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Aspects of Tibetan Buddhism Aspects of Tibetan Buddhism by Claudio Naranjo ome characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism elaboration. In this sense Tibetan Buddhism, Sare, of course, characteristics of Buddhism or Vajrayana, incorporates the earlier devel- in general. Other aspects have a specifically opments of Mahayana and Hinayana. Vajra- Tibetan character, which I believe is particu- yana builds on the early yanas, specifically larly important since Tibetan Buddhism can be Mahayana. We can see how Mahayana em- seen as the growing tip of Buddhism, in the phasized compassion more than Hinayana, the same way that California has been seen as the earliest form of Buddhism, which seems com- growing tip of consciousness within the United paratively drier than the later forms. For ex- States. Of course, every religion gives birth to ample, Mahayana introduced into Buddhism developments, but the religious attitude of the the conception of the Bodhisattva path, the Western world has been perhaps surprisingly ideal of Bodhisattvahood, or renouncing en- (given the Western emphasis on progress) lightenment in order to aid all beings. It is true traditionalist when compared to Buddhism, that when the question of self-seeking in the which has always been open to new formula- pursuit of enlightenment is raised in one of the tions of the teachings and has readily incor- earlier discourses of the Buddha, he says that porated new scriptures into the canon when such seeking is not necessarily selfish: "This is they were felt to be valid. In fact, one of what you are meant to do in a shipwrecked the most noticeable characteristics of Tibetan world-first of all you must put your own feet Buddhism is that it readily acknowledges this on firm ground, and then you can help others." continual growth of the teachings through the But excessive seeking can lead to a kind of creativity of each new generation. In its ex- monks' disease or religious disturbance, a pressive form this is seen as the reception of the dangerous domain that has an aspect of truth teachings directly from the sambhogakaya, this but is unbalanced and lacks an equal concern process being the intuitive and revelatory about remaining in touch. There is a basic means through which the teachings are paradox in such exclusive seeking for enlight- confirmed and expanded as time goes on. enment, which perhaps characterized earlier That Tibetan Buddhism stands foremost in Buddhism; an excessive monkishness can in- the living development of Buddhism may be terfere with the enlightenment that is being seen from the fact that it has taken those two pursued, because enlightenment has to do with great basic and inclusive conceptions of Bud- an ecological perspective. That is, enlighten- dhism-the doctrine of shunyata, the open ment cannot be pursued exclusively because dimension of being, and karuna, compassion- This article is an edited transcription from a talk given by ate action in the light of the vision of shunyata Claudio Naranjo at the University of Southern California to their highest level of articulation and in June, 1975. enlightenment has to do with a perception of the whole, with a view of oneself as one cell in a bigger organism of the human society and the cosmos. Moreover, a one-sided pursuit of en- lightenment can easily be seen as a false solu- tion for the problem which it intends to over- come, much like the false solution of the baby that becomes frustrated because it cannot get enough milk and is then fixated to sucking as the way out from frustration. The more he sucks, the less he gets. That is the paradoxof psy- chological 'sucking', which psychoanalysis calls 'orality': the more you experience it in a one-sided manner as being out there, the less you are in touch with the fountain within. So the Bodhisattva ideal may be seen, from one point of view, as the solution to the problems raised by exclusive seeking. Mahayana builds on a balance between the extremes. The compassion of Buddhism is not what we ordinarily understand when we think of love. The word love is sometimes avoided in Buddhism because it is so easily misunder- stood. The great love which arises in the en- Claudio Naranjo leading a seminar at the lightened state is not anything like what we call Nyingma Institute emotions, because there is nobody who is the subject of the emotion. It is an emotion without our experience that we do not realize the open an ego, or without a self, if you like. So there is dimension of experience, or shunyata, in which a bliss without an enjoyer, and that bliss is we would see through our "self" and many inseparable from the activity of compassion, other mental fictions which we fondly take for the pouring forth toward the rest of creation. granted. The doctrine of shunyata receives its Thus, Mahayana elaborates on the early highest and most extensive elaboration in Ti- insights of Hinayana which stress the imper- betan Buddhism, but because it is an experi- manence of all that is and the absence of an ence which is far beyond our ordinary mind, ego, anatma, and the basic unsatisfactory na- any description will take the form of a nega- ture of all existence in the samsaric world. tion. Our mind as we know it is the realm of the ego; that is, what we in our present state of orrelative to this is the great doctrine of awareness call being awake is being 'subject' to C shunyata which is sometimes rendered as total samsaric conditioning through habit pat- non-ego and sometimes, rather unsatisfactori- terns, learned responses, constant conceptuali- ly, as "emptiness." This is the most difficult of zation, and so forth. This endless merry-go- all Buddhist concepts to render in words round of mental phenomena always seeks because it signifies experience which, while not resolution in what is to come and ever harks beyond human experience, lies beyond the back to what has been. Ever pushed by desire human ability to conceptualize. In fact, it is for something else, it turns in vicious circles. If because we conceptualize and constantly label we were to speak in Christian terms, we might Spring 1976 say we were ensnared by the devil. Shunyata, ergy flashing, and just as physics has shown then, can be seen as the annihilation of all this that the spaces between particles are much tedious commonplace consciousness that is vaster than the space occupied by them, per- needed for another more holistic consciousness haps there is more time we don't exist than to supervene. Since this ordinary consciousness time we do. is everything we think we are, we need to de- That the emphasis on shunyata is a fore- velop the art of getting out of the way. In most characteristic of Tibetan Buddhism is Christianity, and in the Western religious tra- hinted at by the term used to describe the type dition in general, the emphasis has always been of Buddhism developed in Tibet-Vajrayana, to seek what was on the other shore; for this which means the "adamantine way." Vajra reason it invokes and enters into dialogue with translates literally as "thunderbolt" and also the divine being beyond the human condition, means "diamond." What is suggested here is with transcendence beyond the domain of hu- the hardness quality of the enlightened mind. man experience and its limitations. Buddhism, It is fired through experience into a stability or on the other hand, rests on an awareness. We permanence that marks all but can't itself be might say that it is not enough to invoke marked, unlike the samsaric mind composed something outside', because however much of constantly changing fictions. The thunder- we bark up the right or the wrong tree there is bolt: which religious symbolism puts in the something instrinsic in the attitude of barking at hand of Indra, Zeus, and Jehovah-evokes that the tree which is bound to leave us in the same aspect of the numious which makes every- predicament if we do not renounce our present thing standing below quake and crumble. It state of being, if we do not cut or sever all the pierces and penetrates the ego. This shunyata ties to the mental and emotional and physical side of Tibetan Buddhism is symbolized by the habits, or conditionings, that define what we dorje, or vajra symbol which you may have think we are. So this is an aspect of Buddhism seen. Vajrayana practitioners hold in the right involved in the idea of shunyata. hand the three-dimensional vajra representing This subjective and individual aspect of the realization of shunyata and in the other shunyata also has its objective and cosmic cor- hand the bell which suggeets the skillful means relative: it is perhaps not different than what is (upaya) used in compassionate action in the expressed: that behind all the forms of divine light of shunyata. emanation and divine being there is the dark origin of light. It is said in the Quabbalah that nother way in which Mahayana and Vajra- God and world both exist and do not exist. yana Buddhism differ from earlier Hina- And even some contemporary physicists, such yana Buddhism is that they are much more as Dirac, have come to a similar realization. intensely devotional. Generally, religions are The constant search for the irreducible sub- classified into theistic religions, such as we stance or form of the universe, as the atom was know here in the West, and non-theistic thought to be, has revealed a never-ending host religion, but already in the Mahayana, Buddha of particles which now seem like conceptuali- is addressed much as a divine being is, and in zations of the same primordial non-material Vajrayana there is seemingly the invocation of stuff, all emerging from a basic voidness.
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