Vividness

The Electricity of Liberated Perception

Author: David Chapman

Recommended by my under 9s mini-rugby rival Max Langenkamp during a fb messenger call that prompted me to go for a walk in a park.

An Invitation to a Brighter, Freer Way of Seeing, Feeling, and Acting

This is what Vajrayana offers: a new world is opened up as we relax the compulsion to fit objects, experiences, people, and ourselves into fixed categories.

Vajrayana is a form of Buddhism that is largely inaccessible despite its great potential, primarily due to its presentation not being updated for modern conditions. It is also said to be the most advanced and difficult of all Buddhist approaches.

Before diving deeper, a key concept of Buddhism should be introduced - “yanas”. Lacking an equivalent in Biblical religions, yanas are different approaches within a religion, distinct methods that are applicable depending on where you are and where you want to go. Yanas are defined in terms of a base, a path, and a result: the starting point, the method of movement, and the goal.

Truth and Methods in Buddhism

The attractive proposition of many Western religions is that they contain an eternal truth (”The Truth”). Believing in the religion and its Truth is the primary form of practice, and as long as you believe, God will save you.

Buddhism is non-theistic, there is no-one to save you. You must save yourself.

Buddhism is also not big on Truth. In fact, it only posits one Truth - the non-duality between form and emptiness.

Aside from this one Truth, any other Buddhist statement is useful only if it helps on the path. These statements are methods, pragmatic approximations of reality that are useful to act on in particular circumstances.

Buddhism is pragmatic; it is a religion of methods, not of Truth. Methods are ways of approaching enlightenment.

Buddhism encompasses a multitude of methods. All of which are valuable in particular situation, none of which are right or wrong, which one works better or worse depending on where you are and what you are trying to accomplish. Often it is best to use a combination of methods.

Methods may differ, and it is often only possible to apply one at a time, because they each have contradictory requirements. They may be incompatible, but they do not conflict - neither is right or wrong. What is important is to know when to apply each method.

Methods may have contradictory requirements, but they cannot contradict. Methods are not to be understood as potential Truths, because then their seeming contradictions become a problem.

Absolute and Relative Truth

There is a tendency is to equate absolute truth with the abstract and incomprehensible that is accessible only to the enlightened (eg. Buddhas), and relative truth with the common sense consensus view of the world. This leaves our everyday view of the world intact and allows us to proceed with our daily lives as usual.

Dzogchen (a Buddhist approach, Tibetan for “utter completeness”) explains that there is not one relative truth that is the common-sense consensus view of the world, but many, which superficially conflict. Adopting this explanation no longer leaves our worldview completely intact, and we must learn to see the world in many different ways. That disrupts our ordinary way of operating.

Principles and Functions

Functions can be understood in terms of base, path, and result.

• Base - the kind of situation in which a practice will be useful

• Path - the practice itself, what we do in the situation

• Result - the outcome of the path

Only when we want the particular result of a function does it make sense to apply a practice.

Each practice, within its function, is derived from a broad principle. Principles are simple, core themes, or the fundamental logic of Buddhism. They explain how and why Buddhism works.

Various principles of Buddhism are frequently incompatible. Generally, one can combine practices that share a principle. Simultaneously applying practices derived from different principles are liable to unsatisfactory results, because they are pointing in fundamentally different directions

For example, the fundamental principle of Sutra is renunciation, of which one may practice abstaining from sensual enjoyments. However, enjoyment is a fundamental principle of Tantra, and one may practice reveling in the delight of consumption.

One does not have to swear exclusive allegiance to a particular principles, yanas, or practices. They are all valid and valuable and one may frequently switch between them, choosing which to apply when, but you may only use one at any given moment.

The Futile Quest for Certainty

The mundane world is chaotic, risky, arbitrary, confusing. The good can suffer and the bad can prosper. Life is unfair, it doesn’t make sense.

We want assurance that this is an illusion. That the real world that extends beyond the mundane world (afterlife, Nirvana, etc.) is orderly and consistently meaningful. We want answers - sometimes desperately.

There are hundreds of religions and ideologies that claim to have answers. But, they do not agree.

People often seek certainty within religion. This adds another layer of confusion - the religious domain, that which is supposed to provide answers, seems to also be chaotic and uncertain. Unless, we can find the one true path that really has the answers.

Serious spiritual practice requires commitment to a single tradition, yet the question of how to pick the right one seems difficult (or impossible). If religion claims to hold the Truth, it may very well be the most important thing in life.

Buddhism insists that the answers we’re looking for cannot be found, it is “The Way of Disappointment”

Emptiness is at the heart of Buddhism, repeatedly crushing our hope that we will find a satisfactory end to our search for answers. If we take this seriously, it follows that we cannot use Buddhism to confirm ourselves. There is no way to be absolutely certain of anything other than the non-duality of form and emptiness.

The quandary of uncertainty is at the heart of Dzogchen. It teaches us how to live joyfully and effectively in a world that is both horrifying and perfect, chaotic and crystalline, alienating and supremely meaningful.

Approaching Religion

There are several different ways of relating to religious or spiritual systems.

• Path

• Social group

• Faith

• Worldview

• Toolbox

• Tradition

Path

The path approach, though uncommon for other systems, seems to work best for Buddhism.

The path approach to religion has many parallels to a garden path you may walk on.

• It is something you can follow

• You can see where you’re going, and where it will take you

• At junctions, you have to choose where to go

• If you don’t like the direction of the path, you can go back and try a different route, or leave the path entirely

• Paths may or may not have destinations; sometimes, you walk on a path just to enjoy the scenery.

Paths often have a signpost at the start saying where it will take you. Sometimes the sign is wrong - rare in the real world, but much more likely in the spiritual realm. However, it is impossible to be certain without following them all the way to the end. And until you get to the end, you can’t really know what it is like.

Even if a path has no destination, or a mislabelled one, it still allows movement. If you are unable to make any more steps, or if steps don’t take you anywhere, there is no longer a path.

Paths do not appear spontaneously; they are forged by others who have gone before. Some may have documented the route or offer guidance along the way.

Social Group

When people deliberately look for a religious organization, it often seems their real goal is to find a comfortable social group, overlapping in values, social class, interests, and lifestyle. This can serve purposes such as emotional support, intellectual entertainment, and affirmation of life choices.

This is a valid reason to join religions, but not a Buddhist one. Although it is probably the most common reason, it is also a waste of time and emotional energy, and diverts every individual within the group from its proper purpose.

For Buddhism to be effective, it needs to undercut your basic assumptions about life. An excessively comfortable group, constantly validates your reference points, and serves as an obstacle.

A sangha (Buddhist community) should be comprised of people whose experiences and understanding of life is different from yours, being in a sangha can be irritating and tiresome.

Faith

For some religions, the important part is that you believe in them full heartedly. This condition is sufficient for membership. This is true in many Christian sects.

To approach Buddhism this way is not wrong, but it misses the key aspect of Buddhism that is important to Buddhists - applying methods, not believing truths.

Worldview

A worldview (or philosophy) is a system for understanding meaning - life, the universe, and the part one plays in it. This is not necessarily a faith; it can be a method for searching, as opposed to a set of claims to subscribe to. Some religions do also provide a worldview, such as those that are spiritual but not religious.

A worldview in isolation is not a path, as it does not show you where to place your foot next. It may give you an overall sense of direction, but it does not provide the pragmatism of a path.

Toolbox

The near opposite of faith. Faith is belief without method; Toolbox is method without belief. It provides you various methods that take you in different directions.

This is the common modern approach to spirituality - you take methods from different systems and apply them as you see fit. The toolbox approach provides pragmatism, but it does not give you an overall sense of direction.

A toolbox is smaller than you, it becomes a part of you. Religion is bigger than you, you become a port of a religion. A toolbox is much smaller than a religion.

Tradition

Most religion is inherited from family or a close community. The legacy may be a reason to stick with a religion, or provide enough inertia to see no reason to switch. This is usual for Buddhists in Asia, and less common in the West.

Buddhism provides a toolbox for pragmatism, a worldview for direction, social structures for guidance, and a tradition that instills confidence. Together, these form a path.

Redefining “Right”

Within most major religions there are hundreds of lineages or sects to choose among.

• Western religion - framed around Truth, the right sect is the one where one believes true answers lie.

• Buddhism - the right sect is a matter of individual fit rather than ultimate correctness. It provides pragmatic methods in place of Truth.

This means finding a Buddhist sect involves considering what you need as a unique individual, in order to move in the direction you want to go, to reach the place your goal lies. Questions can include:

• What do I find inspiring?

• What motivates me?

• Where am I, spiritually?

• What am I currently capable of?

• What are my strengths and weaknesses?

• What directions can I go from here?

• Which directions do I want to go?

• What tools are available to take me from where I am to where I want to go?

• What do I like?

On the Path

A garden path was used to metaphorically introduce Buddhist paths, in reality, a more apt comparison might be a remote hiking trail over rough terrain in the distant mountains. It may be difficult, uncertain, and at times dangerous. Luckily, someone has been on the path before, and teachers and communities are available.

Walking on the Shoulders of Giants

Followings a path allows you to leverage the insights and hard work of many people, it gets you somewhere faster and more predictably.

A spiritual path has way-points gives you the direction that previous path-makers have worked out. Part of the definition of a path as a religious system is the existence of defined stages, and a way of knowing if you have accomplished each stage.

A path always takes you somewhere, in a direction that someone thought was useful, giving at least some sort of guarantee. As long as there is a path ahead of you, further progress is possible. This should be caveated by reminding you a path may not take you where you want to go - remember to constantly check whether or not it is still heading in the direction you want to go. If not, consider an alternate route or continuing off-path.

Choosing a Path

There are three crucial questions to ask when picking a path:

• Does the path take you somewhere you want to go?

• Can it actually get you there?

• Do you have the strength and skills to follow it?

Selecting a path is also a matter of taste

• Do you want to get close to God? Or as far away as possible?

• Do you want to be holy and serene? Or sweaty and ecstatic?

Off the Path

The claim “I am following my own path” is absurd as it implies a unique, new path, which by definition you cannot follow. If you want to go further, you must extend the path yourself.

There are three things this can mean:

• Wandering off into the wilderness, off of any path

• Blazing a trail, building a new path for others

• Aimlessly jumping from one path to another, taking a few steps on each one, doing what seems attractive at the moment

The third is what most people mean, and it’s not actually going off a path. It just doesn’t take you far enough along any single path to be useful, at the same time also not taking you into new territory. You are unlikely to get far from your starting point - years later you may be dealing with the same emotional problems that plagued you at the start.

Of course, it can be helpful to investigate several paths, but at some point you need to go far enough down a single path to bring real change, to progress from your starting point.

Mixed Feelings

Everyone, when approaching a spiritual tradition, will feel a mixture of attraction and repulsion.

Every religious system seems to have delightful aspects and irritating ones. It is important to accept this ambiguity, however uncomfortable. Any quick judgement you have will likely be wrong, and it can take months or years of investigation to find a good fit. It is important to embrace both attraction and repulsion to find the right fit in the long run.

In Buddhism, this is a deeper point: ambiguity is an essential aspect of experience. Learning to accept ambiguity is a key Buddhist practice.

Approach Gradually

Every religious group has a series of stages that allow increasing involvement as your interest and understanding deepens. It is important to move through the stages as you become ready to. Mixed feelings will always be present, but each stage requires a greater level of confidence and lower level of repulsion.

It may be tempting to ignore our feelings of repulsion for several reasons

• We like the feeling of attraction and dislike the feeling of repulsion. We try to get rid of the bad feeling by pretending it isn’t there.

• We want to be accepted by the religious community, expressing our repulsion will make us less accepted

• We want to believe we’ve succeeded in finding the right fit, to avoid additional time consuming hard work to keep searching.

It is important to discuss these mixed feelings as they are inevitable and not inherently problematic. However, one must learn to start the conversation in an open and respectful way:

• “I like some things about your system, but practice X is obviously wrong.”

• “I like some things about your system, but I am bothered about X, because it conflicts with Y. Am I missing something?”

The act of discuss the nature of ambiguous feelings itself is a central theme in Buddhism, and can be a springboard for profound teachings.

Opinions and Curiosity

Not knowing is uncomfortable because it represents a void where truth should be. We often try to fill this void by jumping to conclusions. Once we form an opinion, we no longer need to wonder.

Many people feel entitled (or even obligated) to take sides and express strong opinions about things they are ignorant of. The fear of not knowing leads to cynicism and blind faith. They use rigidity as a defense against uncertainty, which helps them avoid ambiguous situations.

Forming a meaningful and well-informed opinion can require a lot of effort, and it is not always necessary unless a decision needs to be made based on it. What truly matters is curiosity, or the absence of it.

Non-dual vision (rigpa) represents the essence of ambiguity and is the goal of the Buddhist path. To cultivate this vision, we gradually let go of fixed ideas about ourselves, others, and the connections between.

Curiosity involves allowing ourselves to be open to ambiguity and embracing the mixture of form and emptiness: knowing and not knowing. It means actively seeking uncertainty and embracing things as they are, dancing with them. By softening our boundaries, we can experience wonderment.

Yanas

Buddhism is enormously complex and diverse. Yanas are vehicles within Buddhism designed to guide you spiritually from one place to another, helping you determine which aspects are important to you.

Different vehicles are useful depending on your current location and desired destination. If a Yana does not take you where you want to go, you can disregard it. If you are not in a position to board a Yana, you can either ignore it or find a way to get there.

The choice of Yana depends on your current location and desired destination. A submarine is a suitable means of transportation from the shore to the bottom of the ocean, but it is not ideal for traveling from Denver to Chicago. An airplane would be a better option for that. While it might be possible to use an airplane to reach the bottom of the ocean, it is not recommended.

In this sense, Yanas are incompatible. They’re all valid, but you can only utilize one at a time. Each Yana stems from a set of distinct principles.

When consuming Buddhist knowledge, it is crucial to identify which Yana serves as the framework for the discussion. A statement that aligns with the principles of one Yana may appear false or nonsensical when interpreted using the principles of another Yana. This can even result in "Yana shock".

To comprehend Vajrayana (Tantra and Dzogchen), one must first grasp the relationship between truth and methods in Buddhism. From a Buddhist perspective, contradictory statements from different Yanas are not problematic as they are considered methods rather than absolute Truths.

Yanas are not Buddhist sects

Sects can be compared to automotive brands, while yanas can be compared to vehicle categories.

The usefulness of different vehicles depends on what you want to do. Each vehicle category has its own sub-categories, and vehicles can be classified in various ways. Different categorizations serve different purposes.

These categorizations and classifications are only useful in context, as ways of pointing out similarities and differences. They are not absolute truths and rarely lead to controversies.

Buddhist sects can be likened to name brands with institutional ownership. Most sects offer multiple yanas, but the number can vary, sometimes even consisting of just one.

Yana Shock is like a culture shock

the fear, disorientation, and anger that comes from being thrown suddenly into an alien value system. It can happen when Buddhists familiar with one yana first encounter another.

Some differences are slight and easy to adjust to. Others are profound and non-arbitrary, expressing deep differences in cultural values that seem severely wrong.

The different yanas contradict each other profoundly, as they are built on different fundamental principles, and have different concepts of truth (especially Truth).

• For Mahayana, emptiness is the ultimate truth and ultimate goal

• For Vajrayana, emptiness is the starting point

Sutrayana vs Tantrayana

Sutrayana defines itself as everything that is not Tantrayana (so Hinayana plus Mahayana). The scriptures of Sutrayana are called Sutras. The scriptures of Tantrayana are called Tantas.

Sutrayana asserts that life is suffering, so you should escape it through Nirvana - but that is effectively impossible.

• Sutrayana starts with a deep revulsion for samsara. It is about rejecting and transcending the world. Without this revulsion, you can’t even start this path. If you think the world can be fixed, you do not have revulsion for samara.

• The Sutric path entails self-denial.

• Sutrayana’s absolute domains - Nirvana or emptiness as alternate planes or dimensions of existence - are not credible. The modern world has already largely rejected Christian Heaven, and a Buddhist equivalent is not too different from a metaphysical standpoint.

• The result is liberation from suffering. You abandon all desire and anything that provokes desire. This is not an attractive proposition unless you are desperately unhappy.

Tantrayana posits that life, marked by both splendid and dreadful moments, should be enjoyed and celebrated; enlightenment in this world is realistically feasible.

• Vajrayana is largely synonymous with Tantrayana

• Tantrayana begins with the recognition of emptiness, which is considered realistically obtainable by ordinary individuals. It offers methods for developing a sufficient recognition of emptiness.

• The Tantric path entails transformation and liberation.

• Tantra emphasizes the actual, physical and social, experienced world. This is the world that secular humanism affirms.

• The result is liberation into mastery, power, play, and nobility. It promises freedom from pointless constrictions.

In actuality, Sutrayana is a somewhat theoretical construct. Actual non-Tantric Buddhisms are diverse, and do not universally adopt all the features of Sutra. Nevertheless, Sutra acts as a useful starting point in understanding how other Buddhisms differ from Tantra.

Non-Tantric Buddhism retain vestiges of Sutra's anti-world, anti-body, anti-self, anti-pleasure, anti-mention, and anti-life orientation.

Tantra is more comparable with modern sensibilities and the secular humanism worldview, affirming the value of everyday life (which Sutra denies). In spite of this, it is still widely considered medieval, and has failed to become a major thread in contemporary Western Buddhism.

The Tantric Base: Spacious Passion

The Power of Attitude

Attitudes transcends the boundaries of internal and external, subjective and objective. It encompasses emotional and mental states, as well as physical bodily postures. You might suggest it is a tendency towards a particular action or response - a disposition to act.

Tantra is about the world and its inhabitants, acting on the basis of their “attitudes toward”, with accurate action requiring a blurring of the subjective/objective boundary.

Maintaining an attitude implies a reliable disposition to act in perceptive, compassionate, and effective ways in response to problems and opportunities. It simplifies life while remaining intricately technical, yet only serve as guidelines for nurturing a helpful, cheerful, and creative attitude.

Many Religions Begin with Existential Problems

The foundational premise of religion often centers on the existence of a fundamental problem. Religion tries to convince you that:

• Everyone’s got a problem, and it’s really bad

• This problem is pervasive, it affects everything in the whole universe, and nothing can escape it

• There is no practical way of solving it (EXCEPT through our religion)

Some examples of these problems

• Eternal suffering after death (Christianity)

• All of existence is pervaded by impermanence, suffering, and non-self (mainstream Buddhism)

• Inherent meaningless of life, rendering action impossible (existentialism/nihilism)

According to Tantra, there are no such problems.

Nothing Is Fundamentally Wrong with the World

Tantra challenges mainstream wisdom, the tantric claim about the nature of reality is that there is nothing wrong with it.

It is also obviously wrong - there are problems, and not everything is ok. To make sense of this contradiction, we distinguish between practical and “fundamental” problems.

Consider one of the mainstream Buddhist “Three Marks of Existence” mentioned earlier - suffering:

• If the universe is about us, and we don’t like suffering, the world would be wrong.

• If there was a God who allowed suffering, the world would be wrong.

• If the world was supposed to be some way that it is not, the world would be wrong.

However, there is no God, the world was not designed, it was not supposed to be any way, there is no eternal Truth to compare it against. Therefore, there can be no fundamental problem with it.

In Tantra, the “Three Marks of Existence” are reframed as 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

Spaciousness entails openness to everything in the world, free from the entanglements of moral judgements. It involves allowing everything in the world to be as it is, and accepting all outcomes as they are. Spaciousness is the tolerance of chaos, unpredictability, discontinuity, and nebulosity.

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

Problems are Not a Problem

So, there are no spiritual problems, but there are real problems.

Spaciousness and passion each lead you to regard all situations as workable. Nothing is cosmically awful; practical problems do not probe the world is wrong. Instead, problems are a sub-category of opportunity: a chance to act to make things better than they would be otherwise.

Workable doesn’t necessarily guarantee a solution. Nothing is wrong doesn’t imply everything can be fixed or made perfect. Catastrophe is always possible; death is always certain.

But, spaciousness and passion together cultivate a deep care towards the world and desire to urgently fix problems as best as you can - and be unruffled when you fail.

This is a realistic attitude that produces a fearlessness - not a stubborn or idiotic one though; it is the fearlessness of knowing that the world is neither good nor bad; that it is not actively working against you; that things can appear to happen randomly; that you will do your best; and so outcomes have no spiritual meaning.

The world is full of problems and opportunities, and it is rich with resources for improvisation, creativity, caring, and connection.

The Joy of Enjoy the Sacred World

According to mainstream buddhism, it is critical to avoid indulging in sense pleasures. They attach you to the world, and the world is wrong. Mundane reality is utterly impure and defiled, the Sacred is found in another realm.

According to Tantra, the world is fantastic, and we should enjoy them as thoroughly and often as possible, as long as it has no negative practical consequences. There is no objective good or bad, judgements are based on personal likes and dislikes - Tantra trains you to suspend such judgement. Everything in the world is sacred, and enjoyment should be inseparable from reverence.

• Mundane reality is a Pure Land

• Samsara is Nirvana

• Reality is uncreated; there is no God

The “Self” Poses No Spiritual Obstacle

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with you.

This is the tantric claim about the self. Ego is not evil, it is not a spiritual problem.

You do not need to fix, improve, transform, transcend yourself. Tantra is about living here and now, you are how you are now, and waiting to get fixed before living is not helpful. There is no higher True Self, cosmic All-Self, or Buddha Within that needs to be awakened.

Emotions, including desire, anger, sloth, worry, doubt, ignorance (Buddhist Kleshas, akin to the seven deadly sins) are not wrong. They can be unpleasant, but also fun. Neither of these are evil.

This doesn’t mean there are no wrong actions, it means that experiencing emotions does not force you to act wrongly. Tantra offers a toolkit of methods to sever the habitual connections between emotions and actions.

The Insignificance of Your Feelings

We often cling to emotions to the extent of defining ourselves through them. However, everyone has the same set of emotions (in different proportions). What you feel in which situations is spiritually meaningless, as in you cannot find any spiritual answers through them.

Personal emotional patterns do not validate one’s existence or establish a unique narrative - you are not special.

This realization grants emotional freedom, this means what has happened need not dictate how you feel; at the same time, it does not afford the excuse of “I wanted to do the right thing, but my emotions got in the way”.

You are Not Perfect

“There is nothing fundamentally wrong with you” does not mean you are perfect.

It means you have no cosmic defects, but are still prone to practical faults, such as bad habits. However, the thing that drives these practical faults also correspond to a specific form of wisdom. Different methods of tantra allow you to flip each Klesha into a corresponding wisdom.

Accepting Your Imperfections as You Are

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.

The Good News and The Bad News

The good news is that there are no spiritual problems.

The bad news is there are no spiritual solutions.

Spirituality claims the mundane world is garbage and should be abandoned, spirituality claims there is a Heaven, Nirvana, or transcendent reality of some sort that is all good.

Tantra is non-spiritual, it is about the everyday, concrete world, just as it appears. It is not interested in escapist fantasies. 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.

The Tantric Path: Unclogging Energy

Tantra is not about techniques - although traditional and modern practitioners may describe it as a set of esoteric practices (or as advanced mental technology).

This isn’t exactly wrong, but it might not capture the essence of Tantra

• Conceiving Tantra as techniques can be a roadblock to necessary innovations

• This view also risks aggressive self-aggrandizement, where the more techniques you master, the better you think you are

Tantra is about your relationship with everything in your life. One’s attitude is what matters in Tantra, not simply performing tantric practice. This is more or less also Dzogchen’s take on Tantra, citing it as artificial and conceptually complicated - the best practice is simply to “remain in state”.

When tantric practices take precedence, they become “power tools for transformation” in fulfilling tantra’s promise of power. This leads to an arrogance that gives onlookers the impression that Vajrayana is for dickheads. Remember, the attitude is the union of spacious freedom with passionate connections. These tend to melt away arrogance, aggression, and self-aggrandizement.

Another take on tantric power is as a mental upgrade. If you can master difficult mental techniques, you can eliminate your defects and construct a better you! This may fit within the Sutrayana framework, which is largely about the self (or lack thereof), but becomes misleading when applied to Tantra, as it is not about the self, but relationships, connections, and interactions.

Unleashing Free-Flowing Energy - as in an every day metabolic kind of energy, not a spiritual one.

Energy is potential. In this context, it is the immediate potential for change. It powers passion, action, and connection. The union of passion and spaciousness releases energy, and energy unbound intensifies passion and widens spaciousness. Tantra amplifies all three, with each reinforcing the others.

This intensification can be uncomfortable. You may feel that your emotions are overwhelming, and that the world is excessively complex and confusing. More of both might be the last thing you want.

The choice then lies between Tantra and Sutra:

• Tantra involves facing yourself squarely and experiencing your feelings fully, immersing yourself in a world with all its vivid fascinations, unpredictable agonies and ecstasies.

• Sutra involves suppressing your unruly passions, energy, and spaciousness, seeking tranquility by retreating into a safe space where your impulses are inhibited.

Luckily, this is not a one time choice. It is possible to take both approaches at different times to cope with more or less intense circumstances, but you cannot practice point both at the same time - they point in opposite directions.

Starting Tantra involves practicing in a sandbox, a safe environment where you can intensify your spacious passion and unclog your energy. The aim is to experience emotions unreservedly, as a brilliant, vibrant biological energy with no inherent implications. Feel them without suppression, analysis, judgement, fixation, or need to inflict them on others.

While safe practice is not the centerpiece of Tantra, they can be understood like scales in music - they lay the foundation for a masterful performance that is everyday life. It produces unconditional confidence that does not guarantee good outcomes, but enables you to face difficulties without recoiling.

The Psychology of Optimal Experience

In Western psychology, "flow" refers to a mental state that occurs when you are fully immersed in an activity that demands your complete attention and skill. It’s highly enjoyable, often the best thing in life. It is also very elusive.

Flow shares several commonalities with Tantra:

• A sense of enjoyment

• Focused attention and intense energy

• Skilled perception of details

• Altered perception of time, forcing you into the now

• A loss of self (funnily, psychology sees loss of self as a temporary illusion, whereas Buddhism sees the self as a temporary illusion)

• Requires and facilitates mastery of skills and a sense power.

There are conditions to flow that Tantra does not share. Flow requires a task that:

• Offers a reasonable likelihood of success

• Demands total attention due to its difficulty

• Has clear rules and goals

• Provides immediate feedback

• Has an absence of distractions

Intensification

Most tantric practices involve intensification. Increasing passion motivates extreme action. Increasing spaciousness gives room for weirdness. Increasing energy fuels extreme emotion.

Intensification is not a goal in itself, but is a method within the path. It prepares you for the culmination of effective action by developing spaciousness.

Intensity builds capacity, your ability to effectively act in extreme situations, by developing passion and spaciousness together - Tantra is extreme because reality is extreme, it will take you places most people never go.

You might also go way too far, revealing the underlying structure of experience, in the form of breaking. What is revealed is that Tantra is big and stupid, wildly enthusiastic but perhaps a psychological defense against experience the rawness of reality.

In this case, you might try Dzogchen, which is approximately Tantra minus big and stupid.

Tantric Non-Duality

Charnel Ground - “Nothing is Sacred”

Hope is a compelling concept. People turn towards it as an escape from the horrors of reality.

However, hope is also merely a practical improvement to life - it cannot alter your existential state. What do we do without hope?

Viewing the world as a charnel ground - where human corpses are dumped to rot

Reality contains a raw, intense visualization of the awfulness of this world. It’s a dangerous, horrifying, chaotic realm. Nobody gets out alive.

Many religions manage to convince people that this is not true through hope for salvation; the only problem is religion is a fantasy that serves as a misguided escape, there is nowhere you can go where you won’t find these horrors.

Reality is also not a hell. Curiosity, creativity, and celebration cannot exist (let alone thrive) in hell. You cannot maintain the tantric attitude in hell - you are preoccupied with resentment of suffering. As long as you think the world is unfair and should be different, as long as you have an opinion on how life ought to be, you cannot maintain the tantric attitude.

In reality, there is no hope. But there is opportunity.

Sooner or later you’ll die, but you might as well do something in the meantime.

Pure Land - “Nothing is Ordinary”

The tantric practice of “pure vision”, like “charnel ground”, involves a shift in perspective - a habit of interpreting the world in a particular way.

Pure vision serves as an antidote to misperceiving people and things as ordinary, allowing you to overlook their vivid details and manipulate them solely for boring and practical purposes - you are no longer surprised or delighted by them.

Approaching the world as if it were a Pure Land - and people as if they were Buddhas

In a pure land, everything is enjoyable. If you are able to experience any situation as a pure land, then you will enjoy it. Nothing is unsatisfactory or threatening. Relax.

This might evoke notions of Heaven; except, the pure land does not fixate “good”. Pure vision makes everything interesting, not good. What makes things interesting is dynamic interaction, that is neither subjective nor objective.

This is a good thing. In heaven, everything is so blandly pleasurable that you turn into an indolent idiot. There is no motivation to do anything but experience pleasure, it doesn’t allow for meaningful action.

The pure land is comfortable enough for meditation, but not entirely pleasant. It is varied enough for you to push you to make yourself useful. In the pure land, flowers are thorny, predators can be heard, corpses can be found.

Oops, we’ve wandered into the charnel ground again.

Approaching Non-duality

What we almost mistook for heaven and hell look to be interconnected. The pure land is the charnel ground; the charnel ground is the pure land.

It is not the case that everything good resides in the pure land, and everything bad in the charnel ground. Instead, reality is non-dual; everything is sacred and nightmarish, everything is perfect and horrifying. You too.

The views merely highlight different emotional responses to non-duality:

• Charnel ground is the antidote to eternalism - the delusion that the universe has an ultimate metaphysical meaning

• Pure vision is the antidote to nihilism - the delusion that the universe is full of purposeless life.

The Tantric Aim: What is Vajrayana?

The Western Buddhist consensus answer seems to be “Buddhist ethics make you a better person, and meditation promotes mental health and social functioning.” However, this is pretty much just secular liberal ethics.

Perhaps a better question to ask is what do you want from it?

It’s a hard question, without one right answer. One perspective suggests that it offers a way of living that is enjoyable for you and valuable to others. The aim is elegant, accurate, kind, effective, and expansive action in the real world through mastery, power, play, and nobility. There is no achieving the aim, no endpoint.

You can get better at it though, which is what Tantra is good for.

At Emptiness

Vajrayana Buddhism begins where Sutrayana ends: at emptiness. Vajrayana delves into realms beyond emptiness, about which mainstream Buddhism (Sutrayana) has nothing to say.

Few Buddhist systems go beyond emptiness, but among them are Zen, Tantra, Dzogchen, and Mahamudra (not discussed).

• Zen starts with enlightenment, there is nothing you need to do to become enlightened, except perhaps noticing it. Once you do, there is nothing more to do. There is no beyond emptiness. It is open-ended, you can wander aimlessly.

• Tantra has a well-defined objective and specific routes to reach it. It is deeply action oriented. You should not deviate from the narrow, precisely defined paths. Without proper instruction and practice, it is pointless.

• Dzogchen grows out of Tantra and shares the starting point of enlightenment with Zen. But, at emptiness, there are still useful and enjoyable things you can do. It is both action-oriented and open-ended. You can have plans, but can also act spontaneously to new opportunities as they arise.

Dzogchen

Dzogchen, a subdivision of Vajrayana, has found recent popularity, particularly among Western Buddhists, for its simplicity. However, it is not well understood. In Tibet, Dzogchen was considered an advanced and secret teaching - this is no longer true, yet good introductory resources remain scarce.

The base of Dzogchen is momentary enlightenment, which is elusive. Almost nobody is qualified to practice Dzogchen. This is not necessarily a problem, and there are compelling reasons to study it in spite of this - it has an exceptionally attractive worldview. The ideas presented in meaningness are a rough secular presentation of the Dzogchen view.

Dzogchen is often called the “highest teaching of Buddhism” and “fastest route to enlightenment”. This is the reason for its allure, and it’s also misleading. The best teaching is whatever is most useful to you, now.

Dzogchen is elegant, clear, powerful, practical, and simple. It is also dry and abstract, to make sense of it requires inspired explanation from a Lama, and years of meditation practice or unusual intellectual capacity.

The Dzogchen world view is exceptionally compatible with modern Western culture, to the point that it may be understood as common sense. That would be to miss how extraordinarily radical it is.

There is No Holiness

Almost every culture, religion, ideology, or world-view holds some things as sacred, pure, and holy - as well as profane, unclean, or taboo.

Among the few exceptions are Zen and Dzogchen - where nothing is inherently sacred. If you spend enough time with Zen or Dzogchen teachers, they will contradict things you think are sacrosanct, defy your expectations of holiness, roast your sacred cows, and do things no holy person ever should.

They may violate fundamental assumptions you didn’t even know you had.

There is Only Vastness

Any fixed belief is a reference point. Reference points are bricks to build a prison of identity. Meditation allows this prison to collapse, revealing a boundless sky - the vastness of non-duality, where purity and impurity are equally meaningless.

In every situation, we have the opportunity to experience awe and beauty, referred to as “kadag” in Dzogchen, signifying “primordial purity”. All reality is primordially pure because purification is both unattainable and unnecessary; nothing has ever been impure. We only created the illusion of impurity as a reference point, to avoid the vertigo of vastness.

By experiencing the brilliant energy of emotions without their conceptual content and unnecessary judgements, we need not divide the world into the dualities of pure and impure, sacred and profane.

Experiencing the dissolution of dualist boundaries can be extremely funny, but until you understand this, it is also easy to be offended.

No Cosmic Justice, No Karma

It seems obvious that the world is unjust, much bad is left unpunished and much good is left unrewarded. People turn to religion for answers.

The answer you’ll typically find is that the universe is not inherently flawed, we just fail to see how it falls in the cosmic plan - cosmic justice will rectify it behind the scenes.

Buddhism offers a similar view, the Law of Karma. It posits that the apparent injustice in our lives stem from the balancing of rewards or punishments for our past actions in past lives. The karmic effects from this life will also persist in our future lives.

This cosmic justice requires a certain, eternal, external, constant, and universal notion of itself - a concept fundamentally incongruent with the fundamental Buddhist principle that nothing can be those things. This presents an unresolved contradiction in many Buddhist systems that lacks coherent resolutions.

Dzogchen acknowledges karma, just not a certain, eternal, external, constant, or universal one - there is no cosmic justice. Karma is a matter of habit, and therefore, empty. It happens when we view the world habitually, when certain situations must lead to certain emotions, which must lead to certain actions. If we can break the habitual cycle, karma is not guaranteed.

If There Was Perfect Justice, It Would Negate Itself

Even if there was “Perfect Justice”, ethical action would be impossible, the very belief in it would negate it.

Performing supposedly ethical actions with the knowledge of such, and with the intention of being rewarded (either in this life or a future one) is self-serving and self-righteous - it is no longer just about doing good.