What I have to say rests on the assumption that it is the function of Vajrayana Buddhist practice to effect in the practitioner realization of the non-dual state. If you (the reader) are practicing with some other goal in mind, such as stress reduction, world peace, saving the whale, or improving your golf game, please stop reading now. Like trying to teach a horse to sing, you will only waste your own efforts and annoy the horse.
All teachers say that it is necessary to begin practicing the Vajrayana with the compassionate view of dedicating one's practice to the liberation of all beings, in order for Vajrayana to be anything other than the ultimate poisonous power trip. That said, it must also be said that the challenge of benefiting others through practice is to understand what that actually means.
It is a fundamental requirement of Buddhism that one go beyond - that is, that one be willing to challenge and break open one's established understanding of who one is and what reality is. Different vehicles have different methods for meeting that requirement. In the Hinayana, the principle is renunciation - of personal privacy, of individuality, of self-clinging. In Mahayana, which some systems see as separate from the other two Sutric vehicles, the principle is still renunciation, but now it is renunciation of the ordinary relationship of self and other (in which self is given primacy). What can happen as a result of Mahayana practice is that one begins to see through the sham of self-and-other altogether, so that what benefits other and what benefits self are no longer separate. The fruition of Sutrayana as a whole is the experience of emptiness. Vajrayana is then based on the experience of emptiness as only half of the story. The Heart Sutra says that form is emptiness, but it goes on to say that emptiness is form. So the principles of Vajrayana are transformation (Tantra) and self-liberation (Dzogchen). In order to practice the Vajrayana, one has to be willing to turn dualism itself on its head, at the most fundamental level. One has to be willing to go beyond anything which separates one from direct experience of the non-dual state in all circumstances.
Buddhism in any form unconditionally requires one to go beyond boundaries. One has to question the fundamental assumption that one exists as a solid, permanent, separate, continuous, and defined being. This sense of existence, this self that one is questioning, can be expected to resist. It is compounded of every survival impulse one has ever generated. The demonstrable fact that it is a misinterpretation of reality is not easy to approach. This is what makes the relentless psychologization of Buddhism in the West so destructive. By definition, psychological models do not "go beyond." They operate within the boundaries of the assumption of the solid, continuously existing self. The resistance of that self to close examination - which inevitably brings to light the emptiness qualities of its form -is easy to justify from within the psychological box. Resistance manifests as neuroses: greed, fear, obsession, hypervigilance, or depression. Psychology can attempt to address the causes of these neuroses from within the assumption that the self continuously exists. But that attempt often founders. Why is it that so many of us are not healed?
Please note, I am not saying that one should not appropriately treat psychological suffering within the purview of psychology itself. The problem lies in mistaking that for Buddhist practice. Buddhist practice is about questioning all assumptions - including the psychologies of self. When we allow questioning to be limited by Western psychological assumptions, we are caving in, allowing the circle of the dualistic rationale to close again. We can justify our fear and refusal to go beyond on the grounds of psychological materialism, the fin de siecle Western religion. While this is a corruption of Buddhism wherever it arises, it is particularly fatal to authentic Vajrayana practice, precisely because the Vajrayana is so perfectly unreasonable. Vajrayana requires us to question dualism altogether, and this questioning takes the form of choicelessness. Practitioners of Tantra and Dzogchen have to be willing to take chö, dharma (which literally means "as-it-is") as command. To make matters worse in the view of psychological orthodoxy, that command is embodied in an unconditional vow to one's Lama as vajra master: damtsig, or samaya.
As damtsig has come into contact with Western psychological materialism, self-defence tactics have taken a variety of forms. The one that has most intrigued me is what I have dubbed the "feast on fæces fallacy" - of which there appear to be two variations. I encountered the first during my introduction to Vajrayana at Vajradhatu Seminary - a three-month practice and study retreat designed by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I attended this retreat after Trungpa Rinpoche's death, when his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, taught it. As the summer progressed and the teachings grew more challenging, speculation about samaya heated up. The speculation took on an odd repeating pattern. At some point in every conversation on the topic, someone would inevitably say, "I heard that samaya means that if the Sakyong tells you to eat shit, you have to do it." The conversation would then devolve into everyone deciding whether they would eat shit or not. After puzzling over it for a while, my eventual response to this statement was, "How likely is it that the Sakyong would ask you to eat shit?" The whole discussion was a scare tactic, however unconscious it may have been. It presented one with an extreme, reductio ad absurdum proposition from which one could quite justifiably turn away in disgust. In the process, it just so happened that one also cut oneself off from finding out what samaya actually did mean. That version of the Feast on Fæces Fallacy operates by the student scaring himself or herself away from damtsig.
The second variation on this theme operates to discredit the Lama with whom the student might make the vow. A good example of this was in a report on the first conference of Western Buddhist teachers with HH Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in 1993. At one of the conference sessions, Robert Thurman reportedly said that anyone who allowed himself or herself to be called a vajra master should be presented with a plate of excrement and a fork. If he or she was not capable of eating it, based on the principle of rochig (ro gcig - one taste), then he or she was a fraud and should take up knitting. This politically devious perspective is one which seeks to neuter every Lama who is not invested with the correct degree of current western adulation. Evidently a Lama who denies being a vajra master but who is nonetheless regarded as a vajra master is exempt from the offer of Robert Thurman's fæcal feast.
What is wrong with this picture? The answer is the same as in the first example. Mr. Thurman's assertion is again the illusory self, defending its existence by reducing the threat to extreme absurdity. By Thurman's logic, unless a Lama is possessed of outrageous ordinary siddhis, the Lama is a pretender as a vajra master. It may be that most Lamas who are viewed as vajra masters by their disciples might not be capable of eating excrement. So what? Why would one trust a person who ate excrement anyway? Wouldn't that take greater faith than relying on a Lama's qualities of wisdom and compassion? If one requires a crazy wisdom master to be able to eat excrement one could find many such masters in residential care as senile geriatrics.
The practice of damtsig has produced many generations of profoundly realized women and men. These people have realized and manifested supreme siddhi, that is, the non-dual state. Whether or not they have also manifested ordinary siddhis such as leaving "environmentally questionable" footprints in rock or eating unlikely substances is strictly secondary. In fact, Lamas who have achieved ordinary siddhis are almost invariably described as being reticent about the fact. The literature on such manifestations also points out that the purpose of ordinary siddhis is to create the opportunity for realization in those who witness them. Siddhis are not credentials, and the purpose of siddhis is not to assure the Robert Thurmans of this world of their own safe place in the order of things.
For the record, I am not in denial about abusive behavior having occurred in some instances. Abuse occurs in every walk of life, and it is not "a good thing." But with the help of Western psychology, a few abusive situations have been cooked into a categorical condemnation of the essence of Vajrayana practice in the name of making Buddhism safe.
This cuts the heart out of Buddhism. Buddhism - especially Vajrayana Buddhism - cannot be safe - per se. Vajrayana also cannot be politically correct. Vajrayana cannot be socially acceptable to the broad majority. Vajrayana cannot be psychologically validated according to dualistic criteria. This is not because Vajrayana is intent upon offense or injury, but rather because it is intent upon realization. And that is by definition beyond any rationale based on the maintenance, preservation, and comfort of the illusory stony island of Me.
Damtsig is ultimately a commitment to unconditional reality, what Shunryu Suzuki Roshi called "things-as-it-is." Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche described it this way in 1979:
Samaya of body ... is the basic idea that any apparent phenomenal situation you experience is connected with the idea of the sacredness of the total environment. Samaya of speech ... is connected with the idea that any utterances, any thoughts are sacred. Samaya of mind ... is connected with the idea of indestructibility. Samaya of mind never allows any possibilities of neuroses to enter into your state of mind, because the whole world is sacred and blessed already with the bondage of abhisheka, the mutual bondage of student and teacher.
This in itself is a tall order. But by the skilful means of Vajrayana, one begins closer to home, with one's Lama. The living face and voice of "things-as-it-is" is the Lama. The student's willingness to be unconditionally true to the naked face of reality is what damtsig is about, not whether the Lama or the student can transform coliform bacteria. The yidams we employ as a method of practice present further faces of things-as-it-is, rather than further faeces of what-we-would-like-to-be. The word, "yidam," is actually a contraction yid ki dam tsig, "the samaya of your mind" (Trungpa, 1973). This is the method of Vajrayana: at the levels of body, speech, and mind, one begins with a vow not to wriggle off the hook. The vow is made to a living, breathing human being who also vows to stay on the hook.
Trungpa Rinpoche, in describing samaya to his students, called it "three-fold en-nailment."
Tantrayana is referred to as Vajrayana because there is a diamond nail which binds together your guru, yourself, and your yidam ... We are bound together by the vajra nail of indestructibility. (1973)
Two Western Lamas whose teachings I have received have said on more than one occasion that if the samaya bond with a disciple required them to die for that disciple, they would do so. From a dualistic perspective, these are horrific images. But if one allows the possibility of the non-dual state into the image, then the scene changes, and that is the point. Then dawns the great paradox of the Vajrayana: total freedom. That is not to be legislated or contained within any relative system for any reason whatsoever. One can only go beyond.
No one is required to practice this particular method. If it is repulsive, then one should look elsewhere. But if it merely threatens an established and limited view of reality, that cannot be helped. In damtsig, one vows to be true. If one can waffle and pick and choose, then one turns away from the nakedness of that vow. To practice Vajrayana is to be willing to commit oneself to dropping "what if?" for what is.