October 9, 2024 • 16 mins
When secret teachings are spoken of in Tibetan Buddhism, the word "secret" is much closer in meaning to "sacred" or "holy" than it is to the meaning of "unknown to outsiders".
When the 15th Karmapa, Khakhyab Dorje, refers to the Mani, the most famous mantra of all, as a "secret" mantra, we know the word has meanings quite different from what we might expect.
A dorje and bell with an unusual design
Here are some words or phrases you might want to look up:
- Dorje
- Vajrayana
- Mahamudra
- Dzogchen
- Mala
- Dudjom Rinpoche
- Ekajati
#Buddhism #Vajrayana #Tibet #DoubleDorje #secret #secrecy
Note that other distribution platforms do not usually pass the transcript on, and if you want to read it you may need to listen on podbean. YouTube has been making its own transcript, which was an unholy mess. I think I have now deleted all of these "auto-generated" scripts, but it will not be possible to retrospectively add properly edited transcripts to episodes prior to September 2024.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Listen.
Do you want to know a secret?
Tibetan Buddhism is full of secret teachings. Wow. Wouldn't it be cool to know secret teachings?
Well, hello my listeners. Now I know I say this every time, but I hope you do feel warmly welcome to this episode of the Double Dorje podcast. I'm Alex Wilding and in this episode I want to talk...
(00:40):
SHhh... about secrecy in Tibetan Buddhism.
To begin, or rather, before we begin, please, please, would you pause for a moment to like this episode, subscribe to the podcast, tell your friends, and so forth in whatever way is appropriate for the channel on which you are listening. At the time of first publishing the podcast is hosted on Podbean, but it's very likely that you're listening somewhere else.
(01:07):
If you do want to see the brief comments, but they don't appear in your channel, you will find them on podbean.
I venture to suggest that it is as important to come to grips with the
whole nest of ideas surrounding secret and secrecy in Tibetan Buddhism, as important as it is to understand, for example, the significance of a vajra or dorje.
(01:33):
It's an essential concept in the tantric approach to practice.
Like the word tantra itself, which as we know has been hijacked ,and distorted practically beyond recognition, secret has also been misunderstood.
It's been abused. It's been used to generate fascination because, like I said, it is cool to be in possession of deep yogic secrets or even cooler, to be seen to be in possession of them.
(02:03):
The word has also been used as part of the cover for psychological, financial and sexual abuse.
The vajra vehicle of vajrayana has a couple of other names which, although they do appear on the surface quite different, are in fact synonymous.
And one of these is the secret mantra vehicle.
(02:25):
Knowing that, it should be no surprise that the term secret is centrally important, and indeed as important as vajra.
I was on the point of saying that we should practically forget the meaning of secret in English and perhaps other Western languages,
and start from scratch to understand its context here.
(02:50):
Paradoxically, however, I don't think it's actually a bad translation. One of the main possible meanings of sang is that something is not known to outsiders - exactly what our word secret means. So I think we might as well stick with it rather than looking around for some weird and wonderful alternative that's never going to catch on.
(03:12):
But in doing that, we really must realise, and we must make an effort to remember,
that in our context of Tibetan style Buddhism, although that meaning of secret may indeed be correct, it's only a seed of a much broader idea.
You might say it's kind of a focal point for the whole wide idea called secret.
(03:38):
In many cases it doesn't at all mean that something is secret in this usual sense of outsiders don't know.
Most importantly, it often means something intimate or private. The sang khang, for example, whose surface translation is secret room, is simply the toilet.
(04:01):
The word toilet, of course, is our own indirect way of referring to the shit-house.
More interestingly, the term sang yum,
for which a word for word translation would be secret mother, secret consort or secret lady of, let's say, a high lama,
in no way means that the couple are having a secret affair.
(04:26):
Referring to the woman concerned as a sangyum is a respectable and respectful, almost a honorific way of referring to her as a consort. Or you might say, wife. To be honest, I would tend to avoid the word wife because it's liable to bring in its wake the whole western-Christian
superstructure of, indeed, Christian marriage, and that's a superstructure that does not apply.
(04:55):
The thing here is that there is no secret in the normal sense involved in such a case.
So we need to leave aside the idea that secret always means secret in the sense of being unknown to others. It can mean that, but that side of the meaning can be almost irrelevant.
This issue does get deeper.
(05:18):
There is a a structure I suppose the word we might use is a trope -
that's used ever and again in Tibetan Buddhist liturgy, meditation instructions, commentary, and so on.
And that is the structure of outer, inner and secret levels which are applied to both understanding and to practice. In other words, the secret level is even closer to you than the inner level.
(05:45):
This scheme can be applied in a range of ways, but one example could be that, for instance, outwardly one maintains proper ethical behaviour, inwardly one is motivated by compassion and by the understanding of emptiness - the bodhisattva path, in other words -
and that secretly, one maintains the tantric vows holding to the vision of oneself as an enlightened Buddha and to the surrounding world as the mandala.
(06:16):
This trope also appears with a fourfold expression outer inner, secret, and ultimate.
The idea here is much the same, but in this case the ultimate inexpressible recognition of the empty, radiant clarity of the mind -essence is, as it were, split off from the secret level to give it more emphasis.
(06:41):
This fourfold version, with that extra emphasis on the ultimate level, is therefore particularly useful in the traditions that emphasise mahamudra or dzogchen,
the two approaches focussing on resting in the recognition of that non-conceptual wisdom that's at the heart of the highest levels of practice.
(07:15):
This scheme is used for theoretical discussion, but the theory here is the theory of practice rather than of any rarefied philosophy.
The outer aspect includes the obvious things like lifestyle and ethics. The inner aspect involves the cultivation of compassion and the wisdom of emptiness, referred to as bodhichitta. The secret aspect now particularly refers to tantric practice, with visualisation, mantra recitation, breath control,
(07:45):
perhaps, and also perhaps physical yogas, in which the internal channels and winds are manipulated. Exciting stuff!
The ultimate level, then, on the basis of the inner practice, is mahamudra or dzogchen. In other words, practice based on the essence of mind.
(08:06):
I want to emphasise again that this is a scheme that can be applied in ways other than those I have just mentioned. You can, for instance, have an outer section of a practice that involves the visualisation of a deity, rather than being concerned with ethics in ordinary life,
followed by an inner section involving a modified form of that deity,
(08:30):
and a so-called secret section with a third form.
Perhaps, then, there might even be an ultimate section that does not involve visualisation, or at least only peripherally.
So when we say something like:
The teachings in this 500 page, brocade-wrapped book is a secret teaching,
(08:55):
what does this really mean?
It means that the teaching covered in this large text operates at the secret level.
It's true that that does mean that practitioners are not, and indeed should not, be going to talk about it with outsiders.
(09:16):
But the reason they shouldn't do that is that it is too precious, too special, too deep, too intimate, too private for idle chatter.
I'm sure that most listeners would not normally go into detail in casual conversation about what they get up to in private with their spouses and intimate partners.
(09:38):
The secrecy of the teaching may therefore indeed mean that it is not immediately easy for an outsider to pry into the particular prayers, visualisations, mantras and practises described in the text.
The fact is that if the outsider digs around enough, especially in these days of the Internet, they probably can find an awful lot of that out.
(10:04):
But would this do the outsider any good? Probably not a lot, beyond perhaps a bit of curiosity being satisfied.
Because without the profound personal connection to these teachings,
a connection that's brought about through empowerment, explanation and what we call the blessing of the lineage coming through the personal teacher, and without being actually engaged in the practice, then the outsider will not have the connection at the secret level that gives the practice power and meaning.
(10:39):
For the practitioner, on the other hand, the practice and all its associated methods are profound and sacred.
I don't know how well I'm getting this point across, so I want to give you a couple of contrasting cases.
(11:00):
The first one is a misunderstanding of secret, although probably a rather harmless one.
In an Internet forum a few days ago,
a user posted a picture of a rather odd looking dorje and bell.
The design of the bell was rather unusual,
(11:21):
but the dorje even more so.
In the place of the lotus petals that almost invariably, I would have said invariably, emerge from the central sphere and support the prongs,
there was a ring of what looked to be pieces of turquoise. I couldn't say whether it was real or synthetic - I wouldn't know how to judge.
(11:44):
These pieces are embedded like a mosaic in some kind of compound or other.
The poster was asking for opinions as to whether this was, so to speak, serious, or whether it was something that had been made for the tourist market.
One respondent then expressed the opinion that It's for Tantric practitioners, their use display and discussion are supposed to be fully secret. Hmmm.
(12:13):
The implication seemed to be that posting the photograph and talking about it was, in the view of that respondent, very, very naughty, possibly involving a breakage of tantric vows, and who knows what consequences follow from that? I don't like to think!
This kind of thinking, I'm sure,
is far too literal.
To be sure, ones dorje and bell, ones mala and all the other ritual things one may have are secret.
(12:40):
One does not display them casually to all and sundry. They are kept in whatever sacred corner or room is used for practice away from the eyes of passing visitors.
But this is because they are special and sacred, not because they are something that other people should not or cannot know about.
Oh, by the way, you may know that I usually include a few technical terms that you might want to look up in the notes to each episode, and you'll see the picture of the unusual dorje I've been talking about there.
(13:15):
As a counter example, consider a prayer composed by Dudjom Rimpoche addressing the Dharma protector Ekajati.
This prayer includes the line, Please spread and expand the teachings of the great secret.
Might sound contradictory if we haven't understood the significance of the secret in these contexts. Clearly, Dudjom Rimpoche is neither encouraging Ekajati nor encouraging his own students to stop treating their sacred texts, ritual objects, mantras and so on with the traditional level of respect.
(13:51):
Far from it.
The prayer is for the deep secret at the heart of the vajryana,
something that's secret because it is so subtle, and although quite simple, very hard to comprehend, and probably next to impossible to put into words, for this secret to be spread for the benefit of all beings.
(14:12):
Needless to say, that great deep secret is not something conceptual like visualise a seventeen-petal pink lotus at your left shoulder and recite, piddle-paddle-twiddle-twaddle 108 times while standing on your left leg and holding your breath.
He is praying that those who have a connection to these teachings will reach the profound spiritual insight the secret at the heart of vajrayana practice.
(14:42):
As a final thought, but it's not one that I want to particularly develop in this episode,
the emphasis on secrecy,
especially when it's misunderstood in that over-literal way,
does feed into the power structures that surround abusive lamas.
Unfortunately, as we know - and I have spoken about this - such lamas do exist, and the idea of secrecy can be used to strengthen the feeling that calling the lama out on these abuses instead of keeping them secret is somehow a breakage of one's sacred vows.
(15:23):
Hmm.
So after that final thought, here is a final final question.
How many Buddhists does it take to change a light bulb?
The answer is none. Everything always is in a constant state of change.
And so thankfully, we've come to the actual end. Please remember to like this episode of the Double Dorje, to subscribe or do whatever it is that suits your channel. And remember:
(15:53):
Some things are secret.
Bye.
Listen.
Do you want to know a secret?
Tibetan Buddhism is full of secret teachings. Wow. Wouldn't it be cool to know secret teachings?
Well, hello my listeners. Now I know I say this every time, but I hope you do feel warmly welcome to this episode of the Double Dorje podcast. I'm Alex Wilding and in this episode I want to talk...
(00:40):
SHhh... about secrecy in Tibetan Buddhism.
To begin, or rather, before we begin, please, please, would you pause for a moment to like this episode, subscribe to the podcast, tell your friends, and so forth in whatever way is appropriate for the channel on which you are listening. At the time of first publishing the podcast is hosted on Podbean, but it's very likely that you're listening somewhere else.
(01:07):
If you do want to see the brief comments, but they don't appear in your channel, you will find them on podbean.
I venture to suggest that it is as important to come to grips with the
whole nest of ideas surrounding secret and secrecy in Tibetan Buddhism, as important as it is to understand, for example, the significance of a vajra or dorje.
(01:33):
It's an essential concept in the tantric approach to practice.
Like the word tantra itself, which as we know has been hijacked ,and distorted practically beyond recognition, secret has also been misunderstood.
It's been abused. It's been used to generate fascination because, like I said, it is cool to be in possession of deep yogic secrets or even cooler, to be seen to be in possession of them.
(02:03):
The word has also been used as part of the cover for psychological, financial and sexual abuse.
The vajra vehicle of vajrayana has a couple of other names which, although they do appear on the surface quite different, are in fact synonymous.
And one of these is the secret mantra vehicle.
(02:25):
Knowing that, it should be no surprise that the term secret is centrally important, and indeed as important as vajra.
I was on the point of saying that we should practically forget the meaning of secret in English and perhaps other Western languages,
and start from scratch to understand its context here.
(02:50):
Paradoxically, however, I don't think it's actually a bad translation. One of the main possible meanings of sang is that something is not known to outsiders - exactly what our word secret means. So I think we might as well stick with it rather than looking around for some weird and wonderful alternative that's never going to catch on.
(03:12):
But in doing that, we really must realise, and we must make an effort to remember,
that in our context of Tibetan style Buddhism, although that meaning of secret may indeed be correct, it's only a seed of a much broader idea.
You might say it's kind of a focal point for the whole wide idea called secret.
(03:38):
In many cases it doesn't at all mean that something is secret in this usual sense of outsiders don't know.
Most importantly, it often means something intimate or private. The sang khang, for example, whose surface translation is secret room, is simply the toilet.
(04:01):
The word toilet, of course, is our own indirect way of referring to the shit-house.
More interestingly, the term sang yum,
for which a word for word translation would be secret mother, secret consort or secret lady of, let's say, a high lama,
in no way means that the couple are having a secret affair.
(04:26):
Referring to the woman concerned as a sangyum is a respectable and respectful, almost a honorific way of referring to her as a consort. Or you might say, wife. To be honest, I would tend to avoid the word wife because it's liable to bring in its wake the whole western-Christian
superstructure of, indeed, Christian marriage, and that's a superstructure that does not apply.
(04:55):
The thing here is that there is no secret in the normal sense involved in such a case.
So we need to leave aside the idea that secret always means secret in the sense of being unknown to others. It can mean that, but that side of the meaning can be almost irrelevant.
This issue does get deeper.
(05:18):
There is a a structure I suppose the word we might use is a trope -
that's used ever and again in Tibetan Buddhist liturgy, meditation instructions, commentary, and so on.
And that is the structure of outer, inner and secret levels which are applied to both understanding and to practice. In other words, the secret level is even closer to you than the inner level.
(05:45):
This scheme can be applied in a range of ways, but one example could be that, for instance, outwardly one maintains proper ethical behaviour, inwardly one is motivated by compassion and by the understanding of emptiness - the bodhisattva path, in other words -
and that secretly, one maintains the tantric vows holding to the vision of oneself as an enlightened Buddha and to the surrounding world as the mandala.
(06:16):
This trope also appears with a fourfold expression outer inner, secret, and ultimate.
The idea here is much the same, but in this case the ultimate inexpressible recognition of the empty, radiant clarity of the mind -essence is, as it were, split off from the secret level to give it more emphasis.
(06:41):
This fourfold version, with that extra emphasis on the ultimate level, is therefore particularly useful in the traditions that emphasise mahamudra or dzogchen,
the two approaches focussing on resting in the recognition of that non-conceptual wisdom that's at the heart of the highest levels of practice.
(07:15):
This scheme is used for theoretical discussion, but the theory here is the theory of practice rather than of any rarefied philosophy.
The outer aspect includes the obvious things like lifestyle and ethics. The inner aspect involves the cultivation of compassion and the wisdom of emptiness, referred to as bodhichitta. The secret aspect now particularly refers to tantric practice, with visualisation, mantra recitation, breath control,
(07:45):
perhaps, and also perhaps physical yogas, in which the internal channels and winds are manipulated. Exciting stuff!
The ultimate level, then, on the basis of the inner practice, is mahamudra or dzogchen. In other words, practice based on the essence of mind.
(08:06):
I want to emphasise again that this is a scheme that can be applied in ways other than those I have just mentioned. You can, for instance, have an outer section of a practice that involves the visualisation of a deity, rather than being concerned with ethics in ordinary life,
followed by an inner section involving a modified form of that deity,
(08:30):
and a so-called secret section with a third form.
Perhaps, then, there might even be an ultimate section that does not involve visualisation, or at least only peripherally.
So when we say something like:
The teachings in this 500 page, brocade-wrapped book is a secret teaching,
(08:55):
what does this really mean?
It means that the teaching covered in this large text operates at the secret level.
It's true that that does mean that practitioners are not, and indeed should not, be going to talk about it with outsiders.
(09:16):
But the reason they shouldn't do that is that it is too precious, too special, too deep, too intimate, too private for idle chatter.
I'm sure that most listeners would not normally go into detail in casual conversation about what they get up to in private with their spouses and intimate partners.
(09:38):
The secrecy of the teaching may therefore indeed mean that it is not immediately easy for an outsider to pry into the particular prayers, visualisations, mantras and practises described in the text.
The fact is that if the outsider digs around enough, especially in these days of the Internet, they probably can find an awful lot of that out.
(10:04):
But would this do the outsider any good? Probably not a lot, beyond perhaps a bit of curiosity being satisfied.
Because without the profound personal connection to these teachings,
a connection that's brought about through empowerment, explanation and what we call the blessing of the lineage coming through the personal teacher, and without being actually engaged in the practice, then the outsider will not have the connection at the secret level that gives the practice power and meaning.
(10:39):
For the practitioner, on the other hand, the practice and all its associated methods are profound and sacred.
I don't know how well I'm getting this point across, so I want to give you a couple of contrasting cases.
(11:00):
The first one is a misunderstanding of secret, although probably a rather harmless one.
In an Internet forum a few days ago,
a user posted a picture of a rather odd looking dorje and bell.
The design of the bell was rather unusual,
(11:21):
but the dorje even more so.
In the place of the lotus petals that almost invariably, I would have said invariably, emerge from the central sphere and support the prongs,
there was a ring of what looked to be pieces of turquoise. I couldn't say whether it was real or synthetic - I wouldn't know how to judge.
(11:44):
These pieces are embedded like a mosaic in some kind of compound or other.
The poster was asking for opinions as to whether this was, so to speak, serious, or whether it was something that had been made for the tourist market.
One respondent then expressed the opinion that It's for Tantric practitioners, their use display and discussion are supposed to be fully secret. Hmmm.
(12:13):
The implication seemed to be that posting the photograph and talking about it was, in the view of that respondent, very, very naughty, possibly involving a breakage of tantric vows, and who knows what consequences follow from that? I don't like to think!
This kind of thinking, I'm sure,
is far too literal.
To be sure, ones dorje and bell, ones mala and all the other ritual things one may have are secret.
(12:40):
One does not display them casually to all and sundry. They are kept in whatever sacred corner or room is used for practice away from the eyes of passing visitors.
But this is because they are special and sacred, not because they are something that other people should not or cannot know about.
Oh, by the way, you may know that I usually include a few technical terms that you might want to look up in the notes to each episode, and you'll see the picture of the unusual dorje I've been talking about there.
(13:15):
As a counter example, consider a prayer composed by Dudjom Rimpoche addressing the Dharma protector Ekajati.
This prayer includes the line, Please spread and expand the teachings of the great secret.
Might sound contradictory if we haven't understood the significance of the secret in these contexts. Clearly, Dudjom Rimpoche is neither encouraging Ekajati nor encouraging his own students to stop treating their sacred texts, ritual objects, mantras and so on with the traditional level of respect.
(13:51):
Far from it.
The prayer is for the deep secret at the heart of the vajryana,
something that's secret because it is so subtle, and although quite simple, very hard to comprehend, and probably next to impossible to put into words, for this secret to be spread for the benefit of all beings.
(14:12):
Needless to say, that great deep secret is not something conceptual like visualise a seventeen-petal pink lotus at your left shoulder and recite, piddle-paddle-twiddle-twaddle 108 times while standing on your left leg and holding your breath.
He is praying that those who have a connection to these teachings will reach the profound spiritual insight the secret at the heart of vajrayana practice.
(14:42):
As a final thought, but it's not one that I want to particularly develop in this episode,
the emphasis on secrecy,
especially when it's misunderstood in that over-literal way,
does feed into the power structures that surround abusive lamas.
Unfortunately, as we know - and I have spoken about this - such lamas do exist, and the idea of secrecy can be used to strengthen the feeling that calling the lama out on these abuses instead of keeping them secret is somehow a breakage of one's sacred vows.
(15:23):
Hmm.
So after that final thought, here is a final final question.
How many Buddhists does it take to change a light bulb?
The answer is none. Everything always is in a constant state of change.
And so thankfully, we've come to the actual end. Please remember to like this episode of the Double Dorje, to subscribe or do whatever it is that suits your channel. And remember:
(15:53):
Some things are secret.
Bye.
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