There is a story about a
Mexican shaman who was making a journey with his disciple, and on their way they
passed through a certain village. Further along the road they stopped for a bite
of lunch. The shaman sat down on a convenient rock and ate an avocado. As he did
so, the story goes, he became completely enlightened. He expressed this total
insight to his disciple, who was so overjoyed that he rushed back to the village
again and excitedly announced to the whole market-place that his teacher had
become enlightened. He just sat down on a rock and ate an avocado, and suddenly
he got it!
And the people asked: What kind of a rock?! What kind of an
avocado?!
The story of the historical
Buddha is a little more elaborate than this, but it has a very similar pivotal
point. He ate some curds and sat on a pile of kusha grass under a pipal tree,
and entered into the state of meditation. He saw for himself how things are:
where everything and everyone comes from, where they all go to, and why. There
may be no record of anyone having asked the historical Buddha What kind of
curds? What kind of tree?
; but subsequently there has been a long history of
Buddhists looking very hard underneath trees and inside yoghourt-pots, so to
speak, before parking themselves on different types of grass, to decide which of
these could be relied upon as authentic supports for their practice.
The Buddhist tradition comes from vision, from human personal experience. That is why we chose Vision as the name of our magazine. The Tibetan word for the Buddha’s subsequent teachings is chö, meaning ‘As It Is’, and any teachings which happened to explain the nature of beings and phenomena in the same way would also be chö. If Pathfinder on Mars were to pick up radio signals or prehistoric rock-carvings which translated into teachings on the non-duality of emptiness and form; and if they thereby rejected the extremes of monism, dualism, nihilism and eternalism; then we could say with confidence ‘We recognise this! This is what we call Buddhism.’ Indeed, there is a text which declares that the Dzogchen teachings are to be found in more than a dozen other solar systems. Sadly, the appetite for sectarianism among Buddhists on this planet is already too much for the teachings of our own solar system.
The many and various styles of Buddhism, called in the Tibetan system Vehicles, are all special forms of teachings on non-duality, and for the future these teachings remain potentially infinite in number and diversity; because they are descriptions of pan-sentient experience. All sentient beings have the capacity to come to their own understanding of them; and to teach accordingly. If their understanding was the same as that of all the Buddhas, then whatever they taught would naturally be in harmony with what we call Buddhism. However, the materialism of the Kali Yuga (the dregs of time – popularly known ‘new age’, and by Ngak’chang Rinpoche as ‘newage’ – to rhyme with ‘sewage’) impels even Buddhists to establish authenticity according to other criteria, such as: race, wealth, costume, reputation, heredity, gender, intelligence, language, patronage, popularity, education, convenience, rank, endorsements, profession, credentials etc. These materialist reference-points have become, by default, an unacknowledged higher refuge than the teachings themselves. Buddha Shakyamuni would have great trouble teaching an audience today, if he had no one to witness the authenticity of his enlightenment except the earth itself: a contemporary audience would have more confidence in a miraculous earthquake than in the teachings.
To take refuge in the Buddhist tradition and to practise in it means that, at some time, in some life, complete realisation is possible. The primary meaning of refuge is therefore confidence. Buddhists are supposedly people who are trying to establish confidence in realisation, from their own experience. How bitterly ironic, then that it is lack of confidence which seems to define the practice of so many present-day Buddhists. The ultimate practice-support is the nature of Mind itself. But some schools assert that not only do the conditions for practice in our own time make complete realisation impossible; but even that no one since the Buddha himself has actually achieved the same result. Who could possibly be inspired by the thought of two and a half thousand years of only failure, on such a scale, to repeat the great experiment? One wonders why the proponents of such negative views consider themselves, as they often seem to do, entitled to hegemony over the entire Buddhist tradition.
The Tantric and Dzogchen teachings contrast directly with such views, and liberate us from being the passive heirs of ancient prejudices. They assert that practitioners could make use of every kind of time, place and personality, to achieve the supreme general result ‘in this very mind and body’; even in this very moment, between one breath and the next. These hot-blooded teachings encounter another kind of problem in the West: that so many people in our culture, including Buddhists, have lingering negative attitudes about the value of being incarnate. So many people suffer from depression; admit to rather disliking themselves; and would secretly prefer to be asleep, unconscious, or dead. Such a terrible shortfall in compassion towards oneself is not compatible with professing oneself dedicated to liberate ‘all sentient beings’.
These Inner Tantric teachings have tended to be seen throughout their history as challenging and controversial; in Tibet almost from the moment they arrived there. The conservative reaction has been to emphasise the preservation and authentication of historical and scriptural forms of Buddhism. Our modern Western perspective should enable us to perceive that these are limited by being cultural artefacts. If the teachings are separated from their origin in visionary experience, then they can be codified, and excluded from being refreshed by the realisation of contemporary practitioners. They will no longer be the teachings on non-duality: they will be merely another ethical form. As its host cultures change and diverge, that form will become empty of relevance, and of its power to inspire. Eventually, Buddhism will come to be regarded as a vaguely spiritual branch of therapy. It will be dependent on other streams of psychology, philosophy or science; other peoples’ visions, authority and patronage. It will become parasitical; and as its host cultures inevitably succumb to impermanence and die, Buddhism will die with them.
To those who feel abhorrence at such a prospect, who are bold enough to stand up for their conviction that there is some alternative, this magazine is enthusiastically and unapologetically dedicated.