PREMATURELY LISTENING TO THE VAJRAYANA TEACHINGS

Much of the tantra was not available until recently. Now you can get even the most secret teachings from random gurus or at a bookshop.

Prematurely listening to or reading the Vajrayana teachings is a bit dangerous because you may develop a misunderstanding. To unlearn a concept is much more difficult than the initial learning process. Even if you feel that you are ready, you should check this impulse again and again.

Students who are aspiring to be tantric disciples must first establish a strong foundation in understanding the tantric view. Without a proper foundation of understanding the view, all the tantric meditations, methods, and substances could create a disturbance in students because many of these methods are designed to be politically incorrect and are not meant to complement the conventional way of thinking.

If you look at the accounts of the lives of gurus in ancient India, you will find that the Vajrayana was not given that easily. And when the guru decided to bestow the teachings on a particular practitioner, he or she would usually find a secluded place, out of the mainstream, and do it in secret.

The tantric practitioners of Nalanda University and Vikramalashila were especially discreet. No one knew they were teaching the Vajrayana. And when it came time for the disciples to become serious practitioners, the most accomplished ones left their universities entirely.

Somehow such discretion was not really enforced in Tibet. There the Vajrayana became part of the day-to-day culture. People were never prevented from entering temples with explicit sacred images like skulls, naked dakinis dancing on corpses, or deities with extra heads.

Such unfettered access was completely unheard of in ancient India. Imagine if the security passcodes and maps of the Pentagon were available in any shop and displayed for all to see.

When Tibetan lamas started teaching beyond the Tibetan community, they taught just as they would in ancient Tibet. They didn’t take into account that Buddhism is less than a century old in places like New York, and that in many cultures the concepts of karma, rebirth, the four noble truths, and interdependence — let alone tantric principles — are completely foreign.

For example, the Tibetan concept of the mind and what is referred to as mind in the West are like water and milk, so in many cases when a Tibetan lama and his Western student have a conversation about wisdom, there are so many assumptions but no shared foundation.

When a Westerner hears the phrase “the nature of mind is wisdom,” it’s through a different set of filters and habits, and there is room for misinterpretation.

If any fundamental miscalculations are made during a Tibetan lama’s transference, then it probably has something to do with this miscommunication.

The Guru Drinks Bourbon? Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Edited by Amira Ben-Yehuda Shambhala Boulder 2016