Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa
Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:41 am
Crazy Wisdom
by Chogyam Trungpa
© 1991 Diana J. Mukpo
edited by Sherab Chodzin
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents:
• Back Cover
• Editor's Foreword
• CRAZY WISDOM SEMINAR I, Jackson Hole 1972
o 1. Padmasambhava and Spiritual Materialism
o 2. The Trikaya
o 3. Primordial Innocence
o 4. Eternity and the Charnel Ground
o 5. Let the Phenomena Play
o 6. Cynicism and Devotion
• CRAZY WISDOM SEMINAR II, Karme-Choling 1972
o 1. Padmasambhava and the Energy of Tantra
o 2. Hopelessness and the Trikaya
o 3. Fearlessness
o 4. Death and the Sense of Experience
o 5. The Lion's Roar
o 6. Intellect and Working with Negativity
o 7. Dorje Trolo and the Three Styles of Transmission
• Notes
• Index
by Chogyam Trungpa
© 1991 Diana J. Mukpo
edited by Sherab Chodzin
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Table of Contents:
• Back Cover
• Editor's Foreword
• CRAZY WISDOM SEMINAR I, Jackson Hole 1972
o 1. Padmasambhava and Spiritual Materialism
o 2. The Trikaya
o 3. Primordial Innocence
o 4. Eternity and the Charnel Ground
o 5. Let the Phenomena Play
o 6. Cynicism and Devotion
• CRAZY WISDOM SEMINAR II, Karme-Choling 1972
o 1. Padmasambhava and the Energy of Tantra
o 2. Hopelessness and the Trikaya
o 3. Fearlessness
o 4. Death and the Sense of Experience
o 5. The Lion's Roar
o 6. Intellect and Working with Negativity
o 7. Dorje Trolo and the Three Styles of Transmission
• Notes
• Index
There is a very savage and rugged side to American culture. Spiritually, American culture is not conducive to just bringing out the brilliant light and expecting it to be accepted.... So there is an analogy here. In terms of that analogy, the Tibetans are the Americans....
The Americans worship the sun and the water gods and the mountain gods -- they still do. That is a very primordial approach, and some Americans are rediscovering their heritage. We have people going on an American Indian trip, which is beautiful, but the knowledge we have of it is not all that accurate. Americans regard themselves as sophisticated and scientific, as educated experts on everything. But still we are actually on the level of ape culture. Padmasambhava's approach of crazy wisdom is further education for us -- we could become transcendental apes.....
STUDENT: Do you think America is savage enough for crazy wisdom?
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Needless to say.
***
What we are discussing here is the umbrella notion -- the notion of coming down from the top: having already attained enlightenment, how do we work with further programs? The story of Padmasambhava is a manual for buddhas -- and each of us is one of them.
As Padmasambhava developed in his monastic role, he again began to manifest in the style of a young prince, but in this case as a young prince who had become a monk. He decided to become the savior of the world, the bringer of the message of dharma.
Devotion or compassion is the only way of relating with the grace -- the adhishthana, or blessing -- of Padmasambhava....
The idea of lineage is associated with the transmission of the message of adhishthana, which means "energy" or, if you like, "grace. This is transmitted like an electric current from the trikaya guru to sentient beings....
The Tibetans of those times believed in a self and a higher authority outside the self, which is known as God. Padmasambhava's function was to destroy those beliefs. His approach was: if there is no belief in the self, then there is no belief in God -- a purely nontheistic approach, I am afraid....
Among my students, a particular approach to the teachings seems to have developed. By way of beginning, we have adopted an attitude of distrust: distrust toward ourselves and also toward the teachings and the teacher -- toward the whole situation in fact. We feel that everything should be taken with a grain of salt, that we should examine and test everything thoroughly to make sure it is good gold. In taking this approach, we have had to develop our sense of honesty -- we have to cut through our own self-deceptions, which play an important part. We cannot establish spirituality without cutting through spiritual materialism....
We might have to change our pattern. The next step is to develop devotion and faith. We cannot relate to the Padmasambhava principle unless there is some kind of warmth. If we cut through deception completely and honestly, then positive situation begins to develop. We gain a positive understanding of ourselves as well as of the teachings and the teacher. In order to work with the grace, or adhishthana, of Padmasambhava, with this cosmic principle of basic sanity, we have to develop a kind of romanticism....
There are two types of this romantic, or bhakti, approach. One is based on a sense of poverty. You feel you don't have it, but the others do....
The other type of romantic approach is based on the sense that you do have it; it is there already. You do not admire it because it is somebody else's, because it is somewhere far away, distant from you, but because it is right near -- in your heart. It is a sense of appreciation of what you are. You have as much as the teacher has, and you are on the path of dharma yourself, so you do not have to look at the dharma from outside. This is a sane approach; it is fundamentally rich; there is no sense of poverty at all.
This type of romanticism is important. It is the most powerful thing of all. It cuts through cynicism, which exists purely for its own sake, for the sake of its own protection. It cuts through cynicism's ego game and develops further and greater pride -- vajra pride, as it is called. There is a sense of beauty and even of love and light. Without this, relating with the Padmasambhava principle is purely a matter of seeing how deep and profound you can get in your psychological experience. It remains a myth, something that you do not have; therefore it sounds interesting but never becomes personal. Devotion or compassion is the only way of relating with the grace -- the adhishthana, or blessing -- of Padmasambhava.
So our discussion of Padmasambhava seems to be a landmark in the geography of our journey together. It is time to begin with that romantic approach.
***
There seem to be two possible approaches here. One is trying to live up to what we would like to be. The other is trying to live what we are. Trying to live up to what we would like to be is like pretending we are a divine being or a realized person, or whatever we might like to call the model....
This approach is known in the Buddhist tradition as spiritual materialism...
We could classify as spiritual materialism any approach -- such as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or Christian -- that provides us with techniques to try to associate with the good, the better, the best -- or the ultimately good, the divine....
When we begin associating ourselves with the good, it makes us happy. We feel full of delight. We think, "At last I've found an answer!" That answer is that the only thing to do is regard ourselves as free already. Then, having established the position that we are free already, we just have to let all things flow....
We do not know who or what we are, but we do know that we would like to be someone or something. We decide to go ahead with what we would like to be even though we do not know what that is....
This is what we could call achieving egohood, as opposed to achieving enlightenment....
Now let's talk about the second possible approach, that of trying to live what you are....
This possibility is connected with seeing our confusion, or misery and pain, but not making those discoveries into an answer. Instead we explore further and further and further without looking for an answer. It is a process of working with ourselves, with our lives, with our psychology, without looking for an answer but seeing things as they are -- seeing what goes on in our heads directly and simply, absolutely literally. If we can undertake a process like that, then there is a tremendous possibility that our confusion -- the chaos and neurosis that goes on in our minds -- might become a further basis for investigation. Then we look further and further and further. We don't make, a big point or an answer out of any one thing....
We go on deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where there is no answer. There is not even a question. Both question and answer die simultaneously at some point. They begin to rub each other too closely and they short-circuit each other in some way. At that point, we tend to give up hope of an answer, or of anything whatsoever, for that matter. We have no more hope, none whatsoever....
This hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom. It is hopeless, utterly hopeless. It is beyond hopelessness....
Without a sense of hopelessness, there is no way to give birth to sudden enlightenment. Only giving up our projects brings about the ultimate, definite, positive state of being, which is the realization that we are already enlightened beings here and now....
In this way, the spiritual journey becomes as exciting and as beautiful as if we were buddha already. There are constant new discoveries, constant messages; and constant warnings....
With this openness, we relate to things as they are rather than as we would like them to be....
It is realization eating out from the inside rather than unmasking taking place from the outside. Eating out from the inside is the tantric approach....
The approach here is to regard oneself as being a buddha already. Buddha is the path rather than the goal. We are working from the inside outward. The mask is falling off by itself....
In fact the whole concept of needing training for things is a very weak approach, because it makes us feel we cannot possess the potential in us, and that therefore we have to make ourselves better than we are, we have to try to compete with heroes or masters. So we try to imitate those heroes and masters, believing that finally, by some process of psychophysical switch, we might be able to become them. Although we are not actually them, we believe we could become them purely by imitating -- by pretending, by deceiving ourselves constantly that we are what we are not. But when this sudden flash of enlightenment occurs, such hypocrisy doesn't exist. You do not have to pretend to be something. You are something. You have certain tendencies existing in you in any case. It is just a question of putting them into practice....
We cannot con the existing experience of life; we cannot con our experiences or change them by having some unrealistic belief that things are going to be okay, that in the end everything is going to be beautiful. If we take that approach, then things are not going to be okay. For the very reason that we expect things to be good and beautiful, they won't be....
STUDENT: I don't understand this extrahuman quality of being born out of a lotus plant -- like Christ's having a virgin mother. Isn't that presenting Padmasambhava as an ideal beyond us that we have to relate to as other-than-human?
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: In some way, being born from a mother and from a lotus are exactly the same situation. There is nothing all that superhuman about it: it is an expression of miracles that do exist. People who watch a birth for the first time often find that that is a miracle too. In the same way, being born from a lotus is a miracle, but there is nothing particularly divine or pure about it. Being born from a lotus is an expression of openness. The process of being in the womb for nine months does not have to be gone through. It is a free and open situation -- the lotus opens and the child is there. It is a very straightforward thing. With regard to the lotus, we do not have to discuss such questions as the validity of the statement that Christ's mother was a virgin. There could only be this one lotus there at that time. Then it died. So we could say it was a free birth....
They captured Padmasambhava and put him on a pyre of sandalwood and set it afire.... The fire in which Padmasambhava had been placed burned on and on, for seven days.... the fire disappeared and the whole area where the fire had been had turned into a huge lake. In the middle of the lake was Padmasambhava, once again sitting on a lotus....
Padmasambhava was the great Indian yogi and vidyadhara who introduced the complete teachings of buddhadharma to Tibet, including the vajrayana, or tantra. As to the dates and historical details, we are uncertain. Padmasambhava is supposed to have been born twelve years after the death of the Buddha. [483-400BCE] He continued to live and went to Tibet in the eighth century [800-701BCE] to propagate the buddhadharma there. Our approach here, as far as chronology and such things are concerned, is entirely unscholastic....
As the scriptures say, an ordinary person should not act like a yogi, a yogi should not act like a bodhisattva, a bodhisattva should not act like a siddha, and a siddha should not act like a buddha. If we go beyond our limit, if we decide to get wild and freak out, we get hurt. We get feedback: a very strong message comes back to us. If we go beyond our limit, it becomes destructive....
Acknowledging sanity is a discipline or a pretense: you pretend to be the Buddha, you believe you are the Buddha. Again, we are not talking about buddha-nature as an embryonic state, but of the living situation of buddhahood having already happened. We adopt such a pretense at the beginning, or maybe we should call it a belief. It is a belief in the sense that our buddhahood is seemingly not real but we take it as a reality. Some element of mind's trickery is necessary. And then we find ourselves having been tricked into enlightenment. There are all kinds of tricks that exist as part of the teaching process. They are known as skillful means....
STUDENT: This business of tricking yourself into being buddha is not at all clear to me. It sounds so un-Buddhist to use your mind to trick yourself. Is that different from what you talk about as deception, as conning yourself, conning experience?
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It's quite different. The deception of conning yourself has to be based on elaborate strategies. Tricking yourself into becoming buddha is immediate. It happens on the spot....
Instead of trying to become buddha, you suddenly realize that buddha is trying to become you....
STUDENT: It seems that both Christ and Padmasambhava had to use magic in order to achieve their final victory.
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Not necessarily. It might have become magic by itself.
S: I mean the lake, and sitting in the lotus flower and --
TR: That was not magic particularly. That was just what happened. And for that matter, the resurrection could be said not to have been magic at all. It's just what happened in the case of Christ.
S: It's magical in the sense that it's very unusual. I mean, if that isn't magic, what is?
TR: Well, in that case what we're doing here is magic. We are doing something extremely unusual, for America. It happens to have developed by itself. We couldn't have created the whole situation. Our getting together and discussing this subject just happened by itself...
If you sit cross-legged as if you were meditating, the chances are you might actually find yourself meditating after a while. This is like achieving sanity by pushing yourself to imitate it, by behaving as though you were sane already. In the same way, it is possible to use words, terms, images, and ideas -- teaching orally or in writing -- as though they were an absolutely perfect means of transmission....
The Tibetans were thought of as stupid. They were too faithful and too practical. Therefore, there was a tremendous opening for introducing the craziness of impracticality: abandon your farm, abandon your livelihood, roam about in the mountains dressed in those funny yogic costumes. Once the Tibetans began to accept those things as aces of sanity, they made excellent yogis, because their approach to yogic practice was also very practical. As they had farmed faithfully and taken care of their herds faithfully, they followed the yogic calling faithfully as well....
Padmasambhava's approach was a very beautiful one, and his prophecies actually foretell everything that happened in Tibet....
Padmasambhava still lives, literally. He is not living in South America, but in some remote place -- on a continent of vampires, at a place there called Sangdok Petri, "Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain." He still lives. Since he is the state of dharmakaya, the fact of physical bodies dissolving back into nature is not regarded as a big deal. So if we search for him, we might find him....
STUDENT: Rinpoche, you made the statement that Guru Rinpoche is literally alive in some country. Are you serious? You used the word literally.
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: At this point it is uncertain what is serious; or what is literal, for that matter.
S: So you could say anything?
TR: I suppose so.
***
And all the spiritual interpretations of the scriptures referring to the unknowable can be applied to the fact that we do not know what we are trying to do spiritually. Nevertheless, we are definitely involved in spiritual conviction now, because we have suppressed our original doubts about who we are and what we are -- our feeling that perhaps we might not be anything....
The approach of crazy wisdom here is to give up hope. There is no hope of understanding anything at all. There is no hope of finding out who did what or what did what or how anything worked. Give up your ambition to put the jigsaw puzzle together. Give it up altogether, absolutely; throw it up in the air, put it in the fireplace. Unless we give up this hope, this precious hope, there is no way out at all....
We do not understand -- and we have no possibility of understanding -- anything at all. It is hopeless to look for something to understand, for something to discover, because there is no discovery at all at the end, unless we manufacture one. But if we did manufacture a discovery, we would not be particularly happy about that later on. Though we would thrive on it, we would know that we had cheated ourselves....
There is no ground, so there is no hope....
This hopelessness provides no security....
But it's hopeless to try and work this out logically. Absolutely hopeless!...
It's impossible to develop crazy wisdom without a sense of hopelessness, total hopelessness....
Just purely hopeless. No ground, absolutely no ground....
Hopelessness is not a gimmick. It means it, you know; it's the truth. It's the truth of hopelessness....
It is said that at the end of the journey though the nine yanas, it is clear that the journey need never have been made. So the path that is presented to us is an act of hopelessness in some sense. The journey need never be made at all. It's eating your own tail and continuing until you eat your own mouth....
The idea that the spiritual journey needs to be made is a deception....
STUDENT: You said there's no God, there's no self. Is there any so-called true self? Is there anything outside of hopelessness?
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: I should remind you that this whole thing is the preparation for crazy wisdom, which does not know any kind of truth other than itself. From that point of view, there's no true self, because when you talk about true self or buddha-nature, then that in itself is trying to insert some positive attitude, something to the effect that you are okay. That doesn't exist in this hopelessness....
You have no ground to stand on, absolutely none. You are completely desolate. And even desolation is not regarded as home, because you are so desolately, absolutely hopeless that even loneliness is not a refuge any more. Everything is completely hopeless....
You are overwhelmed by hopelessness. All over. Utterly. Completely. Profusely. You are a claustrophobic situation of hopelessness....
Padmasambhava's experience of experience doesn't mean anything....
STUDENT: When you talk about hopelessness, the whole thing seems totally depressing. And it seems you could very easily be overwhelmed by that depression to the point where you just retreat into a shell or insanity.
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: It's up to you. It's completely up to you. That's the whole point.
***
As Vajradhara, Padmasambhava's experience of eternity -- or his existence as eternity -- is quite different. There is a sense of continuity, because he has transcended the fear of birth, death, illness, and any kind of pain. There is a constant living, electric experience that he is not really living and existing, but rather it is the world that lives and exists, and therefore he is the world and the world is him. He has power over the world because he does not have power over the world. He does not want to hold any kind of position as a powerful person at this point....
If Padmasambhava had had to challenge the Ponists with logic, the only approach he could have taken would have been to say that earth and heaven are a unity, that heaven as such does not exist because heaven and earth are interdependent....
The whole point when we talk about Padmasambhava is that Padmasambhava is the trikaya principle, which is made out of a combination of both samsara and nirvana at the same time, so any conditions or conditioning are valid. At this point, as far as that experience is concerned, samsara and nirvana are one within the experience. What we are concerned with here is that it is purely free energy. It's neither conditioned nor unconditioned, but rather its own existence is absolute in its own way. So we don't have to try to make it valid by persuading ourselves that there is nothing samsaric that is part of it. Without that [samsaric element], we would have nothing to be crazy about. This is crazy wisdom, you know....
This may be a familiar idea for people already exposed to the teachings of crazy wisdom, but for most people, who think of spirituality as based purely on goodness, any kind of opposition or obstacle is considered a manifestation of evil. Regarding obstacles as adornments is quite an unusual idea. If there is a threat to the teacher or the teaching, it tends to be categorized immediately as the "work of the devil." In this view, the idea is to try not to relate to the obstacles or threats, but to cast them out as something bad, something antagonistic to the teaching. You should just purify yourself of this work of the devil. You should abandon it, rather than exploring it as part of the organic and integral development of the situation you are working with. You regard it purely as a problem....
There still seems to be some kind of timidity in our general approach. We are timid in the sense that, no matter how subtle or obvious the teachings may be, we are still not reconciled to the notion that "pain and pleasure alike are ornaments which it is pleasant to wear."
***
Padmasambhava, having married, became more playful. He even began to experiment with his aggression, finding that he could use his strength to throw things and things could get broken. And he carried this to an extreme, knowing that he had the potential for crazy wisdom within him. He danced holding two scepters -- a vajra and a trident -- on the palace roof. He dropped his vajra and trident, and they fell and hit a mother and her son who were walking below, simultaneously killing them both. They happened to be the wife and son of one of the king's ministers. The vajra hit the child's head, and the trident struck the mother's heart. Very playful! (I am afraid this is not quite a respectable story.)...
STUDENT: Why does Padmasambhava choose such a dramatic means of expressing his dissatisfaction with living in a palace? Why does he have to throw a trident and drop his vajra, piercing a heart and cracking a skull? Why doesn't he just walk out?
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: Walking out sounds like a copout. For him just to disappear and just be discovered as missing sounds like the action of a very transparent person who's afraid to communicate with anything and just flees. Padmasambhava is much more heavy-handed than that....
Padmasambhava was faced with five hundred heretics... the theists won and the Buddhists, who were completely overwhelmed by logical intelligence, lost. Then Padmasambhava was asked to perform a ceremony of destruction, to destroy the theists and their whole setup. He performed the ceremony and caused a huge landslide, which killed the five hundred pandits and destroyed their whole ashram....
STUDENT: Two of the aspects of Padmasambhava seem to be contradictory. Padmasambhava allowed the confusion of the king to manifest and then turn back on itself, yet he didn't allow the confusion of the five hundred pandits to manifest (if you want to call dualism confusion). He just destroyed them with a landslide. Could you comment on this?
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: The pandits seem to have been very simple-minded people, because they had no connection with the kitchen-sink-Ievel problems of life. They were purely thriving on their projection of who they were. So, according to the story, the only way to relate with them was to provide them with the experience of the landslide -- a sudden jerk or shock. Anything else they could have reinterpreted into something else. If the pandits had been in the king's situation, they would have been much more hardened, much less enlightened, than he was. They had no willingness to relate with anything at all, because they were so hardened in their dogmatism. Moreover, it was necessary for them to realize the nonexistence of themselves and Brahma. So they were provided with the experience of a catastrophe that was caused not by Brahma but by themselves. This left them in a nontheistic situation: they themselves were all that there was; there was no possibility of reproaching God or Brahma or whatever....
At that time in India, there were major incursions of heretics, or tirthikas, as they are known in Sanskrit. They were Hindus. They are referred to as heretics because of their belief in duality -- in the existence of an external divine being and in the existence of atman as the recipient of that divine being.
In relation to these heretics, Padmasambhava acted as an organic agent, an agent of the natural action of the elements. If you mistreat the fire in your fireplace, your house will catch fire. If you don't pay enough attention while cutting your carrots, you might cut your finger. It is this mindlessness and mistreatment of the natural situation that is the heretical quality. Rather than regarding existing situations of nonduality as they are, you try to interpret them a bit so that they help to maintain your existence. For example, believing in God is a way of making sure that you exist. Singing a song of praise to God makes you happier, because you are singing the song about him. Since there is a good audience, a good recipient, therefore God exists. That kind of approach is heretical from the Buddhist point of view.
At that time, the great Buddhist monasteries in a certain part of India were being challenged by Hindu pandits. The Hindu pandits were coming to the monasteries and teaching, and the monks were rapidly turning into Hindus. It was a tremendous catastrophe. So Padmasambhava was asked to come. Those who invited him said, "We can't seem to match those Hindu pandits intellectually, so please save us by performing some magic for us. Maybe that is the only solution."
Padmasambhava came to live in one of the monasteries. One day, he produced an earthquake by pointing his trident in the direction of the Hindu pandits. There were landslides, and five hundred Hindu pandits were destroyed....
If you are not in tune with the nature of reality, you are making yourself into a target, an extra satellite. And there's no one to feed you. There's no fuel for you except your own resources, and you are bound to die because you can't keep regenerating without further resources. That is what happened to the pandits whom Padmasambhava killed. This is very uncompassionate or outrageous, but Padmasambhava in this case is representing the nature of reality rather than acting as a black magician or white magician.
***
From this point of view, the path is neutral. It is not biased one way or the other. There is a constant journey happening, which began at the time of the basic split. We began to relate in terms of "the other," "me," "mine," "our," and so on. We began to relate with things as separate entities. The other is called "them" and this thing is called "I" or "me." The journey began right from there. That was the first creation of samsara and nirvana....
The path can make it possible to connect with basic, primordial, innocent being....
You can think without thinking. There is a certain kind of intelligence connected with the totality that is more precise, but it is not verbal; it is not conceptualized at all....
It is a self-existing intelligence of its own....
We have to realize that there is a sense of energy that is always there, and that that energy contains totality. That energy is not dualistic or interdependent; it is a self-existing energy in us. We have our passion, our aggression; we have our own space, our own energy -- it's there already. It exists without any dependency on situations. It is absolute and perfect and independent. It is free from any form of relationships....
The principle of Padmasambhava consists in freedom from any speculative ideas or theories or activity of watching oneself. It is the living experience of emotions and experiences without a watcher. Because we are Buddha already, we are Padmasambhava already....
That kind of sense of openness that happens when we are just about to say something or just about to experience something is a kind of sense of emptiness. It is a sense of fertile emptiness, pregnant emptiness. That experience of emptiness is the dharmakaya. In order to give birth, we have to have an accommodation for giving birth. The sense of the absence of that birth before giving birth is the dharmakaya....
Dharmakaya is unconditioned. The leap has already been made. When we definitely decide to leap, we have leapt already. The leaping itself is somewhat repetitious or redundant. Once we have already decided to leap, we have leapt. We are talking about that kind of sense of space in which the leap, the birth, is already given though not yet manifested. It is not yet manifested, but it is as good as already manifested. In that state of mind in which we are about to experience, say, drinking a cup of tea, we have drunk a cup of tea already before we drink it. And we have said things already before we actually say them on a manifest level....
That kind of pregnant, embryonic, fertile ground that happens in our state of mind constantly is also unconditioned [i.e., as well as pregnant with something]. It is unconditioned in relation to my ego, or dualistic mind, my actions, my love and hate, and so on. In relation to all that, it is unconditioned. Thus we have that kind of unconditioned glimpse happening in our state of mind constantly....
The dharmakaya state is the starting point or ground of Padmasambhava. The embryonic manifestation here is the dharma, the dharma of possibilities that have happened already, existing things that exist in nonexistence....
An enlightened person is supposed to be more or less an old-wise-man type: not quite like an old professor, but perhaps an old father who can supply sound advice on how to handle all of life's problems or an old grandmother who knows all the recipes and all the cures. That seems to be the current fantasy that exists in our culture concerning enlightened beings. They are old and wise, grown-up and solid....
Tantra has a different notion of enlightenment, which is connected with youth and innocence. We can see this pattern in Padmasambhava's life story, where the awakened state of mind is portrayed not as old and adult but as young and free....
One can be enlightened and be infantlike....
Having discovered all our confusions and neuroses, we begin to realize that they are harmless or helpless. Then gradually we find the innocent-child quality in us....
It is like a second birth. We discover our innocence, our primordial quality, our eternal youth....
Padmasambhava as a baby represents that complete, childlike state in which there is no duality; there is no "this" and no "that."...
There is no reference point. If there is no reference point, then there is nothing to pollute one's concepts or ideas. It is one absolute ultimate thing altogether....
The inquisitiveness of that infant aspect in us is not neurotically inquisitive, but basically inquisitive. Since we want to explore the depth of pain, since we want to explore the warmth of joy, doing so seems natural. This is the Padmasambhava quality in us. We could call it buddha-nature or basic enlightenment. We would like to pick up a toy, hold it in our hands, explore it, drop it, bash it around, see it falling apart, unscrew it, put it together. We always do that, just as an infant does. This infant quality is the quality of enlightenment....
It is not learning in the sense of collecting information; rather, it is absorbing what is happening around us, constantly relating to it. In this kind of learning, we do not at all learn things so that we can use them at some point to defend ourselves. We learn things because they are pleasurable to learn, fantastic to learn. It is like children playing with toys....
Padmasambhava was born from a lotus without parents, because he had no need to be educated.
***
Cont'd below