I was not just yelling for help or for mommy or daddy; it was an internal yell, and it created some kind of breakthrough, and some understanding of alcohol at the same time. There is some kind of little click that takes place between alcohol being possessed in your body or alcohol possessing your mind. Once your mind is clear, your body necessarily becomes complicated. At that point I very quickly attained some kind of realization, although I had no visions of any kind. Nothing extraordinary happened to me at all; the headlines of this sadhana just came up in my head, flashed in my mind.
What was happening interested me a great deal: I was hoping that i t might be some kind of leverage, some kind of handle for communicating that sense of discipline, that message which nobody speaks, but which -is in my head. That message was very powerful and very important for me.
Some kind of understanding of alcohol took place at the same time. I was drinking Bhutanese gin, I think, as well as Bhutanese beer, which is atrocious. It usually makes you sick. It's a dishwater kind of substance; it doesn't taste so good. And I was drunk on the combination of the two, or maybe it was three -- whatever the third one was.
I wrote down the title of the sadhana that night, and the next day I woke up quite clear, without any hangover. I was very happy and joyful; my whole mood had completely changed. My preoccupation with Tagtsang, the feeling that I should make a big deal of the place, that I. We had lots of chilies in Bhutan, and Kunga was feeling extremely painful. On that very day, he complained that he didn't want to eat this kind of food any more.
He just wanted some biscuits. He asked me to translate his request to the cook. The cook said he had a problem with the pots: he couldn't cook two meals at Introduction once. Be shouldn't be treated as a V. Bhutanese cooking usesa lot of hot green chilies - it's like Szechuan food. Bot chilies were cooked with the meat. There was no curry powder or any other ingredient. It's very painful to eat, and it's good, too. The worst pain is when you go the bathroom. I wrote just a few words the next day.
So altogether it took me about seven hours to write the whole thing. I think it was less than that, actually; it took about six hours. I didn't have to think about what I was doing; the whole thing came out very fresh. I tried to relax a little bit and rest my fingers. After that, I picked up my pen and just wrote spontaneously.
That is how the sadhana was written. In writing the sadhana, I tried to bring together the Nyingma tradition and the Kagyu tradition. That is the basic: idea of the sadhana: to bring together the ati and mahamudra traditions. There's no conflict at all between the two. The contemplative approach of the Kagyus is somewhat dramatic: and perhaps too poweroriented. In order to tone it down, I added something from the Nyingma tradition, in order to create a better soup stock, a better flavoring.
Bringing those two traditions together actually makes a lot of sense. Karma Pakshi, who is the main figure in the sadhana, is regarded as the same as Padmasambhava, who is the founder of the Nyingma lineage. It was Padmasambhava who introduced the buddhist teachings to Tibet. He was also a tantric master. Karma Pakshi was a less powerful person historically. So my purpose in writing the sadhana was to build a bridge between the two contemplative traditions. Even the wording of this sadhana, how each sentence and the whole thing is structured, is based on that idea of trying to bring together in a harmonious way the mahamudra language of the newer school of tantra and the ati language of the older school of tantra.
Underlying both mahamudra and maha ati, there is some kind of basic foundation: the practice of surrendering, renunciation and devotion. That brings the whole thing together, very much in a nutshell. You have to surrender, and you actually have to develop some kind of. Without that you can't see or hear or experience the. We could go into the details of that later on.
I would like to stop here. If you have any questions, you are welcome. Were you referring to the conflict between the Nyingmas and the Kagyus? ARA: Not necessarily. It refers to all the schools -- to everything, to everybody. The Theravadins were at odds with the Sarvastivadins; the Burmese were quarrelling with the Sinhalese. What is chang, exactly? I think Marpa V: Well, it's difficult to give the prescription on the spot.
It's closest to beer: it's made from barley and yeast. But it's actually referred to as wine - barley wine. The word for wine made from grapes is gunchang. Wine made from barley is called nechang. Q: Are mahamudra and ati two different sects, Kagyu and Nyingma? But the Kagyu tradition actually does accept the ati teachings. Q: I was deeply impressed by the process -- more than I was by the climax or the content of what we're striving to understand, and as you told the story, with my Western ears, I heard you saying that you went in and out of the garbage pail, and you came to this place and made a primal scream, and out came.
So I'm curious as to what motivation you felt, as sort of the filter or the transmitter of buddhism, to create this reconciliation of two schools. For example, the fifth Karmapa was the embodiment of both traditions. At the same time, the Kagyu and the Nyingma lineages both continued separately. Jamgon Kongtrul the Great also realized that the two traditions are very close, that they work hand in hand. The Kagyu tradition is more energetic and the Nyingma tradition is more spacious; nevertheless, they work together.
Q: Rinpoche, I've heard that in the ati tradition they don't use yidams. V: All tantric traditions use yidams. Q: The sadhana is. That simplicity is very exciting, but at the same time, that exciting simplicity is over when the gong rings three times and we go back to our simple, mundane world. We don't think any more in terms of Dorje Trollo or self-existing equanimity. V: Yes. Q: Yet that is what the sadhana is about: in everyday experience.
V: I don't see any particular problem. It's a question of what we're going to do afterwards. We just do what we do, and when the security of our inspiration gets exposed tp city life or just ordinary life, it is very painful for us. I don't see any big problems, particularly. We just have to do it, just do it very simply. And when we do it, we are able to feel it properly.
If we have any complaints, that is a sign that we didn 1 t do it properly. So it's very simple to deal with our official? Was that in reference to the temple at Tagtsang? V: It was in reference to everything. We definitely had a lot of spiritual problems in my country.
But there was no real practice going on; it was a. It was no wonder the Communists decided to take over; they were right from that point of view. They had a perfect right to destroy that superficial and highly [inaudible] society which has no real theocracy, no real religion, no real insight. All those things were true. In fact I think the destruction of the Tibetan kingdom was very fortunate for buddhism.
We are finally here; we are face-to-face with somebody else, with another real world. I'm The Sadhana of Mahamudra. They dpn' t have to continue the old ways -- over and over, again and again. I just tell people the truth: that to begin with, life is painful; that it's not blissful to begin with.
I tell people they have to do their thing properly, that they have to sit a lot. That's the basic point. If people want to get into tantra, I tell them that it's a very long way for them, that they're not ready for it, and so forth.
It has happened in the past, in the Catholic tradition as well as in other high church traditions. It seems to be always the same problem. What we are getting into here is hopefully reformed buddhism. What happened in Tibet did not happen in the name of deception; there were very honest and fantastic teachers, great teachers like Jamgon Kongtrul.
But there were a lot of other people who were trying to make fifty cents into a dollar. It was a complex situation. Q: I'm very glad you're here. V: Thank you. You got your money's worth. So go to bed and get up early. Thank you. That relationship -is the basis of the tradition that we are discussing in this seminar.
The notion of devotion is ordinarily based on some kind of parental relationship, a relationship between a father or mother and a child. It involves security, admiration and hero worship.
That is why a lot of people think that devotion means having a picture of their own particular football player or rock star, which they put on their wall along with their favorite gurus.
Jumbling them together that way seems to be their idea of hero worship, the worship of the ultimate achievement of a spiritual and physical superman. That kind of devotion seems to be Vfiry questionable. There is no real substance or intelligence in relating with the reality of personal growth; it's purely hero worship, a dream world. That kind of adoration actually weakens the notion of heroism.
In the Kagyu tradition, the notion of devotion is an absolutely fundamental and, at the same time, full commitment. Devotees do not regard the object of their devotion as purely an object of admiration. They don't simply admire somebody because he has great talent and because therefore he should be a good person to be put on their list. There is a kind of enormous simplemindedness in that approach, which is why we are not really able to appreciate art or fine craftsmanship or true sanity.
We usually put everything together in one big garbage pail; we feel that anybody who is not quite in keeping with our own clumsiness has got to be good. So let us worship all these great football players or great presidents or great spiritual teachers.
Any real sense of devotion or dedication comes not from comparing, but from personal experience. We have actually committed ourselves. Maybe the closest example of devotion that we could come up with.. He may not even be all that great at keeping his domestic life together. There is just something about that particular person, who doesn't fit any of the usual categories of heroes. He is just a good person, a lovable person who has some very powerful qualities in himself. That seems to be the closest analogy that we 10 Chapter One could come up with.
But at the same time, there has to be something more than that. Our lover may have some kind of physical beauty, or he may be able to offer us some of security. But somehow, in real devotion, we are even transcending that situation. Real devotion is. We are not expecting everything to be absolutely right.
At that point, we take another step in our relationship with our guru, our teacher, who is not a football player, not a great musician or a great singer or even a great lover. That something else is difficult to explain and very hard to describe; that something else has immense clarity and power.
We don't usually like our lovers to have too much power over us; we don't usually like our heroes to have too much power over us.
We would simply like to idolize them. That way it's our choice rather than something coming from that angle. The complete devotion of the relationship between teaC'he:r and student is a very unique situation. There are two aspects to devotion: longingness and humbleness. The first. You would like to experience fully and completely your teacher's mind; you wish you could get inside his brain and look out.
Then you could say, "Wow! This is how he sees it. It's fantastic! You're a little disciple sitting there in your teacher's mind and looking at the world from his point of view. You climb over his brain and you poke a little hole in his skull so that you can look outside. But since you are unable to do that, you feel a kind of fascination and. That longingness is the first kind of devotion. The second aspect of devotion is humbleness.
Humbleness in this case means absence of ego, absence of arrogance. When you worship a football player or your great daddy or your great mother, that worship is somewhat arrogant: you think that you will inherit their great genius.
You would like to associate with great poets, great artists, great geniuses. But when you relate with your teacher, there is very little room for arrogance. You have a sense of humbleness and an absence of uptightness uptightness is also arrogance. Arrogance is thinking that you know what you are going to do; you are completely involved in your male chauvinistic trip or your female chauvinistic trip.
You think that as females or as males, you have the right to a complete description of what spiritual disciplines you might be receiving. That kind of chauvinism is a form of arrogance. People who might mock other Devotion and Crazy Wisdom peoples' chauvini.
You are a pig. When there is arrogance, there is no communication. So the obstacle to humbleness is too much chauvinism, arid not paying enough attention to who you are and what you are. The only way to overcome that obstacle is to develop a sense of humbleness. But that doesn't mean that you have to faithfully follow the Oriental trip of bowing every other minute or every other second.
You don't have to kneel down and lick your teacher's feet as an expression of devotion. Sometimes when people can't experience devotion properly, they just try to act it out physically. They are always trying to please, trying to maintain some kind of protocol, which is highly questionable.
Often such people are extraordinarily arrogant. Real humbleness is not allowing yourself any kind of backbone. You are completely flexible from head to toe. You are without a backbone, without any bones at all in your body. You would just like to kneel down. You are flexible like a good fish that has been cooked; you are completely flexible, like a worm.
You don't have the arrogance of sticking your little corners out and saying, "No, no! You can't touch my ribs. No, no! You can't touch my neck. You can't touch my back, my shoulders, my leg. It hurts! Don't touch me. You are willing to do anything; you are willing to get into anything; you are willing to actually open yourself up and be at the mercy of your teacher.
So those two kinds of devotion, long:ingness and humbleness, the absence of pride or arrogance, become the basis of the sadhana. They are also a description of how you could actually follow your path. Another aspect of the tradition of the sadhana is crazy wisdom, which is a very unusual topic. Bow can we say that craziness and wisdom would exist together? We could say quite safely that the expression "crazy wisdom" is not correct; it is purely a linguistic convenience.
We could say instead that wisdom comes first and craziness comes afterwards, so "wisdom crazy" is more accurate. It is highly powerful and clear and precise. You are able to see things as they are, in their own right; you have no biases at all; you see things as they are, without any question. Out of that, you begin to develop craziness, which is not paying attention to all the little wars, the little resistances that might be put up by the world of reference points, the world of duality.
That is craziness. You might ask how that is possible. Ordinarily, i f you exercise too much control, you can't relax. You think that in order to be in control, you have to be tight. So how can you have immense control and immense relaxation at the same time?
How can 11 12 Chapter One yQu see clearly at the same time? The lineage of the sadhana is the lineage of the two schools put together, the two traditions of immense crazy wisdom and immense dedication and devotion. It puts the student's roie and the teacher's role together into one powerful style. The Kagyu or mahamudra tradition, the tradition of Karma Pakshi, is the devotion lineage.
The Nyingma or ati tradition, the tradition of Padmasambhava, is the lineage of crazy wisdom. It is possible to put these two traditions together and work with both of them. It's possible; it has been done. This particular tradition has developed quite recently, starting about a hundred sixty years ago. It was founded by the Tibetan master Jamgon Kongtrul the Great.
He developed a deep understanding of the ati and mahamudra principles, and he became the lineage holder in both those traditions. His tradition is called the Rime school, which literally means -"unbiased. The initial inspiration for the Rime school came from Karma Pakshi, the second Karmapa, who lived in the thirteenth century.
Karuia Pakshi received teachings from the Nyingma tradition as well as from his own tradition. Rangjung Dorje, the third Karmapa, the reincarnation of Karma Pakshi, brought the two traditions together still more. He had the very clear and precise understanding that the mahamudra teaching of devotion and the maha ati teaching of crazy wisdom could be brought together. That was a very important revelation for Tibetan buddhism. Openness and craziness became one at that point.
In the Kagyu tradition, there were people like Milarepa, who was a very hard worker. He was extraordinarily diligent and devoted to his particular discipline. On the other hand, the holders of the Nyingma lineage, like Padmasambhava, were wild and crazy and fantastically expansive. They were visionary on a larger scale; they had their own particular style of relating with the world. Bringing those two styles together is like making a good cup of tea.
You boil some water and you put a pinch of tea in it, which makes a good cup of tea. You put a dash of milk in it and you drink it up. So what we are talking about is a very beautiful blend of the two situations put together. It's an ideal situation. Quite possibly, I could say that it's the best thing that has happened to Tibetan buddhism.
It's a fantastic, magnificent display of total sanity, of basic enlightenment. Both traditions have developed a sense of ruggedness and openness, expansiveness, craziness. I feel that being able to discuss these things is a rare opportunity for us. The crazy wisdom tradition puts a lot of Devotion and Crazy Wisdom emphasis on the idea of sudden intoxication, the idea that ordinary mind can be suddenly transformed into no-mind. The mahamudra devotional tradition puts its emphasis on gradual intoxication, telling students that they have to take their time, take it sip by sip, so to speak, and find their own level.
Both approaches have some kind of truth in them. However, it is best to start with the gradual process; otherwise you get an upset stomach or you might even die suddenly. In any case, you would experience sudden chaos. So whichever of these two traditions a person is involved with does not really make any difference at this point. Younger students are not able to handle that kind of abruptness. Therefore, they should be trained in hinayana first, then in mahayana and only later in vajrayana.
They should be prepared slowly and gently, and when they are ready to actually take the leap, then you push them off the cliff and make them fly. That is precisely how the mother eagle trains her young: the first few weeks she feeds them with all kinds of meat and worms and what have you, and only later, when they are still playing games with their mother, when they still want food and are getting fat without any exercise, when they are ready to use their wings, the mother pushes them out of the nest.
In that way the young eagles begin to fly; they begin to take pride in their abilities. That is the only way of training them that makes any sense. That lineage is quite fittingly referred to as the children of the garuda, which is a mythical bird in Indian mythology. When the garuda egg hatches, the young garuda is all ready to fly. In the Rime tradition, the ideas of sudden birth and gradual birth work together.
That question of gradual or sudden enlightenment exists in the Zen tradition as well. People talk about satori and suddenly being able to do anything you want. But at the same time, you are expected to do a lot of sitting practice; a lot of training is needed.
So that seems to be the general pattern: that there is a need for both approaches together. That makes the whole thing completely workable. If it were not for the mahamudra or devotional tradition, the maha ati or crazy wisdom tradition might produce a lot of fanatics, a lot of neurotics, quite possibly even a lot of suicides.
It is common knowledge that there is a high suicide rate among Zen practitioners. It is also quite possible that the gradual school would end up just running on its own regular nonsense if there were no crazy wisdom school to save people from their wormlike trip, chewing their way through their own little tree, going round and round and round and finally dropping dead, completely dried up. So bringing the two traditions together saves both, and their combination seems to be one of the most workable situations that has ever developed.
It's no wonder the great teachers of the past came to that conclusion; I would say that they were very smart.
They were, and they still are. It's working in our own time. You're welcome to ask questions if you wish. Is that true? That's Why in Western literature they are called the reformed tradition. Charles Bell and other scholars all call them "reformed. V: Well, this is real reform. We're not threatened by anybody, so Q: You mentioned devotion devotion to teacher and devotion to discipline. I wonder if the teacher is the embodiment of discipline. V: The teacher is the embodiment of discipline.
Q: Can one be devoted to d. V: Sure, to a discipline which is given by a teacher. The crazy wisdom person can do anything he wants; he's very powerful. He's a hero just like a football player is. V: Well, I think that he's a hero rather than someone who is heroworshipped. That's the difference. Obviously, he is powerful. When you possess power, you don't have to say "I am powerful , it because you are powerful already.
So the difference between being hero-worshipped and being a hero on the spot is that you don't have to be qualified as a fantastic and powerful person; you are already. Q: I have to think about that. V: You'd better think about that before you get out of hi! Somebody over there? Young lady in the purple? Q: I would like to ask about the concept of the nine yanas, if you could shed some light on that. Why is maha ati the ninth yana and mahamudra the sixth yana? V: Let's make it very simple.
There are six tantric yanas which come after the first three yanas: shravakayana, pratyekabuddhayana, and bodhisattvayana. Those first three yanas make up the hinayana and the mahayana together. Mahamudra includes the next Devotion and Crazy Wisdom 15 three yanas, which are the first three tantric yanas [kriya yoga, upa yoga, and yoga yana].
Anuttara yana, which is basically the fruition of the sixth yana, is particularly predominant. Beyond that, you are approaching the area of ati or crazy wisdom [the three higher tantric yanas, or maha yoga, anu yoga, and ati yoga].
I would like to ask your opinion of following a path that starts with ati. Or do you see the merging of the two traditions as being the best way for us?
Q: V: Well, it's very difficult to attain ati experience immediately; it takes a long time. So you find yourself following mahamudra, basically. That's how Rangjung Dorje, the third Karmapa, discovered himself. Many of the great teachers of the ati tradition, Jigme Linpa and Longchen Ramjam for example, constantly refer back to the nine-yana structure.
You might think that you are doing ati-type discipline, that you belong to that particular style. Nevertheless, you always find that you have to start from scratch, which is unavoidably the mahamudra principle. So we don't have to give them labels, particularly, but what the whole thing amounts to is that you're starting from mahamudra experience in any case. Q: You spoke of arrogance as the stiffness of going through the motions. Is that the impetus, the irritation that gets you kicked out of the nest?
V: Anything you say, sure. All the rest of it, sure. V: That's a very good question-- thank you. Well, I wondered if somebody would catch on to that. You did. Devotion is not only devotion to your guru alone; it is also devotion to the manifestations of the guru that exist throughout your life, all the time. If you are drinking your tea, if you slipped a disc in your back, if you're crossing the river in a ferry, if you're f1 ying in an airplane, if you step in dog shit -- whatever you might do in your life -- everything is a manifestation of the guru principle.
Because there is such a powerful love affair between you'. You might sometimes feel like complaining about the whole thing; you might try to avoid the whole thing altogether. But somehow that doesn't work. There is a constant haunting quality to your experience, and when you try to forget your guru, he only becomes more prominent. When you try to pursue your guru, he only 16 Chapter One fades away into the background. That kind of process continually happens and that actually creates the colorful perceptions of mahamudra experience.
So the whole thing begins with devotion. That seems to be the basic point. There is need for the vajra master in any case, whether you are part of the ati tradition or the mahamudra tradition. Particularly in the ati tradition, you need to have a lot of guidance and a sense of couunitment to the vajra master. So the more commitment you have to the vajra master in the mahamudra tradition, the more ati-type experience will begin to take place.
So it's saying the same thing in some sense. Q: That was the next thing I wanted to ask: it would seem that if you lived according to a mahamudra style, that would automatically carry over into action, without the normal reference points.
So the traditions are very close together. V: Well said, son of noble family. I think it should be the last one, so it had better be good! V: How do you know about that? V: It does make sense; it does make sense. Q: But did you read about I thought about it. V: Oh, that's great! That's been done already. That seems to be the tantric notion of the whole thing.
Instead of saying "empty," you say "luminous. V: You did? Q: Yes. V: That's too bad. Q: [Laughter. It wasn't just the personalities, was it?
Devotion and Crazy Wisdom V: It was the personalities -- sure. People have different ideas: some people would like to be pilots and fly airplanes. Some people would like to be playboys. The playboy people are mahamudra people; the pilots are ati people. But maybe the playboys would like to fly airplanes, and the pilots might like to be playboys. Those are the two basic kinds of vision: one is so expansive, and the other is so intense and colorful -- a love affair.
Q: But in order to experience mahamudra, wouldn't your practice have to be very spacious, as well? V: In some sense, but if you find yourself in the middle of anuttara yoga disciplines, they are very demanding.
They reduce you to nuts and bolts; with your mudras, your mantras, and your visualizations, you don't know where you are.
It's a very demanding practice. You can't eat this; you can't eat that. You must eat this; you must drink that. You are constantly bounded within a very small area. But that is necessary because each time you practice, it is a process of shedding something.
Getting into the tantric world is a very full experience; overwhelmingly demanding. Some people's idea of tantra is just drinking ordinary liquor and having a good time, having a freestyle love affair. But that's not quite so. Demands are made on you in a particular way; the whole process is extraordinarily demanding. The whole point is to scrape away your basis, so that you don't have any ground to walk on.
It is like scraping meat off bones: your emotions begin to float to the surface like fat boiled in water. Q: But as you practice and the demands become greater and greater, shouldn't some kind of spaciousness always be required?
V: Not necessarily. As you become greater and greater, you could discover more and more possibilities of things that you could put into that greatness. If you become a millionaire, you buy lots of property and lots of furniture. You buy a big house and you fill it with pictures and photographs and furniture. That's how the whole thing goes. When you have a bigger style of thinking, you would like to decorate your world that way, because you feel that passion is your style.
Maybe you should visit the homes of rich people and see how they handle themselves, particularly in America, which is a notoriously crude country. All kinds of things are going on in rich peoples' homes. Spaciousness doesn't mean that when you clear a space, when you open up a space, that nothing will occupy it.
It usually happens that when you have more space, you put more stuff. Q: So the big danger is of this intoxication becoming intoxicated. V: Yes, that's right. You got it. Well, I think you should get up earlier tomorrow; therefore, you should go to sleep.
If you could put more emphasis on disciplining yourself and on taking part in the sitting practice, that will probably make what we are going to discuss much more workable and immediate and realistic. Good night. The language used in the sadhana is based on those two experiences: the highest level of devotion and the highest level of wisdom combined. Today we could go beyond that to understanding the sadhana itself. The sadhana is composed of various sections, according to the traditional pattern.
At the beginning is taking refuge and the bodhisattva vow. The first section also creates an atmosphere of self-realization or basic potentiality, which is an ongoing theme in the sadhana. In tantric language, it is called "vajra pride.
You are already enlightened, so you need only recognize and understand that. Karma Pakshi Padmasambhava is sitting on a triangle, which rests on a rock which is built on the charnel ground, which is a symbol of no man's land. It is the ground where birth and death take place; it is prelife and postlife experience. The idea of the charnel ground is that all kinds of experiences coexist simultaneously; you are working with that kind of no man's land; you no longer belong to any particular situation; you no longer belong to any particular lifestyle.
You are completely open and basic. Discontinuity, or dissolving, and continuity are constantly taking place within that situation. From that basic mandala of the charnel ground, the siddhas arise. The various parts of the body mandala are the forehead center, the throat center, the heart center and so on. The body mandala is connected with what is known as inner yoga: you don't actually have to arrange anything; the mandala is already developed in your own existence.
Your body could be regarded as sacred ground already. At that point arises the figure of Karma Pakshi and Padmasambhava as one person, the great wrathful one, the embodiment of crazy wisdom. That basic principle is not particularly visualized as orthodox sadhanas prescribe.
In this case, the qualities and the visualization are taking place simultaneously. The qualities, or symbolism, and attributes of all kinds are described one by one.
The jnanasattvas merge with the existing visualization, called the samayasattva. But in this sadhana, samayasattva and jnanasattva are embodied together: the symbolism is described first, and then the attributes of the symbolism are described, throughout the whole thing.
The basic point is that Karma Pakshi and Padmasambhava are one, and their attributes are continuous. In addition, there are various centers in the body: the forehead center, the throat center, and the heart center, which are important places. The confused world, to use an ordinary metaphor, is like a chicken without a head. That chicken is very freaked out; he runs all over the place.
But a chicken with a head might be a better chicken. So the head cakra, or actually, somebody with a whole body including the head, is the idea of solidity, definiteness. The throat center is connected with the idea of speech, communication, reference point. You have to speak in order to connect the body and the mind. The heart center is related with the mind. In the forehead center we have Tusum Khyenpa, who represents the vajra principle. He was the first of the Karmapa line. He was a great ascetic, a great meditator and a great penetrator.
In the throat center we have Mikyo Dorje, the eighth Karmapa. He was a great scholar, a great theologian so to speak , and a great grammarian. He represents speech, the proclamation of the teachings. In the heart center we have Rangjung Dorje -- right? He was the third Karmapa. He was the one who actually brought the ati -tradition and the mahamudra tradition together. He was a lineage holder in both the Nyingma tradition of Longchen Ramjam and so forth, and in the Kagyu tradition, obviously, since he was a Karmapa himself.
That whole process is based on the unique world which is created by bringing together the contemplative traditions of the two schools. There is no need to borrow from any other tradition; we have a self-existing world that is created from the unique bringing together of the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions.
There is no sectarianism or bitterness at all between them. There is a saying in Tibet that the separation between the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions doesn't exist in the same way that your left eyeball and your right eyeball do not put pressure on each other. You see with both eyes. The two traditions are always together and always synchronized in their disciplines.
Getting back to the sadhana, around Karma Pakshi are a great host of buddhas, the utterance of the dharma, and the protectors and everything. They sort of legitimize the visualization as also being the embodiment of the three jewels: buddha, dharma and The Siddhas sangha. The dakinis, the dharmapalas and the protectors are all included. That's the important point. Not holding back doesn't mean vomiting out sickness or churning out buckets of diarrhea.
This is a very sane approach: we are talking about how to let go of the whole thing, how to open. You suddenly discover a sense of immense freedom when you connect with the wisdom of those two beautiful schools put together. One school has the brains and one school has the heart, so to speak. Joining the two makes a perfect human being -- something even more than that, a higher human being, a fantastic superman, a vajra superman of our age.
The best of the two worlds had been put together in combining the two great contemplative traditions: that was the message that came to me from my teacher, Jamgon Kongtrul. He transmitted a lot of information and a lot of teachings to me. I also received teachings from many other teachers; I probably had something like fifteen gurus altogether. And I understood that there was no problem, no chaos, no confusion in putting those two schools together.
They don't even have to be put together, actually; they simply dissolve into each other -- simultaneously. That dissolving is a product of "let loose," "let go," and "unleashed. The next section is the supplication. In the supplication, we are basically trying to relate with each of the basic centers, or focal energies - body, speech, and mind - as well as with the sadhana as a whole, or with Karma Pakshi Padmasambhava. In these verses we are asking to be admitted or accepted into that condition of gloriousness.
Our own condition is highly wretched. So we are trying to link together wretchedness and gloriousness. It is usually very difficult for us to do that. If we don't have a greater vision of anything, we can't bring those two worlds together at all. The world seems very divided to us; we are so depressed and so wretched that when we even think about that gloriousness, we feel more depressed.
Oy vey! And when we are into the gloriousness, we don't want to have anything to do with the wretchedness. It seems to us that wretchedness has not yet come, or else that we have already gone through it; we have already abandoned it behind our back. The purpose of this sadhana is to bring those two poles together, which is not particularly impossible. Wretchedness brings us down to earth, and gloriousness brings us up, makes us expansive, gives us more vision.
So the idea of the supplication is to bring about a combination of those two situations. Supplication is not asking something of some divine principle that exists somewhere else -- upstairs in the loft; it doesn't mean 21 22 Chapter Two trying to bring that person down. It's the fundamental principle of the simultaneous existence of depression and excitement; we try to relate to both of them.
One of the problems with the theistic tradition is a constant attempt to cheer up, to try tQ compete with heaven or with granddad. We try to become completely like him; we try to forget how wretched we really are. The theistic tradition seems to be very schizophrenic; it is unable to accept that the human condition and the divine condition are really one. In the buddhist nontheistic tradition, we don't have that problem.
The divine principle, however glorio1,1s it may be, is still very depressing. And depression, however depressing it may be, is still glorious. We could wash our dishes in the kitchen sink; we could drive our car; we could go to nine-to-five jobs -we could do all the things that we are supposed to be doing. We could earri our bread that way.
But at the same time, we don't have to jump back and forth anymore. Where we are is what we have and what we might be, what we will be and what we have done. Everything is included. If that is what we are thinking, then we are having a problem with our thinking system..
If we try to put those two poles together, we get spiritual indigestion forever. He says that the two poles of the conflict exist because human beings are no longer able to accept simplicity. That seems to be the basic point, which comes through quite truly, quite rightly in Mr. Buber's writings. So the supplication section describes our own condition, which is "wretched" and "miserable. We carry on the whole world that way.
There is a somewhat metaphysical meaning behind the two descriptions: "slime and muck of the dark age" and "thick black fog of materialism. We have a sense of the world's The Siddhas hostility and aggression, as well as passidn; everything is beginning to eat us up. And "the thick black fog of materialism" refers to the basic wrongness of the environment. So a generai sense of the environment and the reference point of our relationship to it are put together.
These two types of corruption correspond'to the description of the two types of sin in the buddhist tradition. The first type is called "evil actions" or "neurotic crimes. We don't want to see the embarrassing holes in our existence, we would like to cover them with patchwork. The second type of sin is called "obscurations" or blockages. There is a fundamental kind of wrongness in our actions because we are so involved in running, speeding.
Those two principles seem to be what is referred to in this section of the sadhana. The next passage is about our disillusionment with the world of spiritual materialism. It reads: "The search for an external protector has met with no success. Charles Darwin quite suspiciously presented his case, which has somehow served the purpose of human individuality. So the humanistic approach makes the basic point, but it gives us no guidelines for how to conduct our lives.
That seems to be the problem. They are constantly rejecting their own culture -- needlessly. But in some sense they are right. Their parents believe in a hierarchical setup of authority which comes from their priests, their religious background. It comes from the first and foremost great-great-great-granddad, who said that law and order was God, who handed down traditions: how you should eat, what your table manners should be, how you shduld sit on your toilet seat.
You are supposed to behave well; you are supposed to be good boys and girls. All that comes from greatgreat-granddad. People resent that, obviously. If you can't even relate with your own parents, and then you find that there are even greater parents -- a hundred percent more so, two hundred percent more so, five hundred percent more so, a thousand percent more so -- if your parents have been magnified to such a gigantic scale, that obviously becomes a source of pain; it becomes a problem.
That kind of heavy-handed authority is what has led American psychology, or Western psychology in general, to the idea of nontheism. That is the newest spiritual development, as far as the Western world is concerned. But we can't be too fatalistic about this situation: it already has a lot of potential, immense potential. The complaints and the reaction against our parents and our granddad and our great-great-granddad are well-founded.
That new kind of wisdom of asserting our own intelligence is quite right; it seems to be the vanguard of the nontheistic tradition, which is just about to give birth. One of the most important and interesting points that we have discussed here is that everything which seems to go wrong with our life, the mismanagement of the dharma and all the other things -- the list goes on and on -- all seem to be related with that problem of theism.
That theistic problem is not a problem for theists in the literal sense alone; it is a problem for buddhists as well. When buddhists begin to deify their beliefs, when they start to believe in divine providence, when they revert to a primitive level of belief, they are corrupting buddhism immensely; they are simply worshipping an external deity.
And very conveniently we have lots of yidams, lots of dakinis, dharmapalas, buddhas and bodhisattvas. In fact, the buddhists of this age think that if they don't like one deity, they can choose another one. They have an immense feast of choices.
In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, there's only one divine person, which makes i t very difficult. But buddhists, or Hindus for that matter, find it delightful to jump back and forth. An email was sent on Dec. Please email us at pathofawakeningbuddhistcenter gmail.
There will be a short talk, after which we will recite The Sadhana it will be scrolled on-screen. The text will be scrolled on-screen. It is inspired by Padmasambhava also known as Guru Rinpoche , an Indian teacher and yogi who was instrumental in bringing buddhadharma to Tibet.
The Sadhana underscores the profound simplicity of the dharma as presented by both the Kagyu-Mahamudra and Nyingma-Dzogchen lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.
It directly addresses the spiritual materialism, abuse of power, and degeneration of practice that compromised Buddhism in Tibet and threaten to do the same in the West. It helps practitioners steer a middle path between the extremes of empty intellectualism and blind devotion.
For a few days nothing happened. Then there came a jolting experience of the need to develop more openness and greater energy. At the same time there arose a feeling of deep devotion to Karma Pakshi, the second Karmapa, and to Guru Rinpoche.
0コメント