Why Vajrayana?

A beginner's field notes on the Diamond Vehicle

125’ Statue of Padmasambhava, Rewalsar Lake, India

If you’ve read my recent essay on Full Metal Spirituality, you know I’m interested in Vajrayana Buddhism, sometimes called esoteric Buddhism or Buddhist tantra. Although I’ve done some study and practice on and off in this tradition for years, I’ve recently connected with a local teacher and sangha and begun practicing more seriously.

As I explore this direction in my spiritual path, I want to document what I’m learning and finding valuable in it. I believe that this 2000-year-old lineage-based tradition has important medicine to offer in the context of contemporary Western spiritual practice, and especially in the context of the metamodern discourse around Buddhism, spiritual awakening, and the Meaning Crisis.

What Is Vajrayana?

The term Vajrayana can be translated as “Diamond Vehicle,” but the vajra is actually a mythological weapon associated with the Vedic god Indra. It’s indestructible like a diamond, but also unstoppably powerful, like a thunderbolt. So it might be more accurate, if clunkier, to say Vajrayana is the Indestructible-Diamond-Thunderbolt Vehicle.

More to the point, the vajra has a deep symbolic meaning in Buddhism, representing the thunderbolt-like nature of spiritual awakening and the indestructible nature of ultimate reality. Paired with the bell or ghanta as a ritual implement, it represents the union of transcendent wisdom and the skillful means (upaya) needed to attain awakening. (The vajra and bell can also be seen as archetypal male/female symbols).

This last bit, about skillful means, turns out to be important because Vajrayana has a major emphasis on the use of ritual technologies like mantra, deity practices, and subtle body yogas intended to accelerate progress along the spiritual path.

Vajrayanists divide the Buddhist path into three yanas or vehicles. This is partly a rhetorical device used to position themselves as superior to other Buddhist schools, but it’s important to explain in order to show you how Vajrayana sees itself.

The term Hinayana or lesser vehicle is used somewhat pejoratively to describe older forms of Buddhism that focus on the goal of liberating oneself from the suffering of cyclic existence (samsara). (These traditions refer to themselves as Theravada, the Path of the Elders, and would no doubt reject the diminutive label).

Mahayana Buddhism, in contrast, embraces the bodhisattva ideal, in which the practitioner vows to incarnate over and over again, working tirelessly to liberate all beings from suffering:

“For as long as space endures,
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world”

—Shantideva

Vajrayana embraces the bodhisattva vow but takes things a step further, by using all kinds of weird, esoteric yogic practices to accelerate the path to awakening.

Like other forms of tantra, that includes practices that might appear transgressive from the perspective of mainstream Buddhism. At least in their original forms, these practices included ritually ingesting meat, alcohol, and other traditionally taboo substances, as well as sexual practices. Many Vajrayana practices also include sexual or “funerary” (i.e. goth) imagery, such as the chöd or “cutting through” practice I described in Full Metal Spirituality.

These practices aren’t done just for fun, but rather to transform “poisons” into the path, turning every aspect of life, especially those that were traditionally considered profane or antithetical to spirituality, into jet fuel for enlightenment.

Incidentally, after writing my “Metal” post, I discovered that

David Chapman

had written about tantra from a similar angle in Our Buddhism goes to eleven, noting how “intensity builds capacity” to meet even the extremes of life (sex, death, illness, conflict) with spaciousness. His article—and all his writing about Vajrayana—is well worth reading.

Lay vs. Monastic

Unlike other forms of Buddhism that tend to work best if you’re a celibate monk or nun, Vajrayana has a strong tradition of non-celibate, lay practitioners (a.k.a. “householders” in Buddhist terminology) becoming advanced practitioners and even teachers.

This aspect appeals to me for obvious reasons. Although I thought about becoming a Buddhist monk when I was younger, I am now quite happy with my life as a 40-year-old psychotherapist/writer with a gorgeous and way-too-smart partner, a wonderful daughter (now in college), a very good dog, and yes, and a beautiful (rented) house.

But aside from the pleasant life I have as a householder, there is a deeper argument to be made for lay practice. Tantrists sometimes argue that with all its complexity and difficulty, the householder life provides even greater opportunity for awakening than a monastic one. After all, monks don’t have to navigate the challenges of long-term romantic relationships, pay taxes, or raise kids. This makes it easier to focus on meditation but also leaves out some of the most challenging aspects of life. Pursuing spiritual awakening as a householder may be playing on hard mode (sometimes it feels like playing Civ on Deity), but for myself anyway, it feels like the greater difficulty comes with richer rewards.

In this way, I feel that Vajrayana can provide at least a partial antidote to what

Daniel Thorson

recently described as The Avoidant Dharma—i.e. Western Buddhism’s tendency to reinforce patterns of emotional withdrawal from life. Vajrayana doesn’t shy away from relationships, sex, or “negative” emotions in the way that other forms of Buddhism might. In fact, because the relationship with a lama (teacher) is so essential, Vajrayana feels fundamentally relational to me. And it bears noting that the student-teacher relationship can bring up some of the same psychological dynamics as a parent-child, partner-partner, or patient-therapist relationship, providing fertile ground to work through our deepest psychological complexes. (On the other hand, when teachers are abusive or not emotionally mature enough to handle the projections of their students, the results can be disastrous.)

On a related note, women are traditionally given a higher status in Vajrayana than other forms of Buddhism. There is a long history of women becoming advanced practitioners and teachers in Vajrayana. Padmasambhava, the semi-legendary adept who brought Buddhism from India to Tibet, is supposed to have said: “The basis for realizing enlightenment is a human body. Male or female, there is no great difference. But if she develops the mind bent on enlightenment, the woman’s body is better.” Similarly, the iconography of Vajrayana is replete with goddesses, dakinis, and female Buddhas that play an important role in the practice.

I’m going to end this section with a caveat, because even within Vajrayana there is tension between lay and monastic paths. The Dalai Lama, no doubt the most recognizable Vajrayana teacher in the West, is a celibate monk, and Vajrayana Buddhists absolutely respect the commitment that monks and nuns make to the spiritual life. But in the Nyingma tradition that I’m practicing within, many lamas are married and have children. Similarly, Tibet is a patriarchal society, and as in many Buddhist cultures, women and nuns have often been treated as second-class citizens. Nevertheless, I believe the previous points are still important in comparison to other Buddhist traditions and in the context of contemporary practice.

Animistic and Magical

One of the things that appeals to me most about Vajrayana is the more animistic, magical side of the practice.

Perhaps because of the influence of indigenous Tibetan traditions, shamanic and magical practices have been preserved in Vajrayana in a way that is generally not the case in other Buddhist traditions. While these aspects of Vajrayana may be a turn off to modern, rationalist Western Buddhists, I personally find them to be an incredibly powerful resource for re-enchanting the world.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a ceremony called Riwo Sangchod, a traditional smoke offering practice. In this ceremony, incense, tree boughs, flowers, and other offerings are placed in a bonfire and the smoke is visualized as transforming into clouds of offerings to satisfy the desires of all beings, from hungry ghosts and local land spirits to gods and buddhas. This includes all the spiritual beings we owe a karmic debt to, or who might want to cause us harm.

While such a practice might seem superstitious from a modern, Western materalist point of view, from an animist one, it’s simply wise. For 99% of human history, and in every single culture other than our own, humans have acknowledged the existence of nonphysical beings such as ancestors and nature spirits. Being in right relationship with these beings has been a primary concern of, again, every single culture except our own, and then only for the last few centuries. From an animist point of view, when we fall out of right relation with these beings (by polluting a local river, for example), these beings might want to cause us harm.

Again, that might sound ridiculous to modern Westerners, but we also have a culture of widespread, often unexplained mental and physical illnesses. As Carl Jung wrote, “the gods have become diseases.” And modern therapists working with Internal Family Systems (IFS) are beginning to recognize and talk about what they call Unattached Burdens, i.e. “parts” that aren’t actually part of the Self and seem to have come in from the outside. Most of the world would simply call these spirits.

The Riwo Sangchod ceremony is just one example, but I think it’s illustrative. Meditation on its own (as practiced in contemporary Western Buddhist and secular mindfulness contexts) is not a complete spiritual path. For most of human history, and most cultures around the world, mental and spiritual health is dependent on being in relationship to a whole community of human and non-human beings. It’s this relational context that makes life feel magical and that I believe is a crucial antidote to the Meaning Crisis. Practicing within this relational context can include prayer, offerings, tending an altar, deity yoga, and a wide variety of other methods.

Nondual

At the same time, Vajrayana holds an uncompromisingly nondual perspective. As I’ve written before, nonduality is the teaching that you are not a separate self, that fundamentally there is no separation between you and reality. Instead, our true nature and the nature of reality is seen as a kind of universal consciousness, from which and as which everything we experience arises. Rooted in the Buddhist teachings on emptiness (particularly the Madhyamaka and Yogacara philosophies), Vajrayana maintains a nondual perspective from the beginning to the end of the spiritual path. Nondual forms of meditation (i.e. effortless or “non-meditation”) are taught in the practices of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.

Dzogchen (the “Great Perfection”), considered the highest teaching of the Nyingma school, aims at complete realization of the nature of reality as empty, luminous awareness. This awareness is not something constructed, but actually the mind’s “natural state,” free of effort or elaboration. Traditionally, students are introduced to the nature of mind through “pointing out” by a lama. I received pointing out instructions from Lama Lena a decade ago but still consider myself very much a beginner when it comes to Dzogchen practice.

Lineage-Based

One of the perils of modern spiritual practice is that people end up cobbling together advice from random strangers on the internet and making that into a path.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great sources of advice and inspiration out there. But particularly in Pragmatic Dharma circles, there are also some casualties. People who took advice that wasn’t the right fit for them at the right time, people who “scripted” their experience through a dubious stage model, “Dark Night yogis” unnecessarily lost in the wilderness for years.

In the Upaddha Sutta, the Buddha says that “good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship is the whole of the holy life.” All Buddhist lineages that I know of emphasize the importance of having a teacher and a sangha.

Vajrayana arguably places even greater emphasis on the student-teacher relationship than other Buddhist paths. As an esoteric tradition, it relies on the lama to initiate the student into certain practices, and provide oral instruction on how to accomplish them. Perhaps most importantly, a qualified teacher is necessary to introduce the student to the nature of mind through the “pointing out” process I mentioned above.

When I was younger, although I badly wanted a spiritual teacher, I was somewhat resistant to actually working with one. Part of me didn’t want to give up the freedom of doing things my own way. As I’ve gotten older, though, made mistakes and (hopefully) learned from them, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of having a teacher and practicing within a lineage-based tradition. There is blessing and protection in practicing not only with a teacher, but in a teacher-student lineage that goes back thousands of years. Such a lineage doesn’t remain static, but evolves over time, overcoming problems, developing best practices and incorporating the wisdom that comes from deep, lived experience. This deep, lived experience is embodied in the actual, flesh and blood human teachers that constitute the lineage, and that embodied wisdom is a crucial ingredient missing from internet dharma as well as most New Age spirituality.

***

As I wrote at the beginning, I’m just a beginner when it comes to Vajrayana. But I’m enthusiastic about what Vajrayana has to contribute to contemporary spirituality.

To the metamodern movement’s search for solutions to the Meaning Crisis, as well as the current discourse around the failings of Buddhist modernism and secular mindfulness, Vajrayana offers a full-blooded, relational, lineage-based, nondual, magical approach to Buddhist practice that, for those willing to learn from it, can go a long way toward the project of restoring meaning to life and re-enchanting the world. At the same time, Vajrayana itself continues to evolve and adapt to the modern world and the needs of contemporary practitioners.

I’m sure my perspective will evolve, too, as I learn more and grow in my practice, and I’m looking forward to documenting what I learn as I go along.

For now, here’s a list of resources that I’ve found helpful so far in building context and meaning around Vajrayana practice:

• (Why Mindfulness Isn’t Enough) and Guardians and Protectors! on The Emerald

• The Magic of Vajrayana Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 with Ken McLeod on Deconstructing Yourself

• Vividness (digital book) by David Chapman

• As sweet as razorblade honey by Sasha Chapin

More from Mind, Meaning and Magic:

• Full Metal Spirituality

• Consciousness First

• 2025: The Year of Magic

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If you’ve made it this far, thanks! As always, I appreciate your feedback on Mind, Meaning, and Magic. What caught your attention in this edition? What would you like to learn more about? How does Vajrayana relate to your own spiritual practice? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading,

Chris Cordry, LMFT

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