14

Naked Awareness

The ego is, above all, separation. When desire does not unfold itself toward the ego, it spontaneously immerses itself in consciousness. In this way, the same thing that ties people conditioned by the ego liberates the tantrika, and desire blossoms into pure love. Obstruction then ceases to exist. If, in presence, we can descend to the deepest in ourselves, we see clearly that there is no ego, no differentiation, and therefore no duality. At this moment fear is no longer present and we can at last, for brief moments, experience the state of the sahajiya—“awakened adept of spontaneity”—which is how the tantrikas define themselves, whether Shaivists or Buddhists. Chinul, the twelfth-century Korean Ch’an master, expresses this freedom magnificently in his treatise Secrets of Cultivating the Mind:

Thus for adepts the principle of equally maintaining concentration and insight is not a matter of effort; it is spontaneous and effortless, with no more particular time frame. When seeing and hearing, they are just so; when defecating and urinating, they are just so; when conversing with people, they are just so; whatever they are doing, walking, standing, sitting, reclining, speaking, silent, rejoicing, raging, at all times and in everything they are thus, like empty boats riding the waves, going along with the high and the low, like a river winding through the mountains, curving at curves and straight at straits, without minding any state of mind, buoyantly going along with nature today, going along with nature buoyantly tomorrow, adapting to all circumstances without inhibition or impediment, neither stopping nor fostering good or evil, simple and straightforward, without artificiality, perception normal.²²

For tantrikas, the ego itself has no core other than consciousness. Once the ego lets go a little, relaxes, eases up, its fundamentally absolute nature frees itself. The ego therefore is not to be cut off, any more than is everything else that makes a human being. Grasping its original immaculate and spatial nature is enough.

Stanza 146 of the Vijnanabhairava Tantra offers this very beautiful definition of meditation: “A stable and character-less mind, there is true contemplation. . .,”²³ while the sahajiyas talk about “consciousness as stability, ease, repose, quiescence.” When the mind finds itself calmed in this way, it is at last able to reflect reality as it is and not as we would like it to be. This incessant reorchestrating of our mind, which makes every effort to see the world as it imagines it, tires us and causes us suffering. A peaceful mind realizes that it has the ability to grasp everything instantaneously. It no longer has to “stockpile” the materials of reality in order to deal with them later. It sees things directly, without projection and without judgment, in all their evidence and obviousness, in their naked reality.

Our desires, our passions, and our senses then cease to be a problem for us. All that they reap in the dailiness of our lives bring us bliss, and we finally perceive that life can be fully lived.

The whole difficulty of the spontaneity for which the tantrika longs, whether Shaivist or Buddhist, is to succeed in seizing the moment with the same lively agility with which one would seize a venomous snake. Hesitation can be fatal.

When reality presents itself to us, we can seize it only in instantaneousness. If we succeed in this spontaneous act, we live upstream of differentiating thought (vikalpa), and each thing presents itself in its naked reality. If we arrive too late, the mental flow will have already introduced a separation between us and the world, and we will have to wait for the next opportunity to be spontaneous. The yogini and the yogi have the intense agility of a tiger. The moment does not escape them because they have returned desire and the activity of the senses to their absolute nature. There is therefore no repression, no avoidance, no transcendence. Asanga, citing the Buddha, says this well: “No outcome for attraction other than attraction and the same goes for aversion and distraction, for nothing is independent of the essence of things.”²⁴

This specifically Tantric yoga is simple yet not easily accessible, because it is tied to ordinary experience. Says Saraha:

By means of that same essence by which one is born, lives and dies,

By means of that one gains the highest bliss.²⁵

To keep oneself sharp, lively and quick, spontaneous, and alert to the instant when things arise is considered the Mahayoga by the tantrikas because the success of this small miracle of presence dispenses with all expedients, all techniques, all spiritual practices, all the specific yogas. It is supreme nonpractice, since in the lightning flash of the moment all becoming and all progression on the spiritual path are annihilated. This is the quintessence of Tantrism, of Ch’an, of dzogchen, the Great Seal, or Mahamudra (as the Tibetans and Kashmiris call it). Saraha expresses this in a magnificent verse of his Dohakosa:

O know this truth,

That neither at home nor in the forest does enlightenment dwell.

Be free from prevarication

In the self [essential]-nature of immaculate thought [consciousness]!²⁶

This “immaculate thought” or “immaculate consciousness” is total freedom. To reach it, tantrikas do not merely talk about it. They teach how to get there, and that is the heart of Tantra.