicky blind quality. So it seems that if you give up hope of attaining anything, then tuning in to fear is tuning in to insight. And skillful means arises spontaneously out of fear itself, because fear seems to be extremely resourceful. It is the opposite of hopelessness, in fact. But fear also has the element of panic and the deaf and dumb quality -- you know, doing the best you can. But fear without hope seems to be something very insightful.

S: Is fear insightful in that it points to why you were afraid in the first place?

TR: Not only that. It has its own intuitive aspect going beyond just logical conclusions. It has spontaneously existing resourcefulness.

S: Could you say more about that?

TR: When you connect with your fear, you realize you have already leapt, you are already in mid-air. You realize that, and then you become resourceful.

S: Isn't that what we are all doing -- being resourceful out of nowhere?

TR: We don't realize that we're already in mid-air.

STUDENT: Rinpoche, you say that fear without hope would be intelligent. Could the same be said about the other intense emotions?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Hope and fear largely constitute the rest of the emotions. Hope and fear represent the kind of pushing and pulling quality of duality, and all the emotions consist of that. They are different aspects of that; they all seem to be made out of hope and fear of something -- pulling and magnetizing or fending off.

S: Is having fear also desire of the same thing you are afraid of?

TR: Yes, that's the way it is. But when you realize that there is nothing to be desirous of (you know, the desire is the hope aspect of the fear), when you realize that, then you and your fear are left nakedly standing alone.

S: So you just connect with the fear without hope. But how do you do that?

TR: It's relating without feedback. Then the situation automatically intensifies or becomes clear.


S: Can you apply the same approach to anger? If I'm angry,instead of either expressing or suppressing it, I just relate to it? I stop the anger and just relate to the thought process?

TR: You don't stop the anger, you just are the anger. Anger just hangs out as it is. That is relating with the anger. Then the anger becomes vivid and directionless, and it diffuses into energy. The idea of relating with it has nothing to do with expressing yourself to the other person. The Tibetan expression for that is rang sar shak, which means "leave it in its own place." Let anger be in its own place.

STUDENT: I still don't understand what we should try to communicate to a dying person.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: You see, death is a very real experience. Usually, we do not connect with a sense of reality. If we have an accident -- or whatever happens in our lives -- we do not regard it as a real experience, even though it may hurt us. It is real to us as far as pain and physical damage are concerned, but still it's not real for us because we immediately look at it in terms of how it could be otherwise. There's always the idea of first aid or some other redeeming aspect of the situation. If you are talking to a dying friend or relative, you should transmit the idea that death is a real experience, rather than that it's just a joke and the person could get better. Often people tell the dying person things like: "Life is really a joke altogether. The great saints say it's not real. Life is unreal. What is death, anyway?" When we try to take this kind of approach, we become jumpy ourselves; and that jumpiness is what we end up communicating to the dying person. We should help them to understand that death is real.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:01 am

5. The Lion's Roar

WE HAVE LOOKED INTO THE IDEA of timelessness, or eternity. It might be necessary for us now to look a bit further. Conquering or transcending the sense of experience brings us to something completely nondualistic. We might call it sanity. The aspect of Padmasambhava known as Nyima Oser displayed sanity in relating to the concept of time and to ideas or experiences connected with spiritual achievement. Having looked briefly into his example, we might now go ahead and discuss another aspect of Padmasambhava: Shakya Senge, Padmasambhava as buddha.

The principle connected with this aspect of Padmasambhava is that, once one has already conquered any sense of gaining anything in the relative world, one has to go ahead and make a relationship with complete and total sanity, the awakened state of mind. Shakya Senge, Padmasambhava as buddha, is concerned with this. Shakya Senge is not buddha in the hinayana sense but in the mahayana sense. The mahayana style of Padmasambhava has to do with utterance of the lion's roar, which in the mahayana teaching refers to proclaiming the teaching of shunyata, the ultimate sanity. So, this aspect of Padmasambhava is connected with the expression of the ultimate sanity.

You might ask, "How could this ultimate sanity go further than conquering conceptuality and the sense of experience? Is there something more than that? Isn't that enough?" At this point, there is something more subtle than that. Conquering conceptuality and the sense of experience is a step toward proclamation. First you have to conquer the enemy, then you can proclaim that you have gained victory over him. In making the proclamation referred to as the lion's roar, Padmasambhava as buddha further emphasizes that sanity. The lion's roar is not regarded as a challenge, but as an adornment. It is not a challenge concerning whether the conquering process has been accomplished or not. Rather, when you have already achieved victory, then the victory brings a sense of good news. Proclamation of this good news is the lion's roar.

In connection with Padmasambhava's life, good news is ultimate good news. It is the good news that the spiritual journey need never have been made. The journey has already been completed, therefore there's no point in searching or trying to gain further insights. The needlessness of making the spiritual journey is the good news. That is the lion's roar. This is something much more than what the mahayana sutras talk about. The mahayana sutras talk about attainment of perfect sanity through realizing that form is emptiness and emptiness is form, and so forth. But the lion's roar that we are talking about here is something much more than that. It goes further in that the ultimate good news is independent of any victory. It is ultimate.

What is Padmasambhava's style of manifesting crazy wisdom in this context? He is the universal monarch who looks down over the yanas of the teachings rather than up to them.

According to the story, Padmasambhava studied with Ananda, the attendant and disciple of the Buddha. He was ordained by Ananda as a bhikshu, and he attained understanding of the message of the Buddha. Padmasambhava regarded Ananda, the Buddha's disciple, more as a guru than as a preceptor. That is an important distinction. He regarded him as a guru rather than as a master of discipline, an informant, a professor, or a teacher in the ordinary sense, because Ananda was in the direct lineage of transmission from the Buddha. This meant that working with him involved a living relationship with the teachings.

Padmasambhava's realization here is something we can relate to as well. The sense of dignity that speaks out and expresses that the journey need never have been made is true. The idea that the spiritual journey needs to be made is a deception. From that point of view, even the ten bhumis of the bodhisattva path are a sophistry. Since there are no bhumis at all, how could there be ten of them?

Seeing things in this way is a part of the crazy wisdom of directness, complete directness. It involves directly relating with sanity, or bodhi mind, with the experience of the Buddha when he attained vajralike samadhi sitting in the shade of the bodhi tree. It is also a further step toward trusting in buddha-nature. At this point, we cannot even call it buddha-nature, because "nature" automatically implies something embryonic. But in this case, we are not talking about something embryonic but about the living Buddha. Padmasambhava associated himself with the Buddha and discovered sanity. He related with Ananda as the messenger who awakened his inspiration.

A guru does not really transmit spiritual entities into us or through us. A guru just reminds us that there is sanity already in us. So Ananda only provided, or for that matter Padmasambhava only provides, a reminder that things are so in this way.

We might find it difficult to follow what this experience is about or to identify ourselves with it. We might find hearing about this like listening to a story in which such-and-such a thing happened and then after that everybody lived happily ever after. But the story of Padmasambhava should be something more than that. If we actually relate with what happens in the life of Padmasambhava, we will find that it is quite realistic and personal. We acknowledge sanity, and then sanity comes about by itself.

Acknowledging sanity is a discipline or a pretense: you pretend to be the Buddha, you believe you are the Buddha. Again, we are not talking about buddha-nature as an embryonic state, but of the living situation of buddhahood having already happened. We adopt such a pretense at the beginning, or maybe we should call it a belief. It is a belief in the sense that our buddhahood is seemingly not real but we take it as a reality. Some element of mind's trickery is necessary. And then we find ourselves having been tricked into enlightenment.

There are all kinds of tricks that exist as part of the teaching process. They are known as skillful means. That seems to be something of a euphemism.

Skillful means are part of the spiritual tradition. The lineage gurus' conduct in relating with students is a traditional discipline. Skillful means are necessary, because there is a tendency to run away from sanity of this nature. Students might find sanity too spacious, too irritating. We would prefer a little claustrophobic insanity, snug and comforting insanity. Getting into that is like crawling back into a marsupial's pouch. That's the usual tendency, because acknowledging precision and sanity is too crispy, too cool, too cold. It's too early to wake up; we'd rather go back to bed. Going back to bed is relating to the mind's deceptions, which in fact we prefer. We like to get a little bit confused and set up our homes in that. We don't prefer sanity or enlightenment in fact. That seems to be the problem rather than that we don't have it or can't get it. If we really prefer basic sanity or enlightenment, it's irritatingly possible to get into it.

That seems to have been the approach of Padmasambhava's aspect Shakya Senge: he preferred to become like the Buddha. He went to see Ananda and talked to him about the Buddha. He studied with Ananda, worked with him, and he became buddha. You might say, "That's too quick," but nevertheless, it happened.

Then we have another aspect of Padmasambhava, called Senge Dradrok, which again is connected with the lion's roar. The name actually means "lion's roar" or, more literally, "making a noise like a lion." In this aspect, Padmasambhava manifests as a defender of the faith, a great magician.

At that time in India, there were major incursions of heretics, or tirthikas, as they are known in Sanskrit. They were Hindus. They are referred to as heretics because of their belief in duality -- in the existence of an external divine being and in the existence of atman as the recipient of that divine being.


Of course you might criticize this approach, saying that we all should have high regard for the sacred writings of Hinduism, especially the mystical teachings of Hinduism such as the Vedanta. And actually, the vedantic writings themselves do not quite express things dualistically; they are not quite in the dualistic style of spirituality. But the heretics that Padmasambhava was dealing with were believers in the literal truth of dualism. They misunderstood the real depth of the mystic teachings and believed in an external god and an internal ego. Strangely enough, believing in this kind of separateness can bring about very powerful psychic powers. Miracles of all kinds can be performed, and some technical and intellectual understanding of the teachings can be developed.

In relation to these heretics, Padmasambhava acted as an organic agent, an agent of the natural action of the elements. If you mistreat the fire in your fireplace, your house will catch fire. If you don't pay enough attention while cutting your carrots, you might cut your finger. It is this mindlessness and mistreatment of the natural situation that is the heretical quality. Rather than regarding existing situations of nonduality as they are, you try to interpret them a bit so that they help to maintain your existence. For example, believing in God is a way of making sure that you exist. Singing a song of praise to God makes you happier, because you are singing the song about him. Since there is a good audience, a good recipient, therefore God exists. That kind of approach is heretical from the Buddhist point of view.

At that time, the great Buddhist monasteries in a certain part of India were being challenged by Hindu pandits. The Hindu pandits were coming to the monasteries and teaching, and the monks were rapidly turning into Hindus. It was a tremendous catastrophe. So Padmasambhava was asked to come. Those who invited him said, "We can't seem to match those Hindu pandits intellectually, so please save us by performing some magic for us. Maybe that is the only solution."

Padmasambhava came to live in one of the monasteries. One day, he produced an earthquake by pointing his trident in the direction of the Hindu pandits. There were landslides, and five hundred Hindu pandits were destroyed.


What do you make of that?

When somebody becomes unreasonable, they create their own destruction. By putting it that way, I am not trying to make sure that you are not put off by Padmasambhava and his activities. I am not acting as his spokesman and saying,"He's good anyway, in spite of those actions of his." It is simply that with him acting as the agent of the elements, of the organic process, the unreasonable and man-made element had to be diminished.

We find, in the next place, the doctrine of Elemental spirits. "When you shall be numbered among the Children of the philosophers," says the "Comte de Gabalis," "and when your eyes shall have been strengthened by the use of the most sacred medecine, you will learn that the Elements are inhabited by creatures of a singular perfection, from the knowledge of, and communication with, whom the sin of Adam has deprived his most wretched posterity. Yon vast space stretching between earth and Heaven has far nobler dwellers than the birds and the gnats; these wide seas hold other guests than the whales and the dolphins; the depths of the earth are not reserved for the moles alone; and that element of fire which is nobler than all the rest was not created to remain void and useless." According to Paracelsus, "the Elementals are not spirits, because they have flesh, blood, and bones; they live and propagate offspring; they eat and talk, act and sleep, &c.... They are beings occupying a place between men and spirits, resembling men and women in their organisation and form, and resembling spirits in the rapidity of their locomotion." They must not be confounded with the Elementaries which are the astral bodies of the dead. [2] They are divided into four classes. "The air is replete with an innumerable multitude of creatures, having human shapes, somewhat fierce in appearance, but docile in reality; great lovers of the sciences, subtle, serviceable to the Sages, and enemies of the foolish and ignorant. Their wives and daughters are beauties of the masculine type.... The seas and streams are inhabited even as the air; the ancient Sages gave the names of Undines or Nymphs to these Elementals. There are few males among them, and the women are very numerous, and of extreme beauty; the daughters of men cannot compare with them. The earth is filled by gnomes even to its centre, creatures of diminutive size, guardians of mines, treasures, and precious stones. They furnish the Children of the Sages with all the money they desire, and ask little for their services but the distinction of being commanded. The gnomides, their wives, are tiny, but very pleasing, and their apparel is exceedingly curious. As to the Salamanders, those fiery dwellers in the realm of flame, they serve the Philosophers, but do not eagerly seek their company, and their wives and daughters are seldom visible. They transcend all the others in beauty, for they are natives of a purer element."

-- The Real History of the Rosicrucians, by Arthur Edward Waite


"While embodied in matter," [the ancient Nyaya Philosophers] said, "the Soul is in a state of imprisonment, and is under the influence of evil passions; but having, by intense study, arrived at the knowledge of the elements and principles of Nature, it attains unto the place of THE ETERNAL"

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike


People in Bhutan were recently trying to build a road from India to Bhutan, called the Bhutan National Highway. They were building and building. They had bulldozers and they had Indian road-making experts. They spent millions and millions of rupees, and they built a beautiful road. But when the rainy season came, the whole road was swept away by tremendous landslides. By building a road you interfere with the mountain, with the structure of the rock. As the only possible reaction of nature to that disturbance, landslides develop. Then once again there is another project requiring millions of rupees, and this process goes on and on.

The last time it happened was when the president of India was paying a state visit to Bhutan. The airplane that was carrying India's gifts to the Bhutanese king and government got lost in the mist and crashed in the Bhutanese mountains. And as the Indian president was preparing to return to India, sudden landslides took place as a farewell gesture to him.

I'm not saying that the president of India is a heretic, but the definition of heresy here is very delicate. If you are not in tune with the nature of reality, you are making yourself into a target, an extra satellite. And there's no one to feed you. There's no fuel for you except your own resources, and you are bound to die because you can't keep regenerating without further resources. That is what happened to the pandits whom Padmasambhava killed. This is very uncompassionate or outrageous, but Padmasambhava in this case is representing the nature of reality rather than acting as a black magician or white magician.

It seems that we cannot be instructed how to perform acts such as the destruction of the pandits. Although the teachings have been handed down through generations and generations without interruption or perversion, so that even now we possess the complete teachings of Padmasambhava, none of those teachings talk about how to kill heretics. There are no such teachings. But the teachings do talk about how to work with practice and your attitude toward it organically. You do that, and the perverters of the teachings destroy themselves. That seems to be the basic message here. That seems to be the aspect of Padmasambhava called "Lion's Roar," Senge Dradrok.

STUDENT: Will the elements also organically protect those who don't pervert the teachings?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Maybe.

STUDENT: Is Padmasambhava's organic action in connection with the elements the same as the action of the dharmapalas, the protectors of the teachings?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Somewhat, yes. But it is also more than the action of the dharmapalas. The dharmapalas are just sort of reminders. But in this case, there is a complete message.

S: Isn't what you are calling the "action of the elements" or "a complete message" in a sense just karmic action?

TR: It is karmic action in the sense that there is an organic thing happening, but there's also something specially organic, which has the quality of being deliberate. There seem to be two patterns. There is a difference between a landslide occurring in the area of a coal mine and the landslide that happened in the heretics' home.


STUDENT: This business of tricking yourself into being buddha is not at all clear to me. It sounds so un-Buddhist to use your mind to trick yourself. Is that different from what you talk about as deception, as conning yourself, conning experience?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It's quite different. The deception of conning yourself has to be based on elaborate strategies. Tricking yourself into becoming buddha is immediate. It happens on the spot.


S: But if I say to myself, "I am buddha" when I don't really know what buddha is --

TR: It doesn't really matter. That's the whole point -- we don't know what buddha is. And maybe not knowing what buddha is, is buddha.

S: Well, it doesn't seem like you actually do anything then. Do you do something?

TR: It's up to you.You have to develop your own system.

S: Does it differ from just confidence?

TR: Yes, It's a quick switch, as if the carpet were being pulled out from under your feet. Or your feet were being pulled over the carpet. It's true. It can be done.


S: It's like tripping-out then?

TR: Tripping-out takes a lot of preparation. But if you are tricked, it takes you by surprise, as though nothing had happened.

S: Is that connected with visualizations and mantra practice?

TR: It's something much more immediate than that. It's just a change of attitude. Instead of trying to become buddha, you suddenly realize that buddha is trying to become you.

S: Does this have anything to do with an abhisheka, an empowerment?

TR: I think so, yes. That's what's called the fourth abhisheka, the sudden introduction of nowness.

S: It seems that there's a whole process of preparation that's necessary for this shift in perspective to take place.

TR: You have to be willing to do that. That's liberation. Apart from that, there is nothing more. It's a question of your being willing to do it; that's the important point. You have to be willing to commit yourself to go through the discomforts that might occur after you are buddha.

STUDENT: Earlier you talked about eternity and Padmasambhava being turned into a HUM. Would being turned into a HUM be like a death experience? Would you have to dissolve in order to penetrate experience; would you have to die?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Penetration is not particularly connected with death. Being turned into a HUM is becoming an intense person. You become a capsulized being. You are reduced to a capsule, a very concentrated sense of being yourself. You are just a grain of sand. It is not dissolving but being intensified into one dot.

S: When Shri Simha swallowed Padmasambhava and shat him out, was that still him?

TR: Naturally. The analogy is swallowing a diamond. When you shit it out, it's still a genuine diamond.

STUDENT: Penetration seems to involve a sense of sharpness. You're in the midst of an egoistic manipulation, and then something wakes you up with a kind of sharpness.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: The sharpness that cuts through neurotic mind seems to be like a two-edged razor that cuts in both directions simultaneously, so the only thing that exists is the sharpness itself. It's not like a needle, not like an axe. It cuts both the projection and the projector at the same time. That is why there is a craziness aspect: the user gets cut by that razor as well as what he is using it on. That makes it humorous, too. Nobody wins the battle. The enemy gets destroyed and the defender gets destroyed as well -- simultaneously -- so it's very crazy. Usually if you're fighting against something, you're supposed to win, but in this case you don't. Both sides get destroyed. Nobody wins. In other words, both win.

STUDENT: This seems to be connected with shunyata. There could be a gap at any instant, and then there seems to be another kind of sharpness --

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: That's quite different. When there's a sense of gap, there's no blade to cut anything. It's self-perpetuating in the sense of HUM. From that point of view, the shunyata experience and crazy wisdom are different. Compared to crazy wisdom, shunyata provides a home, a mutual home, a comfortable home, whereas crazy wisdom provides a constant cutting process. The tantric approach is related with energy; the shunyata experience is just wisdom alone, wisdom without energy. It's a discovery, an experience, a nest of some kind.

STUDENT: What was Padmasambhava's motivation in wanting to become buddha? I'm thinking of what you said earlier: we don't want that uncomfortable state; we want the comfort of claustrophobia and insanity.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Yes. I suppose as far as samsaric mind is concerned, it's a perverted motivation. It is going against that tendency of wanting a home. It goes against the grain of what our parents always say to us: "Don't you want to get married and have a job and a comfortable home instead of just sitting and meditating?"

S: But is there some motivation that is not from the samsaric point of view, but that exists in its own right?

TR: Outlandishness. Being uncivilized.

S: Is that a part of ourselves that we could discover or cultivate in some way?

TR: That's what we have to see. That's what we have to find out. There's no prescription.

S: Is this outlandishness something that we already experience occasionally as part of our lives or something we haven't experienced yet?

TR: I don't know. Let's find out.


Jung additionally says in this 1918 essay, "The soil of every country holds some such mystery. We have an unconscious reflection of this in the psyche; just as there is a relationship of mind to body, so there is a relationship of body to earth." [85] Therefore, since the relationship of Jews to the earth is different than that of the Germanic peoples, the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler could only apply to Jews. "But these specifically Jewish doctrines are thoroughly unsatisfying to the Germanic mentality; we still have a genuine barbarian in us who is not to be trifled with." [86] This Germanic barbarian within is, according to Jung, an "anti-Christian" one, and although Jung warns it can "turn against us" (that is, against Germans like Jung), "it is a still untouched fortune, an uncorrupted treasure, a sign of youthfulness, an earnest of rebirth."

-- The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, by Richard Noll


The morality now prevailing ‘gilds, deifies, transports beyond the tomb, the non-egoistical instincts of compassion, self-denial, and self-sacrifice.’ But this morality of compassion ‘is humanity’s great danger, the beginning of the end, the halting, the backward-glancing fatigue of the will, turning against life.’ ‘We need a criticism of moral values. The value of these values is first of all itself to be put in question. There has hitherto been no hesitation in setting up good as of higher value than evil, of higher value in the sense of advancement, utility, prosperity, as regards man in general, including the future of man. What if truth lay in the contrary? What if good were a symptom of retrogression, a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic, by means of which the present should live at the cost of the future? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but also on a smaller scale, more basely? So that precisely morality would be to blame for the fact that the highest might and splendour possible to the human type should never be attained? So that morality should be precisely the danger of dangers?’

Nietzsche replies to these questions thrown out by him in the preface to the book Zur Genealogie der Moral, in developing his idea of the genesis of present morality.

He sees at the beginnings of civilization ‘a beast of prey, a magnificent blond brute, ranging about and lusting for booty and victory.’ These ‘unchained beasts of prey were free from every social restraint; in the innocence of their wild-beast conscience they returned as exultant monsters from a horrible train of murder, incendiarism, rapine, torture, with an arrogance and composure as if nothing but a student’s freak had been perpetrated.’ The blond beasts constituted the noble races. They fell upon the less noble races, conquered them, and made slaves of them. ‘A herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, with military organization’ (this word ‘organization’ should be noticed; we shall have to revert to it), ‘with the power to organize, unscrupulously placing their fearful paws upon a population perhaps vastly superior in numbers, but still amorphous and wandering—this herd founded the State. The dream is dispelled which made the State begin with a contract. What has he to do with contracts, who can[422] command, who is master by nature, who comes on the scene with violence in deed and demeanour?’


In the State, then, thus established there were a race of masters and a race of slaves. The master-race first created moral ideas. It distinguished between good and evil. Good was with it synonymous with noble; evil with vulgar. All their own qualities they felt as good; those of the subject race as evil. Good meant severity, cruelty, pride, courage, contempt of danger, joy in risk, extreme unscrupulousness. Bad meant ‘the coward, the nervous, the mean, the narrow utilitarian, and also the distrustful with his disingenuous glance, the self-abasing, the human hound who allows himself to be abused, the begging flatterer—above all, the liar.’ Such is the morality of the masters. The radical meaning of the words now expressing the concept ‘good’ reveals what men represented to themselves as ‘good’ when the moral of the masters still held sway. ‘The Latin bonus I believe I may venture to interpret as “the warrior.” Provided I rightly trace bonus to a more ancient duonus (compare bellum, duellum, duen-lum, in which it seems to me that duonus is contained). Bonus, then, as a man of discord, of disunion (duo), as warrior: whereby it is seen what in ancient Rome constituted the “goodness” of a man.’

The subjugated race had naturally an opposing morality—the morality of the slaves. ‘The slave looks with envy on the virtues of the powerful; he is sceptical and distrustful; he has the cunning of distrust towards everything honoured by them as “good.” Conversely, those qualities were distinguished and glorified which served to ameliorate the existence of sufferers. Here the place of honour is given to compassion, to the complaisant hand ready to help, to the warm heart, to patience, diligence, humility, friendliness, for those are here the most useful qualities, and almost the only means by which the burden of existence can be borne. Slave-morality is essentially utilitarian morality.’

For a certain period the morality of masters and slaves subsisted side by side, or, more accurately, the one above the other. Then an extraordinary event occurred—slave-morality rebelled against master-morality, conquered and dethroned it, and set itself in the place thereof. Then ensued a new valuation of all moral concepts. (In his insane gibberish Nietzsche names this ‘transvaluation of values’—Umwerthung der Werthe.) That which, under the master-morals, had passed for good was now esteemed bad, and vice versâ. Weakness was meritorious, cruelty a crime; self-sacrifice, pity for the pain of others, unselfishness, were virtues. That is what Nietzsche terms ‘the slave revolt in morality.’ ‘The Jews[423] have brought about that marvel of inversion in values. Their prophets have melted into one substance “rich,” “godless,” “wicked,” “violent,” “sensual,” and for the first time minted the word “world” as one of opprobrium. In this inversion of values (to which belongs the use of the word “poor” as a synonym of “holy” and “friend”) lies the importance of the Jewish race.’

The Jewish ‘slave-revolt in morality’ was an act of vengeance on the master-race which had long oppressed the Jews, and the instrument of this vast vengeance was the Saviour. ‘Has not Israel, by the very subterfuge of this “Redeemer,” this seeming adversary and destroyer of Israel, attained the final goal of its sublime rage for vengeance? Does it not belong to the secret black art of a truly grand policy of vengeance, of a far-seeing, underground, slowly-gripping, foreplanning vengeance, that Israel itself should deny the proper instrument of its vengeance before the whole world, as something deadly inimical, and nail him to the cross, in order that the “entire universe,” viz., the enemies of Israel, might unhesitatingly bite at this very bait? And on the other hand, would it be possible, by all the refinement of intellect, to imagine a more dangerous bait? Something that should resemble in enticing, intoxicating, bewildering, corrupting power that symbol of the “holy cross,” that awful paradox of a “God on the cross,” that mystery of an ineffable final and utmost cruelty, and self-crucifixion of God for the salvation of man? It is at least certain that sub hoc signo Israel, with its vengeance and transvaluation of all values, has hitherto triumphed again and again over all other ideals, over all nobler ideals.’

-- Degeneration, by Max Nordau


STUDENT: Is what you said before about buddha trying to become you -- is that the motivating factor?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, there is something very strange going on. You are absolutely comfortable and happy the way you are, yet at the same time you find it excruciatingly painful. You are not certain whether you want to stay the way you are, which is very pleasurable, or not stay the way you are, because it is very painful at the same time. That kind of pushing and pulling happens all the time. That seems to be the motivation. You want to keep your habitual patterns, but at the same time you find them too monotonous -- that's the kind of motivation. I mean, we cannot define that as being something special. We cannot say you are making a journey in some particular direction. The directions are confused. You are not confused about whether you are coming or going, but you still want to do something about the situation. That is the contagious quality of buddha-nature, which is trying to shine through all the time, seemingly.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:02 am

Image
Loden Choksi

6. Intellect and Working with Negativity

THE NEXT ASPECT OF PADMASAMBHAVA is actually called Padmasambhava. For some strange reason, "Padmasambhava" became popular as the general name for all the iconographical aspects of this figure. Maybe a certain Gelukpa influence crept into the naming process. Followers of Padmasambhava in Tibet usually refer to him as Guru Rinpoche or Pema Jungne, "the Lotus-Born," which is Padmakara in Sanskrit. Padmasambhava is then the name of only one of the aspects. It seems this has something to do with a sectarian squabble in which one party holds that Padmasambhava is not a cosmic principle, but just a pandit named Padmasambhava.

In any case, the particular aspect known as Padmasambhava was a pandit, a scholar. He entered Nalanda University and studied what is known as the threefold discipline: meditation, morality, and knowledge, or learning. Those three disciplines correspond to the three sections of the Buddhist scripture called the Tripitaka. One section of the Tripitaka discusses monastic discipline, another the basic teachings of the sutras, and the third the psychological structure of beings.

People frequently ask, "Wouldn't it be possible on the spiritual path not to do any studying at all? Can't we just meditate a lot and learn everything from our experiences?" Many people believe that if you sit and meditate a lot, you don't have to read scriptures or study anything at all. They say that just by meditating everything will come to you. That approach seems to be one-sided. It leaves no room for sharpening the intellect or for disciplining the mind. It also does not take into account the knowledge that protects us from indulging in states of absorption, knowledge that tells us that it is necessary to let go of particular states and bring ourselves into another frame of mind. Study and scholastic learning play an extremely important part for us. This is what is demonstrated by Padmasambhava in his pandit aspect.

One of the problems connected with intellect and intellectual understanding is that if we look for and come up with answers, conclusions, logical deductions, we tend to end up with a high opinion of our understanding. If we develop that, then we may no longer be able to experience things properly or learn anything more from the teachings at all. We become hardened scholars and bookworms. We might begin to feel that practices are unsafe if we do not know what they are, so we have to study them scholastically first. This attitude might go as far as saying that if you really want to study the Buddhist teachings, first you have to learn Sanskrit as well as Japanese or Tibetan. You can't even begin to practice meditation until you have learned those languages and studied the appropriate texts.

This attitude suggests that the student should become a superscholar. When the student has become an extremely perfect scholar, he has attained buddhahood. He has all the answers; he knows everything inside out. This kind of omniscience, according to this view, makes one a buddha.

This view that the enlightened being is a learned person, a great scholar, is a misunderstanding, another extreme. Enlightenment is not purely a matter of collecting information. If a buddha didn't know how to change his snow tires, for example, a person with this view might begin to have doubts about him. After all, he is supposed to be the omniscient one; how could he be a buddha if he doesn't know how to do that? The perfect buddha would be able to surprise you with his knowledge in every area. He would be a good cook, a good mechanic, a good scientist, a good poet, a good musician -- he would be good at everything. That is a diluted and diffused idea of buddha, to say the least. He is not that kind of universal expert, nor a super professor.

But if the proper idea of intellectual understanding and sharpening the intellect is not feeding oneself millions of bits of information and making oneself into a walking library, then what is it? It is connected with developing sharpness and precision in relating with the nature of reality. This has nothing to do with dwelling on logical conclusions or concepts. One has to have a neutral attitude in one's intellectual study of the teaching, one that is neither purely critical nor purely devotional. One doesn't try to come to conclusions. The purpose of study, rather than to come to conclusions, is to experience things logically and sensibly. This seems to be the middle way [between the two extremes of rejecting the intellect and emphasizing it exclusively].

Becoming accomplished in intellectual study usually means forming strong opinions. If you are a scholar, your name becomes worth mentioning if you have made some intellectual discovery. But what we are talking about here is not exactly discovery in the professorial sense, but rather discovery on the level of examining and dealing with personal experience. Through such a process, your personal experience is worked through -- it is beaten, burned, and hammered as in working with gold, to use a scriptural analogy. In dealing with your experience, you eat, you chew, and you finally swallow and digest. In this way, the whole thing becomes workable; your focus is not purely on highlights, such as developing your personality into that of a great learned person -- a Buddhologist or a Tibetologist or something like that.

In other words, intellect here means absence of watcher. If we watch ourselves learning -- watch ourselves growing, developing, becoming more and more scholastic people -- then we are comparing ourselves with "other." We are constantly gaining weight in our egos, because we are comparing ourselves with "other." Whereas if there is experience or intellectual study going on without a watcher, it becomes very simple and direct. This kind of intellect without watcher has qualities similar to what we were describing earlier in connection with the experience of the young prince. It is open, willing to explore. It is without a particular attitude. It is without a sense that you want what is happening to be replaced by something else, that you want your ignorance to be replaced by information. It is a constant discovery of new situations in life and what the teachings and scriptures have to say about them. It means discovering the subtleties and feelings related with different aspects of Buddhism. It means understanding the whole geography of the teachings, so that you are not bewildered by some new approach, some new wisdom. You are not bewildered, because you know what area of human psychology a particular approach is connected with. In this way, whatever comes up in relation to the teaching becomes very simple, very easy and workable. This was the practice exemplified by Padmasambhava as Padmasambhava. He became a great pandit because he worked with his intellect without a watcher. On the basis of his example, we can also work with intellect without a watcher.

You might ask: "If there is no watcher, how do we know that we have understood what we have learned?" But it is possible to approach learning and understanding other than by collecting information for the sake of gaining a new personality, or developing a new ego. That is not the only way. There are other ways for one to be highly scholastic, highly intellectual. It is possible to do that without a watcher.

Another aspect of Padmasambhava is known as Loden Choksi, who was a rajguru, as they call the spiritual teacher of a royal family in India. The way Loden Choksi came to be a rajguru is an interesting story. He was wandering from place to place when he came to a nunnery. He began instructing the head nun there, who was the princess of the kingdom of Sahor. Sahor was somewhere in the area of Himachal Pradesh in present-day northern India. The princess was very precious for this kingdom, because she had been invited to become the queen of a number of neighboring kingdoms, as well as of important kingdoms like China, Persia, and, according to the story, the Roman Empire. Despite these invitations, the princess refused to have anything to do with worldly power and pleasures. She wanted to become a Buddhist nun, and she did. The king of Sahor was extremely fearful that if the princess was not successful in maintaining her nunhood [this would be regarded as a deception and a political affront by those kingdoms whose invitations she had rejected and] that they might attack his kingdom. [Therefore, the king surrounded her with five hundred nuns to guard her in her discipline.]

So Padmasambhava was there giving teachings to the princess and the five hundred nuns when a local cowherd passed by and heard a man's voice coming out of the nunnery. Word of this spread throughout the kingdom and created a huge scandal. At some point, the king and queen and their ministers heard the story. They hoped to be able to expose the scandal as based on a false rumor, but were unable to track down the cowherd who was the original witness. They had a collection of lots of gifts placed at the entrance to the royal courtyard and let it be known that if the original witness would come forward and tell his story, he would receive all these gifts. There was gold, silver, jewelry, silks, and so on. Finally, the herdsman appeared and told his story, which actually seemed to be true. He had no ulterior motive for spreading a scandal in the kingdom.

The king sent one of his ministers to find out what was happening at the nunnery. The minister found the doors completely locked, and the nuns would not let anyone inside, even if it was a messenger from the king who just wanted to inspect. The king suspected that something funny was going on at the nunnery and sent his soldiers to break in. They did so and found Padmasambhava sitting on the throne in the assembly hall, instructing the nuns. The soldiers tried to seize Padmasambhava but found it very difficult, bewilderingly difficult, to get hold of him. They couldn't catch him at all. At this point the king became extremely upset and angry and sent a huge number of troops to the nunnery. The troops finally captured Padmasambhava and all the nuns.

The traditional means of execution of this country was burning the prisoner alive in a sandalwood fire. So they put Padmasambhava in a sandalwood fire, and the princess was put into a dungeon filled with thorns. The sandalwood fire, which usually died after twenty-four hours, continued to burn for a long time. With other criminals there was usually no difficulty, but in this case the fire continued to burn and smoke for about three weeks. The king and the people began to wonder what the problem was. Could it be possible that there was something unusual about this wanderer they had burned? The king decided he wanted to collect some pieces of this wanderer's bones in case they might have interesting magical properties. He sent a messenger to the place where the fire was, and the messenger found that a huge lake had appeared on the spot, with logs still aflame around the edges of it. In the middle of this lake was a lotus flower with Padmasambhava sitting on it.

The king realized he had made a big mistake and began speaking to Padmasambhava. Padmasambhava sang a song, saying, "Welcome to the great sinner, welcome to the king trapped in confusion," and so forth. The king invited Padmasambhava to come to his palace. Padmasambhava finally accepted his invitation. At this point, according to the story, Padmasambhava conducted sadhana practices of the vajradhatu mandala at the king's palace. The result, according to the story, is that the kingdom was completely emptied out in seven years' time. The whole civilization dissolved as people became great yogis and found there was no point in sticking to ordinary domestic work. They all became crazy.

In this story, Loden Choksi, the rajguru aspect of Padmasambhava, performed a miracle. His miracle was not merely converting the king; the miracle was his manner of dealing with whatever threats or accusations arose. Loden Choksi manifested the invincibility of Padmasambhava. Any challenge to him, rather than being viewed as a threat, turned into a further adornment of his action. Using obstacles as a way of working with life situations plays a very important part in crazy wisdom.

This may be a familiar idea for people already exposed to the teachings of crazy wisdom, but for most people, who think of spirituality as based purely on goodness, any kind of opposition or obstacle is considered a manifestation of evil. Regarding obstacles as adornments is quite an unusual idea. If there is a threat to the teacher or the teaching, it tends to be categorized immediately as the "work of the devil." In this view, the idea is to try not to relate to the obstacles or threats, but to cast them out as something bad, something antagonistic to the teaching. You should just purify yourself of this work of the devil. You should abandon it, rather than exploring it as part of the organic and integral development of the situation you are working with. You regard it purely as a problem.


I suppose if those of us already familiar with these teachings would look into ourselves on a very subtle level, we might still find some element of this approach. Although we know the philosophy and the ideas -- we know we are supposed to work with negativity and use it as an adornment -- nevertheless there is still some sense of trying to find alternatives, of trying to find some kind of underlying promise.

Actually, this happens quite a lot with our students. People talk about relating to negativity as part of the development of the situation, but then they regard this approach in itself as an alternative way of solving the problem of negativity. Even older students are constantly asking questions, publicly and in private, based on this alternative-solution approach. They still believe that there is a "best way"; they still believe there is a way to some kind of happiness. Although we know we are supposed to relate to pain and misery as part of the path, we still try to regard that as a way to happiness, as a way of solving the problem, as a better alternative. If we had been Padmasambhava as the rajguru, we would have tried to talk to the guards who arrested us before they put us in the fire. We would have said: "This is a great mistake; you mustn't do this. You don't understand what you're doing." We would try this, rather than letting the event happen, rather than letting action speak louder than words.

There still seems to be some kind of timidity in our general approach. We are timid in the sense that, no matter how subtle or obvious the teachings may be, we are still not reconciled to the notion that "pain and pleasure alike are ornaments which it is pleasant to wear." [6] We might read it, we might say it, but still we find it magnificent to twist the twist and feel that misery or negativity is good: "We have to work with it. Okay, I've been doing that. Lately I've been finding all kinds of rough and rugged things going on in my mind and in my life. It's not particularly pleasant, but all in all it's interesting for me." There is some tinge of hope. The idea of finding the negativity "interesting" is that somehow as we go along we will be saved. The unspoken implication is that finally the whole thing is going to be good and pleasurable. It's very subtle. It is almost as though there's an unspoken agreement that in the end all roads are going to lead to Rome.

We are still struggling along with the hinayana mentality, even though we are talking about the most profound teachings of crazy wisdom. We are still thinking this crazy wisdom might lead us to happiness, that the crutches of the vajrayana might help us to walk on a good hinayana path. This shows that we have not related to the whole thing as hopeless -- absolutely hopeless -- at all. Even hopelessness has been regarded as a solution. That cop-out is still happening. We are still going on as though there were this silent agreement that, no matter what we say, we are working toward some kind of happiness. But Padmasambhava in his aspect of rajguru was not concerned about that at all. His approach was, "Let happiness present itself if it happens, but in the meantime, let me be executed if necessary."

Acknowledge yourself as the criminal -- go ahead and do it! He did it. He was executed as a criminal. But then something changed.

Acknowledging other people's mistakes as yours seems to be very difficult to do; however, pain is the path. We don't want to get blamed for somebody else's action. We will immediately say that we didn't do it. "It wasn't my fault." We can't bear to be blamed unjustly. Well, that is quite sensible, I suppose -- people don't like to be blamed. But suppose we decide to take the whole thing on ourselves and let ourselves be blamed, then what would happen? It would be very interesting to find out -- purely by following the example of Padmasambhava (if that makes you feel any better).

That is a very interesting kind of approach. It is not particularly subtle; it is obvious. It becomes subtle only with the twist of the twist of the twist of deception, which is a twist toward a goal.

STUDENT: I'd like to know a little bit more about this twist of deception.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, we could speak about it a lot, but the main point seems to be to cut the self-justification of "It's going to be okay, there's some kind of promise of a reward anyway." Even believing in no promise is a promise of some kind. That kind of twist is always there. And unless we are willing to get blamed unjustly, we can't cut our deception at all. Which is very difficult to do. We are willing to lie for ourselves, but we are not willing to lie for the sake of others. We are not at all willing to take somebody else's pain. Unless maybe we talk to the people whose pain we are taking and say, "Look, I'm doing a good job for you; this is all for you." You feel you would like to have a word with that person before you give in.

STUDENT: Padmasambhava is the lion of the dharma. Somebody wants to blame him for his own bad action. Padmasambhava says, "Sure, go ahead, blacken my name." I don't understand that exactly. Maybe if that was the only thing he could do, it would make sense, but it seems there are other modes of action available. He could pacify, enrich, magnetize, and so on. But just going along with the misplaced blame seems almost like avoiding the situation. I don't see the intelligent quality of his behaving as he did in that situation.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: In this case, because he didn't try to magnetize, the whole thing became more powerful. Instead he gave in, but he gave in in such a powerful way that the others automatically got rebounds from the situation. The result was that in fact Padmasambhava didn't have to talk himself out of his situation, but the others had to do it for him.


The message to us as followers of his is that, since we don't use such techniques too often (to say the least), it is worth trying to practice this approach. We don't have to conceptualize and say that giving in to the situation is the only way. That is not the point. We have all the riches and wealth of all kinds of techniques, and this one is also one of the interesting ones. It is worth looking at. I mean, you have eight styles for dealing with your life -- Padmasambhava's eight aspects each have different messages -- and this is one of them.

STUDENT: Was giving in in this way what Christ did? Just permitting his situation to happen?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: That seems to be very obvious, yes. He just took the blame.

STUDENT: I don't understand the idea of not avoiding pain. If we are not trying to avoid pain then what is the meaning of the Noble Truth about the cessation of pain?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Here the cessation of pain is the sense of seeing the pain from a reverse angle -- from behind -- rather than eliminating it.

S: You mean you just end up on the other side of the pain?

TR: Yes, [on the other side of] the creator of the pain, which is confusion.


STUDENT: It seems that both Christ and Padmasambhava had to use magic in order to achieve their final victory.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Not necessarily. It might have become magic by itself.

S: I mean the lake, and sitting in the lotus flower and --

TR: That was not magic particularly. That was just what happened.
And for that matter, the resurrection could be said not to have been magic at all. It's just what happened in the case of Christ.

S: It's magical in the sense that it's very unusual. I mean, if that isn't magic, what is?

TR: Well, in that case what we're doing here is magic. We are doing something extremely unusual, for America. It happens to have developed by itself. We couldn't have created the whole situation. Our getting together and discussing this subject just happened by itself.


STUDENT: Rinpoche, what you were saying about using pain as an adornment seemed to me like the difference between collecting information and really experiencing the implications of it. But I don't see how you can be sure that you are really making contact with your experience.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: One shouldn't regard the whole thing as a way of getting ahead of ego. Just relate to it as an ongoing process. Don't do anything with it, just go on. It's a very casual matter.

STUDENT: What does Loden Choksi mean?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Loden means "possessing intelligence"; choksi means "supreme world" or "supreme existence." In this case, the name does not seem to be as significant as with some of the other aspects. It is not nearly as vivid as, for example, Senge Dradrok or Dorje TroIo. Loden Choksi has something to do with being skillful.

STUDENT: What is the difference between the kind of direct intellectual perception you were talking about here and other kinds of perception?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It seems that if you are purely looking for answers, then you don't perceive anything. In the proper use of intellect, you don't look for answers, you just see; you just take notes in your mind. And even then, you don't have the goal of collecting information; you just relate to what is there as an expression of intelligence. That way your intelligence can't be conned by extraneous suggestions. Rather, you have sharpened your intellect and you can relate directly to what is happening.

S: But how would you differentiate that from other kinds of perception?

TR: In general, we have perceptions with all kinds of things mixed in; that is, we have conditioned perceptions which contain a purpose of magnetizing or destroying. Such perceptions contain passion and aggression and all the rest of it. There are ulterior motives of all kinds, as opposed to just seeing clearly, just looking at things very precisely, sharply.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:02 am

Part 1 of 2

Image
Dorje Trolo

7. Dorje Trolo and the Three Styles of Transmission

THE EIGHTH ASPECT OF PADMASAMBHAVA is Dorje Trolo, the final and absolute aspect of crazy wisdom. To discuss this eighth aspect of Padmasambhava, we have to have some background knowledge about [traditional] ways of communicating the teachings. The idea of lineage is associated with the transmission of the message of adhishthana, which means "energy" or, if you like, "grace. This is transmitted like an electric current from the trikaya guru to sentient beings. In other words, crazy wisdom is a continual energy that flows and that, as it flows, regenerates itself. The only way to regenerate this energy is by radiating or communicating it, by putting it into practice or acting it out. It is unlike other energies, which, when you use them, move toward cessation or extinction. The energy of crazy wisdom regenerates itself through the process of our living it. As you live this energy, it regenerates itself; you don't live for death but you live for birth. Living is a constant birth process rather than a wearing-out process.

Electricity is "revelation" and "enthusiasm" (inspiration). What we laboriously and indirectly see with the scientific eye was seen by the ancients using another kind of sight. Because of this they have an amazing knowledge of pre-history. The divine electricity transferred it into them! The gods were not only living electrical receiving stations, however, they were also electrical power -- and broadcasting stations....

The effects of electric rays are not all of the same type, however. One type of radiation facilitates healing, as has recently been shown through experimentation, the other stimulates diseases. Just as recovery or sickness comes from the gods. However, a meaningful role is played by radiation in the sexual life -- although this will only be realized in the future. It is known that positive electricity hinders the growth of plants, while negative electricity promotes it. Warmth promotes sexual maturity....

And if I were asked what I understood divinity to be, I would say: By that I understand the living beings of the ultraviolet and ultrared forces and worlds. In former times they were embodied and moved about in complete purity. Today they live on in human beings. The gods slumber in bestialized human bodies, but the day is coming when they will rise up again. We were electric, we will be electric, to be electric and to be divine is the same thing! By means of the electric eye primitive man was omniscient, through inner electrical power they were omnipotent. The omniscient and omnipotent has the right to call itself God!

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron: An Introduction to the most ancient and most modern philosophy and a justification of the monarchy and the nobility, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels


The lineage has three styles of transmitting this energy. The first is called the kangsaknyen-gyu. Here the energy of the lineage is transmitted by word of mouth using ideas and concepts. In some sense this is a crude or primitive method, a somewhat dualistic approach. However, in this case the dualistic approach is functional and worthwhile.

If you sit cross-legged as if you were meditating, the chances are you might actually find yourself meditating after a while. This is like achieving sanity by pushing yourself to imitate it, by behaving as though you were sane already. In the same way, it is possible to use words, terms, images, and ideas -- teaching orally or in writing -- as though they were an absolutely perfect means of transmission. The procedure is to present an idea, then the refutation of [the opposite of] that idea, and then to associate the idea with an authentic scripture or teaching that has been given in the past.

Believing in the sacredness of certain things on a primitive level is the first step in transmission. Traditionally, scriptures or holy books are not to be trodden upon, sat upon, or otherwise mistreated, because very powerful things are said in them. The idea is that by mistreating the books, you mistreat the messages they contain. This is a way of believing in some kind of entity, or energy, or force -- in the living quality of something.

The second style of communicating, or teaching, is the rigdzin da-gyu. This is the method of crazy wisdom, but on the relative level, not the absolute level. Here you communicate by creating incidents that seem to happen by themselves. Such incidents are seemingly blameless, but they do have an instigator somewhere. In other words, the guru tunes himself in to the cosmic energy, or whatever you would like to call it. Then if there is a need to create chaos, he directs his attention toward chaos. And quite appropriately, chaos presents itself, as if it happened by accident or mistake. Da in Tibetan means "symbol" or "sign." The sense of this is that the crazy-wisdom guru does not speak or teach on the ordinary level, but rather, he or she creates a symbol, or means. A symbol in this case is not like something that stands for something else, but it is something that presents the living quality of life and creates a message out of it.

The third one is called gyalwa gong-gyu. Gong gyu means "thought lineage" or "mind lineage." From the point of view of the thought lineage, even the method of creating situations is crude, or primitive. Here a mutual understanding takes place that creates a general atmosphere -- and the message is understood. If the guru of crazy wisdom is an authentic being, then the authentic communication happens, and the means of communication is neither words nor symbols. Rather, just by being, a sense of precision is communicated. Maybe it takes the form of waiting -- for nothing. Maybe it takes pretending to meditate together, but not doing anything. For that matter, it might involve having a very casual relationship: discussing the weather and the flavor of tea; how to make curry, chop suey, or macrobiotic cuisine; or talking about history, or the history of the neighbors -- whatever.

The crazy wisdom of the thought lineage takes a form that is somewhat disappointing to the eager recipient of the teachings. You might go and pay a visit to the guru, which you have especially prepared for, and he isn't even interested in talking to you. He's busy reading the newspaper. Or for that matter, he might create "black air," a certain intensity that makes the whole environment threatening. And there's nothing happening -- nothing happening to such an extent that you walk out with a sense of relief, glad you didn't have to be there any longer. But then something happens to you as if everything did happen during those periods of silence or intensity.

The thought lineage is more of a presence than something happening. Also, it has an extraordinarily ordinary quality.

In traditional abhishekas, or initiation ceremonies, the energy of the thought lineage is transmitted into your system at the level of the fourth abhisheka. At that point, the guru will ask you suddenly, "What is your name?" or "Where is your mind?" This abrupt question momentarily cuts through your subconscious gossip, creating a bewilderment of a different type [from the type already going on in your mind]. You search for an answer and realize you do have a name and he wants to know it. It is as if you were nameless before, but have now discovered that you have a name. It is that kind of an abrupt moment.

Of course, such ceremonies are subject to corruption. If the teacher is purely following the scriptures and commentaries, and the student is eagerly expecting something powerful, then both the teacher and the student miss the boat simultaneously.

Thought-lineage communication is the teaching of the dharmakaya; the communication by signs and symbols -- creating situations -- is the sambhogakaya level of teaching; and the communication by words is the nirmanakaya level of teaching. Those are the three styles in which the crazy-wisdom guru communicates to the potential crazy-wisdom student.

The whole thing is not as outrageous as it may seem. Nevertheless, there is an undercurrent of taking advantage of the mischievousness of reality, and this creates a sense of craziness or a sense that something or other is not too solid. Your sense of security is under attack. So the recipient of crazy wisdom -- the ideal crazy-wisdom student -- should feel extremely insecure, threatened. That way you manufacture half of the crazy wisdom and the guru manufactures the other half. Both the guru and the student are alarmed by the situation. Your mind has nothing to work on. A sudden gap has been created -- bewilderment.

This kind of bewilderment is quite different from the bewilderment of ignorance. This is the bewilderment that happens between the question and the answer. It is the boundary between the question and the answer. There is a question, and you are just about to answer that question: there is a gap. You have oozed out your question, and the answer hasn't come through yet. There is already a feeling of a sense of the answer, a sense that something positive is happening -- but nothing has happened yet. There is that point where the answer is just about to be born and the question has just died.

There is very strange chemistry there; the combination of the death of the question and the birth of the answer creates uncertainty. It is intelligent uncertainty -- sharp, inquisitive. This is unlike ego's bewilderment of ignorance, which has totally and completely lost touch with reality because you have given birth to duality and are uncertain about how to handle the next step. You are bewildered because of ego's approach of duality. But in this case it is not bewilderment in the sense of not knowing what to do, but bewilderment because something is just about to happen and hasn't happened yet.

The crazy wisdom of Dorje Trolo is not reasonable but somewhat heavy-handed, because wisdom does not permit compromise. If you compromise between black and white, you come out with a grey color -- not quite white and not quite black. It is a sad medium rather than a happy medium -- disappointing. You feel sorry that you've let it be compromised. You feel totally wretched that you have compromised. That is why crazy wisdom does not know any compromise. The style of crazy wisdom is to build you up: build up your ego to the level of absurdity, to the point of comedy, to a point that is bizarre -- and then suddenly let you go. So you have a big fall, like Humpty Dumpty: "All the king's horses and all the king's men / Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again."


To get back to the story of Padmasambhava as Dorje Trolo, he was asked by a local deity in Tibet, "What frightens you the most?" Padmasambhava said, ''I'm frightened of neurotic sin." It so happens that the Tibetan word for sin -- dikpa -- is also the word for scorpion, so the local deity thought he could frighten Padmasambhava by manifesting himself as a giant scorpion. The local deity was reduced to dust -- as a scorpion.

Tibet is supposedly ringed by snow-capped mountains, and there are twelve goddesses associated with those mountains who are guardians of the country. When Dorje Trolo came to Tibet, one of those goddesses refused to surrender to him. She ran away from him -- she ran all over the place. She ran up a mountain thinking she was running away from Padmasambhava and found him already there ahead of her, dancing on the mountaintop. She ran away down a valley and found Padmasambhava already at the bottom, sitting at the confluence of that valley and the neighboring one. No matter where she ran, she couldn't get away. Finally she decided to jump into a lake and hide there. Padmasambhava turned the lake into boiling iron, and she emerged as a kind of skeleton being. Finally, she had to surrender, because Padmasambhava was everywhere. It was extremely claustrophobic in some way.

One of the expressions of crazy wisdom is that you can't get away from it. It's everywhere (whatever "it" is).


Totalitarian regimes are different from authoritarian ones. The latter denotes a state in which the single power holder -– an individual "dictator", a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite -– monopolizes political power. "[The] authoritarian state [...] is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty".[6] Authoritarianism "does not attempt to change the world and human nature".[6] In contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens. "The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and the totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens".

-- Totalitarianism, by Wikipedia


At Taktsang in Bhutan, Padmasambhava manifested as Dorje Trolo. He transformed his consort Yeshe Tsogyal into a pregnant tigress, and he roamed about the Taktsang hills riding on this pregnant tigress. His manifesting this way had to do with subduing the psychic energies of the country, a country that was infested with primitive beliefs concerning ego and God.

Another expression of crazy wisdom is controlling psychic energies. The way to control psychic energies is not to create a greater psychic energy and try to dominate them. That just escalates the war, and it becomes too expensive -- like the Vietnam War. You come up with a counterstrategy and then there is a counter-counterstrategy and then a counter-counter-counterstrategy. So the idea is not to create a superpower. The way to control the psychic energy of primitive beliefs is to instigate chaos. Introduce confusion among those energies, confuse people's logic. Confuse them so that they have to think twice. That is like the moment of the changing of the guards. At that moment when they begin to think twice, the energy of crazy wisdom zaps out.

In his autobiography, In the Midst of Wars, Lansdale gives an example of the counterterror tactics he employed in the Philippines. He tells how one psychological warfare operation "played upon the popular dread of an asuang, or vampire, to solve a difficult problem." The problem was that Lansdale wanted government troops to move out of a village and hunt Communist guerrillas in the hills, but the local politicians were afraid that if they did, the guerrillas would "swoop down on the village and the bigwigs would be victims." So, writes Lansdale:

A combat psywar [psychological warfare] team was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of a vampire living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to circulate among Huk sympathizers in the town and make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along a trail used by the Huks. When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the vampire had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on the hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.



Lansdale defines the incident as "low humor" and "an appropriate response ... to the glum and deadly practices of communists and other authoritarians."

***

Counterterror was one way of co-opting uncommitted civilians. To facilitate their political awakening, according to Manzione, "We left our calling card nailed to the forehead of the corpses we left behind. They were playing card size with a light green skull with red eyes and red teeth dripping blood, set against a black background. We hammered them into the third eye, the pituitary gland, with our pistol butts. The third eye is the seat of consciousness for Buddhists, and this was a form of mutilation that had a powerful psychological effect."

Curiously, terror tactics often involve mutilating the third eye (the seat of insight and secret thoughts) and playing on fears of an "all-seeing" cosmic eye of God. Used by morale officers in World War I, the eye of God trick called for pilots in small aircraft to fly over enemy camps and call out the names of individual soldiers. Ed Lansdale applied the technique in the Philippines. "At night, when the town was asleep, a psywar team would creep into town and paint an eye (copied from the Egyptian eye that appears atop the pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States) on a wall facing the house of each suspect," Lansdale writes. "The mysterious presence of these malevolent eyes the next morning had a sharply sobering effect."

To appreciate the "sobering effects" of the "malevolent" and "mysterious" eye of God, it helps to know something of the archetype's mythological origins. In ancient Egypt, the eye of God was plucked from Horus, an anthropomorphic sun-god with a falcon's head. Pictured as the morning sun cresting a pyramid, the eye of God represents the dawn of self-awareness, when the ego emerged from the id and no longer required human sacrifice to overcome its primeval anxiety. Awed by the falcon's superlative sight, talons, and flight, the Egyptians endowed Horus with the bird's predatory prowess, so he could avenge the murder his father, Osiris, whose name means "seat of the eye." Set on high, scanning the earth for the forces of darkness, the falcon as sun-god -- as the manifestation of enlightenment -- carries out the work of organization and pacification, imposing moral order on earth.

The eye of God assumes its mysterious "counterespionage" qualities through this myth of the eternal cycle -- the battle between good and evil -- in which, if the perfidious gods of darkness can guess the sun-god's secret name, they can rob him of his powers and trap him forever in the underworld. Thus a falcon emblem was placed above the gates of all Egyptian temples, scanning for the sun-god's enemies, while the sun-god relied on code names to conceal his identity.

Oddly enough, the eye of God was the symbol of the Cao Dai sect, whose gallery of saints include Confucius, Buddha, Joan of Arc, Jesus, and Victor Hugo. Inside the Cao Dai cathedral in Tay Ninh City, the Cao Dai pope divined upon his planchette the secrets of the Great pyramid; over the temple door loomed a huge blue "all-seeing" eye surrounded by snakes and trees. For this reason, some people suggest that the Cao Dai eye of God endowed Phoenix, the all-seeing bird of prey that selectively snatched its prey, with its ubiquity.

In South Vietnam the eye of God trick took a ghastly twist. CIA officer Pat McGarvey recalled to Seymour Hersh that "some psychological warfare guy in Washington thought of a way to scare the hell out of villagers. When we killed a VC there, they wanted us to spread-eagle the guy, put out his eye, cut a hole in the back [of his head] and put his eye in there. The idea was that fear was a good weapon." Likewise, ears were cut off corpses and nailed to houses to let the people know that Big Brother was listening as well.

"Now everyone knows about the airborne interrogation -- taking three people up in a chopper, taking one guy and saying, 'Talk,' then throwing him out before he even gets the chance to open his mouth. Well, we wrapped det [detonator] cord around their necks and wired them to the detonator box. And basically what it did was blow their heads off. The interrogator would tell the translator, usually a South Vietnamese intelligence officer, 'Ask him this.' He'd ask him, 'Who gave you the gun?' And the guy would start to answer, or maybe he wouldn't -- maybe he'd resist -- but the general idea was to waste the first two. They planned the snatches that way. Pick up this guy because we're pretty sure he's VC cadre -- these other two guys just run errands for him. Or maybe they're nobody; Tran, the farmer, and his brother Nguyen. But bring in two. Put them in a row. By the time you get to your man, he's talking so fast you got to pop the weasel just to shut him up." After a moment's silence he added, "I guess you could say that we wrote the book on terror."

-- The Phoenix Program, by Douglas Valentine


When the call sign ["CHAOS"] originated, the then-colonel was a regimental commander in Twenty-nine Palms where, according to [Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis, “there’s nothing to do but go blow up the desert.” As he was leaving his operations office, he noticed the word “Chaos” written on the operations officer’s whiteboard.

“I said, ‘What’s this about?’ I’m curious, you know. We all are. He says ‘oh you don’t need to know that,’” which only further piqued curiosity.


-- The origin of Mattis’ call sign, ‘Chaos’, by Mackenzie Wolf


PREFACE

Guerrilla warfare is essentially a political war. Therefore, its area of operations exceeds the territorial limits of conventional warfare, to penetrate the political entity itself: the "political animal" that Aristotle defined.

In effect, the human being should be considered the priority objective in a political war. And conceived as the military target of guerrilla war, the human being has his most critical point in his mind. Once his mind has been reached, the "political animal" has been defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets.

Guerrilla warfare is born and grows in the political environment; in the constant combat to dominate that area of political mentality that is inherent to all human beings and which collectively constitutes the "environment" in which guerrilla warfare moves, and which is where precisely its victory or failure is defined.

This conception of guerrilla warfare as political war turns Psychological Operations into the decisive factor of the results. The target, then, is the minds of the population, all the population: our troops, the enemy troops and the civilian population.

This book is a manual for the training of guerrillas in psychological operations
, and its application to the concrete case of the Christian and democratic crusade being waged in Nicaragua by the Freedom Commandos.

Welcome!

INTRODUCTION

1. Generalities


The purpose of this book is to introduce the guerrilla student to the psychological operations techniques that will be of immediate and practical value to him in guerrilla warfare. This section is introductory and general; subsequent sections will cover each point set forth here in more detail.

The nature of the environment of guerrilla warfare does not permit sophisticated psychological operations, and it becomes necessary for the chiefs of groups, chiefs of detachments and squadron leaders to have the ability to carry out, with minimal instructions from the higher levels, psychological action operations with the contacts that are thoroughly aware of the situation, i.e. the foundations.

2. Combatant-Propagandist Guerrillas

In order to obtain the maximum results from the psychological operations in guerrilla warfare, every combatant should be as highly motivated to carry out propaganda face to face as he is a combatant. This means that the individual political awareness of the guerrilla of the reason for his struggle will be as acute as his ability to fight.

Such a political awareness and motivation is obtained through the dynamic of groups and self-criticism, as a standard method of instruction for the guerrilla training and operations. Group discussions raise the spirit and improve the unity of thought of the guerrilla training and operations. Group discussions raise the spirit and improve the unity of thought of the guerrilla squads and exercise social pressure on the weak members to carry out a better role in future training or in combative action. Self-criticism is in terms of one's contribution or defects in his contribution to the cause, to the movement, the struggle, etc.; and gives a positive individual commitment to the mission of the group.

The desired result is a guerrilla who can persuasively justify his actions when he comes into contact with any member of the People of Nicaragua, and especially with himself and his fellow guerrillas in dealing with the vicissitudes of guerrilla warfare.
This means that every guerrilla will be persuasive in his face-to-face communication - propagandist- combatant - ins his contact with the people; he should be able to give 5 or 10 logical reasons why, for example, a peasant should give him cloth, needle and thread to mend his clothes. When the guerrilla behaves in this manner, enemy propaganda will never succeed in making him an enemy in the eyes of the people. It also means that hunger, cold, fatigue and insecurity will have a meaning, psychologically, in the cause of the struggle due to his constant orientation.

-- Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, by Central Intelligence Agency


Not long after, the [Tibet] task force received a visit from the CIA's Far East Division chief, Desmond FitzGerald. Though new to the post, FitzGerald was not unfamiliar with Asia. A Harvard-trained Wall Street lawyer before World War II, he had served as liaison officer to a Nationalist Chinese battalion in the steamy jungles of Burma between 1943 and 1945. Though sometimes prone to offensive elitism commensurate with his Boston upbringing and Ivy League education, he had relished the hardships of his Burma combat experience and had come to appreciate the abilities of Asian allies when they were properly supplied and led.

FitzGerald returned to Wall Street after the war, but a pronounced idealistic streak led him to dabble in politics while investigating corruption in New York's official circles. Though he had just purchased a new brownstone and seemed ready to settle in New York City, a phone call from another former lawyer, Frank Wisner, changed his mind. An OSS veteran from the European theater, Wisner had been mandated in 1948 to run a small covert action agency innocently titled the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). Wisner intended the OPC to take an activist role in confronting communist subversion, and he wanted FitzGerald on his team. [5]

Enthusiastic, FitzGerald readily agreed and was soon named executive officer in the OPC's Far East Division. By that time, the Korean War had started, and Wisner was groping for ways to divert Beijing's attention from the Korean peninsula. OPC's Hong Kong chief suggested harnessing the thousands of Nationalist Chinese troops that had been pushed across the Burmese border during the Chinese civil war. He believed that if properly supplied, this Kuomintang legion could be redirected against the PRC's southern underbelly.

Hearing of this scheme, FitzGerald was smitten. Sickened by tales of Chinese communist excesses, he saw merit in taking on the PRC by fomenting guerrilla uprisings. The idea also matched his somewhat romantic, British-style approach of co-opting locals -- such as the Gurkhas from Nepal -- as allies. Moreover, his own experiences in Burma left him with an appreciation for unconventional Chinese operations in that sector. [6]

With FitzGerald's strong hand, the Burma operation kicked off in February 1951. But despite great expectations and generous CIA supply drops through spring, the project proved an embarrassing failure. Try as they might, each Nationalist foray into Yunnan Province was immediately repelled by PLA reinforcements. Unable to keep revelations about U.S. logistical support out of the press, Washington had no choice but to pull the plug.

Although the Burma operation accomplished little, FitzGerald's career hardly suffered -- quite the opposite. Forgiving superiors saw fit to approve of his tenacity and drive, regardless of the results. In 1952, with the OPC having been absorbed into the CIA mainstream, he retained his position as deputy of the Far East Division.

Despite his significant influence within the division (he was acting chief for extended periods), FitzGerald yearned to make a mark in the field. He got his wish in 1954 when he was assigned as head of the agency's China Base, located within the U.S. naval compound in Japan's port of Yokosuka. Unfortunately for FitzGerald, China Base was a poor vehicle for recognition. As the designated mechanism to coordinate the CIA's regionwide efforts to penetrate and destabilize the PRC, the base was mandated to conduct projects in any number of Asian nations along China's periphery. But other station chiefs did not relish the idea of an outside mission running operations on their turf. Worse, many of China Base's agent sources were exposed as con artists and frauds. After a scathing internal CIA review, China Base closed its doors in the summer of 1956. [7]

Although FitzGerald did not deserve full blame for the failings of China Base -- he had inherited an ongoing operation -- its funeral occurred on his watch. Inevitably, FitzGerald had his share of detractors. "Des was a dilettante," said fellow Far East hand James Lilley, "who plucked out good things to serve his own purpose." However, he also had a strong friend and mentor in former OPC chief and now top CIA operations officer Frank Wisner. [8]

Under Wisner's wing, FitzGerald was next assigned as head of the agency's Psychological and Paramilitary Operations Staff. Though an impressive title, this was actually a hollow desk slot. Not until mid-1958, following a shake-up in the aftermath of the Indonesian debacle, did he get word that he was taking over the Far East Division.

At the time of FitzGerald's promotion, it would have been hard not to focus on the revolt in Tibet. In many ways, the two were a perfect match. After years of frustrating attempts to hobble the PRC from within, FitzGerald had a verifiable case of active and ongoing resistance. And for a man with a romantic sense of chivalry, the rugged Khampas delivered in spades. He soon came to identify with the Tibet project more than with any other agency operation in the Far East. "FitzGerald personally came down to the office," remembers Tom Fosmire. "He told us, 'We're going to do it."' [9]

With this cryptic statement, FitzGerald was giving final authority to proceed with training for the second Tibetan contingent. This time, however, it was decided to offer instruction at a location more similar to their home environment than the tropical climes of Saipan. The closest elevation to Tibet in the continental United States is in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. That same state hosts the country's highest incorporated city, Leadville, at 3,162 meters (10,430 feet). Once bloated with 40,000 residents during the silver boom of the late nineteenth century, Leadville's population in 1958 barely exceeded 4,000. While such tranquility held appeal for the CIA, of even greater interest was the secluded valley thirty-two kilometers to its west. There, strung along a ten- kilometer stretch of the Eagle River, stood Camp Hale.

Much like Leadville, Camp Hale was a shadow of its former self. Activated in 1942, the camp at its peak had 1,022 buildings in support of 15,000 troops. On the surrounding slopes, the 10th Mountain Division learned skiing, rock climbing, and cold weather survival skills -- often in temperatures that dipped to thirty degrees below zero. Their training was put to good use when the division made a daring climb up Italy's Riva Ridge in February 1945, surprising the Nazis on top. For the next two months, they pursued the Axis forces across the Alps before Germany surrendered. [10]

Despite its contribution to the war effort, Hale was destined to be a peace-time casualty. Nazi prisoners (400 of the most incorrigible members of Rommel's Afrika Korps had been confined at Hale) were assigned to dismantle the camp shortly after the war, and they nearly succeeded. Only a handful of buildings was left standing, and they were used periodically through the early 1950s to train ski troops. By the middle of the decade, however, the Pentagon saw little need to maintain specialist ski formations. The camp -- what was left of it -- was shuttered and abandoned.

All of this suited the CIA perfectly. In the early fall, the job of reconnoitering the Hale facilities was given to the task force's second new officer, John Greaney. A lawyer by education, Greaney had attempted to prepare himself for the Tibet assignment by perusing the CIA's files and learning what he could about the mountain kingdom. The agency, he soon concluded, knew precious little. "I tried to get permission to go to Austria and speak with Heinrich Harrer," he remembers, referring to the Dalai Lama's longtime tutor, "but the idea was rejected." [11]

As consolation, Greaney got a plane ticket to Colorado. Armed with the highest-level government permission, he received excellent cooperation from the U.S. Army officers at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, which retained administrative control over Hale. Unfortunately for the CIA, the camp's best remaining buildings were within sight of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. From a security point of view, there was a better area further down the valley, but that would entail laying sewage and water pipes for several kilometers. Since Hale was already frozen under early snows, construction of the pipes promised to be slow. The agency, Greaney concluded, would need an alternative site for the interim.


The task of finding an alternative fell to Tom Fosmire. Shopping around for an existing facility, he took a trip in September to the CIA's expansive training base at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, Virginia -- nicknamed "The Farm." He presented the camp personnel with a request for temporary use of a remote locale within the grounds.

-- The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison


"Rinpoche talking to Dana, said, 'You're oriental; you're smarter than this. You might be playing slave to this white man but you and I know where it's at. We're both oriental ... we know where it's at.' Then he started to talk about 'my country being ripped out from under me, and it was the Chinese communists who did it ... If there's one thing I want to see in my lifetime, it's to see my country back. Only one oriental to another can understand that.' He said, 'I know your background, Dana ... ' He kept doing this super racist thing ... very cutting, and her only response was, 'You're a Nazi, you're a Nazi,' and 'Someone call the police.' She was completely freaking out."

-- Interview with Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77

***

"William characterized his use of guards and physical force as fascistic; 'What about the people who instigate wars?' I asked. His response was the Chinese communists had ripped off his country, and he wanted to rip off theirs. Leaning forward, over me (he was seated in a chair, and we were sitting on the floor in front of him), he said that he and I understood each other, and could talk to each other, but that William was a white man. We had something between us because of our ancestry, which excluded William, he repeated, and I felt he was trying to use that as a seductive argument to divide William and me. I told him that he was barking up the wrong tree. Several times we were asked. 'What's your secret? 'No secret,' we said."

-- Dana Naone, letter dated July 25, 1977 to Trupp, Pickering, and Pope.

***

Trungpa called us to come over in front of him, looked up at me, and said. "I hear you've been making a lot of trouble." Grabbed my free hand to try to force me down, saying, "Sit down." (The other hand had been bleeding a lot and was wrapped in a towel.) When he let go, we sat down on the floor. He said we hadn't accepted his invitation. I said that if we had to accept it it wasn't an invitation. He insisted that it was an invitation. An invitation, I said, allowed the other person the privilege of declining. We pushed that around a bit. The way he saw it, no force seemed to have been used, except by us. I reminded him that we'd never promised to obey him. He said, "Ah, but you asked to come." Then, dramatically, "into the lion's mouth!" I said that they'd developed big corkscrews, new, for forcing coyotes out of their burrows, and that maybe he ought to get one, to do his job more easily. He said he wasn't interested. Cross. That he wanted us to join in his celebration. I said that we'd thought it was lugubrious, and that as I understood it, one couldn't be forced to celebrate, if it was to mean anything. In one of these exchanges he got angry and threw his glass of sake in my face. "That's sake," he told me. He turned to Dana and said. "You and I can understand each other better. You're an Asiatic." And more on that tack. I think Dana should recount what their conversation consisted of. She was very clear, and she I turned him off that one. In an exchange with us both the subjects of fascism came up. I said I thought his use of a gang, and of intimidation, was fascistic. He said the Chinese had ripped off his country, and that he wanted to rip off theirs. The whole question of violence, then. How violent we were. Dana asked him, "And what about the people who start violence and wars in the first place?" He said, "What's the matter with wars?" And in the pause that followed that, he changed the subject, said he wanted us to join in the dance and celebration and take our clothes off." At that point; then and there, we both refused, saying that it was one more non-invitation. He asked, "Why not? What was our secret? Why didn't we want to undress?" To Dana he said, "Are you afraid to show your pubic hair?" We said there was no secret: we didn't dig his party, weren't there at our own choice, and didn't feel like undressing. He said that if we wouldn't undress, we'd be stripped, and he ordered his guards to do the job....

The day after the happenings, as his letter was tacked up, a verbal message came to us through the officers of the seminary, inviting us (yes) to stay on, "either as students or as guests". We sent back another, saying that we needed to know what he meant by those terms, and asking to see him. Several days later we were granted an interview. Quiet and polite. More on the subject of the invitation which we'd refused, and his disappointment. He asked us to stay on. I said the decision must be Dana's, since I thought she had had much the worst of it. He urged her to please stay. Said there would be no more incidents: "one landmark was enough". We had talked it over, of course, and we did so again, in front of him. We'd come to study the whole course; we'd taken it (as he knew) seriously: we wanted to finish what we'd begun, and not be scared off. The last lap, about to begin, was the famous Tantric teachings. We said that if we stayed, it would be with no guarantees of obedience, trust, or personal devotion to him. He said alright: so did we, and we shook hands. No apology on either side. He said he was disappointed in our trying to hold ourselves together after the incident: going to class, talking to people as normally as possible. In his view we should have broken down, in some public way. I said I was appalled at what had happened, but that if the circumstances were to repeat themselves, I imagined that I would act in the same way. We stayed on until the end of the Tantric teachings, the last examination, three weeks later, attending his lectures, but going to other things irregularly. The day after the examinations, the prospect of another seminary party (including slides of Halloween) and of a coming blizzard forecast on the radio, that might keep us snowbound there for several more days, did not seem like things we wanted to hang around for, and we left.

-- W.S. Merwin, letter to Pope, Trupp, and Pickering, 7/20/77

***

Text of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche letter to seminarians, placed in mail boxes morning after Halloween party:

"Evening of October 31, 1975

Dear friends.

In order to present comprehensive communication between the students and myself, I have come to the conclusion that we need to break the ice of our personal concealment. It is time for us all to be honest. If you want to maintain your patterns of hiding your deception, you are invited to leave the seminary before the Vajrayana teachings begin. Since your neurosis is already an open secret, you could be braver in unmasking it. Without commitment to yourself, there is no ground to present the Vajrayana teachings to you. I invite you to be yourself, without trips. I would like to encourage you to make a proper relationship to the coming Vajrayana talks. This requires of you the understanding that we are not fooling each other. Since you are all pretty involved in the teachings, your attempt at deception is a useless hesitation. In order to recognize your personal deceit, you must understand the umbilical cord between you and me. You must offer your neurosis as a feast to celebrate your entrance into the vajra teachings. Those of you who wish to leave will not be given a refund, but your karmic debt will continue as the vividness of your memory cannot be forgotten.

(signed)

Chogyam Trungpa, the Venerable Vajra, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche."

(Text not paragraphed: text delivered via taped interview by Jack Niland, 6/23/77 to A. Santoli.)

-- Behind the Veil of Boulder Buddhism: Ed Sanders, The Party, by Boulder Monthly


Image

[Hiroko Nagata] Toyama, why did you come to the mountain?

Image

[Mieko Toyama] Why? I came for military training.

[Hiroko Nagata] No, I mean what feelings prompted you to come?

Image

[Mieko Toyama] In order to advance the revolutionary war,
I understood that I would have to become a soldier.
In the enduring stage of conflict of the global revolutionary war,
we must develop the revolutionary war in advanced countries ...

[Hiroko Nagata] But you, why did you come here?

Image

You haven't said a word about yourself.
Why did you come to the mountain?

Image

[Mieko Toyama] What do you want me to say?

[Hiroko Nagata] We don't want to hear those kinds of things, but your actual feelings.
We want to know why you want to be a revolutionary soldier.

[Mieko Toyama] For the revolutionary war, we must take on a militant quality and ...

Image

[Hiroko Nagata] No, that's not it. In more practical terms.
Because it is an extremely real situation we face.
Well,
why did you put on makeup this morning?
Why do you need makeup in the mountains?

Image

Why are you growing your hair out?

[Mieko Toyama] Before, my hair was short, and the police knew that so
I decided to grow it in order to do underground activities.

[Hiroko Nagata] If that's the case, why not just use a wig?
I think there's another reason.
What is it?

[Kaneko] Toyama, why don't you take off your ring?

Image

[Mieko Toyama] It's important. My mom gave it to me.

Image

[Kaneko] Aren't you brushing your hair during meetings?

Image

[Shindo] She just became a soldier, and we haven't addressed the female issues yet.
I accept responsibility for addressing the issue.

[Ozaki] This is probably a difference between city safe houses and mountain bases.
I think it's a difference in style between the RAF and the RLF.

[Hiroko Nagata] What have you all done since you came to the mountain?
You haven't done a thing.
The RAF doesn't understand anything.

Image

You have this great mountain hut and plenty of food.
But living in a mountain base isn't so simple.
If things are like this,

Image

all the work put in by the RLF will be meaningless

Image

There's no way we can work together.

Image

[Tsuneo Mori] We accept the RLF's criticisms of Toyama as general critiques of the RAF.

Image

Though the RLF's group and self-criticisms emerged naturally,

Image

evaluation from the perspective of the communist movement is also worthy.

Image

We must address the relations between each revolutionary group from that perspective.
Through mutual critique, from each individual becoming communist
the all-out war can be won.
No objection!
Thus, until comrade Toyama criticizes her activities and becomes a communist,
we will not let her leave the mountain.
All of us will support comrade Toyama's self-critique.
She herself must work hard to go through critique.
Additionally, self-criticism is demanded of all others who require it.
Anyone leaving the mountain for something other than prescribed duty
will be executed.
No objection!

[Everyone] No objection!

-- United Red Army, directed by Koji Wakamatsu


The autumn days slipped by in our numbing routine, so it was some relief when Rinpoche announced that we would have some visitors. Three other students, Duncan, Jane, and Nick, would be visiting for a long weekend. Nick showed up with some LSD and we decided to take a "trip" with Rinpoche. I had never taken acid before, so I was both excited and nervous about the prospect. Max organized the food, as tripping could make you very hungry. He put a pot roast in a slow cooker that would be ready about six in the morning, although I had my doubts that I would be that hungry at daybreak. The six of us sat in the living room and Nick passed around the acid on a small piece of white cardboard. It looked like fish scales. We all took one hit. Rinpoche took what was left, about six fish scales. I drank some sake and we all chatted.

-- The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant, by John Riley Perks


In the early 1950s, anthropologist/cyberneticist Gregory Bateson involved Erickson as a consultant as part of his extensive research on communication. The two had met earlier, after Bateson and Margaret Mead had called upon him to analyse the films Mead had made of trance states in Bali. Through Bateson, Erickson met Jay Haley, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, amongst others, and had a profound influence on them all. They went on to write several books about him....

Confusion technique

In all my techniques, almost all, there is a confusion.[9]


A confused person has their conscious mind busy and occupied, and is very much inclined to draw upon unconscious learnings to make sense of things. A confused person is in a trance of their own making - and therefore goes readily into that trance without resistance. Confusion might be created by ambiguous words, complex or endless sentences, pattern interruption or a myriad of other techniques to incite transderivational searches.

Scottish surgeon James Braid, who coined the term "hypnotism", claimed that focused attention was essential for creating hypnotic trances; indeed, his thesis was that hypnosis was in essence a state of extreme focus. But it can be difficult for people racked by pain, fear or suspicion to focus on anything at all. Thus other techniques for inducing trance become important, or as Erickson explained:

... long and frequent use of the confusion technique has many times effected exceedingly rapid hypnotic inductions under unfavourable conditions such as acute pain of terminal malignant disease and in persons interested but hostile, aggressive, and resistant ...


-- Milton H. Erickson, by Wikipedia


Dorje Trolo controlled the psychic energies of primitive beliefs by creating confusion. He was half-Indian and half-Tibetan, an Indian-looking person dressed up as a Tibetan madman. He held a vajra and a dagger, flames shot from his body, and he rode a pregnant tigress. It was quite strange. He was not quite a local deity and not quite a conventional guru. He was neither warrior nor king. He was certainly not an ordinary person. Riding on a tiger is regarded as a mistake, but somehow he managed to accomplish it. Was he trying to disguise himself as a Tibetan, or what was he trying to do? He was not particularly teaching anything. You couldn't deal with him as a Pon priest or a missionary. He wasn't converting anybody; that didn't seem to be his style either. He was just instigating chaos all over the place as he went along. Even the local deities were confused -- absolutely upset.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:03 am

Part 2 of 2

When Padmasambhava went to Tibet, the Indians got very alarmed. They felt they were losing something very precious, since it seemed he had decided to give his teachings of crazy wisdom only to the Tibetans. This was a terrible insult for the Indians. They prided themselves on being the supreme Aryans, the most intelligent race, the ones most receptive to high teachings. And now instead of teaching them, Padmasambhava was going to the savage country of Tibet, beyond the border areas; he had decided to teach the Tibetans instead of them. King Surya Simha of Uttar Pradesh, the central province of India, sent three acharyas, or spiritual masters, to the king of Tibet with polite messages saying that this so-called Padmasambhava was a charlatan, a black magician in fact. The Indian king advised that Padmasambhava was too dangerous for the Tibetans to have in their country and that they should send him back.

The interesting point here is that the teachings of crazy wisdom can only be taught in savage countries, where there is more opportunity to take advantage of chaos, or speed -- or whatever you would like to call that factor.

The crazy-wisdom character of Padmasambhava as Dorje TroIo is that of a guru who is unwilling to compromise with anything. If you stand in his way, you are asking for destruction. If you have doubts about him, he takes advantage of your doubts. If you are too devotional or too dependent on blind faith, he will shock you. He takes the ironical aspect of the world very seriously. He plays practical jokes on a larger scale -- devastating ones.

The symbolism of the tiger is also interesting. It is connected with the idea of flame, with fire and smoke. And a pregnant tigress is supposed to be the most vicious of all tigers. She is hungry, slightly crazy, completely illogical. You cannot read her psychology and work with it reasonably. She is quite likely to eat you up at any time. That is the nature of Dorje Trolo's transport, his vehicle. The crazy-wisdom guru rides on dangerous energy, impregnated with all kinds of possibilities. This tiger could be said to represent skillful means, crazy skillful means. And Dorje Trolo, who is crazy wisdom, rides on it. They make an excellent couple.

There is another side to Padmasambhava in Tibet, one that is not part of the eight aspects. For Tibetans, Padmasambhava is a father figure. As such, he is usually referred to as Guru Rinpoche, "the guru." He fell in love with the Tibetans and lavished tremendous care on them (not exactly the same way the missionaries fell in love with the Africans). The Tibetans were thought of as stupid. They were too faithful and too practical. Therefore, there was a tremendous opening for introducing the craziness of impracticality: abandon your farm, abandon your livelihood, roam about in the mountains dressed in those funny yogic costumes.

Once the Tibetans began to accept those things as aces of sanity, they made excellent yogis, because their approach to yogic practice was also very practical. As they had farmed faithfully and taken care of their herds faithfully, they followed the yogic calling faithfully as well.


The Tibetans were not artistic like the Japanese. Rather, they were excellent farmers, excellent merchants, excellent magicians. The Pon tradition of Tibet was very earthy. It was purely concerned with the realities of life. Pon ceremonies are also sometimes very practical ones. One of the sacred ceremonies involves making a campfire up in the mountains -- which keeps you warm. It seems that the deviousness Tibetans have shown in the course of the political intrigues of the twentieth century is entirely out of character. This kind of corruption and political intrigue came to Tibet from the outside -- from the Aryan philosophers of India and from the imperial politicians of China.

Padmasambhava's approach was a very beautiful one, and his prophecies actually foretell everything that happened in Tibet, including the corruption. For example, the prophecies tell us that in the end Tibet would be conquered by China, that the Chinese would enter the country in the Year of the Horse, and that they would rush in in the manner of a horse. The Chinese Communists did invade in the Year of the Horse, and they built roads from China to Tibet and all over Tibet and introduced motor vehicles. The prophecies also say something to the effect that in the Year of the Pig, the country would be reduced to the level of a pig, which refers to primitive beliefs, the indoctrination of the Tibetans with foreign ideas.

Another prophecy of Padmasambhava says that the end of Tibet would occur when the household objects of Tsang, the upper province, would be found in Kongpo, the lower province. In fact, it happened that there was a huge flood in the upper province of Tsang when the top of a glaciated mountain fell into the lake below. The whole of the Brahmaputra River was flooded, and it swept villages and monasteries along in its course. Many of the household articles from these places were found in Kongpo, where the river had carried them. His prophecies also say that another sign of the end of Tibet would be the building of a yellow temple at the foot of the Potala Palace, in Lhasa. In fact, the thirteenth Dalai Lama had a vision that a temple of Kalachakra should be built there, and they painted it yellow. Another of Padmasambhava's prophecies says that at the fourteenth stage, the rainbow of the Potala would disappear. The "fourteenth stage" refers to the time of the present, the fourteenth, Dalai Lama. Of course, the Potala is the winter palace of the Dalai Lama.

When Padmasambhava told these stories, the Tibetan king and his ministers were extremely upset, and they asked Padmasambhava to help them. "What is the best thing we can do to preserve our nation?" they asked him. "There is nothing we can do," he replied, "other than preserve the teachings that are being given now and place them in safekeeping somewhere." Then he introduced the idea of burying treasures, sacred writings.

He had various writings of his put in gold and silver containers like capsules and buried in certain appropriate places in the different parts of Tibet so that people of the future would rediscover them. He also had domestic articles buried: jewelry of his, jewelry belonging to the king and the royal household, and articles from ordinary farming households as well. The idea was that people would become more primitive, human intelligence would regress, and people would no longer be able to work properly with their hands and produce objects on that kind of artistic level.

So these things were buried all over Tibet, making use of scientific knowledge -- quite possibly from India -- on how best to preserve the parchments and other kinds of objects. The treasures were buried in many protective layers, including layers of charcoal, ground chalk, and other materials with various chemical properties. Also, for security, there was a layer of poison around the outside, so that thieves or other people without the right knowledge would be unable to dig them out. Such treasures have been discovered lately by great teachers who were supposedly tulkus of Padmasambhava's disciples. They had psychic visions (whatever those are) of certain places where they should dig. Then they set up the unburying process as a ceremony. The devotees would be assembled as well as workmen to do the digging. Sometimes the treasure would have to be dug out of a rock.

This process of rediscovering the treasures has been happening all along, and a lot of sacred teachings have been revealed. One example is The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Another approach to preserving treasures of wisdom is the style of the thought lineage. Teachings have been rediscovered by certain appropriate teachers who have had memories of them and written them down from memory. This is another kind of hidden treasure.

An example of Padmasambhava's acting as a father figure for Tibet was the warning that he gave King Trisong Detsen. The New Year's celebration was about to be held, which traditionally included horse racing and archery, among the other events. Padmasambhava said, "There shouldn't be horse racing or archery this time." But the people around the king found a way to get around Padmasambhava's warning, and the king was killed by the arrow of an unknown assassin at the time of the horse racing and archery.

Padmasambhava loved Tibet and its people dearly, and one might have expected him to stay there. But another interesting part of the story is that at a certain point, he left. It seems that there is just a certain time to care for and look after situations. Once the country had gotten itself together spiritually and domestically and people had developed some sense of sanity, Padmasambhava left Tibet.

Padmasambhava still lives, literally. He is not living in South America, but in some remote place -- on a continent of vampires, at a place there called Sangdok Petri, "Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain." He still lives. Since he is the state of dharmakaya, the fact of physical bodies dissolving back into nature is not regarded as a big deal. So if we search for him, we might find him. But I'm sure you will be very disappointed when you see him.

Of course, we are no longer talking about his eight aspects alone. I am sure that since then he has developed millions of aspects.

STUDENT: You talked about the thought-lineage transmission.You said that the teacher creates half of it and the student creates the other half. I thought that crazy wisdom was uncreated.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Yes. It is uncreated, but it is spontaneously existing. You have one half and the teacher has the other half. It wasn't manufactured on the spot; it was there.

STUDENT: Do you think America is savage enough for crazy wisdom?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Needless to say.

STUDENT: I didn't understand a phrase you used: "living for death." Could you explain that?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: The usual approach to living is the notion that each time we breathe in and out we are approaching closer to death. Every hour brings us closer to death. Whereas in the case of the crazy-wisdom principle, energy is rejuvenated continuously.

STUDENT: Rinpoche, you made the statement that Guru Rinpoche is literally alive in some country. Are you serious? You used the word literally.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: At this point it is uncertain what is serious; or what is literal, for that matter.

S: So you could say anything?

TR: I suppose so.


STUDENT: You mentioned the "black air" that the teacher creates. Is part of that created by the student as well?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Yes, by the student's timidity.

S: You also said if the student had doubts, the crazy-wisdom guru would take advantage of the doubts.

TR: Yes.

S: In what way might he take advantage of the student's doubts?

TR: I wonder if I should give away the game .... The doubt is a moment of uncertainty. For example, if you're physically weak, you can catch flu and colds easily. If you're not prepared and you're not defending yourself, you can be caught in that weak moment. That seems to be it.


STUDENT: I remember you once said that when the abhisheka was about to happen, there was a sort of moment of fear. How does that relate to insecurity and the student losing his ground?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Well, any relationship between the student and the crazy-wisdom guru is regarded as an abhisheka.

STUDENT: In the case of self-existing crazy wisdom, is Padmasambhava the activator principle?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: The activator as well as the background. Because he also consists of dharmakaya as well as sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya.

STUDENT: You talked of the crazy-wisdom process as being one of building up and building up ego until there's a tremendous drop. But at one point you also talked about a process of hopelessness that does not come all at once but develops situationally little by little. I don't see how those two processes can go on simultaneously. They're going in opposite directions.

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Building you up until you have a big fall is the strategy of the crazy-wisdom teacher. Meanwhile, you go along gradually developing hopelessness.

S: When the thought-lineage transmission occurs, there's this openness, this gap. Is that in itself the transmission?

TR: Yes, that's it. Yes, that's it. And there is also the environment around that, which is somewhat global, almost creating a landscape. In the midst of that, the gap is the highlight.

S: It seems that we constantly find ourselves in situations of openness and slip out. What is the benefit of going back to it? Is it kind of a practice, seeing that space so you can go back to it?

TR: Well, you see, you can't recreate that. But you can create your own abhisheka every moment. After the first experience. After that you can develop your own inner guru; and you create your own abhisheka, rather than trying to memorize what happened already in that past. If you keep going back to that moment in the past, it becomes kind of a special treasure, which doesn't help.

S: Doesn't help?

TR: Doesn't help.

S: But it's necessary to have that experience --

TR: That experience is a catalyst. For example, if you have once had an accident, each time after that when you drive with some crazy driver, you have a really living idea of an accident. You have the sense that you might die at any moment, which is true.

STUDENT: We are talking of openness as a very special situation taking place in transmission, and yet, it seems that it's spontaneously there, subliminally and very often here and there and everywhere. It's naturally behind neurosis as it passes through you, kind of passing with it. Can you speak more about the situation of the naturalness of the openness?

TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It seems that at this point if we try to be more specific in describing the details, it won't particularly help. It would be like creating special tactics and telling you how to reproduce them -- like trying to be spontaneous by textbook -- which doesn't seem to do any good. Probably we have to go through some kind of a trial period.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:04 am

Notes

SEMINAR I

CHAPTER 5

1. Pon (often written "Bon") is an indigenous pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. (Ed.]

SEMINAR II

CHAPTER 1

2. "Simultaneous birth" is a reference to the tantric notion of coemergence, or coemergent wisdom (Tib. Ihenchik kyepe yeshe). Samsara and nirvana arise together, naturally giving birth to wisdom. [Ed.]

CHAPTER 2

3. This does not contradict Trungpa Rinpoche's description in the main body of this talk, of the dharmakaya as unconditioned. Although conditioned by a sense of pregnancy, the dharmakaya, as he tells us earlier, also remains unaffected by any contents, thus providing the continual possibility of a glimpse of unconditioned mind. Cf. Rinpoche's answer to the question about karma and the dharmakaya, on pages 123-124. [Ed.]

CHAPTER 3

4. Herbert V. Guenther, transl., The Life and Teaching of Naropa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963).

CHAPTER 4

5. Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, transl., The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1987).

CHAPTER 6

6. This is a quotation from the author's Sadhana of Mahamudra, a liturgy practiced by his students. [Ed.]

About the Author

VEN. CHOGYAM TRUNGPA was born in the province of Kham in Eastern Tibet in 1940. When he was just thirteen months old, Chogyam Trungpa was recognized as a major tulku, or incarnate teacher. According to Tibetan tradition, an enlightened teacher is capable, based on his or her vow of compassion, of reincarnating in human form over a succession of generations. Before dying, such a teacher leaves a letter or other clues to the whereabouts of the next incarnation. Later, students and other realized teachers look through these clues and, based on careful examination of dreams and visions, conduct searches to discover and recognize the successor. Thus, particular lines of teaching are formed, in some cases extending over several centuries. Chogyam Trungpa was the eleventh in the teaching lineage known as the Trungpa tulkus.

Once young tulkus are recognized, they enter a period of intensive training in the theory and practice of the Buddhist teachings. Trungpa Rinpoche (Rinpoche is an honorific title meaning "precious one"), after being enthroned as supreme abbot of Surmang Monasteries and governor of Surmang District, began a period of training that would last eighteen years, until his departure from Tibet in 1959. As Kagyu tulku, his training was based on the systematic practice of meditation and on refined theoretical understanding of Buddhist philosophy. One of the four great lineages of Tibet, the Kagyu is known as the "practice lineage."

At the age of eight, Trungpa Rinpoche received ordination as a novice monk. After his ordination, he engaged in intensive study and practice of the traditional monastic disciplines as well as in the arts of calligraphy, thangka painting, and monastic dance. His primary teachers were Jamgon Kongtrul of Sechen and Khenpo Kangshar -- leading teachers in the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages. In 1958, at the age of eighteen, Trungpa Rinpoche completed his studies, receiving the degree of kyorpon (doctor of divinity) and khenpo (master of studies). He also received full monastic ordination.

The late fifties were a time of great upheaval in Tibet. As it became clear that the Chinese Communists intended to take over the country by force, many people, both monastic and lay, fled the country. Trungpa Rinpoche spent many harrowing months trekking over the Himalayas (described in his book Born in Tibet). After narrowly escaping capture by the Chinese, he at last reached India in 1959. While in India, Trungpa Rinpoche was appointed by His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, to serve as spiritual advisor to the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie, India. He served in this capacity from 1959 to 1963.

Trungpa Rinpoche's first opportunity to encounter the West came when he received a Spaulding sponsorship to attend Oxford University.
At Oxford he studied comparative religion, philosophy, and fine arts. He also studied Japanese flower arranging, receiving a degree from the Sogetsu School. While in England, Trungpa Rinpoche began to instruct Western students in the dharma (the teachings of the Buddha), and in 1968 he founded the Samye Ling Meditation Centre in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. During this period he also published his first two books, both in English: Born in Tibet and Meditation in Action.

In exile in India, Trungpa began his study of English. In collaboration with Freda Bedi, who had initiated the project,[21] Trungpa and Akong Tulku founded the Young Lamas Home School and, after seeking endorsement from the Dalai Lama, were appointed its spiritual head and administrator respectively.[22]

In 1963, with the assistance of sympathetic Westerners, Trungpa received a Spalding sponsorship to study comparative religion at St Antony's College, Oxford University.[23][24]

St Antony's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of French merchant Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, St Antony's specialises in international relations, economics, politics, and area studies relative to Europe, Russia, former Soviet states, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, China, and South and South East Asia.[1] It is consecutively ranked in the top five worldwide.

-- St. Antony's College, by Wikipedia


The Spalding Trust is a charitable organisation based in Stowmarket, England. Its mandate is to promote intercultural understanding by encouraging the study of comparative religion.

Mr. and Mrs. H.N. Spalding established the Trust by means of two trust deeds in 1923 and 1928.[1] The Trust has made grants to individuals, institutions and libraries. Among its benefactions have been the Spalding Chair in Eastern Religions and Ethics and the Spalding Lectureship in Eastern Orthodox Studies, both in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. The Trust also gave several grants to the School of Oriental Studies at the University of Durham in the 1950s. A Spalding Visiting Fellowship in Comparative Religion was established at Clare Hall, Cambridge in 1994.[2]

The Spalding Trust's chairs have included Sir Douglas Veale (1950-1953) ...

Douglas Veale was the youngest of three sons of a Bristol solicitor and his wife, Edward and Maud Veale. He studied at Bristol Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, gaining a degree in classics in 1914.[1] He had joined the Territorial Force on 17 September 1910 when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th (City of Bristol) Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, having previously risen to the rank of cadet colour-sergeant in his school's Officers' Training Corps unit.[2] He was promoted to lieutenant on 31 March 1911.[3] Called up on the embodiment of the Territorial Force on the outbreak of the First World War, he served with 1/4th Battalion in France from 31 March 1915.[4][5] He was promoted to substantive captain on 27 May 1915.[6] He was invalided home and appointed adjutant of the regiment's reserve battalion on 27 July 1916.[1][7]

He stepped down as adjutant on 18 May 1917,[8] and was then allowed to take up an appointment as a civil servant with the Local Government Board, later the Ministry of Health. He was private secretary to various Ministers of Health between 1921 and 1928, then private secretary to Neville Chamberlain, helping to implement the Local Government Act 1929.[1] He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on 1 March 1929.[9] The following year, he was appointed Registrar of the University of Oxford, as part of the university's plan to improve its administration by making the post more important. Although he initially faced suspicion from the colleges of the university, who disliked centralisation, he made his reputation by hard work and sensitivity to the role of colleges. He was reported to write minutes of university council meetings in advance, knowing what the likely decision was going to be. His former position as a civil servant was useful to the university as his former colleagues became more senior and found themselves in influential positions.[1]

He was knighted in the 1954 New Year Honours, receiving the accolade from the Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace on 19 February.[10][11] He became an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi and of St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 1958, the year that he retired from his post; he was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the university. He was Secretary to the Oxford Preservation Trust from 1958 - 62. His interests included walking and tennis. He was married with three children, including the musician John Veale. He died in Oxford on 27 September 1973.[1] He is commemorated in stone on the east side of the passageway leading from the north side in the Old Bodleian Library quad, Catte Street, Oxford.

-- Douglas Veale, by Wikipedia


and Thomas Knox-Shaw (1953-1971). The present chair (2000 to date) is Anne Spalding, H.N. Spalding's granddaughter.[1]:199

-- Spalding Trust, by Wikipedia


In 1967, upon the departure of the western Theravadan monk Anandabodhi, Trungpa and Akong Rinpoche were invited by the Johnstone House Trust in Scotland to take over a meditation center, which then became Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West (future actor and musician David Bowie[25] was one of Trungpa's meditation pupils there).

-- Chogyam Trungpa, by Wikipedia


Freda married BPL on June 12, 1933, at the Oxford Registrar’s Office. She was twenty-two and he was twenty-six….

Their creative, radical Oxford days were over. Both Freda and BPL received their degrees and a whole new life beckoned. It was not what Freda had imagined. She had successfully lined up a job as a cub reporter on the Derby Telegraph, her first stepping stone to Fleet Street (as she had intended). Instead she went to Germany with her new husband, who had won a Humboldt scholarship at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, to research a PHD in Political Science.

“Bedi was concerned about the rise of Hitler, but he thought that as long as he didn’t get a chance to rant in Parliament, it would be all right. He was going to keep a very keen eye on the situation,” she said. She was not to see her homeland again for fourteen years….

By the time Freda reached Berlin, she was pregnant, and delighted with the prospect of motherhood. BPL somewhat protectively decided that she should not work, but instead live quietly in the charming little cottage they had found on the bank of Lake Wannsee. “It was really a lovely place, with a beautiful garden, and we had some very happy months there preparing for the child,” she said. She busied herself with making baby clothes, but could not resist going to Berlin University to study Hindi with a Punjabi professor – a necessary preparation, she thought, for a life on the subcontinent, and to counteract the full-on domesticity she found herself in….

BPL refrained from any political activity in Germany, although he was keeping up-to-date with the Free India movement in India. A frequent visitor to their lakeside cottage was Subhas Chandra Bose, who went on to become one of the most prominent and controversial leaders of the independence movement. Bose was educated at Cambridge and also had a European wife – Emilie Schenkl, an Austrian. He made it a point to visit sympathetic Indian students living in Europe, and the couple had much in common with Freda and BPL Bedi.

“We came to know Bose intimately, and a deep friendship grew,” said BPL. Bose was a hard-core communist, a great admirer of the Soviet Union, who maintained that only an authoritarian state, not democracy, would be able to reshape India. (Later he was forced to resign as present of the Indian National Congress because his platform of violent resistance clashed with Gandhi’s peaceful pathway.)

In Germany, however, Bose, won the young BPL over completely. “Freda and I were both fired up with the patriotic zeal of liberating the motherland from British imperialism,” BPL said. “While we were in Berlin, an eminent journalist asked me what was my agenda for India. ‘Live dangerously,’ I replied. ‘Live dangerously for every form of exploitation of man by man. Live dangerously for every form of injustice. Live dangerously for any violation of human dignity.’”

On May 13, 1934, Freda gave birth to a son after just a four-hour labor….They named him Ranga after the Indian statesman who had defeated the political opposition to their marriage, ten months previously….

BPL had not joined any political club at Berlin University, nor was he taking part in any political activities, but he sensed that tension was mountain. He was friendly with many of the Indian students living in the International Houses, which were being increasingly dominated by Nazi representatives.

In August 1934, Hitler was made fuhrer. The morning the news broke, BPL put down his paper and announced, “Tomorrow we get on the train and go to Geneva. It’s not safe here anymore.”

“He knew that Hitler could swoop down on the Indian students, which was precisely what happened,” said Freda. The life of drama and danger that she pledged to share with Bedi had begun. “You can imagine the state I was in, having to pack up everything in one day, and with BPL having to get the visas for Switzerland. But the next morning we were on the train!” she said

After their hasty exit, they spent a few pleasant weeks staying in accommodations that had been arranged by their old Oxford professor, Alfred Zimmern [Professor Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, whose name is associated with the founding of the League of Nations], who ran a school there. In October 1934, they finally made the decision to go to India and make it their permanent home. They sailed on the SS Conte Verde from northern Italy to Bombay, a journey of three weeks.....

Almost immediately they joined both the Socialist and Communist parties. Freda took on the extra work of organizing the All India Civil Liberties Union of the Punjab. BPL happily set to work organizing demonstrations ...

"Both BPL and I are determined that our fight for Indian independence will be the one and only aim of our lives."...

BPL turned to freelance journalism, editing a sports magazine and then founding "Monday Morning," an outspoken newspaper carrying articles on injustice wherever he and Freda found it. Together they launched a national quarterly journal, "Contemporary India," which ran articles on current ideas in politics, economics, and philosophy as well as short stories by interesting new writers....

From this time on, Freda took on the added responsibility of becoming the main breadwinner for the family ... She wrote book reviews, was a contributor to All-India Radio, and became a consultant on a woman's magazine, "Modern Girl."....

Inspired by the suffragette movement and Marxism (which was against the exploitation of anybody), Freda was in the vanguard of the feminist movement, long before the term even existed.

In between times, Freda also published "Rhymes for Ranga," a children's book with Indian themes, which also incorporated subtle political propaganda about the nobility of the peasant and about Gandhi and won a national prize for children's verse.....

To obtain extra cash, she took a job as the head of the English department at the Fateh Chand College, the first nationalist school for women....

Her students grew from twenty-six to six hundred.....

To solve the problem of finding somewhere to live, they came up with the novel idea of moving to the newly developed Model Town, on the outskirts of Lahore, designed by Dewan Khem Chand on the ideals of sound ecology and the virtues of community living. As they could not afford one of the houses, they took an acre of land behind the residences (freely given by the landlord, a sympathizer) and proceeded to build a complex of straw-and-mud huts. They moved in together with Bhabooji and three-year-old Barrinder, an orphan of a near-relative. It was basic, back-to-nature living -- the simple life advocated by Gandhi....

"Under the trees we built reed huts with thatched roofs and plastered-mud floors, which were extremely beautiful. And we didn't have to pay rent." ....

Freda became pregnant again and their second son, Tilak Zaheer, was born on November 28, 1935, when Ranga was eighteen months old....

Baby Tilak died of dysentery during an epidemic that was sweeping the Punjab. He was just a few months old. Compounding the tragedy, at the time of his death Freda was away campaigning for independence in the countryside, leaving Tilak in the hands of his doting grandmother....

"You must have heard about Tilak," she wrote to Olive. "It was a big shock, but then I am philosophical about these things. I see too much of life not to believe that such troubles are 'all in a day's work,' and that I must leave it. The best consolation is that Ranga is a healthy, high-spirited child, and a joy to us all."....

What the Huts lacked in the way of modern conveniences and hygiene was compensated for by the fact that life around Freda and BPL was never dull. The Bedies had an open home, and a constant stream of fascinating visitors were always dropping by and staying, encouraged by the "come on in, sit down, and have a meal" welcome. The majority were the leading left-wingers of the time -- artists, poets, and politicians, including Gyani Zail Singh (the first Punjabi to become president of India), I.K. Gujral (thirteenth prime minister of India), Hafeez Jullandhri (Poet and composer of the Pakistani national anthem), and Balraj Sahri (the noted film and stage actor). And not least was the mighty Sheikh Abdullah, self-styled "Lion of Kashmir," three times president, who was later to play such a prominent role in their destiny.....

Her home and working life established, Freda threw herself wholeheartedly into her mission to free India from imperialism and to bring justice and quality to the poor an downtrodden. She traveled all over the Punjab by foot, often taking Ranga with her, going from village to village, absorbing the land and its people, raising their consciousness about the struggle for freedom. She stayed in their huts, ate their food, learned their songs, and heard their problems ....

Word quickly spread of the Englishwoman, dressed in a sari, and her audiences grew from a few stragglers to vast crowds, curious to see and hear this phenomenon for themselves. "When I say that in those days I addressed not just thousands but hundreds of thousands of villagers, I am not telling an untruth." ....

"Being a socialist in India is no joke. We all of us live on the edge of jail, and however careful you are, nothing much can be done if you do get arrested, since legal rights are rather pre-Cromwell. It is very difficult to present a picture of these terrifying days," Freda wrote to Olive.

Ranga still remembers the tension that surrounded them all. "Mummy was trailed by plainclothed policemen all the time. In order to get her removed from her job, Fateh Chand College was subjected to all sorts of harassment and sudden inspections, but the school never submitted. It was extremely brave of them, as harboring a political activist was a punishable act. No other college dared employ her, even though a master's degree from Oxford was no mean qualification for a woman in India.....

"They even questioned the sweepers to see if she was teaching sedition! Once, when a sweeper was taken down to the police station and manhandled, my mother marched off with me in tow and took the police inspector to task. She then insisted on making a notation in the complaint book. That evening a British police officer visited the college and threatened to arrest her. She wrote to the police hierarchy in Lahore and sent copies to the newspapers. Mummy was absolutely fearless at all times!"

It was the threat of prison, however, that most unnerved Freda. All the A-list agitators, including of course Nehru and Gandhi, were constantly being hauled before judges and jailed. BPL was no exception. He was first arrested in 1937 for some provocative speech at an outdoor meeting ....

By 1939, the revolution was heating up, and under Bose's influence, freedom fighters were favoring violence as the means to achieve their goal. This was too much for Freda, who promptly turned her attention totally to Gandhi and his peaceful approach of civil disobedience. BPL, however, jumped right in with added fervor and was promptly arrested for dangerous political activity and sentenced to four years in Deoli Prison ....

Now unable to live independently in The Huts because it was too dangerous, she got permission to move into one of Fateh Chand College's hostels, taking Ranga with her. Children were not allowed into the hostels, but Freda was popular with students and staff alike, having won their admiration and respect. Again, the college bravely agreed. With plenty of staff only too happy to look after (and spoil) Ranga. Freda was free to continue her full teaching program and carry on with her own revolution.

Wracked with anxiety about BPL in Deoli, Freda constantly badgered the prison authorities for the right to visit him. After much string pulling from two barrister friends practicing in the Punjab High Court, Freda finally got a permit for a "family" visit....

Ranga recalled, ... "Finally we were put down beside a dirt track and, after an hour's walk, arrived at Deoli Detention Camp, which was run by the army, not the police. They had no information regarding our visit and were visibly put out ...

After a short while we were escorted to the commandant, a strapping British colonel whose discomfiture was even greater than that of his juniors. He said he could not allow the visit without confirmation from headquarters. Furthermore, he continued, providing accommodation for a difficult prisoner's wife and child or acquiring transport to the nearest town was out of the question. He didn't know what to do with us. We could see he was rattled and confused! At sundown he relented and conceded that we could stay in the officers' suite and would be able to meet Papa the next morning, at nine, for one hour. In the end we were given the VIP treatment, including an invitation to dine in the officers' mess hall. Mummy politely declined."

"Mummy was up at first light, and after breakfast (served in our rooms) we were escorted back to the commandant. The atmosphere was tense. The colonel told us there had been an 'incident.' The political prisoners had gone on hunger strike and had had to be force-fed -- with the exception of Mr. Bedi, who had aggressively resisted....

"News of our visit had spread, and another attempt to force-feed BPL had been made at six o'clock that morning. Apparently eight people had gone to Papa's room and found him to be calm and generally cooperative. They put together the feeding apparatus, with no protest from Papa. As the medical officer bent over him, Papa sprang into action. He kicked the attendant in the groin, carried him to the door, and threw him off the veranda, causing him to dislocate his shoulder. Two other guards were floored" ...

"Knowing we were there, Papa said he would eat voluntarily, but only if he could see us.' "...

Freda and Ranga finally found BPL the sole occupant of a ten-foot-square room ...

The visit marked a turning point in Freda's life. Her marriage was founded on the vow to united with BPL in his fight for Indian independence, whatever it took. She now decided to join him in jail. Having discussed the matter over with him in Deoli, she applied to become one of Gandhi's handpicked satyagrahis, the select band of protestors who were willing to sacrifice everything, including their lives, to free India from colonial rule. It was the radical move, she told Olive, that was needed to get the job done and give the oppressed a voice. Freda was determined to live out her beliefs to the full, even if it meant leaving Ranga without both parents.....

Freda waited some time to be chosen, but she was finally accepted by Gandhi as his fifty-seventh satyagrahi -- the first British woman to be admitted to his elite band....

February 21, 1941, was the day Freda chose to make her biggest protest yet....

After fumbling in his defense of India rules book the judge handed her the sentence: six months' rigorous imprisonment in Lahore female jail.

The sentence was exceptionally harsh -- no other satyagrahi was given as much ...

It was not the dank, rat-infested hellhole one might imagine. Her cell was a room, which she shared with other satyagrahis ...

Freda laid out her bedroll on the floor and began her life behind bars. She adapted relatively easily to the regime, which by Western standards was remarkably relaxed. Together the women cooked their own meals on firewood fires with basic rations issued by the prison: cooking fat, sugar, flour, bread, vegetables, milk, tea, and spices. Occasionally their diet was brightened by provisions sent in from family and friends, which they shared. Freda received baskets of fruit and, mot incongruously, flowers from admirers and well-wishers....

It was an extraordinarily social environment. Women had their babies with them in jail, and friends sometimes volunteered to be inside simply to keep their loved ones company. When they weren't working, they sang and danced, especially on feast days, beating drums and swirling their skirts. Freda noted that the laxity of rules was excellent for keeping tension at bay and making imprisonment bearable. (It helped that the deputy superintendent had been one of Freda's students.) The guards even turned a blind eye, or ear to the revolutionary songs with their theme of independence....

Her "hard labor" was not hauling bricks or smashing rocks but working in the prison garden from 8:00 a.m. until noon, and again from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Of all punishments, nothing could have suited nature-loving Freda better. It was a godsend. She set to work tilling the soil, tending the fruit trees and vegetables: marrows, cucumbers, onions, okra, lemons, mangoes, and mulberries. Surrounded by plants and birds, the mystical Freda was often "transported" beyond the prison walls. Her diary records how entranced she was by the early hooting of an owl, the tenderness of a pair of parrots making love, the crows flying purposefully home. And when the garden bloomed, she became positively ecstatic.

"The garden in the early morning is delirious with young leaves, the scent of orange blossom and the crimson roses smelling like heaven. I've never seen so many roses in my life as I have this past fortnight. I put them in earthenware pots and brass bowls and then haven't anything to eat off or cook in."....

When she wasn't outside, Freda kept busy. She taught English, gave lectures on Marx, and as Gandhi exorted, she spun cloth....

By May, Freda began to hear whispers that legal moves were afoot to get her an early release. It was true. A certain Justice Bhide gave an enterprising judgment in the High court that claimed that sending a letter to a magistrate announcing one's intention to break the law (as Freda had done) did not constitute an offense in itself. In fact, he argued, it was a prevcention of a crime! Over the next few days, the news became more certain. On May 23, Freda was informed that she was to be released the very next day, triggering a round of farewell parties from the other inmates, who were sad to see her go.

When the jail doors opened just after noon on May 24, 1941, Freda walked into freedom and a rapturous welcome from a small group of Indian National Congress supporters. A large party had been organized in her honor, where food and speeches were to be offered, but Freda declined.... Going to prison for her beliefs had filled her with a deep sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and strength....

Her triumphant homecoming is etched vividly in Ranga's memory. "Late one afternoon, a message came from Lahore that Mummy's release was imminent, she would come straight to us in Dera. On a rainy afternoon we could hear sounds of slogans being shouted in the distance. I ran straight through the front gate and through the fields where a bullock cart was approaching. Mummy was crouched under a shawl surrounded by several others all crammed into the cart. A huge sirdar (Sikh) picked me up and put me next to her. She pulled me under her shawl and gave me an enormous, tight hug....

Within an hour dozens of relatives, accompanied by others, began to descend. The next morning it got worse -- hundreds of bullock carts laden with families and villagers arrived for darshan (blessing). It was decided that another platform should be built outside the gate, where Mummy could sit and bless the people. For two days people filed past -- and then on the fourth and final day Mummy was taken around the village on a bullock cart."

To the people, Freda have become more than a political activist, she had been virtually beatified. From then on, Freda became a national heroine, her fame, influence, and power growing stronger every day. This was to become invaluable in the work that lay ahead....

Freda had served half of her six-month sentence. During that time she had put on two pounds....

Shortly after her release, Freda heard rumors that her husband was being moved from Deoli, because the detention camp was being prepared for prisoners of war. It was thought that BPL was going to be transferred to another prison, but much to the family's amazement, he simply walked into Dera Baba Nanak one evening. The same victory parades that had regaled Freda's return were now staged for BPL, but this time the couple stood on the bullock cart side by side.

-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie


In 1969, Trungpa Rinpoche traveled to Bhutan, where he entered into a solitary meditation retreat. This retreat marked a pivotol change in his approach to teaching. Immediately upon returning he became a lay person, putting aside his monastic robes and dressing in ordinary Western attire. He also married a young Englishwoman, and together they left Scotland and moved to North America. Many of his early students found these changes shocking and upsetting. However, he expressed a conviction that, in order to take root in the West, the dharma needed to be taught free from cultural trappings and religious fascination.

During the seventies America was in a period of political and cultural ferment. It was a time of fascination with the East. Trungpa Rinpoche criticized the materialistic and commercialized approach to spirituality he encountered, describing it as a "spiritual supermarket." In his lectures, and in his books Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and The Myth of Freedom, he pointed to the simplicity and directness of sitting meditation as the way to cut through such distortions of the spiritual journey.

During his seventeen years of teaching in North America, Trungpa Rinpoche developed a reputation as a dynamic and controversial teacher.

Fluent in the English language, he was one of the first lamas who could speak to Western students directly, without the aid of a translator. Traveling extensively throughout North America and Europe, Trungpa Rinpoche gave hundreds of talks and seminars. He established major centers in Vermont, Colorado, and Nova Scotia, as well as many smaller meditation and study centers in cities throughout North America and Europe. Vajradhatu was formed in 1973 as the central administrative body of this network.

In 1974, Trungpa Rinpoche founded the Naropa Institute, which became the only accredited Buddhist-inspired university in North America. He lectured extensively at the Institute, and his book Journey Without Goal is based on a course he taught there. In 1976, he established the Shambhala Training program, a series of weekend programs and seminars that provides instruction in meditation practice within a secular setting. His book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior gives an overview of the Shambhala teachings.

Trungpa Rinpoche was also active in the field of translation. Working with Francesca Fremantle, he rendered a new translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which was published in 1975. Later he formed the Nalanda Translation Committee, in order to translate texts and liturgies for his own students as well as to make important texts available publicly.

Trungpa Rinpoche was also known for his interest in the arts, and particularly for his insights into the relationship between contemplative discipline and the artistic process. His own art work included calligraphy, painting, flower arranging, poetry, play writing, and environmental installations. In addition, at the Naropa Institute, he created an educational atmosphere that attracted many leading artists and poets. The exploration of the creative process in light of contemplative training continues there as a provocative dialogue. Trungpa Rinpoche also published two books of poetry: Mudra and First Thought Best Thought.

Trungpa Rinpoche's published books represent only a fraction of the rich legacy of his teachings. During his seventeen years of teaching in North America, he crafted the structures necessary to provide his students with thorough, systematic training in the dharma. From introductory talks and courses to advanced group retreat practices, these programs emphasize a balance of study and practice, of intellect and intuition. Students at all levels can pursue their interest in meditation and the Buddhist path through these many forms of training. Senior students of Trungpa Rinpoche continue to be involved in both teaching and meditation instruction in such programs. In addition to his extensive teachings in the Buddhist tradition, Trungpa Rinpoche also placed great emphasis on the Shambhala teachings, which stress the importance of mind-training, as distinct from religious practice; community involvement and the creation of an enlightened society; and appreciation of one's day-to-day life.

Trungpa Rinpoche passed away in 1987, at the age of forty-seven. He is survived by his wife, Diana, and five sons. By the time of his death, Trungpa Rinpoche had become known as a pivotal figure in introducing dharma to the Western world. The joining of his great appreciation for Western culture and his deep understanding of his own tradition led to a revolutionary approach to teaching the dharma, in which the most ancient and profound teachings were presented in a thoroughly contemporary way. Trungpa Rinpoche was known for his fearless proclamation of the dharma: free from hesitation, true to the purity of the tradition, and utterly fresh. May the teachings take root and flourish for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Image
Senge Dradrok
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

Postby admin » Wed Mar 13, 2019 2:24 am

Index

Abhisheka, 148, 170, 180
fourth, 148, 170
inner guru and, 181
Accident, 66, 68
free will vs., 68
ignorance as, 71
karma and, 70-71
Adhishthana (grace), 64, 167
devotion and, 65
Advaita (not-two) principle, 82
Aggression, 12, 32, 98
skillful means vs., 32
American culture, 4
cynicism in, 67-68
theism in, 59-60
American Indian tradition, 54-55,
60, 80-82
body/mind and, 80-82
Pan tradition and, 54-55, 80-
82
Anand~48, 141, 143
Padmasambhava's and, 48, 141-
142
Anger, 98, 137-138
diffusing, into energy, 138
Animal sacrifice, 54, 80
Anthropocentrism, 54-55
Atman, 143

Basic sanity, 15, 139-140, 141-
142
of American Indian tradition, 54
anthropocentric approach to,
54-55
as attitude of enlightenment, 18
emptiness as, 140
fearlessness as speedometer of,
117
lineage of, 48
Pan and, 54-55
Shintoism and, 54
spiritual materialism and, 15
Taoism and, 54
vajra pride and, 60
Bewilderment, 170, 171
duality and, 171
ignorance vs., 171
Bhakti, 64. See also Devotion
Birth
living as constant, process, 167,
179
of Padmasambhava, 26-27, 37,
43-44, 112-116
of tantra, 79
Black air, 67, 169, 179
Blame, taking the, 162-163
Bodhisattva path, 21, 33, 118
enlightenment and, 21, 118,
141
ten bhumis of, 21, 118, 141
Body, 80, 100-101
mind and, 80-82
Brahma, 52-53, 61
Buddha, 21, 84, 147
Ananda and the, 141, 143
becoming, 148-151
dharmakaya, 44
enlightenment of the, 141
lineage of the, 48, 141
Padmasambhava as, 21-22,
139-140
sambhogakaya, 45, 133
Buddhadharma, 3
in Tibet, 3-4, 53-59, 76-84
in West, 3-5, 55, 59-60, 67-
68, 81-84, 186-189
Buddhahood, 142
intellectual approach to, 154-
155
motivation to, 149-151
as path rather than goal, 21
Buddha-nature, 21, 34, 142, 151
dharmakaya level of, 29
eternity of, 40-41
experience of, 95
inquisitiveness and, 114
selfhood and, 90
Buddhism, 5, 11, 55
Hinayana, 161
Mahayana, 139-140. See also Bodhisattva
path
sainthood in, 4-5, 10
vs. theism, 55
Vajrayana/Tantric, 21, 34, 75-
94
See also Buddhadharma

Celtic tradition, 81
Chaos, 40, 173, 174
controlling primitive beliefs by,
173
Charnel ground
eternity and, 37-46, 133
Padmasambhava in, 30, 39-46,
133
Sil-ba Tshal, 30, 40
trikaya and, 108
Christianity, 55
overcoming separateness in, 82-
83
Comparison, realm of, 42, 156
Compassion
adhishthana and, 65
as gravity, 119
trikaya and, 119
Confidence, 101, 147
Confusion
allowing manifestation of, 51-
52, 60-61, 68-69
controlling primitive beliefs by,
173
as creator of pain, 164
destruction of, 24
realization and, 69
spirituality and, 5-6, 50
two games of, 8
as working basis, 9-10, 31
Continuity
of consciousness, 54
Vajradhara sense of, 39
Cowardice, 118
crazy wisdom and, 118, 122,
fearlessness and, 118, 120
Crazy wisdom, 10-11, 46
vs. being crazy, 12
chaos and, 173, 174
cowardice and, 118, 122
definition of person, 112
as directness, 141
eternity as first stage of, 41
fear and, 117, 124
happiness and, 161
hinayana mentality and, 161
hopelessness as essence of, 10,
84-94
limitations and, 117-118
lineage, 59
manifestations of, 126-127
as mirror, 112
obstacles and, 155)-160
samsara/nirvana and, 104
self-existing energy of, 58
shunyata and, 149
skillful means as, 175
sudden enlightenment and, 111
three styles of transmitting,
167-182
trikaya and, 99
See also Dorje Trolo
Cynicism, 63-67, 69
American culture and, 67-68
devotion and, 63-67
romanticism vs., 64-66
Dalai Lama (the fourteenth), 176
Death
avoidance of, 130
discontinuity and, 129
experience of, 129-131, 138
habitual patterns and, 129
penetration by Hum vs., 148
sense of eternity and, 129
sense of experience and, 129-
138
Vajradhara as lord of life and,
132-133
Deception
goal as twist of, 162
Decisionlessness, 69
self-existing intellect and, 69-
70
Defilements, 35
Desire
hope/ fear and, 137
Devotion, 63-67
adhishthana and, 65
cynicism and, 63-67
romanticism of, 64-66
Dharma, 97
dharmakaya as body of, 97
poverty mentality and, 70
as projection, 107
See also Buddhadharma
Dharmadhatu, 102, 103
Dharmakaya, 17-18, 33, 96-97,
101, 102, 108-109, 119
basic being without reference
point, 20
dangpo sangye, 102
definition of, 97
diffusing hope/fear, 34
karma in, 123-124
as nonduality, 102
as ocean, 31
pregnant space of, 101-103
self-consciousness and, 108
space of, 9~7
thought lineage and, 170
Vajradhara as, Buddha, 44
Dharmapalas, 146
Dikpa (neurotic sin), 172
Discipline, 13
nirmanakaya, 19-20
Discontinuity, 129
death and, 129, 131
Discovery, sense of, 119, 126
birth of Padmasambhava as, 26
intellectual vs. experiential,
155-156, 165
Dorje Trolo, 11, 34, 53-58
buried teachings of, 57, 177
crazy wisdom of, 56-58, 167-
172, 174-175
pregnant tigress, mount of, 56
Yeshe Tsogyal and, 172-173
Doubt(s), 179-180
Dualism, 52-53, 79, 143
fear and, 124
heretics and, 143-146
self-consciousness as first expression
of, 108
tantra and, 79
See also Duality
Duality, 171
experience as sense of, 96
Dying person, what to communicate
to, 138

Ecological philosophies, 80
Ego/self, 180
destruction of, 24, 53, 90, 172
embarrassment of, 8
eternity vs. ego, 39
fear and, 125
god and, 52-53, 79, 144
goodness and, 76
nontheism and, 53, 90
theism and, 52-53, 79, 90, 144
primordial innocence and, 28
as sandcastle, 76-77
Egohood
achieving, 9
vs. eternity, 39
Elements, the, 146
karmic anion and, 146-147
Padmasambhava as agent of,
144, 145, 146
Emotions, 97-98
energy of, 98
hope/fear as generating, 137
sambhogakaya and, 97-98
Emptiness
basic sanity as, 140
pregnant, 96
trikaya and, 96-97
See also Shunyata
Energy, 99
of anger, 138
control of psychic, 173
crazy wisdom and, 99-100
of emotions, 98
spontaneous, of sambhogakaya,
18-20
trikaya and, 103
vajrayana/tantra, 74-84, 149
Enlightenment, 9, 33, 34
basic sanity as attitude of, 18
bodhisattva path and, 118
conventional idea of, 25
fearlessness and, 114
hopelessness and, 95
inquisiriveness and, 114
intellectual view of, 154-155
samsaric view of, 109
sudden vs. gradual, 89-90, 95,
106-107, 118
tantric view of, 25-26
tricking oneself into, 142, 147
youthful quality of, 25-26,
113-114, 118
Eternity
of buddha-nature, 40-41
charnel ground and, 37-46, 133
continuity and, 39
conventional idea of, 38
death and, 129
decisionlessness and, 38
discontinuity as expression of,
129
vs. ego, 39
as experience of awake, 38
as mahamudra experience, 133
as making friends, 129, 132
as timelessness, 139
wisdom of, as first stage of crazy
wisdom, 41
Expectations, 42
Experience
death and sense of, 129-138
dharmadhatu and, 102
dharmakaya and, 102
duality as sense of, 96
of experience, 92, 129-138
transcending sense of, 139- 140
youthfulness as immediacy of,
118

Fear,124-125
crazy wisdom and, 117, 124
dualism and, 124
ego and, 125
hopelessness and, 136-137
insightfulness of, 136-137
limitations and, 117
resourcefulness of, 137
skillful means and, 136
Fearlessness, 40, 111-119
cowardice and, 118, 120
limitations and, 121-122, 125-
126
as speedometer of sanity, 117
Vajradhara and, 38
Free will, 68
accident vs., 68

Gap, 149
thought lineage transmission
and, 180-181
Giving up, 85-86
Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain,
178
Goal
as deception, 162
as path, 15, 33, 34, 106
God, 52, 76, 84, 90
belief in, 52-53, 76, 84
ego/self and, 52-53, 79, 144
no self/no, 90
Goodness, 76
hopelessness and, 93
Gradual path, 107
Sudden path vs., 107
Greek tradition, 81
Groundlessness, 88, 91-92
Guru, 141
abhisheka and inner, 181
adhishthana and, 167
Dorje Trolo as crazy wisdom,
174-175
See also Student-teacher relationship
Guru Rinpoche, 175-178. See also
Padmasambhava
Guru tsen gye (eight names of
guru), 112
Gyalwa gong-gyu (thought lineage),
169-170, 180-181
dharmakaya teachings of, 170

Habitual patterns, 129
Happiness, 160-161
hopelessness and, 161
negativity and, 160-161
Heart Sutra. 33
Heretics (Skr. tirthikas), 143
on dualism, 143
Hinayana mentality, 161
Hinduism, 53, 55, 143
gods of, 53
theistic pandits of, 52-53, 60-
61, 143-144
Vedanta of, 143
Holy Ghost, 82
Hope
loss vs., 91
negativity and, 161
See also Hope/fear
Hope and fear, 84-86, 137
desire and, 137
dharmakaya and, 34
emotions and, 1 37
spiritual practice and, 13
transcending, 10, 18
Hopelessness, 83-94, 161, 180
crazy wisdom and, 10, 88, 90
fearlessness and, 23, 84-86
goodness and, 93
groundlessness and, 88, 91-92
happiness and, 161
Naropa and, 93-94
nonduality and, 95
pessimism vs., 88
realization and, 83
shunyata and, 85
student-teacher relationship and,
87-88
sudden enlightenment and, 95
trikaya and, 95-110
truth of, vs. doctrine of, 88
Hum (seed syllable), 133, 148,
149
Human life, preciousness of, 66

Ignorance, 98
accident as, 71
vs. bewilderment, 171
spiritual materialism and, 7
Initiation. See Abhisheka
Innocence, primordial, 25-35
Inquisitiveness, 28, 113-114, 126
enlightenment and, 114
Intellect, 153-165
absence of watcher and, 156-
157
enlightenment and, 154-155
meditation and, 154-155
negativity and, 153-165
proper use of, 155-157, 165
study and, 154-156
Irritations, 45
mandala principle and, 45-46

Jamgon Kongtrul of Sechen, 66-
67, 186
crazy wisdom and, 66-67, 126
Madman of Tsang and, 100,
126-127
Jehovah, 52, 53
Jesus Christ, 163, 164
Judaism, 55, 81

Kagyu lineage, 44
Vajradhara and, 44
Kangsak nyen-gyu (word-of-mouth
lineage), 168, 170
nirmanakaya teachings of, 170
Karma, 30, 146-147
accident and, 70-71
in dharmakaya, 123-124
twelve nidanas and, 71
King Indrabhuti (Uddiyana), 27,
30, 32, 34, 37, 116
King Surya Singha (Uttar Ptadesh),
174
King Trisong Detsen (Tibet), 178
King of Zahor, 49-50, 157-159

Lake Dhanakosha (Uddiyana), 26,
112, 116
Lake Sindhu. See Lake Dhanakosha
Leap, taking a, 22, 125-126
The Life and Teaching of Naropa, 119
Limitations, 117-118, 120-121
fear/fearlessness and, 117, 121-
122, 125-126
going beyond, 121-123
Lineage, 167-169
of the Buddha, 48, 141
crazy wisdom, 58-59
mahamudra, 58
sign, 168-170
thought, 16')-170, 178-181
word-of-mouth, 168, 170
See also Kagyii lineage
Lion's Roar, 52-53, 13')-151
vajra pride and, 53
See also Senge Dradrok
Loden Choksi, 59, 157-165
definition of, 165
Longchen Rabjam, 123

Madman of Tsang, 100-101,
126-127
crazy wisdom of, 100-101,
126-127
Jamgon Kongtrul and, 100,
126-127
Padmasambhava and, 100- 101
Magic, 56, 164
nontheistic, 56
Mahamudra
etermty as, experience, 133
lineage, 58
Mahasukha (Great Joy), 43
irritation and, 43
Mahayana Buddhism, 139-140
lion's roar of, 139
Padmasambhava and, 139
See also Dodhisattva path
Mandala
sadhana of vajradhatu, 159
working with irritations as, 45-
46
Manjushri, sword of, 33
Masochism, 43
Meditation practice, 154
intellectual discipline and, 154-
156
Mind
body and, 80-82
deceptions of, 143
garnes, 12
power of, 55-56
reference points of, 78-79
Miracle(s), 159

Nalanda University, 153
three-fold discipline of, 153
Name(s) of Padmasambhava, 111-
112, 153
vs. aspects, 111
See also Padmasambhava, names
of
Naropa, 93-94
hopelessness and, 93-94
Nationalism, 55
Nature, disturbance of, 145
Negativity, 153-165
as adornment, 159
happiness and, 160-161
hope and, 161
intellect and, 153-165
Nidana(s)
second, in dharmakaya, 124
twelve, 71, 110
Nirmanakaya, 17, 19, 98, 104,
109
as cutting umbilical cord, 109
definition of, 98
discipline and, 15)-20
self-existing fulfillment, 20
as ship on ocean of dharmakaya,
31
word-of-mouth lineage and, 170
Noble Truth
first, 68
fourth, 68, 119-120
third, 163-164
Nonduality, 29, 144
of dharmakaya, 102
hopeless.ress as approach to, 95
Nontheism, 5-6, 52-53, 55, 61,
76
confusion and, 5
ego and, 53, 90
magic and, 56
spirituality and, 5-6, 52
Nyima Oser, 58, 134-135
"conctol" of time by, 134-135,
139
iconography of, 134
Nyingma lineage, 58
crazy wisdom and, 58
Obscacle(s), 159-160
as adornments, 159-161
Padmasambhava's, 4
spiricualityand, 159
Openness, 96, 114-115
as birch from locus, 44
essence of crazy wisdom as, 46
transmission and, 181

Padmasambhava, 3, 153-157
as bhikshu (monk), 48-51,
141-143
birch of, 26-27, 37, 43-44,
112-116
as buddha, 139-143
exile of, 30, 38-44
herecics and, 52-53, 60-61,
143-146
King Indrabhuti and, 27, 30,
32, 34, 37, 116-117
obstacles co, 4
as pandit, 153-157
Princess Mandarava and, 49-50,
157-158
prophesies of, 175-176
as rajguru, 50, 157-162
scorpion and, 172
as siddha, 38-46, 48
tantric view of, 47
in Tibet, 3-4, 11, 33, 53-58,
75-84, 172-178
trikaya and, 20, 34-35, 97-
100, 104, 180
twelve protector goddesses of Tibet
and, 172
uniting with, 100-101
vajra and trident scepters of, 29,
116
in West, 3-4, 68-69
Padmasambhava, eight aspects of,
11, 20-21, 45, 99, 163
crazy wisdom and, 10-11
five sambhogakaya buddhas as,
45
Padmasambhava, names of, 111-
112, 153
Dorje Trolo, 11, 53-58, 167-
182
Loden Choksi, 59, 157-165
Nyima Oser (Holding the Sun),
58, 134-135
Padmasambhava, 153-157
Pema Gyalpo (Lotus Prince),
27-31, 48, 112-119
Perna Jungne (Lotus-Born), 153
Sengye Dradrok (Lion's Roar),
52-53, 143-146
Shakya Senge (Lion, Shakya
Clan), 48-51, 139-143
Vajradhara, 38-46, 48, 132-
133
See also individual listings
Padmasambhava principle, 63, 65,
75-79, 98-99, 101, 153
ground of, 97
three constituents/trikaya of, 20,
34-35, 97-100
Pain and pleasure, 114, 132
as ornaments, 161
simultaneity of, 114
Pain/suffering, 68, 119-120
cessation of, 163-164
creator of, 164
as ornament, 160-161
path as, 162
relating with, 45
Passion, 12, 98
Path. See Spiritual path/journey
Pema Gyalpo (Skt. Padma Raja),
27, 48, 112-119
See also Zhonu bum ku
Perna Jungne (Lotus-Born), 153
Penetration by Hum, 148-149
Perception(s), 165
ulterior motives of, 165
Pessimism, 88
Phenomena, allowing play of, 47-
61
Zen anecdote of, 51
Pon tradition, 53-54, 79-82, 175
American Indian tradition and
54-55, 80-82
animal sacrifice and, 54
body/mind and, 80-82
overcoming separateness in, 82
Poverty mentality, 64-65, 67
"other" and, 70
spiritual materialism and, 64-
65
Pregnant tigress
Dorje Trolo and, 172-175
skillful means as, 175
symbolism of, 174-175
Yeshe Tsogyal as, 172-175
Primitive belief(s), 76, 79
controlling, by chaos, 173
of God/ego, 173
psychic energy of, 173
of separateness, 82-83
in Tibet, 176
Princess Mandarava (Zahor), 49-
51, 157-159
Projection(s), 107
dharma as, 107
separateness as, 109
trikaya and, 107
Prophesies (Padmasambhava), 175-
176

Rajguru,157
Padmasambhava as, 50, 157-
162
Rang sar shak (leave it in its own
place), 138
Razor's edge, licking honey off,
114, 119, 126
Reincarnation, 131-132
Religion(s), 55
fertility, 81
nationalistic, 55
nontheistic, 55, 90
theistic, 52-55; 60-61, 90,
143-144
Resourcefulness, 137
Rigdzin da-gyu (sign lineage),
168-169, 170
sambhogakaya teachings of, 170
Romanticism, 64-66
vs. cynicism, 64-65
of devotion, 64-65-
vajra pride and, 65
Roman tradition, 81
Ruthlessness, transcendental, 22-
24
vs. aggression, 22

Sacredness, 168
Sahor, kingdom of, 157
Sainthood
Buddhist, 4-5, 10
Christian, 4-5
Sambhogakaya, 17-18, 30, 105,
109
definition of, 97~8
emotions and, 97~8
energy of, 18-20, 35
Padmasambhava as, buddha, 45,
133
sign lineage and, 170
as waves of ocean, 31
Samsaralnirvana, 17
crazy wisdom and, 104
creation of, 17
separateness and, 105, 110
trikaya and, 104, 109
Sangdok Pelri (Glorious Copper-
Colored Mountain, 178
Scandinavian tradition, 81
Scorpion, 172
digpa and, 172
Padmasambhava and, 172
Self-Consciousness, 108
Self-deception, 123, 147
as guide, 123
Self/ego, 7, 90-91
buddha-nature and, 90
God and, 52-53, 79, 90, 144
nontheism and destruction of,
53
Senge Dradrok (Lion's Roar), 52-
53, 60-61, 143-146
Sense of humor, 13
Separateness, 82, 96, 110
overcoming, 82-83
problem of, 82-83
projections as, 109
theism and, 90
trikaya and, 105
Shakya Senge (Skt. Shakya Simha),
48-51, 139-143
Shintoism, 54, 55
Shonu bum ku (youthful prince in
vase), 118, 119
Perna Gyalpo as, 118
trikaya and, 118-119
Shri Simha (maha ati master),
133-134, 148
Padmasambhava and, 133-134,
148
Shunyata (emptiness), 33, 85, 86,
135)-140, 149
crazy wisdom and, 149
experience of, as wisdom, 149
hopelessness and, 85, 86
lion's roar of, 139-140
Sign lineage, 168-169
sambhogakaya teachings of, 170
Sil-ba Tshal (Cool Grove) charnel
ground, 30, 40
Skillful means, 32, 142
aggression as opposite of, 32
crazy wisdom and, 175
enlightenment and, 142
fear and, 136
as pregnant tigress, 175
Space, 99
crazy wisdom and, 99-100
pregnant, of dharmakaya, 96-
97, 101-103
Spirituality, 11, 17, 43, 50, 64
approaches to, 15, 25
based on mind, 55
Buddhist, 5, 11
confusion and, 5-6
hope/fear and, 11, 85
hopelessness and, 10
irritations and, 43
nontheistic, 5-6, 52
obstacles and, 159-161
ordinariness and, 64
Spiritual materialism, 3, 6-9, 15,
64
confusion and, 8
danger of, 8-9
poverty mentality and, 64
transcending, 15-16, 39
Spiritual path/journey, 11, 16-17,
25, 29, 31-32
dangers on, 30
goal as, 15-16, 34, 106
gradual vs. sudden, 107
intellectual discipline and, 154-
156
as journey that need never be
made, 89, 140, 141
meditation and, 154
pain as, 161
primordial innocence and, 26
trikaya as basis of, 16-24, 29
as unlearning process, 136
Spiritual practice(s)
hope/fear and, 13
problems with, 42-43
Zen, 45
Spiritual superman, 38
Spiritual supermarket, 68
Spiritual time bomb, 57, 59
Student-teacher relationship, 35,
37-38, 142, 170, 178-180
abhisheka and, 180-181
hopelessness and, 87-88
Study, 154-155
meditation and, 154
purpose of, 155
Sudden enlightenment, 111
crazy wisdom and, 111
Sudden flash/wakefulness, 30-31,
33, 37, 41-42
beginning of journey as, 30-31
birth of Padmasambhava as, 37
Sudden path, 21, 107
vs. gradual path, 21, 107

Takstang (Bhutan), 172
Tangpo sangye (primordial buddha),
102
See also Dharmakaya
Tantra, 21, 34, 75--94
birth of, 79
sudden path of, 21
See also Vajrayana
Taoist tradition, 54
Teachings
buried, 57, 177
preservation of, 177-178
Shambhala, 189
three styles of transmitting,
167-182
Theism, 52-55, 59-60, 84
in America, 59-60
Christian, 55
ego/self and, 52-53, 79, 90,
144
Hindu, 52-53, 55, 60-61,
143-144
Judaic, 55
nationalism and, 55
Shinto, 55
in Tibet, 53-57, 59, 79, 82
Thinking, 69-70
intelligence without, 70
Thought lineage, 169-170, 178-
181
dharmakaya teachings of, 170
gap and, transmission, 180-181
preservation of teachings by,
177-178
Tibet, 174-178
buddhadharma in, 3-4, 53-58,
59, 76--84
Chinese communist invasion of,
176
corruption/political intrigue in,
175-176
dawn of vajrayana in, 75-84
end of, 176--177
Padmasambhava in, 3-4, 11,
33, 53-58, 75-84, 173-178
Pon tradition of, 53-54, 79-82,
175
primitive beliefs in, 176
theism in, 53-57, 59, 79
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, 131-
132, 177
Tiger, symbolism of, 174-175
Time
concepts of, 134-135
"control" of, by Nyima Oser,
134
Timelessness, 135
eternity as, 139
Tirthikas (heretics), 52-53, 60-61,
143-144
Transcendental unknown, 8
Transmission
gap/openness and, 180-181
sacredness and, 168
three styles of, 167-182
Trident, 29
wisdom as, 32
Trikaya, 15-24, 29, 31
charnel ground and, 108
compassion and, 119
crazy wisdom and, 99
energy and, 103
hopelessness and, 95-110
nidanas/six realms/bardo states
as, 110
Padmasambhava and, 20, 34-
35, 97-100
samsara/nirvana and, 104, 109
separateness and, 105
spiritual path and, 16-24, 29,
31-32
zhonu bum ku and, 118
Tripitaka, three sections of, 153-
154
Truth and falsehood
crazy wisdom and, 77-78
fixation and, 78
Tulku (incarnate teacher), 185
Twelve protector goddesses of Tibet,
172

Uddiyana,26, 112
Universal monarch, 140-142

Vajradhara, 41
definition of, 39
as dharmakaya buddha, 44
fearlessness and, 38
Padmasambhava as, 38-46, 48,
132-134
Vajradhatu mandala, sadhana of,
159
Vajralike samadhi, 21, 141
Vajra pride, 53, 60, 101
basic sanity and, 60
lion's roar and, 53
romanticism and, 65
Vajra scepter, 29
skillful means as, 32
Vajrayana, 75-84
energy of, 74-84, 149
See also Tantra
Vedanta, 143
Vidyadhara
definition of, 41, 46
of eternity, 41
five stages of, 41, 43

Waiting for Godot, 100
Watcher, 156
intellect as absence of, 156-157
Wisdom, 32
vs. Ignorance, 32
shunyata experience as, 149
transmuting defilements into,
35
Word-of-mouth lineage, 168, 170
nirmanakaya teachings of, 170

Yeshen (pon deity), 53
definition of, 53-54
Yeshe Tsogyal, 172-173
Dorje Trolo and, 172-173
as pregnant tigress, 172- 175
Zen Buddhism, 45
oxherding pictures, 118

THE DHARMAOCEAN SERIES

Crazy Wisdom
The Heart of the Buddha
Illusion's Game: The Life and Teaching of Naropa
Journey without Goal: The Tantric Wisdom of the Buddha
The Lion's Roar: An Introduction to Tantra
Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle
The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation
Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness
Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Previous

Return to Religion and Cults

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 20 guests