As a professor of Asian studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies
(CIIS) in San Francisco, Steven Goodman is known for his verbal brilliance and
great sense of humor. Aside from his regular classes, he conducts workshops
on trauma, the “shadow,” and the trickster and creativity in relation
to Tibetan Buddhism.
Steven Goodman: In my workshop at CIIS, “Tibetan Buddhist Practices and
the Trick-ster,” I introduce the notion of “crazy wisdom,”
a phrase that got on the map thanks largely to Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
In Tibetan the words are yeshe cholwa, with yeshe meaning “wisdom that’s
always been there,” and cholwa meaning “wild or uncontainable.”
Trungpa Rinpoche said you might as well just say “wisdom crazy.”
It refers to someone who seems to be intoxicated with an un-bounded, luminous,
loving energy. What we call crazy is only crazy from the viewpoint of ego, custom,
habit. The craziness is actually higher frequency enjoyment. Besides, the great
spiritual adepts, the mahasiddhas, don’t decide to be crazy. Crazy wisdom
is natural, effortless, not driven by the hope and fear machine of the ego.
Inquiring Mind: When you teach about crazy wisdom, are you essentially drawing
on the tantrika or the Vajrayana school of Buddhism?
SG: I start at the core of the Mahayana tradition, which is wisdom and compassion.
Wisdom is the living energy that comes from the insight that there are no fixed
points in reality, an insight that is sometimes called emptiness. We go searching
for fixed reference points like a you and a me, and we don’t find anything,
so it’s said that the not finding is the great finding. It’s liberating;
it’s openness. And with the loss of any fixed reference point, including
the loss of self, one can more easily be present with other living beings, hence
empathy or compassion. So compassion is the living proof that one is in the
process of embodying the wisdom insights.
Those twin energies of wisdom and compassion are the operating system or the
lubricant that makes possible all of Vajrayana, which can be seen as dancing
with the apparent display that arises in one’s mind. It proclaims that
everything can be worked with, or even played with. So it’s sometimes
called the upayayana, the vehicle of many methods, each applied according to
an individual’s temperament—calm, domesticated, wild, feral, you
name it.
What also makes this Vajrayana dance possible is the Mahayana insight of a basic
indwelling clarity and goodness, Buddhanature. Inside of us are these already
enlightened qualities that are temporarily covered over, and Vajrayana gives
us many ways to unleash, rediscover and live in the light of that which has
always been there.
IM: Where do all the wild-looking deities enter into the picture?
SG: In fact, all of the wild depictions that you find in Vajrayana—of
devas and devis and extraordinary beings doing extraordinary things—are
all tropes, sort of archetypal outtakes that represent how things can be when
you’re living beyond yes and no, when you’re no longer hiding behind
the barricade of hope and fear. From that space you can use con-tradiction,
trick of the eye, double entendre, parody, ridicule and jokes all as ways of
alchemically transforming the lingering resistance to waking up into pristine
play.
IM: So all those stories we hear about the yogis flying through the air and
appearing in two places at once are just that, stories, used to crack one’s
ordinary frame of reality?
SG: Yes, on one level. But there’s this phrase in Tibetan, gangla gangdul,
which means “to each according to their capacity.” So a teacher
will teach dance steps according to the capacities of the disciple. For many,
their whole life might be a practice of lovingkindness, or reflecting on the
impermanence of all conditioned things. A whole lifetime devoted to the simplest
of insights.
But if someone is sufficiently awake and not afraid, he or she may engage in
a bit more of a dance. One of the things that Vajrayana emphasizes, not unlike
Western therapy, is the need to provide a really safe container. This is not
just a walk on the wild side. And therefore, even though the ego might say,
“Crazy wisdom, great! Trickster, great!” we are actually rather
delicate and sensitive beings, so it’s always good to establish a boundary,
a ritual sacred space, invoking transmission and the wisdom of the elders, and
then within that space, which works largely at an unconscious level, engage
in these orchestral dance movements.
IM: Do the deity figures help to establish the ritual space by depicting all
of our human experience as universal or archetypal?
SG: Exactly. The deities are like a standing wave: visual and aural representations
of our own primal energies. The presence of these deity energies allows for
a radical revisioning of how playful this game of life can be. For instance,
the deity Tara, “She Who Saves,” functions as a support for our
very human work of overcoming resistance (“saving us”), showing
us how to work with obstacles of every sort—attack by wild animals, health
issues, tax and legal problems, and so forth.
IM: Give us one of your favorite stories of a tantric master pulling the rug
out from under a seeker.
SG: The Buddha himself was a great trickster and a master of methods, and always
worked with people according to their capabilities. For instance, there’s
the famous story of Angulimala, a killer who was making a rosary (mala) out
of his victims fingers (anguli). Having killed 999 victims, he thought, “Oh,
only one last finger. Then I will get power, fame, happiness.” As he was
about to slay his own mother, he became distracted by the presence of the Buddha,
who tricked him by walking very slowly and yet eluding Angulimala’s hot
pursuit. Intrigued, Angulimala wondered, “Who is this being?” Already
his consciousness was changing, and eventually he became a disciple of the Buddha.
The Buddha worked with Angulimala by using his desire for power. The Buddha
didn’t say, “Power is not the way.” He said, in essence, “You
want to be powerful? I’ll show you how to be powerful. Know your own mind.”
Another great trickster story concerns Padmasambhava, sometimes called the “second
Buddha,” who was invited to visit Tibet from India in the eighth century.
When he arrived, the king who invited him, Tson Deutsen, waited for this mere
religious man to bow down before him, and there was a kind of king-versus-yogi
standoff. The king was wearing royal silk garb, and finally Padmasambhava sent
a shot of energy toward the king that shredded his garment, or, you might say,
shredded his royal defenses. In that moment the king recognized the real locus
of power in the room and took a fragment of his shredded white silken garment,
bowed down, and offered it to Padmasambhava. That’s said to be the origin
of the Tibetan custom of offering a white silk scarf whenever you meet another
being. You are acknowledging their Buddhanature, their inherent greatness.
IM: You’ve led several trips to Bhutan, a nation that pays homage to a
rascal figure, Drugpa Kunley, who is considered to have been enlightened. Yet
he drank and fornicated a lot and seems to have paid no attention at all to
the moral precepts. Explain how Kunley fits into Bhutanese Buddhism.
SG: There are many stories, both of Drukpa Kunley and Akhu Tonpa, or Uncle Tonpa,
who are archetypal trickster figures. They teach liberation, usually by challenging
holiness as a form of spiritual pride. If people are holding on too tightly
to chastity, then they need a little prodding, they need some tickling, some
humor. Remember, if a teaching is not threatening to the ego, the armored archetype
within us, then it’s not doing its job. So if people are fixated on chastity,
a display of licentiousness will be useful. If someone thinks licentiousness
is the path, then emphasize chastity. Sobriety, drunkenness. Logical thought,
crazy thought.
The mixture of the sacred and profane is common in Himalayan Buddhism. At festival
time in Bhutan, people perform these sacred dances of enlightenment, and shadowing
these very wonderful dances are trickster figures called atsaras. They’re
slightly dangerous, untrustworthy jokers, and their role is to ape and mock
the sacred dances at the same time the dances are going on. Often they will
go into the audience and do rude things, such as dance around with a wooden
phallus with a ceremonial scarf draped over it. The lesson is that it’s
healthy to invite all of us into the dance, and every part of us as well. And
it’s very healthy to laugh. The holy comes with a sense of humor.
IM: Can you give us a story of a modern crazy wisdom master at work?
SG: I was recently at a teaching in San Rafael with Lama Tharchin Rinpoche,
and after everyone was settled he said, “You know that we all have Buddhanature.
And that means that at some point we’ll all become fully awakened.”
There was a big pause, and then he said, “Are you ready? Maybe in the
middle of the talk tonight, you will become fully enlightened. Are you ready?
It could be very inconvenient. What about all of the plans that you’ve
made about where you’ll go after the teaching? You’re depending
on not waking up, aren’t you? Maybe you shouldn’t have made so many
plans.”
© 2005 Inquiring Mind