This is an article inspired by a controversy ignited by Sakya Pandita (1182 - 1251)—one of the five founding fathers of the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism—whose competitive criticism of ‘Paramita Mahamudra’ (also known more positively as ‘Essence Mahamudra’ by both the Kagyu and Gelugpa schools) ignited a long standing debate. I then found an article—‘The Gelug/Kagyü Tradition of Mahamudra’ (a collaborative writing by His Holiness Dalai Lama and Dr. Alexander Berzin [3.])—further distancing the Sakya from recognizing such a tradition, by saying this:
“Thus this tradition seems, I believe, to be a synthesis of Kagyu and Gelug approaches. Although at various points in his autocommentary, the Panchen Lama quotes several texts from the Sakya tradition, he specifically mentions here a list of Kagyu masters of old, not Sakya ones, who have concurred on this anuttarayoga tantra level of mahamudra. Furthermore, the Sakya tradition asserts only a tantra level of mahamudra, whereas both the Kagyu and the Gelug-Kagyu traditions assert both sutra and tantra levels.”
I previously wrote, in support of the Sakya position (especially as emphasize in bold): “As an authentic pith teaching from the Buddha Vajradhara—and one’s qualified Guru—once the disciple experiences the ‘exemplary experience’ of the higher consecrations, it’s an indisputable experiential authentication of one’s Buddha—or vajra—nature. This, as opposed to a conceptual understanding of the empty nature of self and phenomena one might experience after hearing or reading the Buddha’s teaching of it from the Prajnaparamita literature, which would not necessarily be the Mahamudra
experience mentioned above. This is because it’s just the first part, the realizing of nondual clarity and emptiness, and not the second part of a revealed inner and outer ‘body/phenomena’ nonduality—preparing one for a total merger with the mother clear light and its supreme nonduality at the time of death. This ‘body method’, the ineffable experience of an imagined or actual sexual union with a consort, and the resultant primordial wisdom, as opposed to an analytical pointing out, validates the ‘mudra’ part of Mahamudra.” (VD, 9/12/24)
Saraha reaffirms this ‘body method’ while defining characteristic of self-awareness as great bliss, the sensation of which he says escapes panditas due to their focus on erudition and not the grounding of one’s meditation in the emptiness of objects, like a real woman. His commentator explains:
“The bliss aroused from contact with an actual woman is taught to pertain to the level of apparent truth. Again, in order to teach how to stabilize this bliss, which is based on external [causes], [Saraha] says:
All forms should be made space-like in that
[great bliss], and the mental consciousness should be placed in this space-like nature.
(DKA 75ab)” ***[1.]
Another contradiction within the Kagyu lineage (of which Saraha is considered part of) concerning, ‘Paramita Mahamudra’ come from Mikyö Dorje, the 7th Karmapa:
“These days, [so-called] Mahāmudrā realization, in the mountain solitude of Tibet, Is the current discursive form of awareness only. It depends on the study of and reflection on scriptures and reasoning
And arises in the mind-stream Thanks to pointing-out instructions by the lama. …
As for [genuine] Mahāmudrā realization, It is the distinguishing feature of Great Yoga.
Other than that, it occurs upon accomplishment, Through the triad of empowerments, Vows, and conduct, and the like, How could Mahāmudrā be known? [Certainly not] through verbally or symbolically pointing out That one’s mind is merely emptiness.” (31, Mathes on Maitripa) ***[2.]
Further: “Sahajavajra recognized Maitrīpa’s Ten Verses on True Reality as Pāramitā-based pith instructions in accord with the mantra system and distinguished in them a special Mahāmudrā path eventually called Sūtra Mahāmudrā. However, Dīvakāracandra elaborates in his Elucidation of the Wisdom from a Prajñā (Prajñājñānaprakāśa) that it is impossible to attain Mahāmudrā without the erotic bliss of karmamudrā practice.” (93, Mathes)
“In this way—even by a Karmapa’s own words—the Sakya position in such doctrinal matters is especially validated over the Kagyu/Gelugpa assertion ‘that Mahamudra can also arise after merely hearing an analysis of primordial wisdom given by the Guru, without a path initiation into its experience during the three higher consecrations arising the four mandalas out of which Mahamudra reveals itself….’ One has to wonder why the wisdom Paramita vehicle could be unduly elevated to the level of the lightening quick method and wisdom of the resultant Mahayana path, Vajrayana, which exclusively employs the body method of the three higher consecrations.” (VD, 9/12/24.)
That being said, Klaus Deiter Mathes, offers a fairly blunt and convincing answer to why one might pursue a path that mixes Mahayana analysis and Mahamudra technique (that is to say, a ‘Paramita Mahamudra’) in his study on Maitripa and his ‘amanasikāra’ (without mentation) cycle of teachings: “Back in the ’80s, when some of my Dharma friends were planning to join the first three-year retreat in Halscheid, Germany, I was told that, following the Maitrīpa lineage, it was also possible to practice Mahāmudrā on the basis of a special form of śamatha and vipaśyanā that does not depend on the six dharmas of Nāropa. A direct realization of one’s true nature of mind would not only be possible through formal tantric empowerment and practice in a three-year retreat, but also in a direct mind-to-mind transmission of realization that can happen, for example, through special pith instructions of otherwise exhausting philosophical texts. Maitrīpa’s Ten Verses on True Reality (Tattvadaśaka) are enhanced by such instructions (as implied by verse 2) and open up, according to Maitrīpa’s disciple Sahajavajra, a not-specifically-tantric access to Mahāmudrā. I vividly remember Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatsho Rinpoche’s inspiring explanations of logic, Madhyamaka, and the Maitreya works that amounted to something similar to what must have been happening during such pith instructions.” (Mathes, Intro.)
I became a devotee of Saraha after being introduced to Herbert V. Günther’s Publication of the Song of Saraha: Study in the History of Buddhist Thought (January 1, 1973). I found Saraha’s Dohas immediately understandable and compelling, though years if not lifetimes away from seriously practicing. I poured over that holy book, just a few years after its publication, and can appreciate Mathes’ statement “a special form of śamatha and vipaśyanā that does not depend on the six dharmas of Nāropa.” At that time, of course, initiation into and teachings on those six yogas was not readily obtainable. Unless perhaps you were a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at, ironically, Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado. Or, at his (16th Karmapa sanctioned) Karmê Chöling dharma center in Barnet, Vermont (originally called, perhaps more appropriately, ‘Tale of the Tiger.’) Even then, the rigor and expense of preparatory academic study and foundational meditations were costly in more ways than one. I’d already been practicing Soto Zen for several years (having taken a preliminary refuge with Genkaku Roshi) according to the Reverend Master Jiyu-Kennett of Shasta Abbey, Mt. Shasta, California. This was while earning my Masters degree in English at nearby CSU, after which I felt I needed a less ‘academic’ and, much less, social Dharma scene.
Blessedly, after a night of debauchery at the Hotel Boulderado, while walking on the shoulder of the Foothill’s PKW from Boulder to Louisville—some 15 miles in the middle of the night—Mani mantras mystically descended upon me. I started reciting them vehemently, and within ten days I was in New York City taking refuge with H.E. Deshung Rinpoche, who in the year 1977, was senior monk of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. He was also, at that time, in a ten million Mani recitations retreat. Could it be some of his Mani’s fished me out of Boulder’s toxic waters? Personally, I’ve never doubted it.
Rinpoche, recognized in his day as one of the foremost yogi-scholars from Tibet, received many of Buddhism’s top teachers, dignitaries, luminaries, and disciples from both East and West. After kneeling before him, and offering a khata, my fervent request was for him to show me ‘the nature of one’s own mind.’ This was an almost embarrassingly Zen thing to request. He smiled patiently, replying ‘slowly, slowly.’ And so for the next three-and-a-half years, I and a dozen other struggling New Yorkers, were taught the exoteric, ‘Three Levels of Spiritual Perception,’ quite thoroughly inculcating us with Mahayana values and Madhyamika tenets. Once he was satisfied this fortunate dozen of us—to a one extremely devoted disciples—were properly prepared, we were then delivered into the equally compassionate hands of His Holiness the Sakya Trizen, 41st (Kyabgon Sakya Gongma Vajradhara), who matriculated most of us all the way through the preeminent Mahamudra pith teachings, The Precious Lamdre, starting with Lam dre lob shéy in Purwala, India, in 1980-81.
Also having an affinity for Saraha, Mathes has this to say: “[The siddha], Maitripa is revered for standing in a lineage of transmission that goes back to the great Brahmin Saraha (ca. tenth century), whose teaching and spontaneous songs of realization reached Maitripa through the tantric Nagarjuna and mystical Savaripa. Later Tibetan doxographers referred to Saraha's songs as Essence Mahamudra, as they enable qualified disciples immediate access to the true nature of mind. This is considered possible through a direct mind-to-mind transmission of the guru's blessing, as expressed in a verse by Saraha that Savaripa sang when granting Maitripa tantric empowerment:
“‘When the natural mind has been purified,
The guru's qualities enter your heart.’
Realizing this, Saraha sang this song:
‘Though he had not seen a single tantra, a
single mantra. When the guru’s words have
entered your heart,
It is like seeing a treasure in the palm of your
hand.” (9, Mathes.)
After five decades of Lam dre blessings and some humbling and lengthy Hevajra retreat experiences, I’d say—strictly based on personal experience—that the Sakya school also has an ‘essence’ Mahamudra. It’s in the yoga with the vow bound-deity and mudra per se. In this case, the dakini consort, Buddha Dagmema (Nairatmya Yogini), who blessedly visits the most fortunate and diligent supplicants in their retreats, as she originally did with the Mahasiddha Virupa. (But perhaps never since as dramatically and spectacularly so.) In doing so, She, coupled with mantra and Guru as one force, completely halts one’s mentation for indeterminate lengths of time. While at first, this may seem a heart-stopping experience, one adjusts to it through the love of Guru and psychic support of one’s protectors. After experiencing one’s primordial love, the Buddha Dagmema, changing ‘that into this’ and ‘this’ back into ‘that,’ the illusory play of the two yogic processes— uttpanakrama (generation) and sampanakrama (perfecting/exhausting)—are accomplished. With one’s emotive and cognitive obscurations transformed into purifies, and one’s notion of a substantive self ‘exhausted,’ Mahamudra begins.
Saraha, on deity yoga as a supremely non-dual accomplishment, speaks of this very illusory play and experience of ego death. First, from his commentator:
“Having ascertained and understood in
this way, the master yogin, whose intellect [dwells] in true reality alone and who is uniquely skilled in the display of illusion,
plays with the richness of objects.” 654
[Next, Saraha] says:
The deity is generated and even the goal is
seen. 655
You kill yourself. What good does it do you?”
656 (DKA 63ab)
When the deity is seen directly with its marks, having arisen in its (complete] form, then you kill yourself (lit. "the self dies"). What will this deity do [to youl?] To put it plainly, nothing at all. 657 Therefore, [Saraha] says: 658
Samsara is not uprooted then, 659 [but]
without practice there is no departure (from samsara,” 660 (DKA, 63cd)
This realization, in that it’s post-union, a true ‘sahaja’ with the observer entirely removed—or “killed”—may be beyond that of any pointing out essence mahamudra, minus a consort ‘woman’ as a grounding object countering conceptuality, as one’s mentation is also halted.
Is this equivalent, or superior to, Maitripa’s amanasikāra (without mentation) cycle of teachings? When we consider that during Maitripa’s tantric empowerment his guru, Savaripa, sang one of Sarah’s songs, as quoted above—
When the natural mind has been purified,
The guru's qualities enter your heart. Realizing this, Saraha sang this song,
Though he had not seen a single tantra, a single mantra.
—it seems at least an equivalent
From this it also seems Saraha eschewed a strictly tantric approach. Or at least found it dispensable, attesting as well to anti-conceptual method, as witnessed in his writings of murderous dakinis. That a mudra or yogini would actually kill the yogin is mentioned elsewhere in Saraha’s Dohas and with even deeper anti-conceptual, or ‘conventional,’ implications:
“Other ordinary [persons] see with their human eyes [that the man] gets killed and eaten, but yoginis neither kill nor eat anyone. It is rather that he who is full of the coemergent and whose nature is the coemergent is dissolved into the coemergent. 831 This is the idea. Therefore the yoginis' conduct is at odds with all treatises and worldly convention. 832
To make this clear, [Saraha] says:
The husband is eaten and becomes radiant
within the coemergent. 833
Passion and dispassion is performed
[again], 834
and she stands next to her own 835
[husband] being broken in her mind.
[Such] a yogini appears to me. 836 (DKA
83)
Once her [own] 837 husband is eaten and becomes radiant within the coemergent
nature, she starts [the cycle of] passion over again.” (Mathes and Szántó)
Related to this is the Khmer preah sang (sangha) probation tale, often told at Prasat Neak Poan (entwined serpents?) in Angkor Archeological Park. Here, there is an artificial island with a Mahayana Buddhist temple, where once upon a time a ‘Potisat’ from Shrī Lanka came to ancient Cambodia and chose a small elite number (8?) of male hopefuls to become sangha members of the famed Abhayagiri Vihara. They mount the magical horse Balaha and are instructed not to turn around and wave goodbye to their wives as they fly away. But, alas, they all do and in so doing they fall off their magical transport and land at the feet of carnivorous witches—the real nature of their wives—who then eat them alive. This object lesson is typical of the strict religious messaging heard in the Sot chanting of present day Mahanikaya Theravada monks in Cambodia.
Given Saraha’s interpretation of dakini salvation, however, if may be the probates, who were really headed for monastic servitude in a Senegalese mega-monastery, were not really ‘killed’ and eaten at all. But rather duly transformed by sexual union with their ‘wives’—who were really dakinis with hearts of gold and lotuses dispensing bodhicitta nectar—and so they then all became ‘radiant within the coemergent nature.’ So runs the imagination, and ameliorative interpretation, broaching all three vehicles—Shravaka, Mahayana, and Vajrayana—which were present in the ancient Angkor Kingdom, for over three hundred years.
The salvic significance of mudra relationships for the Highest Tantra yogin is familiarity with the lotus-bagha-womb-vagina with which all beings are obsessed. “Drowning/ In the sea of love/ Where everyone would love to drown” is how Stevie Nicks, a popular American singer-songwriter, expressed her own liking of the ‘lotus.’ Saraha, in his SPONTANEOUS SONGS concludes that beings, having died in a state of bliss, seek a state of bliss in the bardo, where the recently dead await rebirth in a disembodied state for up to forty-nine days, according to the Vajrayana teachings, or even much longer, according to the Shravaka vehicle.
Haven’t you ever noticed just walking down the street how people with sex on their mind will be glancing downward, perhaps ever so briefly, at the genital region of a passerby they find attractive? To me, the above habit (which Sadhguru dismissed as just natural behavior) signals the third kind of suffering: the addiction to copulation, death, and taking incessant rebirths through beginningless time. This may also demonstrate the compulsive nature of one of the Eight Worldly Dharmas, ‘attraction and aversion,’ as well, depending on the looker’s sexual bias. A remedy for both of these is in the turning of the ‘irreversible chakra’, referring to the Third Consecration, facilitated either by an imagined ‘wisdom consort’ or an action ‘live’ mudra.
Some traditions caution lay practitioners against the latter, unless one is advanced, and with the monks, unless all is experienced as the Vajra dhatu. Yet, some experience with a live, action mudra, may be necessary to facilitate the full power of an imagined, wisdom one. Preferable, according to some yogic Masters, is union with the ‘action’ over the ‘wisdom’ mudra, including His Holiness the Fourteen Dalai Lama. As head of the Gelugpa school and its monastic order, this is somewhat pleasantly surprising. In all probability, an action mudra was primarily used—I would think at least once—by most practitioners up until Je Tsongkhapa (founding father of the Gelugpa) revised certain practices or imposed prohibitions. Such as the use of an action mudra during the Third Consecration while practicing New Translation School Anuttara tantras. This, of course, was to better suit the Tibetan, Vinaya vow-holding, monastic community.
Saraha seems to have both alternately promoted and derided action mudras. Like asking, why sit the entire net of samsara upon your lap? And flatly stating the coemergent will not come from such a rubbing of genitals together. Strictly speaking, he’s right. But in a larger context, I’m not so sure, as an action mudra can destroy the false notion of things being existent or non-existent through the descent of Primordial Wisdom—within the Third Consecration’s blessing—perhaps every time. This by cutting through coarse consciousness and bringing about a deep awareness of the subtler nature of mind, which is at the heart of all Buddhist realization.
Buddhism’s Four Seals are: (1) all conditioned phenomena are transient, (2) all polluted phenomena are duhkha (unsatisfactory) in nature, (3) all phenomena are empty and selfless, and (4) nirvana is true peace (https://wisdomexperience.org). Mahamudra also has four seals; but, as we shall see, they’re more closely related to Buddhism’s Four Seals when done using a consort. These two sets of four seals link to the Four Noble Truths as vehicles of a universal application according to the level of the practitioner’s abilities and karmic circumstances. In the Four Seals of Mahamudra, sexual union facilitates “the tantric practitioners' relying on a transferring partner, or ‘messenger,’ – someone to help them transfer themselves to higher states of insight and realization – as an external method to bring life-force to their practice is the seal of their behavior,” this according to Drikungpa Jigten Gonpo, the founder of the Drikung Kagyu tradition. He also wrote, concerning Mahamudra’s four seals, “relying on external and internal methods, joining their mind and energy-winds together at the center of their chakras – primarily, their heart chakra – without ever separating the two, is the seal of their preventive measures. Never letting the vows and close bonds degenerate that they receive at empowerments is the seal of their close bond. Taking as foundation their keeping of all their vows and close bonds and then, by relying on external and internal methods such as gathering their mind and energy-winds at the center of their heart chakra, manifesting the deep awareness that is a discrimination of voidness arising inseparably from being a blissful awareness, in other words manifesting simultaneously arising deep awareness, is their great seal.” (berzinarchives.com)
Sexual union is also key in broadening the appeal and effectiveness—in short, its skill in means—of tantric practices over sutric one. Understanding this helps in decoding their respective literatures as well. For example, an interpolation on the standard sutric opening line, ‘Once upon a time on Vulture Peak,’ altered in a tantra to the equivalent of, ‘Once Upon a Time In the Vulva of Chamunda.’ The latter, of course, isn’t in a tantra. But rather is the title of a piece I previously wrote in these pages. To help clarify its meaning, I used as a primary authority the most influential Sanskritists for the West, David Lorenzen, and excerpts from his seminal work on the tantric Kapalikas:
”The meditation on the ‘Self as seated in the vulva’ is reminiscent of the Buddhist tantric maxim: ‘Buddhahood resides in the woman’s vulva.’ The term bhaga (vulva) also has a variety of meanings, especially in the Buddhist Tantras. Many of these texts begin with the words: ‘Once upon a time the Lord of all Tathagatas was dwelling in the vulvae of the vajra-women.’ This is an example of what Bharati calls afferent sandha-terminology—the use of object words, frequently erotic ones, to ‘intend’ metaphysical or mystical concepts. Here the commentators explain bhaga as the ‘void-element’ (kha-dhatu) or the ‘void’ (Śūnyatā), and also as Prajna, the female personification of enlightenment.’” (As previously quoted in Vajra Tales, June 23, 2024)
Mahamudra then—reframed as something like ‘Consort Mahamudra’—is one that keys into this third suffering (the Suffering of Suffering) of habitual rebirths, by transforming the afflicted addiction to menstrual blood and semen into one for the coded words rakta and bodhicitta, purifying one’s vision so that the transiting bardo being’s continuum manifests, for example, the sambhogakaya form of a Bodhisattva residing in a Buddhafield, instead of a wretched being in the animal realm, or worse. While this may be an oversimplification of the rebirth process—certainly from the Shravika’s pointing of view—where there is thought to be a karmic matching of bardo being and future parents (see Vajra Diaries, ‘After Death States, Tibetan and Pali Traditions,’ Nov., 19th, 2023), it’s germane to what really distinguishes ‘Mahamudra’ from other stages of meditative of Buddhist realization. That ‘mudra’ of the compound Maha-mudra is none other than the ‘mother’ who has birthed all beings throughout a beginningless time. As this death and rebirth cycle is a ceaseless continuum, it means she too has also been birthed by all other beings. This is an essential Mahayana tenet that aids in teaching its selfless practices of loving kindness and compassion. Another mainstay tenet, stated above, is that all women are “Prajna, the female personification of enlightenment.” Also, as the second of Buddhism’s Four Seals, this practice of sexual union within the transformative Third Consecration—the experiencing of Primordial Wisdom—is a preventative seal, or measure, opponent to the Suffering of Suffering’s ceaseless rebirths—a salvic aspect of achieving its irreversible chakra.
As some masters have mentioned, the mudra is a synecdoche for a woman and mother, and becomes the base or ground of the practitioner’s complete purification of death and resultant union with ultimate reality. As in the ultimate union of ‘the son’ clear light merging with the ‘mother’ clear light. So, concerning Mahamudra in general, how can it not be in union with a mudra? Who is essentially the Great Mother—perennially an action/imagined consort—as well as Prajnaparamita who embodies both wisdom and enlightenment. This is why the Essence Mahamudra of the Sakya is in the mudra per se, action or imagined, and I say preferably action—at least once within the lifetime of the tantric practitioner—so the exemplary experience is authentic and reliable.
***Notes:
1. Saraha’s Dohas, with the two commentators Advayavajra and Moksakaragupta, is taken from STUDIES IN INDIAN AND TIBETAN, BUDDHISM SARAHA'S SPONTANEOUS SONGS. Trans., Klaus-Dieter Mathes and Péter-Dániel Szántó.
2. Maitripa: India's Yogi of Nondual Bliss [Lives of the Masters Book 7] Dieter-Mathes, Klaus.
3. "The Gelug/ Kagyü Tradition of Mahamudra" was originally written in Dharamsala, India, March 1982 and published as H. H. the Dalai Lama and Berzin, Alexander, Ithaca, Snow Lion, 1997
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