The original publication of this talk was published in Loka 2 (A Journal From Naropa Institute).
THE BLUE PANCAKE
A Teaching on Maha Ati
by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Talk was given at Naropa Institute, 1974
Also taken from Chapter 15 Maha Ati, ‘Journey Without Goal’ – The Tantric Wisdom of the Buddha.
The ninth yana, maha ati or ati yoga, is the final stage of the path. It is both the beginning and the end of the journey. It is not final in the sense that we have finished making a statement and we have nothing more to say, but final in the sense that we feel we have said enough. At this level, if there are any further words, they are the creations of space rather than idle remarks.
The tantric journey is like walking along a winding mountain path. Dangers, obstacles, and problems occur constantly. There are wild animals, earthquakes, landslides, all kinds of things, but still we continue on our journey and we are able to go beyond the obstacles. When we finally get to the summit of the mountain, we do not celebrate our victory. Instead of planting our national flag on the! summit of the mountain, we look down again and see a vast perspective of mountains, rivers, meadows, woods, jungles, and plains. Once we are on the summit of the mountain, we begin to look down, and we feel attracted towards the panoramic quality of what we see. That is ati style. From that point of view, our achievement is not regarded as final but as a re-appreciation of what we have already gone through. In fact, we would like to retake the journey we have been through. So maha ati is the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning.
Ati teachings talk of enormous space. In this case, it is not space as opposed to a boundary, but a sense of total openness. Such openness can never be questioned. Ati yana is regarded as the king of all the yanas. In fact, the traditional Tibetan term for this yana, long gyur thap kyi thekpa (klong gyur thabs kyi theg-pa), means “imperial yana.” It is imperial rather than regal, for while a king has conquered his own country, in order to be an emperor he has to conquer a lot of other territories and other continents as well. An emperor has no need for further conquests; his rule is beyond conquering. Likewise, ati is regarded as ‘‘imperial” because, from the perspective of ati yoga, hinayana discipline is seen as spaciousness; mahayana discipline is seen as spaciousness; and the tantric yanas. as well, are seen as spaciousness. If you review what we have been discussing throughout this book, you will see that we have been taking that point of view. We have discussed everything from the perspective of ati. Because of that, we have been able to view the characteristics of the various yanas and tantric disciplines in terms of openness and spaciousness and inevitability. That notion of wakefulness we have been discussing constantly is the final wakefulness of ati yoga.
Ati yoga teaching or discipline is sometimes defined as that which transcends coming, that which transcends going, and that which transcends dwelling. This definition is something more than the traditional tantric slogan of advaita, or “not two.” In this case, we are looking at things from the level of true reality, not from the point of view of slogan or belief. Things are as they are, very simply, extremely simply so. Therefore things are unchanging, [and therefore things are open as well. The relationship between us and our world is no relationship, because such a relationship is either there or not. We cannot manufacture a concept or idea of relationship to make us feel better.
From the perspective of ati, the rest of the yanas are trying to comfort us: “If you feel separate, don’t worry. There is nonduality as your saving grace. Try to rest your mind in it. Everything is going to be okay. Don’t cry.” In contrast, the approach of ati is a blunt’ and vast attitude of total flop, as if the sky had turned into a gigantic pancake and suddenly descended onto our head, which ironically creates enormous space. That is the ati approach, that larger w^v of thinking, that larger view.
Buddhism has a number of schools, primarily divided into! the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana traditions, and squabbling goes on among all of them. They all speak the language of totality, {and every one of them claims to have the answer. The hinayanists may say that they have the answer because they know reality. The mahayanists may say that the bodhisattva is the best person that we could ever find in the world. Tantric practitioners may say that the most fantastic person is the powerful and crazy yogi who is unconquerable and who has achieved siddhis and magical powers of all kinds. Let them believe what they want. It’s okay. But what do those things mean to us personally, as students who want to practice and who want to experience the teachings?
The maha ati practitioner sees a completely naked world, at the level of marrow, rather than skin or flesh or even bones. In the lower yanas, we develop lots of idioms and terms, and that makes us feel better because we have a lot of things to talk about, such as compassion or emptiness or wisdom. But in fact, that becomes a way of avoiding the actual naked reality of life. Of course, in maha! ati there is warmth, there is openness, there is penetration—all those things are there. But if we begin to divide the dharma, cutting it into little pieces as we would cut a side of beef into sirloin steaks, hamburger, and chuck, with certain cuts of beef more expensive than others, then the dharma is being marketed. In fact, according to Vimalamitra, the reason maha ati is necessary is because throughout the eight lower yanas the dharma has been marketed as a particularly juicy morsel of food. The maha ati level is necessary in order to save the dharma from being parcelled and marketed; that is, it is necessary to preserve the wholesomeness of the whole path.
Actually, if we could make an ati yoga remark, all the yanas are purely creating successively more advanced and mechanized toys. At first, when a child is very young, we give him mobiles to look at, rings to suck, and rattles to shake. Then, when the child is more sophisticated, we give him more sophisticated toys, “(creative playthings,” and brightly colored bricks and sticks to put together. We provide even more sophisticated toys as the child becomes more and more inquisitive and sophisticated, and his mind and body are better coordinated.
Finally, at the level of adulthood, we continue to buy toys for ourselves. When we are old enough, we may buy ourselves a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, or a stereo kit that we can put together. We may even build ourselves a house—the ultimate (Creative plaything. Or we may invent some new gadget: “I designed a new kind of motor car, a new kind of airplane, a new kind of submarine. I built it and it actually worked. Isn’t that fantastic?” We feel that our abilities are becoming much greater because not only ban we build fantastic toys and enjoy them ourselves but we learn how to sell them, market them. When we become really sophisticated, we might design a zoo or even an entire city, and be accepted as important people in our society. It feels fantastic, extremely powerful and encouraging. But we are still fascinated by our toys.
According to ati yoga, going through the yanas is similar to that process ot collecting more and more toys. The more sophisticated and fascinated we become, the more we are actually reducing ourselves to a childlike level. Somehow we are not yet at the level of maha ati if we are still fascinated by our toys, our occupations, no matter how extensive or expansive they may be. At the maha ati level, those little tricks that we play to improve ourselves or to entertain ourselves are no longer regarded as anything—but at the same time they are everything, much vaster than we could have imagined. It is as though we were building a city or a zoo, and suddenly the whole sky turned into a gigantic pancake and dropped on us. There is a new dimension of surprise that we never thought of, we never expected. We never expected the sky to drop on our head.
There is a children’s story about the sky falling, but we do not actually believe that such a thing could happen. The sky turns into a blue pancake and drops on our head—nobody believes that. But in maha ati experience, it actually does happen. There is a new dimension of shock, a new dimension of logic. It is as though we were furiously calculating a mathematical problem in our notebook; and suddenly a new approach altogether dawned on us, stopping jus in our tracks. Our perspective becomes completely different.
Our ordinary approach to reality and truth is so poverty-stricken that we don’t realize that the truth is not one truth, but all truth. It could be everywhere, like raindrops, as opposed to water coining out of a faucet that only one person can drink from at a time. Our limited approach is a problem. It may be our cultural training to believe that only one person can get the truth: “You can receive this, but nobody else can.” There are all sorts of philosophical, psychological, religious, and emotional tactics that we use to motivate ourselves, which say that we can do something but nobody else can. Since we think we are the only one that can do something!, we crank up our machine and we do it. And if it turns out that somebody else has done it already, we begin to feel jealous and resentful. In fact, the dharma has been marketed or auctioned in that way. But from the point of view of ati, there is “all” dharma rather than “the” dharma. The notion of “one and only” does not apply anymore. If the gigantic pancake falls on our head, it falls on everybody’s head.
In some sense it is both a big joke and a big message. You cannot even run to your next-door neighbor saying, “I had a little pancake fall on my head. What can I do? I want to wash my hair.” You have nowhere to go. It is a cosmic pancake that falls everywhere on the face of the earth. You cannot escape—that is the basic point. From that point of view, both the problem and the promise are cosmic.
If you are trying to catch what I am saying, quite possibly you cannot capture the idea. In fact, it is quite possible that you do not understand a word of it. You cannot imagine it in even the slightest, faintest way. But it is possible that there are situations that exist beyond your logic, beyond your system of thinking. That is not an impossibility. In fact it is highly possible.
The earlier yanas talk about the rug being pulled out from under our feet, which is quite understandable. If our landlord kicks us out of our apartment, the rug is pulled out from under our feet obviously. That is quite workable, and we find that we car; relate with our world. But in ati we are talking about the sky collapsing onto us. Nobody thinks of the possibility. It is an entirely different approach. No one can imagine a landlady or a landlord who could pull that trick on us.
In maha ati we are not talking about gaining ground or losing ground, or how we settle down and find our way around. Instead we are talking about how we can develop headroom. Headroom, or the space above us, is the important thing. We are interested in how space could provide us with a relationship to reality, t<j> the world.
I do not think we should go into too much detail about maha ati. I have basically been finger painting, but that is as ‘far as we can go at this point. However, we could discuss another topic that is closely related to ati yana: crazy wisdom.
Using the word crazy from the English language to describe tantric experience is very tricky because of the various ideas we have about craziness. In the American Indian tradition there was a warrior named Crazy Horse. He was a crazy, old, wise eccentric, who was a great warrior and had tremendous couirage. Being crazy is also associated with the idea of being absurd, onj the verge of lunacy. There is also a notion of craziness as being unconventional. And sometimes we talk about somebody being crazy about music or crazy about honey or sugar. We mean that somebody takes excessive pleasure in something or has an excessive fascination, to the point where he might destroy himself by being so crazy about whatever it is.
We might also say that someone is crazy if he doesn’t agree with us. For instance, if we are trying to form a business, we will approach somebody to be our business partner who agrees with our business proposals. We tell him that the two of us can make lots of money. And if we approach this “uncrazy” person properly, he will accept our logic and he will love the idea of going into business with us. Whereas if we approach an intelligent “crazy” person, he will see through us. He will see any holes in our plan or any neurosis that our business might create. So we don’t want to approach such a person as a business partner: “I won’t talk to him. He’s crazy.” What we mean is, “He will see through me. He won’t buy my simplistic logic, my trip.” That description of craziness comes somewhat close to the tantric idea of craziness. Still, such craziness has a sense of basic ground. There is a lot of room, a lot of trust, but there is also a lot of solidity.
We might also view our grandparents’ orthodoxy as crazy. They are so soaked in their own culture and their own normis that they don’t understand our culture at all. Their crazy ways inakc them practically unapproachable to us. We cannot shake their faith and their convictions, and we feel frustrated when we have something to say to them and they don’t respond as we want. So we might regard them as semi-crazy.
I don’t think crazy wisdom fits any of the examples above. Instead crazy wisdom is the basic norm or the basic logic of sanity. It is a transparent view that cuts through conventional norms or conventional emotionalism. It is the notion of relating property with the world. It is knowing how much heat is needed to boil water to make a cup of tea, or how much pressure you should apply to educate your students. That level of craziness is very wise. It is based on being absolutely wise, knowing exactly what to do. Such a wise person is well versed in the ways of the world, and he has developed and understood basic logic. He knows how to build a campfire, how to pitch a tent, and how to brush his teeth. He knows how to handle himself in relating with the world, from the level of knowing how to make a good fire in the fireplace up to knowing the fine points of philosophy. So there is absolute knowledgeability. And then, on top of that, craziness begins to descend, as an ornament to the basic wisdom that is already there.
In other words, crazy wisdom does not occur unless there is a basic understanding of things, a knowledge of how things function as they are. There has to be trust in the normal functioning of karmic- cause and effect. Having been highly and completely trained, then there is enormous room for crazy wisdom. According to -that logic, wisdom does not exactly go crazy; but on top of the basic logic or basic norm, craziness as higher sanity, higher power, or higher magic, can exist.
Maha ati teachings talk of enormous space. In this case, it is not space as opposed
to a boundary, but a sense of total openness. Such openness can never be
questioned. Ati yana (1) is regarded as the king of all the yanas. In fact, the
traditional Tibetan term for this yana means “imperial yana.” It is imperial rather
than regal, for while a king has conquered his own country, in order to be an
emperor he has to conquer a lot of other territories and other continents as well.
An emperor has no need for further conquests; his rule is beyond conquering.
Likewise, ati is regarded as ”imperial” because, from the perspective of ati yoga,
hinayana discipline is seen as spaciousness; mahayana discipline is seen as
spaciousness; and the tantric yanas, as well, are seen as spaciousness.
Ati yoga teaching or discipline is sometimes defined as that which transcends
coming, that which transcends going, and that which transcends dwelling. This
definition is something more than the traditional tantric slogan of advaita, or
“not two.” In this case, we are looking at things from the level of true reality, not
from the point of view of slogan or belief. Things are as they are, very simply,
extremely simply so. Therefore things are unchanging, and therefore things are
open as well. The relationship between us and our world is no relationship,
because such a relationship is either there or not. We cannot manufacture a
concept or idea of relationship to make us feel better.
From the perspective of ati, the rest of the yanas are trying to comfort us: “If you feel separate, don’t worry. There is non-duality as your saving grace. Try to rest your mind in it. Everything is going to be okay. Don’t cry.” In contrast, the approach of ati is a blunt and vast attitude of total flop, as if the sky had turned into a gigantic pancake and suddenly descended onto our head, which ironically creates enormous space. That is the ati approach, that larger way of thinking, that larger view.
Buddhism has a number of schools, primarily divided into the hinayana,
mahayana and vajrayana traditions, and squabbling goes on among all of them.
They all speak the language of totality, and every one of them claims to have the
answer. The hinayanists may say that they have the answer because they know
reality. The mahayanists may say that the bodhisattva is the best person that we
could ever find in the world. Tantric practitioners may say that the most fantastic
person is the powerful and crazy yogi who is unconquerable and who has
achieved siddhis and magical powers of all kinds. Let them believe what they
want. It’s okay. But what do those things mean to us personally, as students who
want to practice and who want to experience the teachings?
The maha ati practitioner sees a completely naked world, at the level of marrow,
rather than skin or flesh or even bones. In the lower yanas, we develop lots of
idioms and terms, and that makes us feel better because we have a lot of things
to talk about, such as compassion or emptiness or wisdom. But in fact, that
becomes a way of avoiding the actual naked reality of life. Of course, in maha ati
there is warmth, there is openness, there is penetration-all those things are there.
But if we begin to divide the dharma, cutting it into little pieces as we would cut
a side of beef into sirloin steaks, hamburger, and chuck, with certain cuts of beef
more expensive than others, then the dharma is being marketed. In fact,
according to Vimalamitra, the reason maha ati is necessary is because throughout
the eight lower yanas the dharma has been marketed as a particularly juicy
morsel of food. The maha ati level is necessary in order to save the dharma from
being parceled and marketed; that is, it is necessary to preserve the
wholesomeness of the whole path.
Actually, if we could make an ati yoga remark, all the yanas are purely creating
successively more advanced and mechanized toys. At first, when a child is very
young, we give him mobiles to look at, rings to suck, and rattles to shake. Then,
when the child is sophisticated, we give him more sophisticated toys, “creative
playthings,” and brightly colored bricks and sticks to put together. We provide
even more sophisticated toys as the child becomes more and more inquisitive
and sophisticated, and his mind and body are better coordinated.
Finally, at the level of adulthood, we continue to buy toys for ourselves. When
we are old enough, we may buy ourselves a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, or a
stereo kit that we can put together. We may even build ourselves a house-the
ultimate creative plaything. Or we may invent some new gadget: “I designed a
new kind of motor car, a new kind of airplane, a new kind of submarine. I built it
and it actually worked. Isn’t that fantastic?” We feel that our abilities are
becoming much greater because not only can we build fantastic toys and enjoy
them ourselves, but we learn how to sell them, market them. When we become
really sophisticated, we might design a zoo or even an entire city, and be
accepted as important people in our society. It feels fantastic, extremely powerful
and encouraging. But we are still fascinated by our toys.
According to ati yoga, going through the yanas is similar to that process of
collecting more and more toys. The more sophisticated and fascinated we
become, the more we are actually reducing ourselves to a childlike level.
Somehow we are not yet at the level of maha ati if we are still fascinated by our
toys, our occupations, no matter how extensive or expansive they may be. At the
maha ati level, those little tricks that we play to improve ourselves or to entertain
ourselves are no longer regarded as anything-but at the same time they are
everything, much vaster than we could have imagined. It is as though we were
building a city or a zoo, and suddenly the whole sky turned into a gigantic
pancake and dropped on us. There is a new dimension of surprise that we never
thought of, we never expected. We never expected the sky to drop on our head.