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

It is a fundamental and very profound irritation. The irritations we discussed before are relatively simple and seem to be ordinary ones. The irritation of the mahamudra experience is very insulting in many ways, disconcerting. That is why the experience of mahamudra is also referred to as “crazy wisdom.” It is a crazy experience, but not exactly ego madness. It’s wisdom that has gone crazy. The element of wisdom here is its playfulness, humorousness, and sybaritic quality. Even though you are irritated and naked and completely exposed without your skin, there is a sense of joy or, more likely, bliss.

One of the definite characteristics of the Buddhist tantra, on the mahamudra level at least, is not running away from sense pleasures, but rather identifying with them, working with them as part of the working basis. That is an outstanding part of the tantric message. Pleasure in this case includes every kind of pleasure: psychosomatic, physical, psychological, and spiritual. Here, it is quite different from the way in which spiritual materialists might seek pleasure—by getting into the other. In this case, it is getting into “this.” There is a self-existing pleasurableness that is completely hollow if you look at it from the ordinary point of view of ego’s pleasure orientation. Within that, you don’t actually experience pleasure at all. All pleasure experiences are hollow. But if you look at it from the point of view of this nakedness, this situation of being completely exposed, any pleasure you experience is full because of its hollowness. On the mahamudra level, pleasure does not take place through the pores of your skin, but pleasure takes place on your very
flesh
without skin. You become the bliss rather than enjoying the bliss. You are the embodiment of bliss, and this contains a quality of your being very powerful. You have conquered pleasure, and pleasure is yours. One doesn’t even have to go so far as to try to enjoy pleasure, but pleasure becomes self-existing bliss.

In this way, every experience that might occur in our life—communication, visual experience, auditory experience, consciousness, anything that we relate to—becomes completely workable, highly workable. In fact, even the notion of workability does not apply. It’s yours. It is
you,
in fact. So things become very immediate.

This is what is often called vajra pride. Pride in this case is not arrogance, but is nondualistically self-contained. You are not threatened by your projections or projectors, but you are there, and at the same time, everything around you is you and yours.

It took a long time for Naropa to realize that. Having visited the freak show, he failed again. Finally, at the last moment, when he thought of killing himself and was just about to relate with the totality of himself,
finally
then he experienced that penetrating pain in himself. He thought that maybe if he eliminated his body, he might be able to relieve that pain. At that point, Tilopa finally appeared. Through the twelve tortures that Naropa went through (with the help of Tilopa), sometimes he understood this nakedness, experiencing it fully, totally, completely, and sometimes he didn’t understand it and instead tripped out into the highest spiritual mishmash. The perfect example is when Tilopa put sharpened pieces of bamboo between his nails and his fingers, put little flags on the ends of the pieces of bamboo, and asked Naropa to hold them up into the wind. That exemplifies (through the medium of pain, of course) how real the nakedness could be if it were blissful.

That seems to be a very powerful message for us. Mind you, we are not going to practice that very exercise with every student, but that is an example of what the process is like. How many times can the guru tell a person, “Come out! I know you’re there! Be naked!” A student might decide to take off his clothes and say, “Okay, I’m naked,” but that’s not quite it. We have to say, “There’s more nakedness. Come on, do more than that. What else can you do?”

Particularly, a scholar like Naropa has enormous hang-ups. Receiving instructions from a mahayana teacher requires only simple devotion, reducing oneself to an infant and asking the guru to act as the baby-sitter. But on the vajrayana level, the student-teacher relationship demands more than that. It is a process of training the student as a warrior. At first, a warrior teacher does not use a sword on you. He uses a stick and makes you fight with him. Since the student’s swordsmanship is not so good, he gets hurt more than he is able to hurt the master. But when the student gains confidence and begins to learn good swordsmanship, he is almost able to defeat his own teacher. Then, instead of a stick, it becomes a sword. Nobody really gets killed or hurt, because all the levels of communication take place within the realm of the rainbow or mirage anyway. But there is a training period. A learning process takes place, which is very immediate and very powerful and very necessary.

On the hinayana level, the teacher is a wise man. On the mahayana level, he is a physician/friend, a spiritual friend. On the vajrayana level, the student-teacher relationship is similar to that in the martial arts. You could get hurt severely if you are too tense. But you could also receive a tremendous—almost physical—message. The message is not verbal or intellectual. It is like a demonstration of putting tables and chairs together. The teachings come out of the world of form, the real world of form. The teachings consist of colors and forms and sounds rather than words or ideas.

This is what Naropa was going through—the physical teachings, which are real and direct and obvious. And they are personal, highly personal. Each time we come closer to tantra in the journey through the yanas, the relationship to the teacher changes and becomes more and more personal. The teacher acts as his own spokesman but also as the spokesman of the vivid and colorful world that you are part of. If you don’t have the experience of winter, you have to take off your clothes and lie in the snow at night. That way, you will learn a very good lesson on what winter is all about that doesn’t need words. You could read a book about it, but it doesn’t mean very much unless you have that very immediate and direct experience—which is frightening, very powerful.

Somehow we are unable to have an experience of this nature without going through the basic learning process that enables us to handle that kind of experience. Therefore, the three-yana principle is very important—the gradual process from hinayana to mahayana to vajrayana. This process makes it all make sense. Without it, it does not make any sense; it is just training in masochism.

There’s a story about a certain workshop that took place in this country, I don’t remember exactly where. It was supposed to be a workshop in self-exposure, and anybody interested in that workshop could just pay their money and come in, without having the faintest idea what it was all about. They were invited to eat dinner together. There was beautifully prepared food and nice china and a nice tablecloth and candlelight and everything. They ate their food and they drank their wine. Then, at the end of the meal, everybody was supposed to break their plates and glasses and chop up their tables and chairs. That was the workshop. What does it mean? Of course, it might mean a lot if you really know what it is all about. But on the other hand, if you just saw that advertised in the newspaper and decided to go to it because you thought it was a groovy thing to do—you’d never done
that
before—it wouldn’t mean very much. You might feel uncertain how much you should talk to the others about the experience. You might feel slightly awkward and, at the same time, released or something or other. But on the whole, it would make no sense if there were no training process behind it.

Vajrayana is also very powerful, but you can’t just come in and do the workshop of the twelve trials of Naropa. It doesn’t mean anything without basic training in mindfulness, awareness, groundlessness, and fearlessness. In that sense, tantra is a very dangerous thing. At the same time, it is very powerful, and every one of us can do it. Other people have done so. Actually, we don’t have to be such great scholars as Naropa was. As long as we are interested in using our intellect and our intuition, we can do it. Mahamudra is possible as long as we have some basic training in relating with ourselves. We have to learn fearlessness that is without hesitation but is not based on blind faith. If we have a logical mind, a scientific mind full of suspicion, that is good.

Student:
Why do you tell us all this? I find this kind of explosion quite frightening.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s good. It means you’re beginning to feel it.

S:
Yes, I am.

TR:
That’s good. It’s not up to me to keep this a secret. You might develop your own self-secretness, your own way of keeping it a secret from yourself. But if you’re afraid, that means something is cooking. That’s good to hear.

Student:
Is mahamudra the first point at which the idea of samsara and nirvana ceases to apply? Or does that happen back with shunyata?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In shunyata, there is the idea of the nonduality of samsara and nirvana, but there is still a sense of this being sacred. In mahamudra, there is definitely nonexistence of samsara and nirvana.

Student:
You said that at the point in the student-teacher relationship where sticks are exchanged for swords, all communication takes place in a rainbow realm. I was wondering if you could explain that a little more.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
At the point where you pick up swords, there is no gain and no loss. At the level of using sticks, there may be still gain and loss, but when you pick up the swords, there’s no gain and no loss.

S:
Couldn’t it be a very great loss if you got your head cut off?

TR:
Well, your head is not particularly a concern here. The point is that you become a highly skilled dancer. You and the teacher can still play together even if you have no head. That’s what I mean by rainbow.

S:
How is that a rainbow?

TR:
That’s the rainbow. The teacher can still train a student without a head, or a student can learn without the head that’s been chopped off. The physical, literal situation does not apply there anymore. It’s as transparent as the rainbow, yet it is still colorful and vivid.

Student:
You said that in the shunyata experience, ego is still a problem. Is the ego still a problem in mahamudra?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In the mahamudra experience, ego is not a problem, but the memory of the previous yana is a problem. You have to recover from the hangover of the previous medicine you were taking.

S:
The previous medicine was shunyata?

TR:
Yes. It works that way throughout the rest of the yanas. Throughout the tantric yanas, it works that way.

S:
So in the shunyata experience, there is still an element of duality between ego and—

TR:
An element of nonduality. That’s the problem.

S:
Oh, yes. I see.

Student:
What’s the difference between the pain we experience at first and the pain we experience in mahamudra?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The difference is that this pain is much, much more real. It is direct pain that is beyond any neurosis. The other one is seeming pain, psychosomatic pain.

S:
You mean earlier on you don’t get into the pain?

TR:
That’s right.

Student:
You said at one point that ego is pain and pain is ego. If you lose your ego, how can you experience pain?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The absence of ego is pain still. You still feel the absence of ego, nonduality.

S:
So that’s still an experience.

TR:
That has been compared to an empty perfume bottle. You can still smell the perfume.

Student:
You said that mahamudra was unoriginated, but then you said that confusion and realization come about at the same time. It sounds like something is originating.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, they don’t help each other; they don’t ferment each other. They are just unoriginated; they come out of nowhere.

Student:
Does the bodhisattva ideal of service to other sentient beings extend over into vajrayana?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Basically, yes; but on the vajrayana level, it is less pious and more immediate. On the mahayana level, there is still a notion of doing good.

Student:
Could people experience mahamudra through taking acid? It seems to me that that is possible, but as you said before, without the proper preparation, it wouldn’t make any sense.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You said it. You see, the mahamudra experience has nothing to do with being high. It’s very real and direct. You are no longer under the control of the other. You are just yourself, very simply. But any kind of hallucinogenic experience has a sense of the other.

S:
You mean memory, comparison to other experience?

TR:
Yes.

Student:
You said that mahamudra pain was without neurosis, and you also said that in the rainbow realm you could cut your head off and still learn. I am a little confused about what is going on here. What is direct pain at that level? Can it be talked about?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Pain from having your head chopped off. You have no head, right? But you still have a headache. That kind of pain.

S:
Is that physiological or psychosomatic?

TR:
Well, obviously psychosomatic. When I talk about your head being chopped off, I do not mean that the vajrayana master and his student would literally have swordplay. That’s a figurative thing. That pain is very immediate pain. When you have no head, you still get a very painful headache. It becomes very penetrating.

Student:
You were talking about the relationship between master and student in the vajrayana being personal. I was wondering how one makes it get personal.