Book Review: Crazy Wisdom {The Eight Aspects of Padmasambhava}– by
Chogyam Trungpa, edited by Sherab Chodzin
(Shambhala 1991)
This book stemmed from a series of lectures given by Chogyam
Trungpa during two week-long crazy wisdom seminars in December 1972 following a
three-month retreat where he presumably contemplated what he would teach in
North America now that he had been here a few years. He encountered here a
quest for experience among young people experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs
and spiritual techniques. Apparently, the first lecture was given right after
the retreat with him not having slept at all the previous night and day. His
teaching style would change to a more methodical one after these Crazy Wisdom
Seminars. The teachings follow a request to teach about the eight aspects of
Padmasambhava. Trungpa Rinpoche chose the title of Crazy Wisdom to convey in an
informal manner these eight aspects. Each chapter ends with questions and
answers from the teaching sessions.
He notes at the very beginning that the subject is very
difficult and may be confusing to some, presumably due to mixing different
levels and styles of instruction. Padmasambhava was a beloved Indian teacher
who brought Buddhist teachings to Tibet. The Tibetans of the time were
uncultured shamanist peoples. He is credited with “taming” the wild Tibetan
people, and with introducing them to new ways of experiencing metaphysics and
spiritual practices. Trungpa notes that one can make a crude analogy of
Padmasambhava teaching Tibetans to Tibetans teaching Americans in modern times,
not that Americans are wild and uncultured, but that they are predisposed to
what he calls “spiritual materialism” which is the idea that merely “buying”
into an idea one can be healed by it and come to metaphysical understanding. Spiritual
materialism, he suggests, is chasing an ideal and formulating conclusions
without actual understanding. A better approach is to meditate on our own
confusion without seeking immediate answers but to go deeper into our chaos and
neuroses to seek a deeper understanding without the overriding goal of an
answer in verbal communicative terms. He says, we seek until we give up hope. “This
hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom.” Hopelessness is also
fearlessness. This process of going deeper within has the effect of ridding us
of our preconceptions so that we lose our reference points. Such a
psychological process is connected to the eight aspects of Padmasmbhava and he
suggests that his teaching of discussing these aspects can be such a penetration.
It is important to avoid the habit of trying to grade oneself on a spiritual
path as that is the snag of spiritual materialism. The spiritual journey is “ongoingly
ruthless,” he says, and there are no resting places for self-congratulations. This
ruthlessness implies not giving in to hope and fear. Crazy wisdom is a “primordial
craziness,” free of seductive delusions and distractions. In spiritual
materialism the goal is often to confirm ideas, to see things as one idealizes
them rather than to see things as they are. In spiritual materialism there is a
goal but in transcending it there is no goal.
“Padmasambhava’s way is that of transcending spiritual
materialism, of developing basic sanity.
Developing basic sanity is a process
of working on ourselves in which the path itself rather than the attainment of
a goal becomes the working basis.”
Trungpa mentions three categories that develop in the
journey: completeness/totality of the path, energy/play on the path, and practicality
of the path. He notes that the spiritual path does not need to be labeled – all
of our mundane activity is included as well, how we relate. The illusory division
of self and other creates the equally illusory division of samsara and nirvana.
Spirituality is not really the path, he says, but a way of conditioning our
path and our energy. The three categories above are how we condition the path,
how we relate to it. We relate to it in terms of the totality of our
experience, our energy and play, and the practicality of it. This is our
motivation. Now he relates these three aspects (totality, energy, and
practicality) to the three bodies of the Buddha: dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. He calls them the
psychological aspects of Buddha Nature. He explains that the eight aspects of
Padmasambhava are not lineal stages but more like a wheel, being eight aspects
of any situation. He explains the Tantric approach as unmasking from the inside
rather than from the outside. Tantra works from the assumption that we are inherently
enlightened so that we merely remove the obscurations to our enlightened nature
rather than “become” enlightened, what we already are.
Metaphorically, we tend to see enlightenment as an adult
phenomena – old and wise, but in Tantra, says Trungpa, it more resembles a
child-like and youthful quality. The story of Padmasambhava appearing as an
eight or ten year-old boy on a lotus in a lake with enlightened qualities is an
example. He was said to be playful and innocent. Once as a young prince when playing
with a vajra and a trident on the roof of the palace, he dropped both, killing
two passersby. For this he was exiled and found his way to dwell in a charnel
ground. He was born with a sudden glimpse of awakening and thereafter had to
learn how to deal with his awakening. The story of Padmasambhava, he says, is a
manual of how to be a Buddha and we are all potentially, inherently a Buddha.
Discovering our Buddha Nature is the Tantric path. Here the path is the goal
and the goal is the path.
Padmasambhava, as manifesting from dharmakaya through
sambhogakaya down to nirmanakaya had to learn how to relate to sentient beings
and the worldliness within which they are caught up. Thus he had to learn to
relate with samsaric mind. Living in the charnel ground, he sees it in his
playfulness as no different from the palace he lived in previously. He dwelled
in the fearlessness, the knowledge of eternity, the first stage of crazy
wisdom. A vidyadhara is the holder of
‘scientific knowledge’ and an attainer to this crazy wisdom. Being enlightened
he manifested as Vajradhara, the
holder of indestructibility. This completes the first two aspects of
Padmasambhava: as a young prince in the palace and as a young siddha in the
charnel ground.
The third aspect is as a bhikksu,
a Buddhist monk. This cements his relationship to the tradition. His acquired name
is Shakya Simha, or Lion of the
Shakyas, which was also a name of Buddha. As a monk he began teaching dharma.
When he visited a nunnery where a princess just turned nun, Mandarava, was
dwelling, he began teaching there and was eventually discovered by the king,
Mandarava’s father, who was so dismayed that he captured Padmasambhava and
burned him on a pyre. The pyre burned for some days but would not kill him. He
manifested a lake there and sat on a lotus in the center of it. The king
confessed his wrong-doing of harming an accomplished siddha and bid him to
teach at the palace. The guru initially refused but eventually accepted. During
this stage of his teachings he let things be – he let the beings around him
discover their own neuroses. His next trial or act was to debate magically five-hundred
theists, Brahmanists. He destroyed them in his next aspect as the Lion’s Roar, Senge Dradrok.
His next aspect occurred when he went to Tibet. Here he did
not encounter theistic Brahmanists, but Bon shamanists. Their equivalent concept
was that of yeshen, which means
something like ‘primordial ancestral great friend’, or heaven. Here he
manifested in the wrathful form of Dorje
Trolo. Trungpa considers that Bon, at the time, was theistic, and Buddhism
being non-theistic, made it difficult to challenge nationalistic theistic religions
like Hinduism but even harder as in the case of Bon, profound shamanistic
philosophies grounded in nature. He calls it “anthropocentric” and notes that
those types of beliefs are not grounded in basic sanity. He could not pit his
gods against their gods but utilized ‘mind,’ as his crazy wisdom to
subdue/convert the Tibetans.
“Dorje Trolo arrives in Tibet riding a pregnant tigress. The
tigress is electric. She is pregnant electricity…. Dorje Trolo knows no logic.
As far as {he} is concerned, the only conventional logic there is is relating
with heaven and earth. Because the sky forms itself into its particular shape,
the horizon exists. There is the vastness of space, the sky; and there is the
vastness of the earth. They are vast, but okay – so what? Do you want to make a
big deal out of the vastness? There is this vastness, but why not consider the
smallest things that are happening as well? The grain of sand is more
threatening than the vastness of space or of the desert; because of its concentratedness
it is extremely explosive. This is a huge cosmic joke here, a gigantic cosmic
joke, a very powerful one.”
According to tradition, Padmasambhava buried many teachings
in Tibet to be discovered by future generations. This is known as the “terma”
tradition. Trungpa describes this manifestation of Dorje Trolo as an immense wrathful
energy of compassion and wisdom. Trungpa also notes in answering a student
question that the crazy wisdom tradition appears to be exclusively confined to
the Nyingma school in Tibetan Buddhism – the “old” school associated with
Padmasambhava, particularly the Maha ati,
or Dzog Chen lineages. He does note
that the Mahamudra tradition of India and Tibet involves similar types of manifestations
of siddhi, or accomplishments. Trungpa notes that traditionally there are three
ways to tell and understand the Padmasambhava story: the external/factual way,
the internal psychological way, and the higher, secret way – which is the
approach of crazy wisdom. These are the traditional classifications: outer,
inner, and secret. He notes that his current teachings about the life of
Padmasambhava are quite unscholastic, though they draw on some of the outer
events of his life.
He mentions the idea of working with Padmasambhava as a
cosmic principle rather than as a historical person, utilizing his “grace” or adhisthana, in a devotional or romantic
way as in bhakti yoga. There are two
approaches here he says: the exoteric way of poverty, of seeking the grace one
does not have – which is based on spiritual materialism; and the esoteric way
of admiring the same principle that you also possess innately – which is based
on sanity. This important method employs what is known as “vajra pride” or
sacred outlook. It is the pride that is untainted with ego as it is simply
recognition that one has the potential for complete awakening. It is an
acknowledgement of that potential. Regarding these approaches he says that most
of the time one begins from the poverty viewpoint, one begins from a
materialistic approach of attaining what one does not have, then proceeds to
the sane approach of discovering qualities that are inherent within. I remember
a Padmasambhava teaching I attended where the teacher noted this cosmic
principle of the Guru, saying that there was a Padmasambhava for every section
of space or world system of so many planets!
At the beginning of the second seminar he reiterates that
Padmasambhava’s goal was to teach the barbarian monotheistic Tibetans the
non-theistic approach of Buddhism. Believing in “that” or God implies belief in
“this” or not God. ie. the Self. It is this relating through reference points
that is delusional, he notes. He had to cut through the practicality of the
indigenous ecological-type shamanic tradition in order to teach the Tibetans
and prepare them for the Tantric path, which requires letting go of Self. It is
similar, he said, to America at the time – we all think things exist for our
benefit as the Bon Tibetans did. He intimates that such
indigenous/shamanic/practical/sane/ecological traditions are quite beautiful
and valid, just that the Buddhist view transcends their limitations. Previous
beliefs and traditions do not need to be discarded, according to the Buddhist
view, but perhaps just sublimated in some sense to a more profound view.
Trungpa reiterates in a long exchange with a student, that
the prerequisite for crazy wisdom is sheer, all-encompassing, groundless hopelessness.
“… a sense of hopelessness could provide the basic approach to non-duality.” He
notes that experience itself involves a sense of duality – relating to the
experience as the one having it. This is usually called subject-object duality.
Thus the experience is projected onto a self, an experiencer, and there is
separation. He says there is a sense of space between experience and the
projection of the experience. There is an instant of “pregnant openness”” or
emptiness between experience and its projection. The projection happens after
the experience: “When we definitely decide to leap, we have leapt already.”
Experience first happens (unconditioned) before it is conditioned. Trungpa
notes that Padmasambhava manifested from dharmakaya through samboghakaya to
nirmanakaya, (He is often called a nirmanakaya Buddha) and this manifesting
from the subtle to gross bodies/forms of Buddha is also connected to his eight
aspects – the aspects are on different levels/planes of subtlety. Padmasambhava
“is” the three kaya principle. As practitioners we are trying to relate to the
Padmasambhava-ness in our state of being – the Precious Guru within. He also
says we are infested with Padmasambhava and haunted by him.
He tells the story of the ordinary farmer, the Madman of
Tsang, who was asked by Trugpa’s guru, Jamgon Kongtrul, how to unite with Padmasambhava.
He answered that he did recitations and mantras for years continuously trying
to unite with the great Guru but finally he gave up and then realized that he
was the Guru, that the Guru was calling him and then everything changed.
Trungpa notes that dharmakaya means primordial Buddha and refers to the Buddha
that did not “become” a Buddha but always was and has never not been Buddha.
The eight “aspects” of Padmasambhava are traditionally translated
as the eight names of the guru. The aspects ae not a lineal descent or ascent
but simultaneous. They might be called the eight ways beings experience Padmasambhava.
He notes that the effect of crazy wisdom is to mirror one’s neuroses back as in
the scriptural statement:
“He subdues whoever needs to be subdued and destroys whoever
needs to be destroyed.”
There is no logic and there are no limitations.
The first aspect is Pema
Gyalpo or Padma Raja in Sanskrit.
This is the youthful lotus prince. He is born with the enlightened quality of
fearlessness. He related with things openly and directly, without fear. He had
a sense of eternity.
In talking about the dharmakaya (body of truth) he notes
that it does have some conditioning, at least in the Nyingma teachings.
Dharmadhatu is no experience while the dharmakaya is the beginning, doorway of
conditioning experience. He also says there are different viewpoints as to
whether there is karma at the dharmakaya level – in the Maha Ati (Dzog Chen) tradition
Longchen Rabjam says there is karma in dharmakaya, but other schools say no. He
also notes that the process of manifestation from dharmakaya to nirmanakaya is
the same as the process of manifestation given in the Buddhist tradition as the
twelve links of interdependent origination, or the twelve nidanas. Trungpa Rinpoche here and throughout the book gives more
conversational style question and answer exchanges than I have encountered in
teachings. There is a playful quality to the dialogue, yet it is also quite
intense.
Death is an uncompromising discontinuity where our habitual
patterns cease to function, he says. He notes that socially, facing impending death
is often embarrassing to both the dying and those who witness it. He notes, I
think quite correctly, that most faith-based reminders about death, are really
based on fear. They are reactions to the discomfort of the impending unknown
and the impending ceasing to exist.
In his next aspect, after being exiled and living in the
cremation ground he discovers eternity. He goes to visit a teacher in the Maha
Ati tradition, Shri Simha, said to
have come from Thailand, but now living in a cave in another charnel ground. He
asks Shri Simha how to destroy the sense of experience. Shri Simha reduces him
to the syllable HUM, then swallows
him and shits him out. HUM 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.”
HUM is a seed syllable, often a condensed form (of a yidam
deity), thus he was condensed, abbreviated, tightly packaged, concentrated.
Developing his sense of eternity Padmasambhava was said to
be able to control time and space. This is his yogi aspect, Nyima Oser. Trungpa suggests that this “penetration”
is like waking up from absorption. He uses the analogy of falling out of a punctured
hammock. He also notes that spiritual development is more an unlearning process
rather than one of collecting experiences. Thus the style of Padmasambhava is
one of unmasking, unlearning, removing layers of obscurations. He makes the
interesting statement that fear without hope is insightful. “It has spontaneously
existing resourcefulness.” He seems to suggest that hope and fear as the root
of all emotions are the basis of duality. They are the attractive and repulsive
aspects. He says that we would ideally relate to them without feedback so that
the situation will resolve or become clear. Trungpa spent a lot of time
beginning in his youth attending to dying people. He says that we should convey
to a dying person that death is a very “real” experience rather than trying to
give them hope for some happy outcome through dogma. The idea is to let it be
as it is rather than try to persuade it, I think.
The aspect of Shakya
Senge, or Padmasambhava as a Mahayana Buddha is “connected to the
expression of ultimate sanity. This realization allowed him to be able to teach,
to proclaim, through the Lion’s Roar. According to tradition Padmasambhava
studied with and was ordained as a monk by Ananda, the famous student of the
Buddha. Ananda was his guru. I can observe that that shortens the lineage between
Padmasabhava and Buddha Shakyamuni just as the termas shorten the lineage
between Padmasambhava and the tertons (terma treasure discoverers). This makes
sense in light of the Guru’s ability to control time. Padmasambhava, or Guru Rinpoche,
is the archetypal guru, particularly for the Tibetan people. He is said to be
still alive in the same body living near Jambu, on a continent of vampires (rakshasas) in the Copper Colored Mountain.
Teaching sanity requires skillful means, as sanity is often found
to be too spacious or irritating. Perhaps we are too comfortable in our
confusion. Senge Dradrok, his aspect
as the Lion’s Roar, is when he appears as a great magician to subdue the tirthikas, the dualists, sometimes called
heretics. These heretics are distinguished from the non-dual Vedantists, whose
view is much closer to that of the Buddhists. This powerful aspect of the Guru
allowed nature to destroy those predisposed to being destroyed.
Trunpa distinguishes the experience of emptiness (shunyata) from that of crazy wisdom.
Shunyata is wisdom without energy while the Tantric approach is based on
energy.
The next aspect is simply Padmasambhava. He is usually
called Guru Rinpoche, or Pema Jungne, or
the “Lotus-Born” in Tibet, or Padmakara
in Sanskrit. This may have something to do with a sectarian philosophical argument
whether he should be understood more as a cosmic principle or as a historical
person, a scholar, or pandit. This is his aspect as a pandit. He entered Nalanda
Monastery and studied the threefold discipline: meditation, morality, and
knowledge, which correspond to the Buddhist division of teachings known as the Tripitaka, the three baskets: sutra,
vinaya, and abhidharma. The idea is to become well-grounded in theory and
practice and understanding. He mentions the value of working with the intellect
without a “watcher” and this seems to be similar to Indian teachings about
working without a witness.
The next aspect is Loden
Choksi. Here he was a king’s guru (rajguru)
who went to the nunnery to teach Mandarava who would become his consort. When confronted
by the King of Zahor who sent him to be executed he manifested using all
aspects of his punishment to ornament himself magically by becoming immune to
all the tortures. Obstacles became adornments. In this aspect he accepts and
adapts accordingly rather than seeking to change things other than himself, his
mind.
The eighth and final aspect of Padmasambhava is Dorje Trolo, the absolute aspect of
crazy wisdom. This aspect is all about transmitting the teachings, the grace-energy,
or adhisthana, to sentient beings. There
are three styles of transmitting this energy: 1) by word of mouth – this includes
all language and writing too and all of our preconditioning to be able to
receive and comprehend such teachings; 2) the method of crazy wisdom on the
relative level – here the teacher shows by creating situations that appear to
occur by themselves through a symbol or sign conveyed by the Guru; 3) the mind
lineage or the thought lineage. This aspect of crazy wisdom may appear quite
ordinary but is based on dharmakaya, so is the most profound. He mentions a
kind of aware uncertainty developing, at the boundary between the death of the
question and the birth of the answer. The crazy wisdom of Dorje Trolo is an
uncompromising wrath. He subdued the twelve guardian goddesses of Tibet,
converting them to protectors of the dharma. He transformed his consort Yeshe
Tsogyal into a pregnant tigress and together they subdued the psychic energies
of the country. He appeared in his wrathful form ambiguously, as part Tibetan,
part Indian, part human, part animal. The pregnant tigress represents dangerous
energy, the vehicle of Padmasambhava. He introduced impracticality to the
overly practical Tibetans. Yet it was the return of their practicality later
that made them good yogis, he says.
Padmasambhava foretold prophecies of the distant future. One
was that Tibet would be conquered and subdued. This made the royal personages
anxious. One remedy was the development of the buried treasure, or terma
tradition, where teachings were concealed magically all over Tibet for the
benefit of future generations.
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