Crazy Wisdom’s Tenuous Tibetan Background

Agathon, mad saint of Mt. Athos, 1925

“The job of an artist, the work of an artist, is not to do with what we know. The artist is like a fool, like an idiot, going on a journey to discover something.”   

 — Anish Kapoor 

ཡེ་ཤེས་འཆོལ་བ།  YE SHES ’CHOL BA  

We hear it often repeated that the just-given  Tibetan phrase underlies Trungpa Chögyam’s “Crazy Wisdom.” Do a Schmoogle search for it as well as its English version, and you’ll find plentiful references. I say it would better be translated as Full Knowledge libertinism, or Enlightened Awareness profligacy. It’s as if the post-Enlightenment knowledge, or Full Knowledge, accomplished by the Buddha were to go on to fall into disorder or disarray, or just get wasted. Traditional Tibetan texts know nothing of this term. This may be proven by all who will search through the extremely extensive TBRC/BDRC database. The reason for its absence? It was made up as a plausible ‘back translation’ of English “Crazy Wisdom,” in a move to lend it authority and authenticity.*

(*For further details about where and how far Trungpa went with it, see David DiValerio's book The Holy Madmen of Tibet, p. 239 ff.) 

It is interesting to note what appears to be one independent 20th-century witness to the phrase (and the one and only instance that a TBRC database search turns up) in the works of Dongag Chöki Gyatso (མདོ་སྔགས་ཆོས་ཀྱི་རྒྱ་མཚོ་ 1903-1957). Examined more closely, the context cannot be made to support Trungpa’s usage, and so we may safely dismiss it as a “false positive.” 

Padampa Sangyé never used the term, not surprising at all since nobody did before the 20th century. Still, even some of the most highly esteemed Tibetan and Tibetan-style teachers of our day go on to speak of it as traditional, occasionally naming Padampa as an instance of it, even though it has the distinctive scent of a newly reinvented modern reincarnation of what was once significantly different. One may be inclined to insist that there is crazy wisdom, and then something else called crazy wisdom. But with the proviso that there really is no Tibetan term behind it, what would be the point of pressing the matter further?

For those true believers out there who still insist on buying it, I’d like to unload my collection of Tibetan Singing Bowls. I see little sense in ringing them anymore, and I like to think I can spot an opportunity when one bites my nose.

But not so fast...

I have a brief answer to those who adamantly oppose the contemporary employment by spiritual mentors or psychological counselors of any counterintuitive methods regardless of their potential effectiveness. I wonder if they are ready to say that medical practitioners should give up surgery. Think about it. Surgery is no doubt harmful in its own way and need it be said very invasive, violating our personal space so much more than gentle herbal elixirs and ointments do. It can take us a great deal of time to recover from the physical and emotional traumas. And as is well known surgery far too often results in serious injuries of its own, even death. So let’s take surgery out of the hands of the physicians.* Perhaps we could go further, and take therapeutic massage away from them as well. It may not cut into us, but it sure does hurt, and in precisely the place where it hurts they press far too hard, and it takes too much time to recover.** Oh, and not to mention shock treatments, even if they are those supposedly more precisely targeted 21st-century types of electroconvulsive therapies we’ve been hearing about. Do the benefits justify the pain, the temporary loss of autonomy and time, not to mention the healing process that comes after the trauma of treatment? I hope I'm following the logic rightly. I think I am. Are the physicians necessarily abusing their power every time they cut us, press into us, or shock us? Should we forbid them their most effective means of treatment? 

Relax, I’m not getting doctrinaire here: if any person we meet in the street, even if that person is a surgeon, tries to attack us with a sharp weapon we would be right to dodge their blows and call for backup. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a man on the operating table snatching the scalpel from his physician’s hand and shouting, “You stop right there! Don’t you dare cut me or I’ll have you arrested for assault with a deadly weapon.” No. We submit to the doctor because we know it’s needed. 

If we’re in fact content with our lot as puppets or slaves to the impulsive or habitual thoughts that drive us to do badly and feel badly, no problem. If drugs are sufficient to deaden us to them, no problem either. Either way Buddhism has diminished and lost much of its necessity. Just give up the struggle and take the drugs, it’s your choice, isn’t it. Well, isn’t it?

(*In the histories of Tibetan medicine it is said that during the imperial period Tibetans did just that. They removed surgery from the medical toolbox on account of one single mortality. **I confess to speaking with a degree of hypocrisy here, since I also do my best to rely on herbal extractions and ointments, avoiding as far as humanly possible the poisons and blood lettings offered by modern medicine... at the same time I much appreciate the relief that results from the pain inflicted during massage treatments. I can’t explain myself to myself, sometimes... Well, not in a way I find entirely coherent, or applicable to every occasion. I’ve said my piece.)

 

A couple of things to read

“Iurodivye [юродивый]: Fools for Christ,” a blog posting at CityDesert (January 16, 2014).

Pasang Yontan Arya, “External Therapies in Tibetan Medicine: The Four Tantras, Contemporary Practice and a Preliminary History of Surgery,” Chapter 4 of: Theresia Hofer, ed., Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, Rubin Museum of Art (New York 2014), pp. 32-89. 

My note: Although cataract surgery has its own history in Tibet and there are literary traces that other types of surgery were done here and there in more recent centuries, in general surgical procedures were abandoned in around the year 800 CE because of the death of Emperor Mune Tsenpo’s mother following heart surgery. On these points, see page 85 and following.

Levi Asher, “When Hippies Battle: the Great W.S. Merwin/Allen Ginsberg Beef of 1975,” posted here on November 17, 2005. An interesting recounting of events on the night of The Party. A few of the readers’ comments are more revealing than the essay itself.

Thomas Cattoi, “Pussy Riot and Chögyam Trungpa: Reinventing Crazy Wisdom for Post-Modernity,” Journal of Dharma Studies, vol. 3 (2020), pp. 59-70, online publication. Sadly, you might have to cross over a paywall to get to it. Why is open access such a pseudo-problem, and who says somebody has to fork over a lot of money in order to make things free? To be honest, now that I’ve managed to access it, I can’t tell you what its point is exactly. Is it that outrageous actions are disruptive? And that something good might possibly come of it? Don’t we know this? Don’t most of us make use of this practical wisdom from time to time?

Tom Clark, The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a Copious Collection of Germane Documents Assembled by the Author, Cadmus Editions (Santa Barbara 1980). About the now famous drinking party in which a well-known modern poet and his companion suffered serious humiliation at Trungpa’s command. You might be able to borrow it from archive.org if it isn’t checked out already. There is a still-growing body of literature on Trungpa Chögyam and the people who gathered around him. Academic theses are being written, including one with a thesis that Canadian military returning from Iraq would not have suffered from PTS syndrome if they had only been trained in Trungpa’s “Shambhala Warrior” program. Oh really... warning bells at so many levels. Anyway, I won’t attempt a full bibliography today.

Georg Feuerstein, Holy Madness: Spirituality, Crazy-Wise Teachers, and Enlightenment (Revised and Expanded Edition), Hohm Press (Prescott AZ 1996).  The title when first published in 1991 was Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wisdom Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus. It may seem to be toned down a bit, which would have been good and probably also wise. At p. 344 (as you must know by now, the bit calling crazy wisdom a “straight translation” is off, and we’re left wondering if he meant to say that it was the Tibetan or the English that was first coined) he says:

“... the expression [crazy wisdom] was apparently coined by the late Lama Chögyam Trungpa, whose crazy-wise exploits are well known in Western Buddhist circles and beyond. “Crazy wisdom” is a straight translation of the Tibetan phrase yeshe cholwa. Trungpa’s coinage was adopted by at least two American-born teachers to characterize their own teaching style—Adi Da and Lee Lozowick. The expression is composed of two concepts that on first glance appear to be mutually exclusive...”

My note: I checked, and I see this passage was not part of the 1991 first edition. I confess I haven’t read the new one all the way through, but it seems this considerably expanded edition has further pressed on that no doubt on occasion difficult-to-define boundary between [1] what’s spontaneous enlightened activity that helps people and [2] what’s plain self-interested evil likely to hurt all concerned. Unlike some “Tibetan Buddhists” I know of, I think we would be right to err on the side of goodness and mercy. And, it may go without saying, it is better to share than to impose. In short, I think he widened his net far too far by including some of the figures he does include. And that goes for the author’s own guru, Da Love-Ananda (aka La Tidah, Adi Da, Bubba Free John etc.) who taught that giving yourself new names whenever you like is just plain fun and not confusing at all, as well as Gurdjieff and Crowley. I believe the last-mentioned is the same one famed for saying “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Following this advice will indubitably show thyself as the total dick thou art. See if you can go to this review in Tricycle written by Stuart Smithers for similar sentiments expressed more nicely. But I have to say, the great virtue of Feuerstein’s book is to find some kind of method in the apparent madness of saints in the whole world, not just a small part of it.

Enrique Galván-Álvarez, “Translating the Translator: Identity and Revision in Trungpa Rinpoche's Buddhism(s),” IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship, vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 111-126. I found some very useful references in it.

Priscilla Hunt and Svitlana Kobets, Holy Foolishness in Russia: New Perspectives, Slavica Publishers (Bloomington 2011). This book includes one section, at pp. 41-148, that I regard as particularly valuable, a translation of A.M. Panchenko, “Laughter as Spectacle: Holy Foolishness in Old Russia.” There are remarkable parallels with the early sources on Padampa I’d like to talk about another time in some other blog.

Anish Kapoor, “Modi’s Government Fears Culture — and the Freedom of Spirit it Spreads,” The Wire (July 21, 2022).

D. Martin, “Crazy Wisdom in Moderation: Padampa Sangyé’s Use of Counterintuitive Methods in Dealing with Negative Mental States,” contained in: Yael Bentor and Meir Shahar, eds., Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, Brill (Leiden 2017), pp. 193-214.  For an addition and edition of a relevant Tibetan text, see this blog entry. Despite the well-known chapter of the Crazy of Tsang's Songs of Milarepa which dates quite late, there isn’t really any statement evincing a positive evaluation of madness or craziness per se in the certifiably early works associated with Padampa and the Zhijé school that I’ve been able to find (I’ll keep looking). What we do find are some rare and mostly soto voce discussions of counterintuitive methods (gya-log), methods that may not be crazy in the least, at least upon closer inspection.

John Riley Perks, The Mahâsiddha and His Idiot Servant, Crazy Heart Publishers (Putney VT 2004). You may want to read this book about serving as butler and personal attendant of a demanding master ahead of time to help you decide if this is the kind of thing you would like to volunteer for. Then again, this is not something for the prudish or faint of heart. So maybe just leave it alone. I was particularly bemused to read how, like Prince (now King) Charles, the Rinpoche had to have the toothpaste squeezed onto his toothbrush ahead of time, and just so. Oh, my... How disabled can an able-bodied person get?

Ed Sanders, “The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary,” Boulder Monthly (March 1979), pp. 24-39. A scan might be downloadable here. The author was a member of The Fugs, which says something. You might prefer the color scan, with inclusion of the interview with Allen Ginsberg, here (but no, it's not downloadable).

Suzannah Showler, “Crazy Wisdom: A Love Story.” Posted at Hazlitt (November 24, 2020). Whatever you might be thinking during the reading, admit this at least: the words and graphics are all snap and sparkle: https://hazlitt.net/longreads/crazy-wisdom-love-story.

Terje Sparby, “What Stands in the Way Becomes the Way: Dual and Non-Dual Approaches to Meditation Hindrances in Buddhist Traditions and Contemplative Science,” Religions, vol. 13 (2022), in 19 pages. Easily available online (just search for it), this brand new article indexes quite a range of Buddhist teachers’ ideas concerning useful ways to counteract obstacles, or how obstacles can be made to serve as stepping stones on the Path. I’m not convinced anything is gained by adopting the dualism of dual versus nondual, as is done here. But after all, as a dialectical tool of analysis it doesn’t get in the way all that much. Still, I do sense traces of Vedantic Advaita vs. Dvaita, and I don’t see Buddhists talking like that in any discussions about what is basic (as a dialectic to build upon). What does concern me is 21st-century youngsters finding ways to justify going about life with all the wickedness they can muster. That’s not a good direction.

Robert Woods, “Buddha-Gate Scandal and Cover-up at Naropa Revealed,” Tibetan Review, vol. 14, no. 7 (July 1979), pp. 17-18, 21.  You should be able to find it reproduced on this page belonging to Rob Hogendoorn.

Getty Images

Even more as if that weren’t enough

The editors of Inquiring Mind held an interview with the late Steven Goodman of the California Institute of Integral Studies, entitled “Wisdom Crazy” that could be worth your while. It ought to be here: 

https://www.inquiringmind.com/article/2102_12w_goodman/

There is also Trungpa Chogyam’s own book bearing the title, and ditto a rather recent film about his life where he literally rides off on a white horse at the end,* but you can find those on your own. If you are really crazy and seriously lacking in the requisite wisdom you may want to purchase a volume called Crazy Wisdom made up entirely of “curated” Wikipedia entries that you could have found on your own without forking over the bucks for it. It’s out there, believe you me. Oh, and there is the Wikipedia entry “Divine Madness.” It displays some of the problems we’ve grown to expect from authorship by a conglomerate. Just wait until AI takes it over and gloms the universe of knowables up even more.

(*If you can find a way to see the movie, fast forward just about three minutes into it to hear Trungpa’s own voice explain how crazy wisdom is a translation of ye-shes chol-ba, while the latter could, he says, be translated as ‘wisdom gone wild.’ He immediately goes on to recalque his creatively back-constructed [རང་བཟོ་] Tibetan as “craziness gone wisdom.” Fine and good, I suppose, even if not good English is made to translate something invented. Still, I think it could just as well have been translated as ‘erring [on the side of] Full Knowledge.’ That sounds perfectly workable even if hardly doable.)

Not one that’s been viewed by many, I could recommend a serious video entitled “Saints, Scholars, and Provocateurs: Chogyam Trungpa and Buddhism in the Twenty-First Century,” filmed at Harvard Divinity School on July 9, 2013. It’s here.

• Back in 1993, the 14th Dalai Lama termed crazy wisdom “new vocabulary,” and if you ask me His Holiness could not be more on the mark. For the reference, see Stefan Larsson, Crazy for Wisdom, Brill (Leiden 2012), p. 9. Oh, and read the book, too, if you can find the time.

• If you are pressed for time, see this video with the title “Dalai Lama on Chogyam Trungpa,” for statements by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama as well as Tenzin Palmo, the Jetsunma. You’ll likely recognize a number of other people in the audience, including Buddhist teachers of different nations and traditions. It took place 30 years ago, back in 1993. The continuation is here. But you might prefer the very long version of the same conversation, here.

• A note on that proper name: Chögyam Trungpa (1937 or 1940 to 1987) has behind it the original Tibetan spelling  དྲུང་པ་ཆོས་རྒྱམ་, Drung-pa Chos-rgyam, a slightly shortened version of Drung-pa Chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho. As a child he was a recognized as a reincarnated Lama associated with Zur-mang Monastery in eastern Tibet. He sometimes bears the fuller name Zur-mang Drung-pa Chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho, being the eleventh incarnate of Zur-mang monastery’s Drung-pa line. For a list of all twelve, look here.

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The Shell of Fools (in which foolish hopes create an illusion of smooth sailing to an entirely imaginary destination)

Well, at least that is what I imagine this picture is about. It could just represent the appetites bottled up inside, or are they nurturing some hope to find freedom from their shell? I just don’t know, even if I do see sangsara or, to speak Blakean, the “world of generation” in it, both its possibilities and its discomforting* limitations:

An engraving with added hand coloring. Source: Johann Theodor de Bry (1561-1623), Emblemata saecularia, mira et iucunda varietate saeculi huius mores ita exprimentia (Frankfurt 1596).

(*Our contemporary self-help seminars and health clinics often make use of what would appear to be Buddhist-derived techniques, tucking a few pillows around the sore spots to make our stay in the clam-shell more tolerable, ‘dealing with the stresses of modern life,’ ‘healing relationships,’ ‘finding fulfillment in work,’ and the like. I would think that actual followers of the Buddha toss those palliative pillows out and get to work on reaching the other shore regardless of difficulties. Then they might begin to implement the union of wisdom and method that gives Bodhisattvas of the Great Vehicle their definition.)

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Discussion: An Instant Response from Jan-Ulrich Sobisch:

Dear Dan,

I could comment on your “defence” of using counterintuitive methods based on your comparison with surgery, particularly your sentence “We submit to the doctor because we know it’s needed.”

Do we? If we did, that would be a good point to make. However, do we know? Or isn’t it more that we trust that the doctor knows what he (or she) does and that the science behind it is solid?

Now it is an analogy! People go to the Rinpoche and trust that what he does is based on great wisdom and skill. The problem, however, is: Do we have a solid basis for forming that trust, or is this trust built on something like projection?

The science behind surgery can be checked, but how to check projection?

Another important aspect in the immediate context of this is “charisma.” I understand it here as “attribution of outstanding knowledge and skill by so-and-so on so-and-so.” Now, if you watch (in youtube) the ‘documentary’ “Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche” (Shambhala), you can see how charisma is built. There is for example the story of the servant who “personally saw” how the Rinpoche, after apparently being too drunk to teach, suddenly became totally sober in the elevator. Did he really see it? We have to trust him that he did. Or does he retell a story of someone else, having appropriated it to himself long ago? Or has he built himself a memory (a process of which we hear so much in recent years – and at least I can say of myself that in hindsight, I can see how many times I did that myself). In other words, has he told the story so often that the filling of the logical gaps became something that felt like a memory to him? 

Or we can see the super successful therapist talking about her sexual encounters with the Rinpoche (when she was a young and, of course, stunningly beautiful woman), which were, of course, liberating her, so that now, she is enabled (ennobled?) to pass on the wisdom, which made her a great success in the scene.

And so on. In short, I doubt that the analogy is solid. Or that it provides what you may have thought it provides.

BTW, while I believe that Feuerstein’s book is mostly worthless (I did read most of it!), I am quite impressed by DiValerio’s book. In short, my argument here would be that it is useless to talk, write or think about the possible intentions of Tricksters, Fools, Madmen, or Saints, simply because we cannot know (and not because we cannot fathom!), but it is much more useful to investigate the social or socio-historical aspect of these people and things: How did they fit into the situation that they found themselves in?

I hope this was interesting to you.

Best wishes,

jan