Unveiling The Heart Of Tantra
Episode Summary:
Episode 7 of Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features a conversation with Dr. Ian Baker from The Vajra Path, renowned Vajrayana Buddhism scholar, yogi, explorer, and author. They explore the origins, practices, and transformative potential of Tantra within both the Vajrayana Buddhism and non-dual Shaiva Shakta traditions. Dr. Baker breaks down the concept of Tantra, touching on its definition, historical emergence, and the non-dual essence of practice. Additionally, they touch on the use of psychoactive plants in tantric practices and the exciting potential for Vajrayana's future as it intersects with contemporary culture and beyond.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introduction and Guest Background
01:35 Overview of Tantra: Origins, Definition, Practices, Misconceptions, and Creative Essence
09:27 Exploring Sahaja: The Innate Bliss and Its Relevance
19:47 Karmic Knots and Tantric Practices for Transformation
40:36 Psychoactive Plants in Tantric Traditions
49:52 The Vajra Path: Bridging East and West through Pilgrimages
Guest Bio:
Dr. Ian Baker holds a PhD in History and a MPhil in Medical Anthropology from University College London, following earlier graduate work in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and English Literature at the University of Oxford.
He is the author of seven critically acclaimed books on Himalayan and Tibetan cultural history, environment, art, and medicine including, Tibetan Yoga: Principles and Practices, The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple, The Heart of the World, The Tibetan Art of Healing, and Buddhas of the Celestial Gallery, with introductions by the H.H. the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra.
Recognized by National Geographic as one of seven ‘Explorers for the Millennium,’ he has conducted extensive field research in Tibet’s Tsangpo Gorge region, and currently leads private journeys and travel seminars in India, Tibet, and Bhutan.
Baker has studied under Tibetan Buddhist luminaries, such as Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche, Dudjom Jigdral Dorje Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and is also the co-founder of The Vajra Path with Dr. Nida Chenagtsang.
Full Transcript
Adrian: Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma, and I'm your host Adrian Baker. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Ian Baker.
Ian is a scholar of Vajrayana Buddhism, a yogi, an explorer, and an author with more than 40 years experience studying and teaching Tibetan Buddhism. Ian is the author of seven critically acclaimed books on Himalayan and Tibetan cultural history, environment, art, and medicine, including The Heart of the World, A Journey to the Last Secret Place, The Tibetan Art of Healing, and The Dalai Lama's Last Secret Temple, a collaborative work with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama that illuminates Tantric Buddhist meditation practices.
Ian's latest book is Tibetan Yoga, Secrets from the Source. Ian has also written for National Geographic magazine and has contributed to academic journals in the field of Tibetan yoga and Vajrayana Buddhism. And now much of Ian's work is leading pilgrimages to sacred sites in India, Tibet, Bhutan, places in Europe, including Greece, along with another excellent teacher, Dr. Nida, and their organization is called The Vajra Path, which I encourage everyone to check out. And now for my conversation with Dr. Ian Baker.
Dr. Ian Baker, thank you so much for joining us on Redesigning the Dharma. It's great to have you here.
Ian: That's an exciting platform, So looking forward to the conversation.
Adrian: So I will have read your bio in the introduction to the show, but I'd like to give guests a little bit of a sense of where I'd like to go.
So, I want start with the origins of Tantra, including the origins of Sahaja, since you helped come up with the name for this platform, Sahaja Soma.
And then going through the history of Tantra, and talk about what is Tantric practice, what are similarities and differences between different kinds of Tantric paths, for example, Vajrayana Buddhism and non dual Shaiva Shakta Tantra.
And then where I'd like to end up is, being able to explain to people who might not be into one of those formal paths, but just a path of personal transformation, whether that's through meditation, or plant medicine, or other spiritual path, why they might be interested in Tantra. And, what is it that's unique about Tantra and tantric Buddhism, for example, versus mindfulness.
So, that's sort of the overview, but I think a great place to start is what is Tantra? Especially since there's so much confusion around that word and in different associations with it, perhaps you can just start with that definition of, what is Tantra? .
Ian: Sure. Well, I think with Redesigning the Dharma, I think what we're speaking about is Dharma, which is sort of the truth, the path. There are many different ways in which we can translate the word Dharma, in the same way, there are many ways to understand the word Tantra.
So, we're sort of thinking about Tantra as a Dharma, as a path to personal transformation. So, when we look at the word Tantra, in the Buddhist context, it first emerges as a treatise, as a kind of ritual practice that was in a written form, that obviously was consolidating earlier oral teachings.
And so when we talk about the Buddhist tantras, we're talking about a series of texts that go back in the case of Buddhism, to the 7th century. And when we actually look at tantras in terms of texts from the Hindu Shaiva tradition, they go back a couple centuries earlier.
So it's very clear that the Buddhist tantras in terms of their textual forms were influenced. by the, pre existing Hindu Shaiva texts. We can speak about that more, but the word in that context, as I said, can refer to sort of ritual manuals that are not just about tantric ritual, but also about contemplative practices.
But tantra also can be, for example, it was translated into the Tibetan context as a gyu (rgyud), meaning continuity. And so continuity meaning it's a state of being, a state that is continuous through all different stages of life, and particularly as it's described in the Buddhist tantras, samsara, meaning worldly life, and nirvana, meaning the liberation from dukkha, from dissatisfactory conditions. It's also the continuity between samsara and nirvana.
So basically it's a very embracive path that in a certain sense was a response to a more renunciatory disposition that of course Buddhism is well known for. With the Buddha's own going forth, meaning leaving his palace and going forth to an ascetic lifestyle.
So what's distinct about the Tantra as opposed to the more ascetic path is that it's one that's more embracive of the senses, more embracive of life and life circumstances, as opposed to one that is kind of creating a division between so called worldly life and spiritual life. And as a result of that non dual approach, meaning joining together of the union of, of opposites, as it might be considered in a Jungian psychological sense, it's meant to be a quick path, it's meant to be a far more direct path to that personal transformation and realization of our non dual nature as described in the tantric texts.
So I think tantra, if we look at it from this idea of Redesigning the Dharma, what we can also see, which is very very distinct about the Buddhist Tantras as a, as a set of texts that borrowed significantly and adapted from pre existing Shaiva texts, and we'll talk more about that, but I think what's very important to recognize is the creativity, the innovation that was there right from the earliest genesis of these texts, whether 5th, 6th century in the case of the Shaiva texts, or from the 7th century from the emergence of the Buddhist tantras.
It was an incredibly creative process. So I think it's important, in our current age to recognize that creativity so that it's actually something that we really honor in our own.
It's not about just preserving an unbroken tradition. It's actually preserving that spirit of spontaneous creativity that was right there at the very genesis of the tantric tradition.
Adrian: That's a really important point and I appreciate you saying that. I know a lot of times with Redesigning the Dharma it gives, and that's why I named the podcast this because really there was no fixed ever static Dharma. It was something that was always evolving.
And so I appreciate you talking about that and, and the spontaneous creativity and making it more about preserving the spirit. Towards that end, could you actually give some examples of the ways in which the tantras were innovating and adapting even early on in both a Shaiva and a, and a Buddhist context?
Ian: Yeah, so for example, if we look at the, one of the most well known of the Buddha's tantras, the Chakrasamvara tantra, meaning the wheel of bliss or the bliss of the wheels, meaning the chakras or the energy focal points of energy in the body, we see direct passages from the Chakrasamvara tantra that were already existing in the Shaiva tantric tradition and particularly in the non dual Shaiva tradition in Kashmir.
So that's been very, very well documented, to the point where it would be, in contemporary terms, be considered plagiarism. But if we, you know, before we have that particular nomenclature, what we can really see is a very dynamic and creative inter textuality, as it would be called sort of in an academic context.
But really it's about in my sense, a very exciting kind of borrowing and building upon traditions that I think were not as indoctrinally opposed then as they might be considered now, for example.
So I think when we talk about the Siddha culture, meaning the realized adepts, we also see that many of the so called canonized 84 Mahasiddhas in the Buddhist tradition are also Siddhas, in the Tantric Shaiva tradition, such as Gorakhnath and Machindranath.
All of these show us that there was common ground between the Hindu Tantra and the Buddhist Tantra, and that what was common was these Siddhas who were non renunciatory. I mean, they were renunciatory only in the sense they sort of, they transcended the kind of conventional limitations. But they didn't have to give up their vocations, I mean, they were kings, they were herdsmen, they were fishermen, they were, whatever it was.
They found actually that transformative protocol, if you want to call it, within the actual vocations of their everyday life and often with very, you know like Tilopa, known for sort of the progenitor of the so called six yogas that he taught in Naropa, to his primary student, I mean, they, they had an incredibly rich lives that were by no means renunciatory or, so called spiritual in the sense of excluding the non spiritual. It was a path of integration.
And I think that's what we can really see as a characteristic of Tantra.
Rather than renouncing the world, it's about transforming. And then ultimately it's about integration. And we see that with, for example, you know, with the tradition of Sahaja, that in a sense was an outgrowth from the Tantric tradition.
Adrian: Yeah. And so just to underscore, first of all, that point that you said, I think, cause it's so important and it's something that I've talked about on this podcast is finding a path of awakening. that emphasizes integration into householder life, into worldly life, including worldly desires.
If you're not a renunciate is something that's very important. And it's something that sometimes we miss when we're inheriting these practices and teachings and views from spiritual traditions that were primarily renunciatory in their orientation and so that can lead to confusion.
And so that's one thing to underscore for people in terms of why they might be interested. maybe they're just interested in meditation, but it's also, you're imbibing a whole view and in orientation and just being really clear about the way that's going to orient you to the world and that's embracing incompatibles. So I want to underscore that for some of the audience and I'd love you to go into a little bit about what sahaja is since you touched on that there.
What, yeah. What were these origins of the Sahaja teachings and how is that relevant to these traditions and practices today?
Ian: Okay, well, we talked about the Mahasiddhas, meaning the great realized adepts who essentially were the progenitors of this transformed form of Buddhism that really was representing a path of integration and transformation rather than one of abnegation and renunciation.
So the figure who is often considered to be the kind of the greatest of the Mahasiddhas, and certainly one of the earliest, generally thought to be from the 8th century, is Saraha.
So Saraha was one of the, great Mahasiddhas. And in his extraordinary dohas, in his spiritual songs, which was the way that often the Mahasiddhas transmitted their knowledge, was not through didactic text, but through these kind of ecstatic spontaneous songs that they gave, you know, in different contexts.
So there's, in the case of Saraha, there's the king doha, there's the people's doha. So depending on the audience, they would present their spontaneous teachings in different ways.
But one of the very interesting things about Saraha's Dohas is that he, in some ways, expresses very clear impatience with a lot of the ritual practices that were very characteristic of an aspect of tHevajrayana or Tantric, Esoteric Buddhist path.
And so, rather than, and actually saying, you know, that if some of these outer observances were going to bring us to realization, then, going naked, for example, would be in the renunciatory way, then animals would be awakened, etc.
So in the Tantras, they talk about these four stages of enstatic, meaning it's ecstatic, meaning going beyond the self, but it's enstatic in the sense it's a discovery of a bliss state that actually takes us out of our conventional way in which we relate to our own embodied states and which actually are transcendent of the ego.
And so these four enstatic states of bliss, which directly result from practices of like tummo or inner fire kundalini, we can talk about that later, the fourth state, the culminating state of these four states of bliss is called sahajananda, meaning the innate bliss.
And actually Saraha says in one of his songs that actually the whole path can be summarized through that direct realization and embodiment of the sahajananda, of this innate bliss.
And so basically the path then became one of embodying sahaja, meaning this state of innateness. And we see this actually in one of the most again, earliest of the so called yogini tantras, the Hevajra tantra, speaks very extensively about sahaja.
And it refers to sahaja actually as being kind of the origin of of the universe as it were. And in the same way that, Saraha speaks about, by that by which we are born and live and die, by that you should realize, you know, your own innate nature. And he's using the word sahaja here, but we also see it in one of the main textual and earliest of the textual Buddhist tantras in the Hevajra tantra.
Also we see it in a very interesting way in a text by a female Mahasiddha, Lakshminkara who was a contemporary of Padmasambhava, the great Siddha who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet, she wrote a text called the Advaya Siddhi, where she speaks extensively about Sahaja as being, and even she talks specifically about Sahajayana.
So in a certain sense, going beyond Vajrayana, meaning this kind of uh, direct and lightening path, as it were, to realization which is filled with all, you know, with a combination of ritual, almost magical practices, along with very extensive uh, and often kind of complex contemplative practices. But interestingly she cuts to the essence. So Advaya Siddhi, her text, literally means the attainment of non duality.
So this is the Advaita, which we see in Vedanta. But in Advaya, in this context, is also the, you know, it's the Dzogchen, we can talk about that in the Tibetan Buddhist context, but it's this non dual reality in which that which we experience is not separate from our own innate being. But that is in a certain sense, the attainment of non-duality, is where all of these practices and techniques are leading us to. And in this context, this is referred to as sahaja, it's our innate beingness.
So we can see it in the earliest of these Mahasiddhas, both the male figure of Saraha, the female figure of Lakshminkara, but we also see it extensively referred to in the Hevajra Tantra in which was really often considered to be the first of the so called Yogini Tantras. And Hevajra meaning, it's this kind of evocation of the essence of Vajrayana, or the lightning path to enlightenment and specifically in that text, Vajra is equated with emptiness, shunyata, uh, and that's also equated with sahaja.
So sahaja is to recognize ultimately this empty, which is of course a bad translation of shunya, but basically it means that all that we take to be kind of real in the sense of self existing is actually just part of a processual reality. Which have made up more of events rather than, things.
And it's that form and emptiness that, you know, particles and waves as we might think of it in, terms of contemporary physics, is really what Sahaja is speaking about.
It's that we're in this kind of, you know, again, to sort take liberties with the language of the Tantras, you know, a kind of quantum world in which how we see things determines how they then, in a sense, express themselves and actually function within our lives.
So this is, again, whether we see a particle or a wave. Whether we see an object or a process. It's again that kind of space time continuum, which in a sense is what tantra and sahaja are part of. It's the innate reality that we seek to attain.
Adrian: I know Bob Thurman likes to use for shunyata something like radical relativity or extreme interdependence. And so that might be helpful for people as well, just thinking about the interdependent nature You know, of all phenomenon of, of everything
Ian: Yeah sunyata which is often described as as emptiness. Just that's kind of the translation that we were given in the early 20th century, but "sunya", which does mean empty, but "ta" is actually the positive side of that vacuity, it's actually the expression. So we can often think of it, you know, David Bohm, for example, who was often, as the Dalai Lama refers to as his physics guru, Lama, the infinite potentiality from which everything arises, so it's the fecundity of all reality.
It's the empty space from which everything arises, and it's not separate from everything else either. So I think that radical interdependency, radical events rather than things, because things are expressing themselves within a, you know, within time, and therefore they're impermanent, but it doesn't mean that they don't exist, it just means they don't exist in the way that we often reify them, when we look at them and think that they're solid and they're not, and so that's the, you know, that's the positive side of of impermanence, is that everything is in a state of constant flux and creative manifestation, that infinite potential.
Adrian: Yeah. And for one thing as well, relevant to this, that I'd love to define for someone who's perhaps newer and coming to this conversation is the term non duality, because it's obviously key to understanding this interdependence and what we're talking about. I'm, I'm wondering for someone who's totally new, what's a basic definition of non duality that you could offer?
Ian: Yeah, so when we look at that term, non duality. When we look at what does that word translated from in the Eastern context, we're looking at dvaita in the, let's say, Hindu context, and we're looking at Vaya in the context of some of these early Buddhist tantras. So basically, I think what the essence of that is, we can actually see it already expressed within the Upanishads, that Tat Tvam Asi, you know, is this term that's often translated as "you are that".
So whatever it is that we perceive as being somehow extraneous to our own perception is actually intrinsic to our own embodied reality. So, in other words, I mean, again, I think it's such an esoteric term, it's complicated to give a simple definition, but it basically means that everything we perceive is inseparable from our own mind.
I mean, we know that on a certain level, we know that, that which we hear, that which we see, everything that we often externalize and take to be objective is in fact just an extension of our conscious awareness.
So then it becomes this very creative dynamic process by which by training the mind, we actually alter the way reality in turn reflects back to us because we recognize that it is actually inseparable from our own consciousness.
So non duality is basically just to own everything. Not in an egoic way, because a selflessness that, in a sense, is transcendent of the ego. So it's that awareness that we come to through practice, which is no longer concerned with, oh, you know, normally when we approach human, you know, experience, it's like, oh, how is that good for me? How do I react to that? Am I frightened by that? Am I attracted by that? Do I want that?
And so we live in this kind of negotiated experience of reality, which is all based upon our, our fears, our desires, our hopes, our expectations. And sort of you could say on one level that the state of awakening is where we've actually completely freed ourself from that kind of knot of personal desires. What in Buddhism we would call, you know, that tirtha, that grasping after phenomena, which is an expression of the egoic consciousness.
So in a certain sense, what we're looking at in the awakened state is to have transcended this egoic awareness, and it's more of an ecocentric, if you want to think of it in those ways, as opposed to egocentric, meaning eco meaning, like ecology, it's how everything is interconnected, and there's no one thing that's privileged over another.
And that's that transcendent awakening, which is, in itself, the non dual experience, because you're suddenly in this liberated state, where you're free of a negotiated relationship with phenomenal appearances based upon, preferences, which like and dislike and we see that in some of the beautiful Buddhist expressions, particularly in the Zen tradition.
I think there, there's a one, the Song of Zen, which is like, with preference of like and dislike, then heaven and earth are split apart, for example. And that, that is the gate, that is the Dharma gate into the liberated state as to be free of those kind of considerations of like and dislike.
And instead, just to have this radical embrace of all phenomena with that disposition of compassion, which is essentially just an empathic embrace of everything that arises.
Adrian: Nice. Thank you for outlining that, Ian. And since you mentioned the knots, I'd actually love to go into that a little bit because on Sahaja Sama, what I'm talking to people a lot about, when I'm explaining how to approach plant medicine through a non dual tantric lens, is it's really important to understand this tantric view of the subtle body and karmic knots.
You know, how karmic knots get stored in the channels and really what we're doing through tantric practices, whether it's yoga asanas or whether it's Soma, like working with Peganum Harmala is we're trying to untie these knots.
And so I wonder if you could share your perspective. How would you describe the karmic knots in the subtle body and, what that means to work with that within a tantric practice. How tantric practice is about transforming these karmic knots and why that's important for someone who might be new to meditation or new to Tantra, because for example, there are a lot of people who found benefits in mindfulness, who weren't interested in Buddhism. But mindfulness, the early stages of Buddhism, it emphasizes transcendence as what we were talking about earlier, and it didn't really engage transformation of the body that way with these
physical practices. And so perhaps you could talk a bit about the knots and what they are and how transforming them are really important in tantric practice.
Ian: Yeah, so I think it's very, it's a very important question and it is, of course, the very foundation of what tantric practice is. An awareness of these kind of blockages, these energetic blockages, I mean, if we look at it in kind of contemporary or 20th century context of depth psychology, let's say, you know, from Freud to Jung, this idea of the, of the unconscious, we see actually already that back, even in the time of Upanishads, there was already an awareness of the unconscious mind. I mean, that part of us that expresses itself, you know, using the Sanskrit word of asanas, these are these kleshas. These are these processes that inhibit the way we relate to reality based upon these deep imprints of experience.
We can call them karmic, we can call them whatever we want, but they are knots. They are blockages. They disrupt that sense of flow of energy and awareness within our embodied experience. And so, as you say, a lot of the basis of tantric yoga, yoga meaning to connect with our own true essence, is about untying and seeing through the knots...
but generally that's often described as there's also this Veda, the word Veda, which is to pierce through these knots. So in other words, in any case, to, rid ourselves of those blockages.
And that can happen through powerful entheogenic plant medicines that were certainly used within the yogic tradition and in tantric Buddhism as well, as well as through these very dynamic embodied practices working powerfully with the breath and with powerful bodily practices in order to use the body and the breath in order to go to deeper states conscious awareness in which those knots, in a sense, are freed and no longer inhibiting us.
It doesn't mean we have to dwell on them the way we would in, for example, in Freudian sense. It's not like you have to actually bring all this attention to them and work through them and all the archetypal stages in a sense that Jung in particular articulated, and which we can see a lot of parallels with in Tantric Buddhism.
But it's basically just no longer having those imprints of experience modifying, inhibiting, that complete embrace of the fullness of our nature, which is the Sahaja state. And that's also very clearly stated in the Hevajra Tantra, that the end of, in a sense, the Vajrayana, is the Sahajayana.
It's about being in that state of complete open flow of life, which is actually all of existence. And if it's all of existence, it is by nature non dual. So Sahaja, in that sense, is clearly, you know, the non dual state. But again, at this stage, all language and words, nomenclature, all of that is going to be limiting.
But I think as you say, when we work with so called the subtle body, we're working with these energetic patternings that, in a sense, underlie our physical body.
We can relate easily to our flesh and blood, as it were, but we see that within that, and often there's this, you know, mind body dualism, but in between that is this whole realm in which mind and body are interacting, and we understand that as the so called subtle body but it's really an energetic body.
And again, in Tantric Buddhism, Tantric Shaivism, we no longer relate to ourselves as, you know, flesh and blood and bones. We relate to ourselves as a network of interconnected energy flows, the nadis, literally meaning rivers or currents. And then within that is the, prana, which is this vital energy that's flowing through those currents. And then in the Tantric Buddhist context, you have the bindu, the tigle, which is often described as the very essence of our mind, but it's also the essence of our body.
And it's that, in a certain sense, that actually overcomes the sometimes perceived duality of mind and body that we have in a Western context. So they call in Tibetan, the Tiklé Gyachen, this great essence that we are in which mind and body become completely coextensive without that kind of division that we often fall into.
So all of that experiential awakening to that comes through the subtle body and removing those blockages in our experience that prevent us from, you could say, an embodiment of the subtle body, which in a certain sense I think all of the tantric yogic practices are bringing us towards.
And you mentioned again about how the physical practices that we might think of as, you know, yoga in a more contemporary context, you know, working with the physical body in order to go beyond our usual way in which we relate to the physical body.
So, I mean, that would have been how yoga was understood originally. It wasn't just to gain f exibility of body was also to gain more importantly, that flexibility of mind. Where we begin to be able to train the mind by working with the body. And I'd say that, that really is the essence of the dynamic approach that Tantric Yoga, whether in its Buddhist form or Hindu form, offers us.
Adrian: Thank you, Ian. Something that you mapped out there was just sort of the inseparability of that.
And that's, this is something that I learned, for example, so in order to really transform the mind, because body mind are inseparable, we need to be fully embracing of that. And I think it's also not only for people who are new and giving them that sense of the path, but for people who are also on the path for a while, for example, there are people who may well have already had a recognition of the non dual nature of mind and even some stability in that. It's not an issue accessing that.
But one thing that I discovered was that even when I had gotten to that point that actually, oh, I had, maybe short circuited some of the subtle body work and Tsoknyi Rinpoche helped me to realize that I have to keep coming back to that and doing the subtle body practice because that is what pulls us out of the view.
You know, that's when we get pulled up and reactive and all of our patterns is when we haven't worked with that karmic knot. And so I would just underscore the importance of that for people, and I wonder for you, what are some practices that have personally been very helpful for you in terms of working with these karmic knots and bringing you into greater embodiment?
Ian: Yeah. So, again, just to talk first about, you know, let's say the tradition. So, the karmic knots that we're referring to are referred to in kind of the yogic literature as Granthi. They are these blockages, impediments, and exactly as you said, sometimes we recognize those through this reactive patterning that we can fall back into when we've actually lost this view of non duality in which suddenly the, you know, a personal egoic self, with it's likes and dislikes, is suddenly triggered by some kind of external circumstance. So, a seemingly external circumstance, which, again, is it really external?
So those are, in a certain sense, as you know, in the Tantric tradition we purposefully sometimes put ourselves in circumstances where we would get triggered in order to be able to recognize, or as it would be referred to in the tradition, recognize, and then you release it immediately.
So there's a spontaneous recognition of when that trigger, when something's triggered, and then you immediately see it so that you're not actually, you don't follow it. But it's, it's recognize and release, recognize and relief. It's sort of a it's an immediate process.
So as you were saying, you mentioned Tsoknyi Rinpoche, you know, representing the so called Dzogchen, the Great Perfection tradition, or the Ati Yoga, meaning the supreme yoga tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism that directly correlates to this view of sahaja, this innate state of being, which Mahasiddhas like Saraha and Lakshminkara refer to.
So, the direct way of working with those kind of energetic knots is just to recognize, and that's the, as you know in the Tibetan tradition, trekchö, it's cutting through. It's seeing when we fall from the view, and then immediately cutting through to that non dual state.
And so that's the ultimate practice, is to just through awareness itself. Having that be the path without any necessity for subtle body practices per se, because one's already at this so called higher level of Ati. And yet, in that same tradition, Anu, which would be the tradition that goes beyond, these are also techniques, and even as my teacher, Chatral Rinpoche, spoke about, you know, of course the highest practice is just to recognize and, the view doesn't mean that we just stay in a quietistic state and a view of, in a sense of a passive observation, I mean he was very dynamic in his activities, but it just means to carry that view into all of our actions.
And that in the Tantric Buddhist context is considered charya, the stage of integration. But, as he also taught that whenever one might, you know, and again, one has to feel it in with oneself. I mean, sometimes one can just cut through using the mind, but then there are times when one can recognize that those impediments are somehow you feel them in your body.
And then you, you work with the breath, you work with dynamic physical practices in order to so called cut through, which is the trekchö, which is the ultimate practice, but you can use also embodied practices to cut through.
And so in that Dzogchen tradition from my experience, there's a whole cycle of practices called Khordé Rushen, which means cutting through the perceived division between samsara and nirvana, meaning let's say pure consciousness and the contents of consciousness in order to recognize that non duality.
And those are very, very embodied practices that we would think of in contemporary terms as a kind of psychodrama. You could do these in retreat and you act out different states of being and through that process you kind of exhaust the projective consciousness, meaning the imaginative mind that is often operating subconsciously and passively.
But by acting it out you begin to recognize exactly that difference between what we project and then staying in this very natural state, the Naldjor, as it would be called in the Tibetan tradition. And that can happen through, it doesn't mean that it has to happen necessarily in a formal practice, but it means that through that spontaneity that we can bring to any life experience, you know, without the inhibitory qualities that hold us back from things, but when it's done with pure awareness, with pure compassion, and, it is actually enacting the liberated state.
So I think it's a very profound practice. I mean, it's subtle, but I think, that is kind of the highest practice in a certain sense. That spontaneous engagement with the flow of life, and that we embrace it with a full conviction of immeasurable compassion.
And I think I, I mentioned that simply because the traditional gateway into Buddhist Tantra, the so called four immeasurable states of loving kindness, of compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. And these states, which are already expressed in the same form, these Brahmaviharas, are already there in the Upanishadic tradition that we think of now as Hinduism.
But again it represents this powerful inter um, you know, the best practices were shared by both. But that sense of an immeasurable state of openness, an immeasurable state, in other words where there's no delimitation, especially when it comes to compassion, love, and kindness, why would there be a limit to that?
And the same with this kind of sublime equanimity that is also considered the kind of the fourth culminating state of the Brahmaviharas, of the immeasurable states. It's just a state in which everything is allowed to be. Doesn't mean that one just, you know, ignores circumstances that they are, but just means that one does not engage reactively with the display of the phenomenal world, but one has a state of ease with everything that arises.
We see that, for example, in the Hellenic Greek tradition, Ataraxia, as it was called, it was also both Piro who went with at the time of Alexander the Great into India, it's often considered to be a quality that he imbibed from the so called gymnosophists, meaning the naked philosophers that he encountered in India.
It's also Epicurus who was the founder, you could say of the Greek philosophical school of Epicureanism. Which is, was a state in which the highest pleasure in life was ataraxia. So in other words, it wasn't a hedonistic path, it was just a state in which that freedom from afflictive desire was considered to be the highest good, and that one carried that through into all one's interactions with the human and the non human world.
You know, and it speaks to something that's, in that sense, universal. How we, you know, whether we see it in Tantric Buddhism, in Kashmir Shaivism, in ancient Greek philosophy from the 4th century A. D. or B. C. it's basically talking about a state of profound ease that arises when we've kind of freed ourselves from those sticky points, those knots, those areas where we tend to get sort of hung up you know, just to use common parlance. What triggers us, and what triggers us are, of course, are those knots. But those knots don't have any substantive reality, they're just reifications of consciousness.
Adrian: Yeah. Ian, since you mentioned it right there, you started talking about your interest in the connections between Hellenistic Greek thought and these early tantric traditions of Shaivism and Vajrayana. I'm wondering, can you say a little bit more about that?
Because I know your Vajra Path trips with Dr. Nita, you've been going to Greece and that connection wasn't immediately obvious to me until I did a deeper dive into your work. And so I'm wondering if you can say a little bit about what sort of the common nexus is there and also what perhaps that Greek influence brings? Because I know you've done your trips on bringing in the sense of Eros and how actually that might connect to a certain quality of tantric shaivism that can sometimes be missing in Vajrayana Buddhism.
So if you could say a little bit about that.
Ian: Yeah, and I think it goes really back to, you know, what we started out our conversation talking about the origins of Tantra and we talked about it, you know, with this emergence of Shaiva Tantra texts from the 5th, 6th century and then with the 7th century when we have the real first evidence of Buddhist Tantra.
But where a lot of these Tantric texts attribute their origins, they say that they were actually, they came from a sort of semi legendary land called Udiana which is in the Northwest frontiers of India in an area that's now commonly recognized, I mean there are rival theories, but it's generally considered to be the Swat Valley of what's now in Pakistan in the Hindu Kush Mountains.
Now why that is interesting, we have early evidence of early Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, for example, who went to this land of Udiana and they speak directly about this co existence of Shaiva Tantra and Buddhist Tantra already there from 7th century.
So we see this was a place where these two traditions interacted, borrowed from each other in order to extend the reach of their own doctrines and their own practice. So, what's particularly fascinating to me is that this Udiana was on this, the ancient, we talk about the Silk Road, but they were also sometimes now referred to as the Musk Trail, because it was also the same routes by which musk was transported, as well as certain plants and were exchanged between so called East and West.
And there's certainly evidence when Alexander the Great on his great campaign into, to India went to the Swat Valley in a place called Nyasa was a place where it was recognized as being the possible birthplace of Dionysus.
So people probably know that Alexander the Great sort of saw himself as an emanation, or a representative, or an incarnation of, or a son of Dionysus, the great Greek god, or embodiment of ecstatic awareness, that often is in a kind of more lesser way associated with, divine intoxication, but really what we're talking about is this disruption of the conventional consciousness that keeps us within limiting patterning.
So you know, the real essence, I think, of the Dionysian ecstasy was about going out of the self into a state that was actually far more expansive, even if it had certain dangers associated with it. And that's something there that's inherent within the Tantric Buddhist tradition, the so called transgressive language, and what is that really referring to, and anytime that we go beyond conventional boundaries, you know, things are suddenly open to reinterpretation.
But what was interesting in this context for me was to see that even at the time of Alexander, there's also an account of a Dionysian rituals that happening within the Swat Valley at that same time. And that refers specifically to masked dance rituals that we associate like with the Greek theater that of course is attributed to, associated with Dionysus.
Also, there was a very rich culture there going way back of so called viniculture or winemaking. So the same way that Dionysus is so much associated with wine and intoxication, we see evidence of that in the Swat Valley, prior to any evidence of the emergence of both Shaiva and Buddhist Tantra there.
So, in my mind, that the textual attribution to Udiana as being the place where the Tantra sort of came into being is really borne out by these early accounts from BC before there's any clear evidence of any textual tradition of Tantra, for example.
So I find that very interesting that there was a lot more exchange happening along the caravansaries, meaning the exchange of ideas and goods along these ancient trade routes.
And certainly the clear evidence that we have along those routes, not just of the Shaiva traditions and the Buddhist traditions, but also the Sufi traditions. And we can see within Sufism, for example, they have their own tradition of six yogas, for example, within the Kubjiwara Shaivism and there's been some scholarly investigation of possible links between, you know, where did those ideas come from? Does it go back to that time of Tilopa and Naropa and with the dream yogas...
The six yogas, just for people who aren't familiar with them, they were in the 10th, 11th century, one of these Mahasiddhas, Tilopa with the complexity that had arisen within the tantric Buddhist tradition, so called Vajrayana, there were these kind of takeaways from the most important and prevailing tantras of that time, beginning with the Hevajra Tantra, which is generally considered one of the earliest. And it was from the Hevajra Tantra that the practice of inner heat, of tummo, became the foundation for the six yogas.
It was basically trying to take the essence of the Hevajra, the most important part of it was this practice that could actually, literally, and that's the essence of the practice, is as it's described, is to burn through these conceptual knots within the central axis of the body. Any kind of conceptual limitations are incinerated, as it were, through this ecstatic heat and bliss that arise from this very, very powerful practice of working with the body and the breath and intention.
And then that gives rise to, originally the way Tilopa described it, it was karma mudra. You brought this inner heat into, interestingly, rather than a solipsistic solo practice, through partnered practice, intimate practice, then this inner heat was brought into a higher state in which that inner light, that clear light, that luminosity of being, could fully manifest.
And that was considered the third of the I mean, there were different ways in which the six were described, but this idea of clear light, this luminosity of being, was really the, that which was the essence of the six yogas as a whole, and that you experienced it within the so called gyulu, meaning this illusory body, which is the subtle body.
Which means that we experience this bliss not with our kind of normal egoic consciousness, but it's an energetic experience that is transcendent of the ego. And that's what brings it, makes it, an expression of realization rather than kind of reification of our own kind of conventional sense of self and you identify with the bliss and all of the kind of inflation that can come from that.
And then you have the practices you know, so they're carried, the six yogas are the practices of the day, the practices of the night, and then the practices of at the time of death, through the ejection of consciousness and through this kind of navigation of an interdimensional reality called the bardo, meaning between states, either between one life and the next, or between transitional states, even within our current lifetime, meaning states of waking, dreaming, sleeping and often as the tradition itself describes it, through sort of intimate erotic experience, which itself is considered to be already a kind of altered state of being.
So this was really the essence of the tantras was to actually move beyond the ritual outer practices into very dynamic ways of increasing awareness at all stages of waking, dreaming, sleeping, even dying whereby those Granthi, those knots, those limitations and blockages could be definitively, as it were, routed out through working with the subtle body, meaning the energetic nervous system in order to bring about that total transformation of being.
Adrian: And since you were mentioning the exchange of plants at one point along this route, it triggered my memory in your book, Tibetan Yoga. You've got a whole section on psychoactive plants and I know you've written on soma rituals. I'd love to start right there with just Peganum Harmala because I know you noted the evidence for the use of Peganum Harmala in Tibet and in Tibetan yoga.
And I'm wondering, you know, what do we know about its use? Is there any sense of what it was used for?
Ian: Well, we know that Peganum Harmala, which is, as you know, conventionally sort of known as Syrian Rue, not that it is limited to Syria, but it actually is a plant that grows across that whole belt of the Silk Road, as it were. And we also know that it was certainly a substance used within the Haoma practices of Zoroastrianism, Persia.
So it only, it's completely logical that it was, a key ingredient in the Soma formulas in the Indian subcontinent because we can see that direct parallel and it's still used today as a kind of purificatory substance in the Persian, in the Iranian tradition. You know, the burning of, Harmala would just kind of clear the energies just as it would clear the energies of the mind when it would be used in a ritual or contemplative context.
And, you know, we also know that it has, you know, unlike many other psychoactive substances, it's benign in the sense that it's not bringing you into you could say existential rabbit holes the way ayahuasca can sometimes because it's, you know, the combination of, you know, like Aldous Huxley, you know, he's known for his book Doors of Perception and how these substances can open up into a larger perception of reality than we're, often aware of.
But he also wrote a book subsequent to that called Heaven and Hell, which was a kind of more nuanced exploration of these altered states so chemically or altered through plant medicines. In the sense that there was the unpredictability of whether you're going to kind of go into the heavenly beatific realms or whether you're going to be taken down to these thonic realms of the unconscious mind.
Those are sometimes, as we know, to navigate, negotiate, those can be a more powerful learning experience sometimes than just having another, you know, a beatific vision. Sometimes there's a lot to be gained from learning to work with those energies of the underworld, as it were, the underworld of our own consciousness.
So I think in my experience and research, we can really see the Syrian Rue, Peganum Harmala as something that is part of a tradition all along the Silk Road. I think there's a lot more research to be done, but clearly we have evidence of it even in contemporary times in Iran as a purificatory I mean, Iranian friends would say, oh, they just, they burn it regularly.
But we also know that if it's used in a more specific way that it can actually bring about that expanded state where the so called veils of reality are opened. We understand Soma to be not just a single substance, but one that was certainly used in syncretic combination with other plants, just like we know with ayahuasca.
You know, it's not just the ayahuasca vine, it's actually, the syncretic substances that allow that, the dimethyltryptamine, for example, to be activated through the monoamine oxidized inhibitor. And I think that there were similar processes involved, whether or not it was those same two chemicals or not is a whole other matter, but, you know, I think from your research and certainly what I've experienced, we can see how that state of really expansive awareness that, is clearly evident within the Haoma Soma traditions can be augmented and can be developed through the admixture of other plant medicines so they work in a very dynamic way together that goes beyond what either substance would do on its own.
So I think that to me is really the essence of what was happening within when we look at the use of psychoactive plants within the Tantra tradition.
Whether it's in Hinduism, we can see it very clearly, you know, the psychoactive plants connected with Shiva, including cannabis, including opium, all of that there, it's not hidden. So there's many, you know, there's even a book called, you know, Shiva and Dionysus. So we can see that state of ecstatic intoxication that we associate with Dionysus, we also see that within the Shaiva traditions.
But then, as you were saying, in Buddhism it's a bit more hidden. Although it's very clear in a lot of the key Buddhist tantras like the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa Tantra, the Mahakala Tantra, there's quite a lot of evidence of the use of psychoactive plants in order to bring about altered states of consciousness.
Even in the Dzogchen tradition, there are texts, early texts that talk about the use of even Datura in a boiled in goat's milk and then dropped into the eyes in order to induce visionary states if one's not able to achieve them directly through the more conventional methods.
So there were often these kind of radical solutions that were brought through the use of psychoactive plants. And I think, you know, as you were saying, because we have deeply monasticized view of, Buddhism, even of esoteric Buddhism, because, you know, when we see the emergence of the tantras, it was not made for celibates. And so we can see that the power of the early tantras was in order to create a very attractive path such as one had within the Shaiva tantras, it was for, for lay people.
I mean, Buddhism was not just taught to monks from the outset. You know, Buddha taught lay people as well. But because of this high elevation of the monastic tradition, particularly within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that , Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche has very famously said, Vajrayana was not made for monks or nuns.
They can practice it, but only in a kind of an adaptive way where actually some of the practices are just visualized rather than enacted. And as a result, they may work, they may not. But the point is that because it's a path of integration and embracing of all of life, it doesn't, it's, it's by nature incompatible with a monastic lifestyle in which you are purposefully cutting yourself off from many aspects of our human nature, if you will, from desire.
So anything that would cause an awakening of or an desire would be something that would be not desirable within a monastic lifestyle, whereas in the Tantras, you take desire as the path. So when you try to then make that work for monks or nuns, it's a bit of a kind of cognitive discord you could say.
So I think a lot of the confusion in the contemporary kind of world of Tibetan Buddhism comes from this kind of idea of a monasticized Vajrayana. And we can kind of see the whole way in which that arose, both with India and then particularly how it developed in Tibet.
When we look at how, for example, Esoteric tantric Buddhism was first introduced in Tibet by Padmasambhava with his multiple consorts, you know, he was a sorcerer more than he was, you know, certainly nothing in his lifestyle was even mildly monkish.
And then even when we look at the so called the beginnings of the Sarma tradition, of the new tantras, that came, couple hundred years later, there was Marpa, he was the teacher of Milarepa. And he brought it from Naropa and Tilopa. None of them were monks.
And Marpa famously had, I think he had five wives, and he was considered, the progenitor of the whole Sarma or the new tantric transmission. And then the tradition as it went from Milarepa onward to Rechungpa, who was a yogi, a non celibate yogi, and then to Gampopa, who'd been a monk before.
And then the tradition just gradually became institutionalized, you could say. And so a lot of the practices also sort of altered in the way they were presented, altered in the way they were practiced. And one could argue that they became less dynamic and they were framed in different ways than they would have been originally in Indian Tantric Buddhism.
So for me, it's very interesting to look back at that early phase of Vajrayana Buddhism in Udyana that we see with figures like Indrabhuti and Lakshmikara and as well as, you know, the Mahasiddhas themselves who were all, living lives of radical integration sometimes rather than lives of institutional abnegation of those things that, you know, the majority of contemporary practitioners of Tantric Buddhism today, especially in the West, the number of them who are interested in becoming a monk or a nun is infinitesimal compared to the number of people who are interested in engaging these practices as a householder, as a wandering yogin, if we want to think of it in that way as well.
So I think that's why it's important to be able to distinguish between monastic tantra in the Buddhist context and, you know, its original ethos. And all we have to do is look at the early texts like the Hevajra tantra, Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, Guhyasamāja Tantra and they're all advocating practices that were partnered practices.
And what's interesting about that is that we also see in that, that these are practices that happened in community. They happened in Kula. They were small communities. They, it wasn't, didn't have this emphasis on sort of aesthetic, a prolonged retreats, going off to caves for long duration, it was more about how we actually could carry this idea of radical non duality into our most intimate relationships, into our communities, into our field of everyday experience.
And I think on one level, it's more challenging, but it's also much more natural. And I think that's where it's exciting when you look at Redesigning the Dharma as it were, which really means just going back to its origins and understanding that it was such a creative process when it first emerged.
And if we carry that kind of view into, okay, how have these practices changed over time? What were the sociological conditions, geographical conditions, cultural conditions that caused those changes to occur? Are they still relevant today? What were the, as you talked about in the beginning, going back to these first principles? And how do we bring those forward, and how do we bring them into forms that really speak to our everyday lives today.
Adrian: Yeah, Ian, I think all of that raises a really interesting question about, okay, where's Vajrayana heading you know, and how's this related to what you and Dr. Nida are working on with Vajra Path. So especially as Vajrayana goes to the West, place where there's not this culture of monasticism and renunciation, it seems all the more so necessary to adapt in a different way.
And how do you see it adapting? What do you think is necessary? What do you think of the opportunities? And just say how that's relevant to what you and what Dr. Nida are up to.
Ian: yeah. So with the Vajra Path, which is Dr. Nida and I sort kind of founded, if you want to call it that, this, it's looking at Vajrayana culture in dialogue with the contemporary world, with a kind of more cosmopolitan orientation and how Vajrayāna, exactly as you say, can be relevant within a contemporary transnational world that we're in.
And it's one reason why The Vajra Journeys began with a Vajrayāna conference in Bhutan, but the next trip that we did was actually in Greece, beginning to explore what kind of common ground there might be between the initiatic practices and aspects of the Vajrayāna tradition in its earliest genesis with initiatic processes in the ancient Greek mystery schools, for example. To explore that energetically and experientially by going to some of those places of initiation in Greece, you know, such as Delphi, which was considered sort of the center of the world in the ancient times.
As well as places like Eleusis that had its own mystery school traditions, working with entheogenic substances in order to go through a kind of symbolic death and rebirth. And we see a lot of those aspects, of course, are common within Tantric Buddhism, and particularly in, you know, the whole idea of the bardo yogas, going through death and rebirth, death and rebirth, constantly.
So we're exploring that in the sense that, you know, as Westerners, we have this sort of Aegean DNA, in the sense of so much of our own culture emerged out of these ancient traditions from the Hellenic Aegean and even pre Hellenic, meaning the Minoan Crete, example, which was a matriarchal culture and that's actually a trip that we will do next year with Dr. Nida, is to explore the, you know, say, the Yogini Tantras in connection with these matriarchal traditions of the longest surviving matriarchal culture that we're aware of, which was Minoan Crete. So I think for us to understand how it can adapt, we want to kind of go back to its origins.
I mean, there's a link between Mongolia, the Tibetan plateau, and the Aegean world that's just starting to emerge now. There's a great classical scholar Peter Kingsley, who did some really interesting work on these links between these cultural exchanges that happened between, you could say, the Tibetan Plateau and ancient Greece in connection with these traditions that were connected what was called Hyperborean Apollo.
So Apollo, which we think of often as the kind of counterpart of Dionysus and we think of him as the classic Greek deity. But in reality when you look at some of these early traditions as Peter Kingsley has pointed out, Apollo's origins are attributed to Hyperborea, meaning the far, the deep north, meaning coming from the the Tibetan plateau or Mongolia, however we want to understand it.
So, I think it's, to me, it's fascinating to look at these links that have been explored but under researched, and so part of what we want to do, and so next year, for example, in addition to a trip in Tibet and Bhutan, so 2025, for example, we'll have two trips, one of which will be in Turkey, kind of looking at the way the Silk Road began from, let's say, Constantinople, Istanbul today, through Cappadocia and then later that same year to Mongolia, sort of looking again at the very beginning and end, if you will, of the Silk Road.
And when we look more and more at the interactions between Islam and Buddhism along the Silk Roads, and particularly in the context of Sufism, I think there's a lot to be explored. So that's certainly part of what we want to do with The Vajra Path, is to open it up when you talk about, okay, what can be changed, what can be adapted.
It's to understand the deep historical interconnections. So we know that in kind of conventional religious terms, religious traditions, including Vajrayana Buddhism, they like to think of themselves as revealed teachings that have nothing to do with any other tradition per se.
But I think as, in the West today, from our kind of liberal arts education, you know, it's important for us to really acknowledge the deep interchanges that actually can excite us into why these traditions are so rich is because they interacted with other traditions. And that's where their dynamism comes from rather than actually subscribing to a kind of mythopoetic or legendary origin of the traditions.
If we really look openly and honestly at the historical genesis of these processes, then we kind of escape the idea that Conventional Tibetan Buddhism would tell us that the Buddhist tantras were actually taught secretly by Shakyamuni Buddha after when he was 80 years old.
So there's a lot of these kind of conventional views that are still upheld by the tradition from some of the greatest representatives of the tradition, but they're kind of hard for educated Westerners to really accept that when they can look so clearly at the historical evolution of a tradition rather than a kind of mythopoetic origin myth, for example. So I suppose with Vajra Path, it's about bridging the rational mind with the mythopoetic mind, because there is also the power that comes from that willful suspension of disbelief that allows us to engage energetically and imaginatively with such a rich tradition.
And that simply is, you know, that's the poetic mind that we want to cultivate within these traditions. But at the same time, without losing the rational mind at the same time. And I think that's, that's the beauty of it. It's the challenge of it.
You know, we think a lot, going back to what you were talking about before, of mindfulness, of interoception, meaning attending to our breath, attending to our chakras.
This is certainly what we associate a lot with meditative process. But there's also the whole other side of a spectrum of interoception to exteroception. You know, in the West we perhaps emphasize more looking outside, disconnecting from our own interceptive awareness to that which exists outside us.
But there are, you know, the powerful methods within Tantric Buddhism and Tantric Shaivism, where we can actually navigate, we gain a flexibility of mind, we train the mind to be able to move along that spectrum between inner awareness and outer awareness, and actually until we dissolve that so called spectrum into the non dual expanse of reality itself.
Because as we know, for example, there's often the danger within certain practices of, even as Tsoknyi Rinpoche, for example, since you were referring to him before, we can actually over identify with a kind of quietistic shamatha state in which we become very, it's very
Adrian: as he calls it.
Ian: what's it, sorry, stupid
Adrian: He calls it stupid shamata.
Ian: Exactly. And we
Adrian: We're zoned out.
Ian: Exactly. And we need to cut through that as, as Tsoknyi Rinpoche teaches. That's the cutting through, even through these kind of so called quietistic and beatific states into that just immediate that sharpness of experience. And so I think that's the flexibility of mind.
We want to be able to access that whole range between the interoceptive, the extraoceptive, to use kind of the outer and the inner, if you will, until that outer and inner division becomes, in a certain sense, recognized as just a continuum, which really is that meaning in Tibetan of tantra gyu, that which, in a way, is seamlessly present within all experience.
Adrian: Nice. Well, Ian, I love that. And as you're describing that cosmopolitan vision for Vajra Path, it's so clear that resonates as well with the vision that I have for Sahaja Soma because it really is about getting to this, you could say, spiritual insight or mystical heart that is really at the core of all mystical traditions and contemplative paths, whether it's mystical Christianity, Sufism the non dual tantric traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, and that's not to paper over the important differences in those orientations, but there is a core, I think, mystical truth there.
So, I love what you're doing. I love the line of bridging the rational and the mythopoetic line because we need to do both. And I think a lot of times what a modern secular Westerner fears, the people who are into spirituality but not religion, is they think that becoming interested in spirituality means abandoning reason and it doesn't have to do that.
Have to involve that or subscribing to dogma. So I feel very aligned with what you're doing and I thank you very much for your time This was a really enriching conversation and a lot of fun.
Ian: Well, I'll just say in conclusion from my side that I think, you know, what you're doing with Sahaja Soma, I mean, soma, as you know, has such a rich meaning. I mean, there's the outer soma or the outer elixir. There's also that soma, which is that kind of immortal, blissful awareness that arises through these practices.
And that that's innate to our being. It's not something we cultivate, only in the sense that we try to bring it increasingly into our experiential field. So I think, that is the essence that connects all these traditions, whether it's Sufism, Shaivism, Buddhism, it's all about getting to that rich, primordial elixir of life, which is the Soma, which is our innate state.
So, thank you for doing what you're doing, and as these practices come into greater alignment with our contemporary lives, with all of the new challenges in the world that we have, I think it's an extremely exciting way of going back to the creative origins of these traditions. So, thank you for that.
Adrian: Thank you Ian, I appreciate the kind words and I want to give you the opportunity to let people know where they can find you or about any upcoming offerings that you'll have this year.
Ian: Sure. Well, as you said, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang and I sort of came up with this vision, if you will, of The Vajra Path, which is kind of keeping the word Vajra, the Sanskrit word, but translating jana or vehicle. So it's kind of like bridge between the East and the West by just keeping one Sanskrit word and changing the other word to English.
So The Vajra Path has various components and particularly now emphasizing these pilgrimages and journeys. So we will actually have a website relatively soon, which will just be TheVajraPath.Com, but it's not there yet. So currently there's a Facebook page and there's an Instagram account in which we, for example, we just announced the two trips that we'll be doing in 2024, the Year of the Dragon. Which will be a trip to Tibet and Mount Kailash in July and a trip to Bhutan in October. Both of them focusing on different aspects of Vajrayana.
The one in Tibet in particular looking at the, essence of the Chakrasamvara Tantra. Which has clearly place in which the Shaiva tradition and the Buddhist tradition come into kind of radical interaction at a sacred mountain, which is the seat of Shiva and Shakti for Hindus and the seat of Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi in the Buddhist sense. So it's going to be a very exciting trip starting in Lhasa and going to this holy mountain that's considered the center of the earth from all of those traditions.
And then the Bhutan trip will actually really emphasize Tummo, which is the foundation of the six yogas. And so we're going to go through with The Vajra Path and to have a whole curriculum for the six yogas. So we really want to kind of firm that up with this next trip in Bhutan. And then subsequent trips, as I mentioned, 2025, it'll be Turkey and Mongolia.
But looking again at how we carry our experience on every aspect of our lives into this path in which we can kind of awaken to the fullness of our being.
And that, I think, is the beauty of Vajrayana. It's not about escaping life. It's about living it in a way to its fullest, in the fullest expression of our human nature.
So until we have the website, people are also more than welcome to reach out to me personally at my email address, the simplest is just ianbaker108@gmail. Com or they can connect with me on my Facebook page. I also have a website, IanBaker.Com, but it's kind of also under construction.
But until then, people can reach out to me, to Dr. Nida and it's a very exciting sort of sangha or community that's emerging through this Vajra Path. As we have, o bviously, common interests in getting to the very essence of our human nature and our human experience and how we actually can connect, as it were, the richness of these ancient traditions with our contemporary lives today and the challenges we face on the planet.
So, looking forward to the unfolding of Sahaja Soma and The Vajra Path, and the ways that they have intersected through our conversation today. Thank you for the time that you made for this.
Adrian: Thank you and I look forward to continuing the journey in Tibet.