Personality is of prime importance in the functioning of Vajrayana
vis-à-vis the Lama and disciple. The personality, however, is irrelevant
within Sutrayana. Moreover, personality is seen as a hindrance and an
obstacle to the teaching. This is the case because personality is a
symbol of form – and the Sutrayana teacher should be reflecting
emptiness. The teacher in Sutrayana renounces the form of his or her
individual manifestation in order to reflect the nature of the teachings
accurately. Within Vajrayana, however, the personality is a symbol of
transformation. The Lama’s personality is the vehicle by which the
teachings are expressed. The personality of the Lama expresses the very
quality of the path that is most important – the fact that the elemental
neuroses are open to transformation. The elemental neuroses do not have
to be obliviated – they remain as the apparitional array or vajra
appetite, vajra acerbity, vajra desire, vajra suspicion, and vajra
phlegmatism. The Lama can employ voracity, resentment, yearning, doubt,
and indifference as skilful means. The Lama can employ excess,
antipathy, nostalgia, distrust, and unresponsiveness as skilful means.
The Lama can employ surfeit, antagonism, wistfulness, scepticism, and
impassiveness as skilful means. The Lama can employ dominance,
hostility, lust, uncertainty, and insensitivity as skilful means. The
listings are endless – and impossibly subtle in their complexity. The
Lama—if he or she is a Lama with genuine realisation—paints continually
arising pictures of the manner in which the neuroses can be transformed
into transparent manifestations of the non-dual state. In terms of
Vajrayana the personality of the Lama is indispensable as a means of
showing the disciple that his or her own personality is open to
transformation.
Where this is not understood – people either judge the Lama according to
Sutrayana criteria, or they enter into magical thinking in which the
behaviour of the Lama is some kind of reflection: ‘Lamas never really
become angry – they merely reflect the neuroses of their students as a
teaching.’ Likewise – the Lama never actually experiences insatiability,
irascibility, craving, wariness, or sorrow. Writing off the Lama’s
emotions as ‘educational reflections of his or her students’ is similar
to a child’s view of the adult world – in which television aerials
capture airborne images that flow down the cable and thence spill out
onto the screen. A charming explanation – but one which does not accord
with what occurs. Having made this analogy, however, we must say that
the child’s charming explanation has more in its favour than bizarre
notions of Lamas as emotionless ‘educational emulators of emotions’.
Such ideas arise from a state of incomprehension as to the nature of
‘essential Vajrayana’. Such ideas also arise from the sense in which
Vajrayana is Sutrayana with ‘added magic’ – where the Lama is some kind
of saint with special powers. It is also the case that people like the
state of incomprehension. They like their ‘enlightened masters’ to dwell
in an incomprehensible world which denies them access. In this
incomprehensible world the Lama is like the super brain surgeon who puts
everything right. The super scientist who shrinks teams of doctors into
miniature submarines which explore the blood stream of patients in order
to fight with the rogue corpuscles of confusion. We make this imagined
form a movie; a ripping yarn – but one which bears little relation to
what is possible. The 16th
Karmapa did not really have cancer – he was merely manifesting it as a
teaching. Or maybe the 16th Karmapa had cancer but only because he was
taking on the karma of deluded beings. These statements concerning the
16th Karmapa are as ridiculous as they are insulting as they are
infantile. Realisation does not preclude cancer. The 16th Karmapa was a
great yogi who died of cancer with immense dignity and immense
compassion for those around him. His death was indeed a teaching – and
it is indeed sad that many people are utterly unaware of what that
teaching was.
