Revisiting the mind treasure of Taktsang
IN OCTOBER 1968, a young Buddhist monk travelled on horseback to Taktsang. He had just received the Dorje Drolo (the wrathful aspect of Guru Rinpoche, in which he manifested at Taktsang) empowerment from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
As a lineage holder, and with invitation from the royal grandmother, the young reincarnate monk was on a retreat at Taktsang. Never did he realize, until it happened after a disillusioning wait, that in Taktsang he would discover a great terma (treasure) that had a huge impact on his development as a Buddhist teacher.
The young monk was Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the treasure he discovered was The Sadhana of Mahamudra. The Sadhana didn’t come easy. In the beginning of his retreat, young Trungpa found Taktsang very ordinary, ‘just another mountain range’.
“I didn’t get any sudden jerk at all. ‘What is this place?’ I wondered. ‘It’s supposed to be great; what’s happening here? Maybe this is the wrong place; maybe there is another Taktsang somewhere else, the real Taktsang,” says Trungpa Rinpoche in his chronicles.
But things began to come up, he says, and the place had a very powerful nature. He had a feeling of empty-heartedness once he began to click into the atmosphere. One felt very empty-hearted, as if there was nothing inside one’s body, as if one didn’t exist. One felt completely vacant, without feeling, he says.
“As that feeling continued, you began to pick up little sharp points: the blade of the phurba, the rough edges of the vajra. You felt that behind the whole thing there was a huge conspiracy: something was very alive. When I started to feel that, the Sadhana just came through without any problems.”
And he received one of the most important mind termas of the 20th century.
This is the darkest hour of the dark ages.
Disease, famine and warfare are raging like the fierce north wind.
The Buddha’s teaching has waned in strength.
The various schools of the sangha are fighting amongst themselves with sectarian bitterness; and although the Buddha’s teaching was perfectly expounded and there have been many reliable teachings since then from other great gurus, yet they pursue intellectual speculations.
The sacred mantra has strayed into Bön and the yogis of tantra are losing the insight of meditation.
The above are the opening lines of The Sadhana of Mahamudra, a text that brought about a turning point in Trungpa Rinpoche’s presentation of the Buddha dharma in the West.
In Tibet, Chögyam Trungpa had already been recognized as a tertön, a teacher who finds or reveals terma, which are the teachings that Padmasambhava concealed in physical locations throughout Tibet and in the realm of mind and space.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche says the Kagyü tradition and the Nyingma tradition are brought together very powerfully at Taktsang. “There is a feeling at Taktsang of austerity and pride and some sense of wildness, which goes beyond the practicing lineage alone,” he says.
Rinpoche was accompanied to Asia by one of his young English students, Richard Arthure, who later said The Sadhana of Mahamudra arose in Rinpoche’s mind toward the end of Taktsang retreat.
“And the main part of it was written down very quickly, in one or two days. We began translating it into English almost immediately, although most of the work was done after we had come down the mountain from Taktsang and were staying in a guest house on the outskirts of Thimphu,” says Richard Arthure.
The end of the Sadhana consists of a poem composed ‘deliberately’ by Trungpa Rinpoche.
In the copper-mountain cave of Taktsang,
The mandala created by the guru,
Padma’s blessing entered in my heart.
I am the happy young man from Tibet!
I see the dawn of mahamudra
And awaken into true devotion:
The guru’s smiling face is ever present.
On the pregnant dakini-tigress
Takes place the crazy-wisdom dance
Of Karma Pakshi Padmakara,
Uttering the sacred sound of HUM.
His flow of thunder-energy is impressive.
The dorje and phurba are the weapons of self-liberation:
With penetrating accuracy they pierce
Through the heart of spiritual pride.
One’s faults are so skillfully exposed
That no mask can hide the ego
And one can no longer conceal
The antidharma which pretends to be dharma.
Through all my lives may I continue
To be the messenger of dharma
And listen to the song of the king of yanas.
May I lead the life of a bodhisattva.
According to Buddhist scholars, The Sadhana of Mahamudra is the most articulate presentation of spiritual materialism and the most profound understanding of how to vanquish it. The Sadhana is practiced at the Shambhala Center on the new and full moon days. The practice consists of meditation and chants, and lasts about an hour. Through this sadhana students can receive a true experience or understanding of the spiritual path.
After receiving the terma, Trungpa Rinpoche went back to England and shortly after married a young English woman, and moved to North America.
“We could say he was, for our time, a manifestation of Padmasambhava. The discovery of the Sadhana of Mahamudra was really the beginning of his activity in the West as an enlightened teacher,” says his student.
Dasho Sangay Wangchuk, a member of the Royal Privy Council, was 20-something at the time. He remembers meeting Trungpa Rinpoche, a softhearted slow tutor with a friendly personality.
“The beauty of his teaching is that he uses simple everyday words and gives short lectures, mostly lasting for 30 minutes,” he said.
Dasho Sangay Wangchuk later visited Trungpa Rinpoche’s Shambhala Center in the U.S. with Lam Karmapa (Zhamar Rinpochhe). He said a devotee is considered his follower only after completing the sixth level of learning in the centre, after which the follower is taught preliminary practice. This is followed by Varga Yogini, the last practice.
Dasho Sangay Wangchuk said Rinpochhe’s teaching inspired him when he visited Rinpochhe’s centre in the U.S.
“People often call him the modern Drukpa Kuenley because of his fondness for women and drink,” said Dasho Sangay Wangchuk.
In fact, Trungpa Rinpoche generated much controversy because of his sexuality and use of tobacco and alcohol. He cultivated relations with a number of his female students, and used alcohol liberally.
For the eleventh Trungpa tülku who lived a rather short life (28 February 1939 – 4 April 1987) was a great meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the Taktsang terma helped him re-present the Shambhala vision in a radical way.
In a poem titled The Song of the Wanderer composed in Bhutan in 1968, Trungpa Rinpoche writes:
The mood of sadness is inexhaustible;
Trying to end it would be
Like trying to reach the limits of space.
The feeling of longing is sharp and quick
Like an arrow shot by a skillful archer.
Across the sea in an Asian island
There are wild flowers of every kind.
These flowers are inseparable from the yogi’s experience.
This is too realistic to be only a dream,
But if it is really happening
I must say it is rather amusing.
In the land of Bhutan
Where mountains are clothed in mist
Young Chögyam is wandering like a stray dog.
In the hermitage of the Blue Rock Castle
A pregnant tigress is suckling her young.
There we found the nectar of the new age.
Source: thejournalist.bt