Casual blog

My last two pages pointed out the good news: there are no spiritual problems.

The bad news is that there are no spiritual solutions.

Spirituality tries to sell you the idea that everything will be peachy-keen forever, if only you apply an all-purpose spiritual solution. Somehow, that is supposed to solve all practical problems, as well as the big hairy cosmic one.

Tantra thinks that’s twaddle.

No Neverland

Spirituality claims that the mundane world is total garbage. There’s nothing worth having here; it causes nothing but misery in the long run. You should abandon it.

Spirituality claims there’s some kind of heaven, or nirvana, or transcendent reality, or domain of emptiness, that is all-good. You should move on to that spiritual plane. That’s salvation. That’s the solution to everything.

Tantra is about this everyday, concrete world, just as it appears. It is not interested in escapist fantasies about Neverland.

This world is where we are. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It’s real, it’s workable, it’s enjoyable, and it needs our help.

Your problem is not dukkha

Some Buddhisms suggest that “all existence is marked by suffering.” That’s the #1 big fat spiritual problem.

Most people don’t think “suffering” is their problem. That’s awfully vague, general, and abstract. Real people have specific problems, like car trouble, sick children, or being dumped by a lover.

It takes a lot of fancy Buddhist rhetoric to get anyone to pay attention to “suffering” instead.

One difficulty is that “all is suffering” is obviously false. So, if you push on Buddhists a bit, they’ll admit that it’s not exactly suffering, it’s “dukkha,” which is something else, that they can’t quite translate.

Well, let’s be generous, and agree that everything is “marked by dukkha,” whatever that means. So what?

Any classification lumps some things together, and splits other things apart. A classification is useful if, for some purpose, all the lumped things can be treated the same way.

The Four Noble Truths aren’t either true, or false. They are a way of approaching things; an attitude. If you adopt this attitude, you’ll follow the Eightfold Path as the solution to all problems. You’ll reject everyday, practical concerns as mere samsara.

The Eightfold Path is a pretty good thing. It doesn’t help much with car trouble, sick children, or being dumped by a lover, however. Even if there is such a thing as “the end of all suffering”—which seems unlikely—it won’t fix squealing brake pads.

The Four Noble Truths lump too many things together. They ignore too many important distinctions. They lead you away from practical solutions to practical problems.

Tantra cares about specifics. It is fascinated with the everyday world, with all its complexity and detail; brake pads and mononucleosis and broken engagements. It’s about good old samsara, not Neverland Nirvana.

No global fix

So what is tantra’s solution, then?

It hasn’t got one.

There isn’t one.

Reality can’t be fixed, because it has no fundamental flaw. There’s just things we like, and things we don’t like, and ways we can respond to them.

Spirituality promises a total explanation of everything. Tantra rejects that. Things often happen for no particular reason. There is no ultimate “why.” Not everything can be understood; and that’s fine.

Tantra offers no guarantees. There is no reliable recipe for happiness, goodness, or peace of mind. No total, ultimate salvation is possible.

What tantra does provide is relative methods for dealing with relative circumstances. I think they’re pretty nifty…

Religion for geeks

Tantra is unusual—possibly unique—in avoiding both eternalism (fantasies of metaphysical salvation) and nihilistic pessimism.

I think this makes tantra the ideal religion for geeks (like me.) Geeks refuse to believe in things we have no evidence for. We’re usually dismissive of spirituality, because its metaphysical claims are either false or meaningless.

The problem with rejecting spirituality is that often the only alternative seems to be nihilism: the idea that everything is meaningless. That leads to rage, depression, and sterile intellectualization.

Tantra has a cogent answer to nihilism, and upholds purpose, meaning, and value. At the same time, it has a practical, realistic, engineer-like outlook, without fanciful metaphysics.

Relating this to tradition

Traditionally, one of the distinctive features of tantra is its claim that samsara and nirvana are inseparable, or the same. That implies that there is no escape from one into the other. I’ll write more about tantra’s attitude to samsara and nirvana in a later post.

Traditionally, tantra is concerned with the world of manifestation, or form, and the relative truth; in contrast with sutrayana, which is concerned with emptiness and absolute truth. “Form” roughly corresponds to “the mundane world” and “absolute truth” with Neverland.

When living in a Buddhist theocracy—as tantrikas almost always have—it’s dangerous to point out the limitations of the Four Noble Truths. Offhand, I don’t recall a traditional text that does. Chögyam Trungpa has an account similar to mine in Crazy Wisdom, pp. 119-20, however.

I will have much more to say about tantra’s approach to “suffering” in an upcoming page about charnel ground.

Tantra is often thought of now in the West as the most metaphysical branch of Buddhism—replete with mystical magic, squillions of spooks, and astral adventures. This is a historical misunderstanding. I’ll sort that out in another upcoming page.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with you.

You are just fine—just as you are. That is tantra’s main claim about the self.

“Ego” is not evil. It is not a spiritual problem.

No upgrade required

You do not need to:

• fix your self
• improve your self
• get rid of your self
• see through the illusion of your self
• transcend your self
• transform your self
• analyze or understand your self

Tantra is about living here and now. Whatever self you do or don’t have—you are how you are, now. Waiting to get fixed before living is not helpful.

No other, better self

You cannot, and do not need to:

• find your True Self
• get in touch with your higher self [much less your guardian angel]
• awaken the Buddha Within
• unify your little self with the cosmic All-Self

These are just fantasies. They are imaginary ideals that spiritual people try to live up to. All they will ever do is make you feel inadequate and miserable.

There are no wrong emotions

Desire, anger, and ignorance—the Buddhist kleshas—are just fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. They can be unpleasant to experience—but they can also be fun. Life’s mixed like that; it doesn’t make emotions evil.

This does not mean that there are no wrong actions. It means that experiencing the kleshas does not force you to act wrongly. Tantra has a toolkit of methods that help break the habitual links between particular emotions and actions.

To make the point that no emotion is wrong, tantra has greedy Buddhas, angry Buddhas, horny Buddhas, paranoid Buddhas, and idiotic Buddhas. (These are the “Five Buddha Families.”)

Your feelings are not significant

Sometimes, even when feelings are painful and unhelpful, we cling to them as defining our selves.

Everyone has the same set of emotions, though. The details about which ones you feel, in which situations, are spiritually meaningless. You cannot find The Answer To Life, The Universe, And Everything there.

Your personal patterns do not validate your existence. Do not weave them into a story about how special and different you are.

Tantra has tools that help break the habitual links between situations and emotions. That gives emotional freedom. The fact that so-and-so happened does not mean you have to feel such-and-such.

That means a tantrika cannot make excuses along the lines of “I wanted to do the right thing, but my self got in the way.”

Practical faults

“There is nothing fundamentally wrong with you” does not mean you are perfect. (Although some New Age folks might tell you that.)

You have no cosmic defects; but, if you are like me, you have numerous practical faults. For example, I am habitually irritated—usually by badly-designed or buggy software.

That is not a good thing. I get grumpy, and gripe about broken websites to my girlfriend. Occasionally that gets her in a grump too.

For tantra, the energy that drives bad habits is the same as a specific form of wisdom. For example, irritation and mental clarity are produced by the same energy. (I do think very clearly about software.) The methods of tantra allow you to flip each klesha into the corresponding wisdom.

Just as you are

Tantra is not therapy; it not is about fixing up or improving the self. It may help with psychological problems, but that is not the point.

Tantra allows you to view your counter-productive habits with some affection and humor—even as you try to overcome them.

The point of tantra is to live as considerately, effectively, and enjoyably as possible just as you are.

Relating this to tradition

This page is based on the Dzogchen approach to the tathagatagarbha theory. That’s a pretty technical subject, so what follows is rather long and complicated. I’ve tried to make it somewhat amusing, however.

How to become a sky god

Mahayana has the brilliant idea that Buddhas are sky gods. They live up in the sky, and they are gods because they have an immortal (permanent) Self (atman) that is entirely suffering-free. Also they are omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. And you can be one too!

This makes Mahayana popular, because everyone wants to be a sky god. Theravada doesn’t allow that.

However, sky gods cause a bunch of philosophical problems. Also a technical one:

OK, you’ve sold me. I want to be a sky god. How do I, as an impermanent, constantly-suffering non-self, become one?

Mahayana came up with a brilliant answer to that: the tathagatagarbha.

But first, a little light entertainment.

Dormitive principles

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson wrote:

Molière, long ago, depicted an oral doctoral examination in which the learned doctors ask the candidate to state the “cause and reason” why opium puts people to sleep. The candidate triumphantly answers in dog Latin, “Because there is in it a dormitive principle (virtus dormitiva).”

Characteristically, the scientist confronts a complex interactive system — in this case, an interaction between man and opium. He observes a change in the system — the man falls asleep. The scientist then explains the change by giving a name to a fictitious “cause,” located in one or other component of the interacting system. Either the opium contains a reified dormitive principle, or the man contains a reified need for sleep, an adormitosis, which is “expressed” in his response to opium.

And, characteristically, all such hypotheses are “dormitive” in the sense that they put to sleep the critical faculty … within the scientist himself.

… In fact, the multiplication of dormitive hypotheses is a symptom of … the present state of the behavioral sciences — a mass of quasi-theoretical speculation unconnected with any core of fundamental knowledge.

Since Bateson wrote this forty years ago, diagnosing a supposed explanation as a “dormitive principle” has become common and useful.

Here’s the pattern:

• Some process X has result Y. We want an explanation.
• You invent a thingy Z, an invisible part or essence of X, which allows it to cause Y.
• Z is actually just an fancy renaming of Y.
• You add a bunch of meaningless technical jargon, preferably in an extinct holy language, to obscure that.
• You hope no one notices that Z actually explains nothing, and can’t be found because it’s purely metaphysical.

In Molière’s case, the process X is “taking opium,” result Y is “falling sleep,” and the abstraction Z is “the dormitive principle.”

Tathagatagarbha: Mahayana’s dormitive principle

So how does practicing Buddhism (X) cause you to become a sky god (Y)? Well, according to Mahayana, it’s the tathagatagarbha (Z) that makes it possible.

“Tathagata” is a code word for “Buddha.” The meaning of “garbha” is obscure. One common translation is “embryo.” However, it is said that the meaning of “tathagatagarbha” is more-or-less identical to “Buddha-nature.” In other words: “enlightenment principle.”

So the idea is that everyone has one of these garbha thingies inside themselves; and it is already a sky god, or somehow similar to one, so it causes you to turn into one too. (The garbha is, of course, highly abstract and metaphysical; you can’t find it if you cut someone up.)

This is phenomenally beef-brained. Like all explanations relying on “dormitive principles,” it totally fails to explain anything; it just puts a name on the hypothetical cause. It leaves a slew of philosophical and technical problems:

• So what sort of thing is this garbha? (For example: is it an atman (Self) or not?)
• How exactly does it relate to me? (If I am impermanent, how can I have a permanent garbha?)
• How exactly does it relate to sky gods? (Is it the same thing as dharmakaya or what?)
• What do those relationships imply about my relationship with sky gods? (If it’s one, why aren’t I one?)

Most importantly:

• I still want to be a sky god. But if I’ve got a garbha, it’s obviously not doing its job. It must be asleep or something. What do I have to do to kick it awake and get to work?

Various sutras give a wide range of unworkable answers to these questions. By their own admission, they are inconsistent and incoherent; contradictory and confused.

You could look at the history of non-Theravada Buddhism as a series of attempts to make sense of these problems.

Generally, in China—and later Japan—they were regarded as Holy Mysteries. Tathagatagarbha is dormitive in Bateson’s second sense: it puts to sleep the critical faculty within Buddhists. “The very fact that the doctrine makes no sense is what makes Mahayana superior to all other religions.” Credo quia absurdum.

The “other-powered” East Asian schools—which became the most popular—take the sensible position that becoming a sky god by your own effort is inconceivable. Instead, you should pray to an existing one—Amitabha—who will pull you up.

Zen insists on trying anyway. For Rinzai Zen, failing at the impossible task of making sense of Mahayana’s absurd metaphysical contradictions (i.e., koan practice) is the very thing that brings about enlightenment.

Even modern Zen still dangles the promise that you can become a sky god. It aims at a metaphysical operation in which you discover your True Self, which is deathless and free of all suffering. “Sky” is now metaphorical, but talk of becoming God remains strangely popular.

Tantra, tathagatagarbha, and Dzogchen

Tantra is rooted directly in the tathagatagarbha sutras. However, it is more interested in the technical question—how do I make the garbha do its thing?—than the metaphysical ones. Over many centuries, different tantric systems have invented startlingly diverse methods.

The Nyingma taxonomy is one useful way of classifying these thousands of tantric texts and methods. It categorizes them into six yanas, in an order from “outermost” to “innermost,” or “lowest” to “highest.”

As you travel from the lowest to highest tantras, “Buddhahood” becomes an increasingly realistic possibility. On the one hand, it seems more and more present and achievable. On the other, it becomes less and less exalted and metaphysical.

The “highest” of the six tantric yanas is Dzogchen. It has, I think, the only workable answer to the problems with tathagatagarbha:

According to Dzogchen, you are always already a fully-enlightened Buddha.

That means that the garbha has no work to do, so we can chuck it out. All its metaphysical problems disappear along with it.

The technical problem—how do I become a Buddha?—also disappears. You already are one, so there is nothing to do.

Dzogchen is the only Buddhism that is not a path to enlightenment. It is a path from enlightenment. Dzogchen answers a different question:

Given that I’m a Buddha, now what?

Practical tantra

Viewed from Dzogchen, tantra’s attempts to bring about enlightenment are comical. It’s like a school of sharks strategizing about how to get wet.

That doesn’t make tantra useless, however. It can be reinterpreted as practical methods for accomplishing practical ends.

In fact, tantra has always been put down by people who say Buddhists should spend absolutely all their energy on trying to become sky gods. In their opinion, any attempt to be useful here on earth is a waste of time. Sometimes detractors say that a practical, this-worldly orientation is what defines tantra, relative to other yanas. This is wrong, but it is true that tantra has always had a big practical aspect, from its beginning.

When tantric methods are reinterpreted from the Dzogchen perspective, their distinctive feature is to assume you are a Buddha. In other words: there is nothing spiritually wrong with you; there is no spiritual quality that you lack; there are no spiritual goals you need to achieve.

From the Dzogchen perspective, tantra is a bunch of cool things for Buddhas to do.

Never mind the sky gods

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking:

Hey, buster, you just pulled a fast one! If you’re saying I’m a Buddha, you’ve moved the goal posts. Maybe I am a “Buddha,” according to your definition, but so what? I still want to be a sky god. I’m definitely not a sky god.

Dzogchen’s answer to that:

NEVER MIND THE SKY GODS

HERE’S THE SEX PISTOLS

Further reading

Pages 6-8 of Ngakpa Chögyam’s Wearing the Body of Visions cover the same material as this page, and are the most direct influence on it.

Chögyam Trungpa’s Crazy Wisdom was another major source for this page (and my previous and next ones). Pages 6-10 are particularly relevant.

Cheri Huber’s There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate is an easy, down-to-earth modern Zen interpretation of tathagatagarbha, with zero jargon. I found it helpful when I read it fifteen years ago. I can’t find my copy, and I suspect I would want to argue with some parts of it now. However, from memory, I would still recommend it.

For the Five Buddha Families, and how to flip kleshas into wisdoms, see Ngakpa Chögyam’s Spectrum of Ecstasy: Embracing the Five Wisdom Emotions of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Paul Williams’ Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations gives a good overview of tathagatagarbha theories. (The book is also a valuable resource for understanding the history and logical structure of Mahayana overall.)

For an explanation of the Nyingma taxonomy of tantras, see Chögyam Trungpa’s The Lion’s Roar.

For the relationship between tantra and Dzogchen, see the “uncommon perspective” page on the Aro web site, and the pages on tantra and Dzogchen. For greater detail, Namkhai Norbu’s The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen is outstanding (but somewhat difficult reading).

Nothing is fundamentally wrong with the world.

That is tantra’s main claim about the nature of reality.

Maybe it sounds like good news: “Cool, man! Everything is great! No problem! Don’t worry, be happy!”

But that is not believable; and it is not the attitude of tantra. There are problems, and everything is not OK. We need to deal with that.

To make sense of this seeming contradiction, I distinguish between practical problems, and problems that could be called “spiritual,” “existential,” “cosmic,” or “fundamental.”

Spiritual problems would require magical solutions

Many religions start with the idea that there is some hideous problem with all of existence.

The problem might not be obvious. The job of the religion is to convince you that:

• you’ve got this problem (and so does everyone)
• it is really, really bad—much worse than it appears
• it affects everything in the whole universe, so there’s no escaping it
• it’s so vast and awful and incomprehensible that there’s no practical way of solving it
• so you’d better buy our brand of magic instead.

For example:

• After you die, demons will torture you forever, because someone ate a magic apple.
• All of existence is pervaded by impermanence, suffering, and non-self.
• Life is inherently meaningless, so it is impossible to act.

(These are, of course, the cosmic defects proposed by Christianity, Buddhism, and existentialism.)

According to tantra, there are no such problems.

Impermanence, suffering, and non-self are called “the Three Marks of Existence” in mainstream Buddhism, which makes a big fuss about them. Tantra refuses to regard them as existential problems, or as any other sort of big deal.

A spiritual problem, according to religions that believe in them, requires a spiritual solution. But there are none. This belief diverts your energy into attempting to solve an imaginary spiritual problem, and away from practical solutions to real, practical problems.

Suffering does not make the world wrong

If the universe were about us, the world would be wrong. We don’t like suffering, and there’s quite a bit of it going around.

If there were a God, the world would be wrong. If someone designed the world, he did a piss-poor job. We should fire him. Or maybe he’s a bastard, and we should kill him.

If the world were supposed to be some way it is not, it would be wrong. But “supposed” supposes a supposer. According to whose criteria could the world be judged?

There is no God; the world was not designed; it was not meant to be some way; there is no cosmic plan to compare it against.

Therefore, there can be no fundamental problem with it. We have no grounds for complaint.

Stuff happens, mostly for no particular reason. Some of it, we like; some of it, we don’t.

Mainstream Buddhism calls experiences we don’t like “suffering,” and thinks that’s a cosmic problem. It means the world is wrong and should be abandoned.

According to tantra, the Three Marks of Existence are actually the “Three Doors of Liberation”: impermanence provides delightful entertainment; suffering gives the energy to act; non-self is simply how you are.

Spacious passion relishes real difficulties

The attitude of tantra is spacious passion.

Spaciousness implies that you are open to everything in the world. You don’t get finicky about “this aspect is spiritually bad; it’s impure, so I’ll avoid it.”

Spaciousness implies that you allow everything in the world to be as it is. You don’t think “this is wrong, it should be some other way.” You accept all outcomes—including disasters—as just how things are.

Passion is the desire to actively connect with everything. You are interested in everything, eager to learn, and eager to intervene. Passion is the desire to create and enjoy. Passion drives projects, and also just tinkering with reality to see what happens.

Everyday reality is workable

There are no spiritual problems; but there are real problems. Small ones like dirty dishes in the sink, and big ones like global warming.

Spaciousness and passion both lead you to regard all situations as workable. Nothing is cosmically awful; practical problems do not prove the world is wrong.

“Workable” does not guarantee that there is a solution. “Nothing is fundamentally wrong with the world” does not mean that everything can be fixed, or that life can be made perfect. Catastrophe is always possible. Death is always certain.

Passion and spaciousness together imply that you care deeply about the world, that you urgently want to fix problems, that you always do your best—and you are unruffled when you fail.

Having this realistic attitude produces a kind of fearlessness—a key attribute for tantrikas. It is not the idiot fearlessness—produced by spirituality—of being sure that things will magically come out well in the end, because God loves you. It is the fearlessness of knowing that the world is neither good nor bad; that it is not your enemy; that events are often random; that you will do your best; and so outcomes have no spiritual meaning.

A tantrika recognizes that experience is a mixture of pleasure and pain, and has no problem with that. It is simply how things are.

Problems are not a problem. A problem is a species of opportunity: a chance to act to make things better than they would be otherwise. The world is full of opportunities. It is rich with resources for improvisation, for creativity, for caring, for connection.

Enjoy the sacred world

According to mainstream Buddhism, it is critical to avoid indulging in sense pleasures. Those tie you to the world, and the world is bad.

According to tantra, the world is fantastic. According to tantra, tantrikas should enjoy sensual pleasures as thoroughly and often as possible. There is no problem with that—if it has no negative practical consequences.

According to tantra, it is possible to enjoy everything.

Nothing in the world can be objectively bad, because there is no external standard to measure it against. “Good” and “bad” are judgements based only on what you happen to like and dislike. Tantra trains you to suspend such judgement.

According to mainstream Buddhism, mundane reality is utterly impure and defiled. The sacred is found only elsewhere.

According to tantra, everything in the world is sacred. Enjoyment should be inseparable from reverence.

Relating this to tradition

This page is a reinterpretation of some major tantric doctrines:

• Mundane reality is actually a Buddha field, or Pure Land—a heaven, more-or-less
• Samsara is actually nirvana
• Tantrikas should thoroughly enjoy the sense pleasures it provides
• Tantrikas are constantly drawn into action by compassion
• Reality is uncreated; there is no God

Since these points are central to tantric Buddhism, I’ll return to them in later pages in this series.

“You know what we need, Hobbes? We need an attitude.”
—Calvin & Hobbes

What I find most valuable in Buddhist tantra is an attitude. It’s the attitude I’ll call “spacious passion.” Over the next dozen pages, I’ll explain that attitude, with its applications and implications.

But here, even before telling you what spacious passion is, I want to answer an objection:

An attitude?? What good is an “attitude”? And what’s it got to do with Buddhist tantra? I thought tantra was supposed to be about mystical rituals and esoteric doctrines, not an attitude.

“Attitude” is an interesting word. Attitudes cross the internal/external, subjective/objective boundary. An “attitude” may include an emotional or mental state; but it can also refer to a bodily posture. It may be defined as a tendency toward a particular action or response.

This is key to tantra. Some Buddhisms treat both their path and goal as primarily mental, internal, or subjective. For Buddhist tantra, external action is more important. But accurate action requires blurring the subjective/objective boundary.

Usually, one has an attitude toward something or someone. Again, this is key for tantra. While some Buddhisms emphasize objectless emptiness, tantra is about this world and its inhabitants. While the Buddhas of the other leading brands sit around in the sky being holy, tantric Buddhas act. They act on the basis of their “attitude toward.”

The path of tantra consists simply of maintaining the attitude.

“So what?” Well, since the attitude is a disposition to act, you reliably respond perceptively, compassionately, and effectively to problems and opportunities. Maintaining the attitude makes life choiceless.

Tantra doesn’t necessarily mean you think less about what to do; nor does it give you magic powers to overcome obstacles. What it does is eliminate questions like:

Do I feel like being a sullen selfish slob? Or do I feel like being helpful, cheerful, and creative?

Tantric methods make the answer automatic; and eventually the question no longer arises.

Tantra assumes you are intelligent. It has some hints about how to be helpful, cheerful, and creative. Mostly, though, if you decide to, you can figure that out for yourself.

Tantra can seem extremely complex and technical. However, its mass of details are all just hints about how to maintain the passionate, spacious attitude.

The tantric attitude is valuable regardless of how you come to adopt it. On the other hand, the tantric practices and doctrines have no intrinsic value. They exist only to promote the attitude.

If you have some other way of maintaining the attitude, you could—in theory—fully accomplish tantra without using or knowing anything about the traditional teachings. Ultimately, any and every activity is tantric practice, when accompanied by the attitude.

The attitude of spacious passion makes the tantric concepts and methods make sense. It shows why they exist and how they work. It gives you an intuitive meta-feel for them; an automatic natural understanding. Consulting the attitude lets you know how you are doing:

Is this practice enhancing my tendency to spacious passion? Or is it making me narrow and dopey?

Applying tantric methods blindly, without understanding the point, can make you mean-spirited, aggressive, self-important, paranoid, and closed-minded. How you react to life difficulties lets you know if you are doing it wrong.

Technical mastery and intellectual understanding are important in tantra, but not all-important. They are only means to an end. Asking:

What do I need to do, or to understand, to live with greater gusto and wider vision?

is the guide to deciding how far to take particular techniques or studies, and which to take up next.

This series is about “reinventing tantra,” by which I mean: how can we make tantra inspiring and practical in the global 21st century culture? Much needs to change—just as tantra has changed countless times in the past, to meet new circumstances. How do we know what to retain from tradition, what to re-present in new language, what to leave behind, and what to create that is altogether new?

Answers can flow from the understanding that tantra exists simply to promote spacious passion. Whatever does that, here and now, is a valuable method of contemporary tantra. Whatever does not, needs revision; or can be left on the shelf as a possible resource for future generations.

Relating this to tradition “Attitude”

I am not using “attitude” to translate any particular Tibetan or Sanskrit word. And, as far as I know, there is no tantric text that says that maintaining an attitude is the most important thing.

I do think that this is implicit in tantric theory, though. I suspect that open-minded Tibetan lamas would not particularly object to my formulation.

Causal and resultant vehicles

Tibetan theory divides Buddhism into causal and resultant vehicles. A “vehicle” is a yana, or approach to Buddhism.

Mainstream (non-tantric) Buddhism is described as consisting of “causal vehicles.” Their methods attempt to cause enlightenment.

The tantric yanas—there are half a dozen of them—are resultant vehicles. According to tantra, you are always already enlightened. Therefore, it is not necessary (or possible) to cause enlightenment. Instead, you take the supposed result (Buddhahood) as the path.

That is, the method of tantra is to do being a Buddha. Or, it is often said, you self-identify as a Buddha.

Since the goal is also to be a Buddha, some versions of tantra say explicitly that the path is the goal (and vice versa).

Different forms of Buddhism have different ideas about what a Buddha is. For many, though, I think it’s fair to say that Buddhahood is, indeed, an attitude. So, maintaining the attitude of a Buddha is the path, and is also the goal.

I prefer to speak of “maintaining an attitude” than “self-identifying” to emphasize the dynamic external activity of Buddhahood, and also because “self” is such a problematic concept in Buddhism.

I prefer not to talk about Buddhas and Buddhahood. Those concepts are far too encrusted with myth, ideology, metaphysics, intellectual argument, and historical confusion.

Anuyoga

The approach to tantra I advocate is similar to anuyoga.

Anuyoga is a distinctive, uncommon form of tantra, found only in the Nyingma branch of Tibetan Buddhism. It is different enough from “mainstream” tantra that it is considered a separate yana. Its texts, practices, and doctrines barely overlap with other tantric yanas, although it is similar enough to count as tantra rather than something else entirely.

Anuyoga skips most of the complex ritual of “mainstream” tantra. Instead, its approach is: Just Do It®. You go directly into being a Buddha, with only minimal technical support.

Anuyoga flourished mainly during the “Tibetan Dark Age” around the year 959. This period was considered “dark” by later propagandists, because the Tibetan state and the established church lost control over tantra. From my point of view, it was probably something of a Golden Age. (I’ve written about that elsewhere.)

After theocracy was re-established, anuyoga became almost entirely theoretical, forgotten, fictitious, or extinct. (Jacob Dalton wrote a fascinating PhD thesis about this, if you want to learn more. I may summarize that in an upcoming post.)

Anuyoga developed as a style of practice suitable for dynamic social conditions. It is ideal for independent, part-time practitioners who have real lives. On the other hand, the style of tantra taught in Tibet in the past few hundred years was designed to support state power and institutional stability. It is suited mainly for monks, i.e. indentured religious factory workers.

Social conditions for Buddhism in the contemporary West are more similar to the “Dark Age” than to the theocratic feudalism of recent Tibet. I think the anuyoga approach is more attractive and useful for most contemporary Westerners than the other tantric yanas. Unfortunately, those other yanas (particularly mahayoga and anuttara tantra) have mostly been all that is available.

However, interest in anuyoga has been revived in the West by both scholars and practitioners. As a living practice, it is taught, for example, in the Aro gTér and by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu.

Anuyoga forms a “bridge” between mainstream tantra and Dzogchen. I learned tantra mainly in the Aro style, and Aro teaches mainly Dzogchen. My explanations of tantra are strongly influenced by Dzogchen ideas—which is almost the same as to say that they are anuyoga in flavor.

Buddhist tantra is extraordinarily diverse. Its 1400-year history, spanning most of Asia, includes many radically different, contradictory approaches. There is probably nothing they all have in common. It is impossible to generalize about tantra. Anything you might say will turn out to have an exception somewhere, or somewhen.

In my overview, I will often write “tantra is X,” or “tantra says Y,” or “tantric practice does Z.” As generalizations, these will always be false.

What I mean is: “It seems to me that tantra can be X, say Y, or do Z—and I think that’s a good thing. That is the approach to tantra I favor.”

I will often also explain tantra by contrasting it with other forms of Buddhism. Then I will say “tantra is not X”; and what I mean is “tantra doesn’t have to be X, and X is not part of the approach I favor.”

To write the long versions of these out, each time, would become cumbersome. So, I’ll substitute the simpler versions. But, please bear in mind that these are shorthand.

This is risky. If you are not familiar with other presentations of Buddhist tantra, you may get a seriously skewed, narrow perspective. If you find what I have to say interesting, you certainly should read other authors to get a broader view.

If you do already know something about tantra, it may seem that I make absurd, sweeping statements, probably based on ignorance and arrogance. Perhaps you can give me the benefit of the doubt by mentally reattaching the qualifiers: “it seems possible to me that tantra could…”

Tradition, authenticity, and innovation

In a series titled “reinventing Buddhist tantra,” the approach is, naturally, non-traditional. This may upset some readers.

If you have studied traditional Tibetan tantra, you may find some statements not only overly broad, but actually wrong. That is, when I say “tantra is X,” you may believe that tantra is never X, and couldn’t be X. It may seem unrecognizable as Buddhist tantra to you. There, we may have an actual difference of opinion, which we might discuss.

However, I believe there’s little or nothing new in my content. By “reinvention,” I mean mainly “re-presentation”: changes in language and format, but not in substance. I am only pointing out implications of current cultural conditions for tantra, and vice versa. Still, stylistic innovations may be drastic enough that there appears to be a change in essentials. (Or, I may just be mistaken about what is essential and what is merely Tibetan or Indian traditional culture.)

It may be useful sometimes to mentally replace the word “tantra” with “Chapman’s confused ideas.” Then maybe you like my ideas, or you don’t, and we can discuss that. That would probably be more useful than arguing about whether or not something is “really” Buddhist tantra.

What does “really” mean? Different tantric systems are wildly different. How similar does something have to be to count as “really” tantra? There can be no rule about that.

Many Tibetans are obsessed with “authenticity.” Since different Tibetan tantric systems contradict each other, they engage in vicious arguments, trying to prove that their version is “authentic.”

“Authentic” is usually equated with “most ancient.” That makes “reinvention” an unpopular idea among Tibetan Buddhists.

The objective fact, though, is that no existing Tibetan Buddhist system is “authentic” in this sense. “Traditional” Tibetan Buddhism, as now taught, mostly dates only to the 1600s and 1700s. (Few Tibetan teachers realize this.) Tibetan Buddhism has, in fact, continually reinvented itself in new forms suitable for new times.

The approach to Buddhist tantra I advocate has more in common with the tantra of the year 959 than 1959. It draws as much on Indian Buddhism as Tibetan Buddhism. So, in a sense, it is far more traditional than what is usually taught now by Tibetans.

That is, however, not the reason for my approach. I have zero interest in justifying anything through tradition. Rather, in 2012 in America, I find some aspects of 959’s Indian tantra more useful than 1959’s Tibetan tantra. (I will write much more about the historical dimensions of tantra in later posts.)

Not arguing with fundamentalists

Unfortunately, some American students of Tibetan Buddhism enjoy a kind of Buddhist fundamentalism. They love to argue about arcane points of dogma by quoting scripture (or, more often, textbook commentaries on scripture). They denounce other Tibetan Buddhist sects as “inauthentic” and sometimes even “demonic.”

I’m unwilling to engage with that sort of discourse here.

I will make no attempt to prove that anything I say is “authentic.” I consider that word meaningless. Much of what I say is certainly “untraditional,” and perhaps even “innovative.” If tradition is important to you, you may wish to read something else instead.

Tibetan fundamentalists like to demand scriptural authority for anything they are unsure of. Although little, if any, of what I have to say is new, I have zero interest in proof through scripture. I’ll ignore such demands.

Sources are important to me, though. If you are genuinely interested to learn more about anything I’ve said, I will usually be able to suggest further reading.

For the same reason, I will often connect my presentation with the more traditional language. In some cases, the wording I use is so different that it may not be obvious what traditional teaching I’m drawing on. In those cases, I’ll relate it back to the more common approach. That is not to justify what I say as compatible with tradition, but to give a route into relevant literature.

In the 1970s and ’80s, several brilliant innovators presented Buddhist tantra in the West for the first time. They taught from personal experience, not ancient texts. They explained tantra in plain modern language, not academic jargon or bad translations from Medieval Tibetan. Their talks were warm, humorous, interactive, and frequently referred to popular culture and everyday Western life.

Among these were Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tarthang Tulku, Lama Yeshé, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, and Ngakpa Chögyam. To prepare to write about tantra, I recently re-read a dozen of their books. I was awed anew, although I had gone through each of them several times before.

I certainly have nothing new to say; nothing to add to those presentations. And yet, in upcoming posts, I will re-present Buddhist tantra again.

Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just say “tantra is cool, go read those books”?

Every presentation of tantra needs to be highly specific to its time and place. The themes of Sutrayana—mainstream Buddhism—are eternal. Emptiness is unchanging. Absolute truth is the same everywhere. But tantra is about form; about manifest appearances; about concrete experiences; about relative truth. Tantra needs to be continually reinterpreted so it makes sense in a continually changing world.

My judgement is that the world has changed hugely since the 1980s—in ways that may not be obvious. So, books from the first flowering of Buddhist tantra in the West may no longer communicate. Especially, they may not seem compelling to people who were born in the ’70s and later, who came of age in the ’90s and later.

On this page, I’ll describe three ways the world has changed, and why they imply that a new presentation of tantra is necessary:

• Consensus Buddhism, which began around 1990, is now taken for granted as defining Buddhism overall. Tantra needs to be explained relative to the Consensus.
• Almost nothing was known about Tibetan Buddhism in the West before the 1970s. Mediocre export Tibetanism is now widely misunderstood as defining Buddhist tantra.
• The 1980s were perhaps the last decade of the Modern era. Modernity has ended. That means the end of some fundamental assumptions that Western Buddhist audiences once took for granted.

Buddhist tantra after the Consensus

Americans in the 1970s mostly knew they knew little about Buddhism—especially not about tantric Buddhism. That gave them open minds. Nowadays, due to successful marketing, everyone thinks they know what Buddhism is. What everyone thinks Buddhism is, is the Consensus.

This means Buddhist tantra must now be described partly by contrast with the Consensus, which adopted some little bits of tantra, but deliberately excludes most of it.

It would be simpler and clearer to explain tantra straight-up, in its own terms, without reference to other forms of Buddhism. In a perfect world, that would be ideal. But it has never been possible, even from the beginning, because tantra is so different from the Buddhist mainstream.

My judgement is that it is not possible now, either. Current audiences constantly misunderstand tantra, due to assumptions they import from Consensus Buddhism. A teacher must constantly say “you might think X, but that is just the Consensus view; tantra says exactly the opposite.”

Books written in the ’70s and ’80s defined tantra in contrast with a different set of spiritual misconceptions—many of which are now uncommon. That makes the explanations less relevant to current readers, and easier to misunderstand.

It appears to me that the era of Consensus domination of American convert Buddhism is ending. After a 20-year gap, there is a renewed openness to alternatives. Innovative new Buddhisms are starting to appear; some draw on tantra. Probably more will in the future.

Even after it loses dominance, I expect Consensus Buddhism to remain highly influential. That means that other Buddhisms will continue to define themselves partly in contrast with it.

Buddhist tantra after sentimental Tibetanism

In the 1970s and ’80s, the great pioneers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West created an economic demand for teachings. In the 1990s and 2000s, less-brilliant Tibetans met that demand.

The tantra of the pioneers was uncompromising and innovative. Later teachers supplied a mixture of what Westerners wanted to hear and what Tibetan tradition made it easy to teach.

Mediocre “export quality” Tibetan Buddhism is a muddle of:

• Consensus “it is nice to be nice” platitudes
• Bad metaphysics
• Medieval superstitions
• Tibetan folk culture
• Long-winded reiteration of texts that lost their meanings centuries ago
• Empty rituals, often functioning mainly as fundraisers

It’s hard to know why anyone was willing to listen to this. Tibetans are genetically holy, apparently. Or at least exotically, orientally fascinating. Also, they are oppressed, and therefore romantic Noble Savages.

Anyway, this junk seems to be going out of fashion. It’s too familiar to be hip.

That means there is a new opening for Buddhist tantra that is not limited by Tibetan culture. However, at first, new presentations will have to constantly differentiate themselves from Tibetanism.

That imperative did not exist in the ’70s and ’80s. Books from that era may now be misunderstood as Tibetanism rather than Buddhism.

Buddhist tantra after the end of modernity

“Modernity” is a set of fundamental assumptions about culture, society, and the self. One key modernist idea is that we need a system that explains everything. Buddhism was understood in the 20th century as such a system.

The modernist assumptions were taken for granted by the West for centuries. By the late 1900s, however, it became clear that they were irrelevant or wrong.

The modern era is now, arguably, over. For people who have made the transition, this is a huge shift in the way we experience the world. (This includes many in Generations X and Y.) The shift is oddly invisible to those still living in modernity (including most born during the Baby Boom).

The first teachers of Buddhist tantra in the West had a Boomer audience. Naturally, their presentations of tantra were geared to a modern understanding. Much in those presentations seems meaningless, or wrong, to new audiences who do not share the modernist understanding.

The end of modernity is both a dire threat and a fabulous opportunity for Buddhism. I think it’s quite likely that Buddhism will go extinct in this century. The post-modern era is hostile to –isms, and Buddhism is an –ism.

The post-modern era has quite a different set of spiritual problems to the modern era. Although many of the modern problems have dissolved, new dilemmas are coming into focus.

I believe that Buddhism, particularly Buddhist tantra and Dzogchen, may offer keys to resolving those issues.

I feel a responsibility to do what I can to help make those keys available.

A selective overview of Buddhist tantra from a nobody

Unfortunately, as the previous page explained, I am incapable of producing a new introduction to Buddhist tantra for our time.

However, over several upcoming posts, I will provide an incomplete overview, to give some sense of what tantra is about.

Mainly, what I want to communicate is a way of relating with tantra—more than the thing itself. This approach is inspired by, and similar to, that of the pioneers that inspire me; but it is not identical. Perhaps it is one that is more accessible now.

This approach is quite possibly wrong. If so, it’s probably better that it be advocated by a nobody, like me.

The suggestions I have are pretty obvious. They’re natural outgrowths from traditional and ’70s-80s tantra, plus contemporary Western ideas. If I don’t propose them, someone with credentials might. If the approach had a credentialed backer, perhaps some students would be misled by authority. Perhaps, too, if an authority advocated this approach, critics would be too polite to dispute it.

If I’m wrong, someone will point that out, and then everyone will ignore me. No harm done.

Introductions to Buddhist tantra

Probably, qualified teachers are now preparing new introductions to Buddhist tantra, in terms appropriate for the 21st century. Until they publish, the most up-to-date systematic introductions date from before the 1990s Consensus ban on tantric teaching.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche did more than anyone else to bring Buddhist tantra to the West. (Arguably, he did more than anyone else to bring Buddhism to America, period.) His Journey without Goal: The Tantric Wisdom of the Buddha is an excellent general introduction. Actually, I would recommend almost any of his books, but that is probably the best starting place for his approach to tantra.

When anyone asks me for a single beginner’s book, I recommend Lama Yeshé’s Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire. It is exceptionally clear, simple, and straightforward. It is filled with an extraordinary warmth and light, like a May morning, illuminating everything but never harsh.

Lama Yeshé’s approach to tantra is rather different from the one I will advocate, however. He is more willing to compromise with Sutrayana (mainstream Buddhism); and he includes quite a bit of metaphysics, which I reject. Still, I find the book wonderful, and it requires the least background knowledge of any of the ones I suggest here.

Ngakpa Chögyam (Ngak’chang Rinpoche) is my Lama, with his wife Khandro Déchen. Wearing the Body of Visions is his overview of Buddhist tantra. Naturally, it has had the most influence on me, and my approach is more similar to the one in this book than in the other two. I find it wholly remarkable. First published in 1992, it also has a somewhat more contemporary feel than Chögyam Trungpa’s and Lama Yeshé’s books, which were based on talks given in the 1970s.

Whereas Chögyam Trungpa and Lama Yeshé died in the 1980s, Ngakpa Chögyam is very much alive, teaching, and writing new books. His approach and style have continued to evolve, in directions I will suggest Buddhism must take now. For instance, his recent books are less systematic, more explicitly interwoven with everyday life and popular culture, and less explicitly religious.

Co-written with Khandro Déchen, E-Mailing the Lamas from Afar (2009) is an edited collection of replies to email messages from their students. It is far from a systematic introduction, and contains little “esoteric information.” Instead, it is full of practical, often humorous, advice on how to apply Buddhist tantra in real life. It leaps from the most mundane practicalities to the most “advanced” Buddhist practices and teachings, and back, sometimes within a single sentence. Perhaps better than any other book, it shows how tantra can actually be lived and used by Westerners in the 21st century.

“Now you something say”

In the 1980s, Ngakpa Chögyam sometimes acted as an assistant teacher alongside his lama Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche. Rinpoche gave the first part of each talk, and then at an unpredictable moment turned it over to his student: “Now you something say.” (Verbs come at the end of sentences in Tibetan, and Rinpoche’s English grammar tended to reflect that.) Ngakpa Chögyam had a half hour, by Rinpoche’s watch, to cover the remainder of the topic. If he finished a few minutes early, Rinpoche made him go on talking until the clock said he was done. That tested Ngakpa Chögyam’s teaching in a pointed way.

This story is almost perfectly dissimilar to the current situation. I am not a teacher, or assistant teacher, and Ngakpa Chögyam hasn’t told me to write about “reinventing Buddhist tantra.”

Still, despite my lack of qualifications and authorization, now I will something say…

I have rashly promised to sketch possibilities for future tantric Buddhisms. This page explains why that’s probably a bad idea. The next one explains why I’m going ahead anyway.

The short version:

• I am the wrong person to do this. I’m completely unqualified, and I am just kibitzing. I have neither the ability nor the wish to make such possibilities real.

I have limited experience with tantra

To bring forth new forms, you ought to have mastered the existing ones. My teachers talk about this in terms of jazz improvisation. Improv is all about breaking the rules, but you can’t usefully break rules until you have mastered them. You have to be able to play jazz standards straight before improv becomes meaningful.

I have some experience with most of the major tantric practices, but am far from having mastered any of them. So, at an experiential level, I don’t know what I’m talking about. My understanding is more intellectual than practical.

It’s possible that I’m entirely out to lunch. You should not accept anything I say just because I said it.

Tantra is not even my main practice

I mostly practice the Dzogchen sem-dé ngöndro, not tantra. (This ngöndro is a system of formless meditation, similar to Zen shikantaza and some brands of vipassana.)

Why not write about Dzogchen, then, rather than tantra?

• Tantra is a much clearer alternative to Consensus Buddhism than Dzogchen is. Tantra is systematically opposite to Sutrayana, which Consensus Buddhism is mostly based on.
• Tantra is much easier to understand, and much easier to explain, than Dzogchen.
• Some understanding of tantra may be necessary as an introduction to Dzogchen, anyway.

I am a nobody

I have no Buddhist credentials. I am not a teacher, nor ordained.

I am just kibitzing

I don’t plan to turn my sketchy ideas into a workable system. I hope qualified teachers will develop approaches similar to what I suggest, but they won’t need my amateur advice.

Perhaps I can be useful in creating popular enthusiasm for such possibilities, however.

I am happy with the system I practice

I am a student in the Aro Ter lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. It works for me.

Naturally, the suggestions I will make are heavily influenced by my experience with Aro. In fact, if there’s value in what I say, Aro is where it came from. If you want to learn more, that’s the first place I’d recommend looking.

Nevertheless, my suggestions may be quite different from Aro in style. The Aro system is, in its own words, “hardcore” and “eccentric.” It may not have broad appeal, or be widely accessible.

I would like to see Buddhist tantra available to millions of people. That would require a more “user friendly” presentation. Consensus Buddhism has done a fine job with user friendliness, which suggests it is possible.

There is a risk of watering-down in developing a system with mass appeal. Some compromises are almost certain, actually. My feeling is that watered-down tantra is better than none at all—for some people. And experience with watered-down systems may lead some people on to the hard stuff.

I am not a modernist

What I will suggest might mostly be described as “modernized Buddhist tantra.” Theravada and Zen were both modernized a century ago (as I have written), and Consensus Buddhism is based on those modernized forms. Due to historical accidents, tantra only began to be modernized in the 1970s and ’80s, and modernization stalled during the following two decades.

I think modernized tantra would be useful to many people, for whom a modernist world-view is non-negotiable. So, I hope that line of development restarts.

However, I am not a modernist. Some of what I have to say will offend some modernists. They insist that Buddhism must be consistent with modern ideas about rationality and ethics. I think it would be possible, and useful, to develop a tantric Buddhism that conforms to their requirements. It would be “scientific” and politically correct. As I will explain, I don’t find that particularly attractive. I don’t consider modernist principles to be Ultimate Truth.

I believe that the modern era ended in the late 20th. century. Modernism is not the best way forward, for the long run.

After finishing this series on “reinventing tantra”—and after returning to, and finishing, my historical analysis of the Consensus—I will sketch an entirely different set of possible futures. I will ask: what use can Buddh-ism have in the post-systems world, in which -isms are all inherently obsolete? In this era, culture, society, and self are shattered into kaleidoscopic fragments. What role can the jagged shards of Buddh-ism play when no one defines themselves as an -ist?