26

Passion

Passion is, for the Tantric masters of the various traditions, an element indispensable to the spiritual search and the plenitude of life. For them, everything is movement, emission and retraction, enjoyment, creativity, incandescence. Even to give themselves over to meditation, they believe a certain degree of excitation (harsa) is necessary. Swami Lakshmanjoo writes: “Unless you fall in love with meditation and approach it with total enthusiasm, attachment, and longing, you cannot enter the realm of Awareness.”⁴⁰

It could be said that the Tantric masters have a very simple approach to life and that we can follow their advice without having to adhere to any ideal other than to become a unique human being, using the whole range of these capacities in order to come deeply into contact with life. In certain paths initiation to this simplicity is preceded by a long and tedious training; the supreme truth is revealed only to those who have successfully passed through years of sadhana.

In Kashmiri Shaivism as taught by my master, Lalita Devi, this truth about the real nature of the mind is taught immediately, and the means by which it can be completely realized are put into play right from the start of the relationship. But my Tibetan master, Kalou Rinpoche, introduced me to the real nature of the mind—Mahamudra, the Great Seal—only after my work with Devi. He wrote in Luminous Mind: The Way of the Buddha: “When transformation of the emotions [Mahamudra] is fully completed, the passions are no longer an obstacle. They even become a help. A traditional image is that they become like wood for the bonfire of wisdom; the more you add, the brighter the flame!”⁴¹

Earlier, he says:

In itself, the practice of Mahamudra is extremely simple and easy. There are no visualizations or complicated exercises. There is nothing to do. It is enough just to leave the mind in its natural state, as it is, as it comes, without contrivance. It is extremely simple. In the tradition of mahamudra reliquary,^*5 it is said that mahamudra is:

• Too close to be recognized,
• Too deep to grasp,
• Too easy to believe,
• Too amazing to be understood intellectually.

Those are the four obstacles that prevent its recognition.⁴²

One day I was surprised to see a Kashmiri master refuse to take on a disciple who seemed to be a very serious practitioner. When I asked him the reason for this refusal, he told me: “Not passionate enough. I do not see the quality of tremoring vibration that we like to work with.”

An impassioned person—even if this passion is manifested in hardly orthodox ways, by outrageous exuberance, a difficult personality, outbursts of violent feelings, actions deemed inappropriate—will have every chance of pleasing a Tantric master, on the condition that behind all of it is true generosity.

The case of Lalla, the poet and Kashmiri master of the fourteenth century, is typical. From the age of twelve, Lalla had mystical experiences. She performed miracles, one of which was to elude the fury of her husband, who was attempting to bludgeon her skull with a club. He only succeeded, however, in breaking the earthenware jar she was carrying on her head, while the water retained the shape of the jar.

Lalla, exuberant, convinced her guru, the Siddha Shrikantha, to give her the teachings by defecating on an image of Shiva that was in the guru’s house. When Shrikantha asked her the reason for this act, Lalla replied: “If Shiva is everywhere, he is also in the dirt of the dumping grounds where I usually go. If every place is sacred, why bother choosing?” Convinced by this young aspirant, Shrikantha agreed to give her the teachings after a long wait. Lalla exults over this event in one of her poems:

At last the guru gave me the teachings.
He told me: “Stop turning your attention toward the outside;
Fix it on the Self instead.”
I carried this truth in my Heart
And then I started dancing, naked!

Later, Lalla experienced the awakening of the kundalini:

When differentiating mind is lulled and sleeps,
The Kundalini awakens!
The five senses’ source gushes forth forever.
The water of unceasing presence to the world
Is sweet, and I offer it to Shiva.
The unending sacred tremoring of consciousness
Is the supreme state.⁴³

This marvelous incandescence, this passion, is the particular mark of all the tantrikas. In order to find it, the adept must seize things in their very first tremorings, before differentiating thought intervenes. It is at this instant that the difference is made between a hedonist, whose worldly search is tied to the ego, and the tantrika, who is in search of the most profound spontaneity.