As the sad and disturbing events and actions related to Sogyal Lakar have become apparent there has been much confusion in the minds of many of his students and other concerned Buddhists as observed on a number of online platforms. One of the aspects of misunderstanding is the rôle, activities and function of the Vajra Master, particularly in regard to the manifestation of Yeshé 'cholwa - Wisdom Chaos, often translated as crazy wisdom. Lakar's activities have been those that abuse, exploit and damage not only his many students but the understanding of the rôle and function of the Vajra Master.
In the hope of assuaging some of the misunderstandings and distress I am posting this recent and clarifying teaching by Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen, the Lineage Holders of the Aro gTér, on the Vajra Master, without whom the treasures of Vajrayana would not be possible.
Vajra Masters
The Body, Speech, and Mind of Vajrayana
by Ngak’chang Rinpoche & Khandro Déchen
Vajra masters may manifest crazy wisdom – but their ‘craziness’ is never prurient, predictable, hackneyed, clichéd, trite, or crass. Yeshé ’cholwa (Wisdom Chaos) is the inchoate efflorescence of primordial wisdom.
Vajra masters may be divine madmen—or divine madwomen—but their ‘madness’ is never self-oriented, self-indulgent, self-aggrandising, or self-obsessed. sMyon Heruka (Mad Sainthood) is freedom from the bureaucracy of institutionalised experience.
Vajra masters may be wrathful – but their ‘wrathfulness’ is never peevish, irritable, surly, petulant, or aggressively impatient. Wrathful Lamas are never serene in public and sadistic in private.
Vajra masters may be the monarchs of their kyil’khors – but their majesty is never haughty, arrogant, imperious, or desirous of droit du seigneur. Vajra monarchs are vastly wealthy in terms of appreciation of the phenomenal world and therefore have no desire for excessive conventional wealth.
Vajra masters may be accomplished in karmamudra – but they reserve their skills for those disciples whose experience of the non-dual state pervades their practice, rather than for those who are merely young and conventionally beautiful.
Vajra masters may accept students’ vows of vajra commitment – but imposters to vajra mastery can only steal the loyalty of those they dupe. Those who are duped only need to recognise they have been duped, in order to be free of those who merely pose as vajra masters.
Vows can only be broken when they have been entered into with authenticity. Deranged poltroons may pronounce two people married – but their pronouncements carry no weight in either religion or law.
Vajra masters are the living embodiments of Padmasambhava and Yeshé Tsogyel, like our own Lamas Kyabjé Künzang Dorje Rinpoche and Jomo Sam’phel Déchen. We, on the other hand, are not vajra masters – and cannot be viewed as vajra masters. We are merely convivial vicars of Vajrayana – and nothing we say need be taken too dreadfully seriously.
སྔགས་འཆང་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ / མཁའ་འགྲོ་བདེ་ཆེན་
Sourced from the Aro Encyclopeidia: http://www.aroencyclopaedia.org/shared/text/v/vajra_commitment_ar_03_ncr_kdt_eng.php