The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (67 page)

This state of being is called vajra nature.
Vajra,
or
dorje
in Tibetan, means “indestructible,” or “having the qualities of a diamond.” Vajra nature is the tough, immovable quality of egolessness, which is the basis for the vajrayana path. The term
vajrayana
itself means “vehicle of indestructibility”—the “vajra vehicle.” The vajrayana is also called the tantrayana, or “tantric vehicle.”
Tantra,
or
gyü
in Tibetan, means “continuity” or “thread.” Vajra nature is the continuity of egolessness, or wakefulness, which, like the sun, is brilliant and all-pervasive.

The deities of the vajrayana are embodiments of vajra nature. In particular, the deities called yidams are important for the practice of vajrayana. The best translation of
yidam
that I have found is “personal deity.” Actually,
yidam
is a shortened form of the phrase
yi kyi tamtsik,
which means “sacred bondage of one’s mind.”
Yi
means “mind,”
kyi
means “of,” and
tamtsik
means “sacred word” or “sacred bondage.”
Tamtsik,
which in Sanskrit is
samaya,
will become important in a later discussion of the sacred commitments of the vajrayana.
Mind
here refers to vajra nature, the basic sanity and wakefulness of one’s being, freed from ego-clinging. The yidam is the manifestation of this enlightened mind; it is the yidam who connects or binds the practitioner to the enlightened sanity within himself. So, according to the tantric understanding, the yidam is a nontheistic deity who embodies one’s innate vajra nature, rather than any form of external help.

There are many thousands of tantric deities, but in the Karma Kagyü lineage, Vajrayogini is a particularly important yidam. When a student has completed the preliminary vajrayana practices, called the ngöndro, he receives abhisheka, or empowerment, to begin yidam practice, in which he identifies with a personal deity as the embodiment of his innate wakefulness, or vajra nature. In the Karma Kagyü tradition, Vajrayogini is the first yidam given to a student. In order to understand the Vajrayogini principle in any depth, a discussion of the stages of vajrayana practice through which a student is introduced to the yidam is necessary.

D
EVOTION

In the Buddhist tradition, relating to a teacher is not hero worship; the teacher is appreciated as an example of living dharma. When entering the Buddhist path, the practitioner respects the teacher as a wise man or elder. The teacher in the mahayana is called the kalyanamitra, or “spiritual friend”—he is a friend in the sense that he is willing to share one’s life completely and to walk with one on the path. He is truly an example of the mahayana practice of exchanging oneself for others.

At the vajrayana level, we begin with faith in the teachings and the teacher, because we have already experienced the truth and the workability of the teachings for ourselves. Then, with the discovery of vajra nature, faith begins to develop into devotion, which is
mögü
in Tibetan.
Mö
means “longing,” and
gü
means “respect.” We develop tremendous respect for the teacher and a longing for what he can impart because we see that he is the embodiment of vajra nature, the embodiment of wakeful mind. At this level, the teacher becomes the guru. He is the vajra master—the one who has mastered vajra truth, indestructible truth, and who can transmit that vajra power to others. However, the vajrayana can be extremely destructive if we are not properly prepared to receive these teachings. Therefore, in order to practice the vajrayana, we must have a relationship with a vajra master, who completely understands the practitioner and the practice and who knows how to bring the two together.

One’s relationship with the vajra master involves surrendering oneself to the teacher as the final expression of egolessness. This allows the practitioner to develop fully the threefold vajra nature: vajra body, vajra speech, and vajra mind. The maturation of devotion into complete surrendering is called
lote lingkyur
in Tibetan.
Lote
means “trust,”
ling
means “completely,” and
kyur
means “abandoning” or “letting go.” So
lote lingkyur
means “to trust completely and let go”—to abandon one’s ego completely. Without such surrender, there is no way to give up the last vestiges of ego; nor could the teacher introduce the yidam, the essence of egolessness. In fact, without such devotion to the teacher, one might attempt to use the vajrayana teachings to rebuild the fortress of ego.

N
GÖNDRO

In order to develop proper devotion and surrender, a student of the vajrayana begins with the practice of ngöndro, the foundation practices that are preliminary to receiving abhisheka.
Ngön
means “before,” and
dro
means “going.” In the Karma Kagyü lineage, there are five practices that make up ngöndro: prostrations, the recitation of the refuge vow, the Vajrasattva mantra practice, the mandala offering, and the practice of guru yoga. These are called the extraordinary foundations.

Ngöndro is the means of connecting oneself with the wisdom of the guru and the guru’s lineage. In prostrations, as the starting point, one is humbling oneself and expressing one’s gratitude for the example of the vajra master and the lineage forefathers. One visualizes the gurus of the lineage, including one’s own guru, in the form of the primordial buddha. Over the course of many practice sessions, the practitioner prostrates to the lineage 108,000 times while reciting the refuge vow 108,000 times. In that way, one reaffirms one’s commitment to the basic path of discipline and renunciation and, at the same time, expresses surrender to the vajrayana teachings and the vajra master. Through prostrations, one catches one’s first glimpse of the lineage.

Mantra practice leads to a closer experience of the lineage wisdom. It allows one to work directly with obstacles and psychological obscurations and to realize that defilements are temporary and can be overcome. The deity Vajrasattva—literally, “vajra being”—is visualized as a youthful white prince who is both the essence of vajra wisdom and the wisdom body of one’s guru. In contrast, the practitioner’s own body is visualized as being filled with impurities of all kinds: physical, mental, and emotional. While reciting the mantra of Vajrasattva 108,000 times, one visualizes that one’s body is slowly cleansed of these impurities by the action of Vajrasattva. By the end of a practice period, one visualizes oneself as possessing the same pure nature as Vajrasattva. The point of mantra practice, therefore, is to recognize one’s inherent purity.

In mandala practice, one gives oneself and one’s world as an offering to the lineage. The student offers 108,000 mandalas made from heaps of saffron-scented rice mixed with jewels and other precious substances. While constructing the mandala, one visualizes the world and everything in it—all its wealth and beauty and one’s myriad sense perceptions—as an offering to the gurus and buddhas, who are visualized before one. The practitioner’s sense of pure being should also be included in the offering and given up; this is called “giving up the giver.” When one gives up so completely, there is no one left to watch what is being given, and no one to appreciate how generous one is being. The more one surrenders in this way, the more richness one develops. There is never a problem of running out of things to offer. One’s human life is in itself an immensely rich situation to offer to the lineage.

Having completed the mandala offerings one then practices guru yoga, which is like actually meeting the guru face-to-face for the first time. Guru yoga is the first opportunity to receive the adhishthana, or blessings, of the guru’s wisdom.

In guru yoga, the practitioner begins to realize the nondual nature of devotion: there is no separation between the lineage and oneself and, in fact, the vajra being of the guru is a reflection of one’s own innate nature. In this way, the practice of ngöndro, culminating in guru yoga, helps to overcome theistic notions about the teacher or about the vajrayana itself. One realizes that the lineage is not an entity outside of oneself: one is not worshiping the teacher or his ancestors as gods. Rather, one is connecting with vajra sanity, which is so powerful because of its nonexistence—its utter egolessness.

S
ACRED
O
UTLOOK

When we begin to mix our minds with the energy of the lineage, we are not doing so in order to protect ourselves from the world. In fact, devotion brings us closer to our experience, to our world. As a result of the practice of ngöndro, we feel a greater sense of warmth and gentleness in ourselves. Because of that, we can relax and take a fresh look at the phenomenal world. We find that life can be an easy, natural process. Because there is no need to struggle, we start to experience goodness everywhere: we experience a tremendous sense of freedom and sacredness in everything.

When we experience this self-existing sacredness, we realize that the only way to abide continuously in this state of freedom is to enter completely into the guru’s world, because such freedom is the blessing of the guru. It was the guru who presented the practice that led to the experience of freedom, and it is the guru who manifests the epitome of this freedom. In fact, we begin to see that the self-existing sacredness of the world is simultaneously an expression of the guru. This experience is known as sacred outlook, or tag nang in Tibetan.
Tag nang
literally means “pure perception.” The idea of purity here refers to an absence of imprisonment. Sacred outlook means perceiving the world and oneself as intrinsically good and unconditionally free.

T
HE
F
IVE
B
UDDHA
F
AMILIES

Having developed sacred outlook, it is possible to take a further step into the vajra world. When we experience the self-existing sacredness of reality, the vajrayana iconography begins to make sense; it makes sense to picture the world as a sacred realm, as a mandala of enlightened mind. From the viewpoint of sacred outlook, the phenomenal world is seen in terms of five styles of energy: buddha, vajra, padma, ratna, and karma. Oneself and the people one meets, the seasons, the elements—all aspects of the phenomenal world—are made up of one or more of these styles, or buddha families. In tantric iconography, the buddha families make up a mandala with buddha in the center, and vajra, ratna, padma, and karma at the four cardinal points.

One or more of the buddha families can be used to describe a person’s intrinsic perspective or stance in the world. Each buddha family principle can have either a neurotic or an enlightened expression. The particular neurosis associated with a buddha family is transmuted into its wisdom, or enlightened, form by the taming process of shamatha-vipashyana meditation, by training in compassion in the mahayana, and, particularly, by the development of sacred outlook in the vajrayana. In their enlightened expression, the buddha families are manifestations of vajra freedom.

The basic quality of buddha energy is spaciousness. The confused manifestation of this spacious quality is ignorance, which in this case involves avoiding vivid or unpleasant experience. When buddha energy is transmuted, it becomes the wisdom of all-encompassing space. Buddha is associated with the color white and is symbolized by a wheel, which represents this all-encompassing, open nature.

Vajra, which is in the east of the mandala,
¹
is represented by the color blue. The symbol of vajra is a vajra scepter, or dorje, whose five prongs pierce the neurosis of ego-mind. The vajra scepter is like a thunderbolt—electric and powerful. Vajra energy is precise and direct. It is the ability to view situations from all possible perspectives and to accurately perceive the details of experience and the larger frameworks in which things take place. The neurotic expressions of vajra energy are aggression and intellectual fixation. When the intellectual accuracy of vajra is transmuted into its enlightened form, it becomes mirrorlike wisdom. Vajra is associated with the element of water. Its neurotic expression, anger, is like clouded, turbulent water; its wisdom aspect is like the clear reflection of a still pond.

The ratna family, in the south, is represented by the color yellow. The symbol of the ratna family is a jewel, expressing richness. Ratna energy is like autumn, when fruits and grains are ripe and farmers celebrate the harvest. Ratna is associated with the element of earth, which expresses its solidity and fertility. The neurotic style of ratna is envy or hunger—wanting everything and trying to engulf everything. Its enlightened expression is the wisdom of equanimity, because ratna accommodates all experiences and brings out their innate richness. When it is freed from hunger, ratna becomes an expression of powerful expansiveness.

In the west is the padma family, which is associated with the color red. The symbol of padma is a lotus, a beautiful, delicate flower which blooms in the mud. Padma is the basic energy of passion, or seduction. Its neurotic aspect is grasping or clinging, which is the confused expression of passion. When passion is freed from fixation on the object of its desire, it becomes discriminating-awareness wisdom—the appreciation of every aspect and detail of experience. Padma is associated with the element of fire. In the confused state passion, like fire, does not distinguish among the things it grasps, burns, and destroys. In its enlightened expression, the heat of passion becomes the warmth of compassion.

Karma, in the north of the mandala, is associated with the color green. Its symbol, a sword, represents cutting through hesitation and confusion and accomplishing one’s goals accurately and thoroughly. Karma is the wisdom of all-accomplishing action in its enlightened manifestation. The neurotic expression of karma energy is resentment and excessive speed. Karma neurosis would like to create a uniform world and resents any sloppiness or inefficiency. When karma is freed from neurosis, it becomes accurate and energetic without resentment or pettiness. Karma is associated with the element of wind, which represents this forceful and energetic quality of action.