Comments on “Aro tsok and the Three Displays”

I enjoy affecting an insouciant irreverence, myself. Probably more than is a good idea-- 'too clever by half' could be an alias/nickname for me.

But 'dharmakaya display' is neither intended to be a 'selling point,' nor a compulsory activity whose requirement people need to be warned about. It is an opportunity to practice 'pure vision'-- and, as such, a daunting challenge. To talk non-dual philosophy is all very well: can you see the original innocence and perfection of the odd lot of your fellow practitioners when they're not wearing clothes? For that matter, do you trust your own innate dignity enough to be willing to take off your own costume? The other two displays are of the robes of the lineage, and of 'splendid attire.' None of the three displays offer the opportunity of taking refuge in being 'just plain old neurotic me'-- a practitioner has to take an extra measure of responsibility.

Dear Sabio,

I would like to be explicit about the whole 'getting naked' thing.

On the occasions when being naked arises there is always a choice - for everyone. For a newcomer or a long term committed person. All three displays are equally powerful if entered into honestly and openly.

No-one ever tells anyone that they ought to manifest one of the displays in order to get over neurosis. One chooses how one wishes to appear - do I want to manifest the glorious richness of the nirmanakaya display (robes or fancy clothes), do I want to manifest the symbolic nature of wearing ritual ornaments (sambhogakaya display) or do I want to manifest the pure simplicity of dharmakaya display (naked).

On any occasion there are always a mixture of people wearing different things - both long term practioners and newcomers - so there is never the idea that those who are manifesting dharmakaya display are 'better' than those who are clothed (nirmanakaya display).

Before someone joins the sangha we always make sure they understand that these practices occur on retreat and that they understand the context, we also try and make sure this is a face-to-face conversation so that they can ask any questions about it, and that they really understand that it is a matter of personal choice.

I hope this helps.

best wishes
Ngakma Shé-zér

Dear Sabio,

Your questions first

(1) Are there other occasions besides the tsok 3 hour event on last day of apprentice-only retreats?

- yes as David stated above we also practice the three displays during some empowerment ceremonies (not all).

(2) Are there apprentices who opt to not participate in the events where nakedness can occur? Is that also a personal choice?

All activities on an apprentice retreat are optional, no one will drag you along and make you attend, but I've never known anyone in the British sangha opt out of an event because of concerns about manifesting the three displays. As I said - you choose what you personally wear - so it would have to be the case that you didn't want to see other people. Also as I said we make it very clear to people before they ever attend one of these retreats that this is going to happen so there are no sudden surprises.

(3) What sorts of challenges/problems has nakedness caused in the past with your group?

None to my knowledge. Some individuals may have there own personal body image issues, but nothing significant, they just don't manifest dharmakaya display. It may be hard to understand but there is nothing in the slightest bit 'sexy' about any of it, nor is there any pressure, so really there have been no problems. The biggest challenge is the fact we hold our retreats in Wales where it is damp and cold - so taking your clothes off is a bit chilly.

(4) Do you know of any other Vajra groups that practice nudity and any problems they have had?

No - but I haven't asked around. It may be difficult to grasp but this is one very small aspect - it's just a bit of a headline grabber so it seems more important than it is.

Sorry if my leap into the conversation seemed more reactive than clarifying. It was partly the rather dismissive language your questions used; there's an important distinction between skepticism and suspicion. I've been in both modes: 30 years ago [when I was insufficiently skeptical] I was involved with a teacher and group about which your questions and concerns are dead-on-- and there was all kinds of holy-sounding verbal smokescreen emitted to enable the abuses that went on. At some point my little native spark of skepticism flared up into full suspicion, and I fled.

So all these decades later, when I encountered Aro, I was about as fully-informed a skeptic as is possible. As others have said, the occasions of nakedness are distinctly NOT sexy; the ambient temperature alone, at most of the retreats at which I've been present, are an incentive for devising very WARM 'splendid attire.'

Pragmatics aside, I stand behind the aspect of challenge/opportunity that the three displays present: what other chance have I ever had to discover the space between prurience and puritanism? When I wrote earlier about 'pure vision' I suddenly realized that tsog is a visionary practice-- and despite my usual opinion about being 'no good at all the visionary stuff' I CAN feel something extraordinary as we read the text together describing the qualities, actions, and symbolism of the yidam.

Few more questions:
(1) Do you find that some people always prefer nudity when it is the option and dressers usually prefer dressing?
(2) Do you all talk about this much or does it go undiscussed?

(3) You said, "It may be difficult to grasp but this is one very small aspect-it's just a bit of a headline grabber so it seems more important than it is."
As I have asked David, if it is such a headline grabber and so relatively unimportant, for the sake of trying to pass on the teachings to a larger potential audience, hasn't the group discussed dropping it? What do you think? For example, as I approach this group, I find much of the thinking and methods very attractive to me. My wife is mildly interested in Buddhism and I have slowly discussed it with her. But I know that she would take many, many steps backward from approaching if I even told her about this. She would rightly be highly skeptical and laugh it away. Such losses to me seem unnecessary and wasteful. Elsewhere on this site David worries that Buddhism will go extinct in this century -- maybe reformations need to consider these elements.

I stumbled onto this thread by accident – so I’m not sure what I have to say is any use of interest. I have no big problem with nudity either way. I used to skinny dip with others when I was young and was always impressed by the fact that people could be naked with each other without it being a big hairy problem. I don’t quite get the connection between nudity and abuse. What’s *that* all about? There was a big scandal sometime back about Sogyal Rinpoche abusing women – but I heard nothing about group nudity – so the two things don’t necessarily go together. Are there rumours about these aro lamas that this question has come up? I’ve known about them since the early 1990’s and although they’re not everyone’s cup of tea (I find their teachings clear and worth hearing) I’ve never heard a whisper about abuse. What I find strange is the approach in asking about this. I don’t know why mister Sabio needs to trivialise the subject as part of his question, or why he needs to come out on top by making a joke out of Kate’s use of words. It’s a serious subject and serious (I mean sensible) questions could be asked about origins and so forth. Anyhow – that’s just my tuppence worth.

I think this is an important topic. But to avoid further mis-typifying, I think it may be useful to break the discussion up into sections. I will write 3 sections here but they are leading to more but I will take pauses to see if we are understanding each other before describing them.

(1) Apologies
I apologize if my style of questioning was offensive. It was not my intent. But apparently several people see my black and white type as such and thus I don't doubt that I could have been more cautious and gentle in the question. So I must leave that issue to the side for now and pursue the content.

(2) Timing
It is interesting that Johnny just happened on this blog considering that I just recently met with some Aro folks and discussed this issue in person and my reasoning caused much distress to them which surprised me. I essentially agree with Dharmadhatu's comment except that conjecture about my "discomfort with nudity" -- that did not drive any of my questions (as friends and family would attest).

(3) Investment & Choice: A human dilemma

What I am about to describe I take as common sense but I may be wrong. I will describe the phenomena and as if the reader agrees that this can easily occur or not. PLEASE remember, I am NOT talking about Aro, but I am talking about a general principle:

Because human psychology makes us all vulnerable to the following issue, I think one should always be judiciously cautious of this pitfall:

(a) When someone gets into a new group which has increasing levels of cost of investment (time, lost friends, money) ....

(b) With each new high investment comes new responsibility, status, privilege and/or information -- in other words, rewards for the investment.

(c) After so much investment , the relatively new member is asked to do something they would not have done on entry into the group and which, if they had known was something that would have been requested, would not have joined the group in the first place.

(d) Now the new member is in cognitive dissonance with two options:

(d1) If they quit, they have lost their investments (whatever those were) AND they may feel tempted to tell themselves they were dumb for not seeing this coming.

(d2) If they stay and compromise themselves, then they now must justify why their new activity is OK.

So my question: Do you see problem #3 as a risk that people must be cautious to avoid in general. (Again, I am not discussing Aro here, just the principle)

Well said Ricardo, That's it in a nutshell. My main interest is knowing more about the origins and history behind the 3 displays. that would really interest me alot. Can David fill me in with something on that?

Traditions which demand trust and commitment before participation and experience should be treated also with caution.

The difficulty with deliberate skepticism is that it can close the mind before experience can get in. Buddhist teachers speak of death, the bardo, and past and future lives. None of us can confirm whether these things are true or not, since we're not dead. But most of us cannot not bring to the table actual memories of being in the womb and being born, any more than we can bring to the table memories of our past lives.

So how do we know that we were ever born? We trust second hand testimony.

My own teachers assert that there is nothing in Buddhism that is inherently an inexplicable mystery that must be accepted on faith alone. That being said, however, there are always inherent limits on what we can immediately test about a doctrine and prove it to our satisfaction to be true. A skepticism that refuses to acknowledge such limits and demands "proof" of every doctrine all at once and all together will never be satisfied with any explanation of any doctrine.

My litmus test is this. My gurus have had much to say about the nature of my mind, my emotions, and my perceptions. These are all things I can immediately compare to my direct experience. Over the past 35 years, everything Buddhism has to say about my direct experience has proved to be unfailingly accurate. I can't test yet what they have to say about death, the bardo, and rebirth. But I think it perfectly reasonable to extend trust [not "faith"] to my teachers on these issues until I can test them directly.

A skeptical demand for any more "proof" than this of any religious doctrine is but a failure to maintain an open mind. Without an open mind true "experience" and "participation" is impossible.

I would like to add to Karmakshanti's admirably clear and even-handed remarks above one thing that hasn't been addressed directly: and that is, that tsok is a group practice in which the entire assembly is envisioning a yidam. The qualities, activities, and appearance of the yidam are described. When nakedness is spoken of, it is often described as 'betokening an utter lack of pretension.' This is an aspiration of the group as a whole-- and it is vulnerable to inharmonious views expressed in any way by anyone present.

One of the things that I have appreciated ever more keenly as time has gone on, and my encounters with other Buddhist groups have been more numerous, is the thought that the Lamas have invested in what a sangha requires, by way of codes of behavior, to function optimally AS a sangha. The Aro view is best encapsulated, I think, in the statement that the most important vows are 'kindness and openness.' Elaborations of this are spelled out to retreat participants, with great clarity, so that there can be no confusion for any of us 'red-faced barbarians' as to what courtesy and dignity would look and sound like.

I, too, wish you well, Sabio, and am sorry if my remarks seemed out of proportion or distorted your views. I would also add that I'm impressed as well with the Aro sangha and their thoroughness of training in what my Kagyu teachers call the View.

Misunderstanding of Tantra, and psychological projection upon it, has been with us from the very first centuries that it came out in the open, as the biographies of Saraha, Dhombi Heruka, and Maitirpa make clear. Our lineage founder Tilopa, got it right, "The problem is not pleasure, but craving." Both Saraha and Maitripa are direct transmitters of our Mahamudra lineage, and included with devotion on our Refuge Tree. So we are aware that the Action that is informed by realization of the View, is likely to violate all sorts of conventions and not just ones about body image and nudity.

I would say, as well, that I think you are going through the transformation of skepticism into confidence that you describe in my case. The actual journey I took is not quite like that. I was impressed from the first with the clarity and rigor of Buddhist thought and the very fact that it immediately fed my mind with nourishment as well as my heart through compassion and devotion. I also had the "luck" of finding teachers who impressed me as well-rounded men worthy of attention and respect. That counted for a lot in the development of my trust.

I also think that Aro does well to express itself as a "feminine" teaching and place such importance on its women gurus. The root teacher in the human world for my own private practice was an Indian yogini, and, since most of our other major practices have an exclusively masculine lineage, I can say with confidence that Chod and my own practice have a distinctly different flavor than these. Not better, different.

Anyone who is troubled by this flavor had best stick with the monks and model themselves on their discipline, even if they take no vows themselves. Buddhism really does have something for everybody, and if you find monks as worthy of respect as I did, they will make it very clear that there is nothing to be gained by sectarian prejudice against some of the more challenging manifestations of the Action.

ps Just realised it was back in 1992 I first saw Ngak'chang Rinpoche with Lama Tharchin Rinpoche at Pema Osel Ling.

David – cheers, that’s really useful, thanks for putting that up. Its really not easy to get hold of this kind of info on Buddhist tantra in books, specially about the meaning. The meaning is really important for relating to the purpose of tsog feasts as a practice because in my experience it been mainly chanting and then eating food thats frankly kind of awful. Is Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen going to be teaching on this in the UK at any time?

Would samboghakaya yidams such as Vajrasattva or Tara also wear Indian royal dress: the hair mantle, the loose trousers, the overskirt, the bare-midriff top [for Tara] or the shawl? Or would the raiment be confined to the jewelled garlands solely?

Dear Johnny,

As David has said Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen are not teaching on tsok in the UK at any point in the planned future, however Lama Namgyal and I are giving a day of teachings about Tsok at Aro Ling in Bistol on 30th April http://aroevents.org/index.php?option=com_aroevents&task=viewevent&id=1360 followed by a Tsok feast that is open to all. This is obviously not compareable to hearing Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen teach on this topic but I hope we will be able to provide some insights into the true beauty and depth of this practice, which may inspire some people to try and discover more.

best wishes
Ngakma Shé-zér Khandro

Well, I certainly wouldn't force you to. You've already gone above and beyond the call of duty on issues like this.

I would point out one or two more things about the historical context of this. Nudity takes on a far different complexion in a land where the lowlands start at 9,000 ft. and the mountains are the highest in the world. Particularly when the heating of choice is a small yak dung fire. A rather blue complexion, actually.

The Sarma narratives of the 84 mahasddhas seem to me to focus more on the context of charnel grounds as a permanent hangout for yogis, with tsok feasts using human skin, human skull, and human bone ornaments and paraphenalia as symbols of "one taste", and a lack of obsession with caste and ritual cleanliness in a land where the climate was much warmer. It also is striking that candali or tummo in that context is a much less referenced practice among such yogis than as it developed in Tibet.

It is very difficult to separate the social conditions from the physical conditions in such religious diasporas. It must also be noted that Tibet has been an overwhelmingly Tantric Buddhist country and culture for 1000 years. Today, the closest approximation to conditions is old Tibet is found only in Bhutan. The vast majority of Tibetans practiced some form of Vajrayana with mantras. So who an audience of "non-practicioners" would be is much more ambiguous than in the West today. Paricularly since the wealthier in the audience are likely to have either supported the Monastery or an individual local yogi as patrons.

One of the amusing stories of this transfer is that, upon arrival, Pandit Atisha was terribly shocked that the Tibetans offered merely bowls of water on shrines. It seemed to him miserly, since the Indians routinely offered milk. Then his hosts gave him some mountain spring water to drink, and after tasting it he understood perfectly. He is said to have commented that, "Tibetan water is better than Indian milk." This remains a folk saying in Tibet, I am told, to this day.

Something else about that just occurred to me. When you look at the various forms of Gonpo Mahakala it is very easy to delineate which of them came from an Indian text source, and which were termas. The Indian ones generally have tiger skin skirts and are naked from the waist up; the Tibetan ones are in chubas: Maning, Legden, and our own Karma Kagyu Dorje Bernagchen, whose name translates as big, black cloak.

Oh, certainly. And the main point is that we are all enlightened beings already. We don't see this because we are confused about things. Both the displays and the meditation on one's yidam are starting points whose "skillfulness" as means is their power to remind us that we could step out of our confusion, if we would just let ourselves do so.

But upon re-reading all the primary writing here about Aro Tsok, I'm a little bit puzzled by something. In the Kagyu tsoks I've been part of, we have not used the 3 displays, and the tsok is part of a larger liturgy focused on one specific yidam practice or guru yoga where we all are doing the same visualization, so if we did dress the part, we would all be wearing the same thing, and only one of the 3 kayas would be manifested in any given tsok. At the level of Inner Tantra, the people there might have a personal yidam, but unless it was the yidam of the overall practice, they wouldn't be visualizing it, or dressing up in it.

By implication, Aro seems to work it differently so that people can and do dress differently. Is the tsok a general ritual rather than attached to specific practices? And I am curious as to why this ritual is the "most elaborate" in Aro--beyond the obvious fact that everyone is dressing up, or, in the case of the Dharmakaya, dressing down.

A Kagyu yidam tsok, for example, would probably be the longest and most complex version of the liturgy commonly used, but it would not be significantly more elaborate than the tsok liturgy of any other yidam, except by virtue of the literary flourishes of the tsok's author, who is usually different from the author of the main sadhana.

Further, other Nyingma traditions seem to stress the tsok's function as the most powerful way to accumulate merit. Yeshe Tsogyal herself is often directly quoted about this. Is this consistent with the Aro point of view?

"The Dzogchen approach is that karma exists in the present moment alone."

This is a tautology, since the past is only memory and the future is only speculation. And from that vantage point I don't think that other Buddhist approaches would disagree.

But that is not the real problem. The real problem is that the causes of the present moment are clearly not still in the present moment. An earthquake causes a tsunami which causes a nuclear reactor meltdown. The meltdown we still have with us, but the earthquake and the tsunami have vanished.

This is not inherently different than the processes of Karma, Cause, and Effect across multiple lives as Buddhists traditionally describe them. And if we confine what are clearly causal relations to only those where we happen to encounter the effect shortly after the cause, a tremendous amount of the present remains unexplained and inexplicable, appearing ex nihilo as "random" events. Is there any such thing? Or are all events "random"?

There is no sensible way in the present to differentiate between the random and the caused, because the mere fact that I did not see the cause in the past of the event I encounter in the present doesn't mean that the cause didn't exist.

We clearly exist in an ongoing net of cause and effect. The rads I absorbed when the doctors irradiated my tonsils resulted in my adult thyroid cancer; the 60 years of tobacco smoking resulted in my father's COPD, which eventually killed him. And there is no sensible way to measure out a set yardage of the past, cut it off the fabric roll and declare, "The causal process of the present moment stops here." or measure out a set yardage of the future, cut it off and say, "From this point forward the present will have no impact on the future."

Nor is it possible, as far as I can see, to prove that the continuity of perception and experience over time that I call "me" arbitrarily begins or ends anywhere.
We can assume it, but we cannot prove it, and if we do assume it, we have not proved it. We will merely have exchanged tautology for circularity.

Sure. But first we have get some things clear. The traditional explanation of Karma, Cause, and Effect assumes prior and future lives. Nobody can prove this assumption and the traditional explanation does not try to. And, neither did the Buddha, who, by all accounts clearly assumed it. But unless you are willing to make it, the explanation will be pointless.

Second, we have to contend with the bad translation of sonam as "merit". There are too many echos of boy scouts and merit badges in it. Sonam is not a thing, sonam is a process. I will continue to use "merit" because we are stuck with it, but you will need to think of it as a process.

Third, we have to pull the colloquial definition of "karma" [as in "My Karma Ran Over My Dharma"] off the word and restore it to its literal meaning in Sanskrit, which is "action". Strictly speaking, karma is only the front end of the process of Karma, Cause, and Effect. What the colloquial definition of "karma" means is what the traditional explanation calls "effect".

To get a clear picture in your mind, you can think of the classic row of dominoes waiting to fall. Every action results in a greater or lesser chain of causes and effects. Most of these don't even continue for a single lifetime, let alone for past and future lives. But an action such as killing a living being is considerably more potent.

Now it may be that the particular being I have killed will still have a karmic link to me that will create a future encounter between us, but it doesn't have to be. It is perfectly possible that the death may completely exhaust the karmic connection between us. But what remains in me is a memory trace of the aversion that provoked the killing and the act of killing itself.

The act is the "karma", the memory trace is the "cause", and the fact that this actually strengthens the emotional habit of aversion is the "effect". One act of killing makes it more probable that you will kill again because your aversion is somewhat stronger. Ten acts of killing makes it even more probable with every new death.

These habitual emotional patterns follow us from past through present to future lives. This is why, as any maternity nurse will tell you, babies are already born with distinct personalities, rather than being mere tabula rasas. If you bring over a strong habit of aversion and killing from a past life, you will already be more likely to kill in this one.

[There is a detailed explanation of how this happens, but it's beside the point here.]

Start your life with a good dose of aversion, kill some more, and the aversion grows even stronger. When you take this "attitude" out into the world, it is likely that the chip you are carrying on your shoulder will increase your opportunities to be angry and kill still more. This is how the karmic process snowballs. Unchecked, this will eventually result in a life that is solid anger both inside and outside you. Buddhists call this state a Hell Realm, and being born into this state is the "ripening" of the angry cause and effect patterns you have been building up over many lives.

Sonam or "accumulating merit" is cultivating this process to work in reverse. By cultivating one's "compassion" through saving lives you are engaging in Karma that will be the Cause, the Effect of which will be your becoming more compassionate and more likely to save lives. When we do this sort of thing consciously and deliberately with Dharma practice, we speed this process up, and the ripening of this is that our environment in future lives will offer us more opportunities to be compassionate and save lives.

Now these are merely examples. There are always many causal chains at work all interacting with each other, but the more deliberately you nurture one causal chain, the more effect it will have in your future, and this is what you are accumulating.

Now don't ask me to "prove" any of this is so. It is not "provable". But you can watch the buildup of habits like this in yourself and others in the short term and see how their lives change for better or worse in the short term, and you will see the process at work for yourself.

That is, indeed, very informative. And dovetails quite nicely with other Nyingma writings I've read on the subjects. Please give my best and wholehearted thanks to your lamas for being so open about such very, very profound and advanced teachings. I hope you, as well, took away something valuable from their kindness..

I'm afraid I somewhat overstated my rhetorical question and elided the other choices among those two alternatives

Many events happen randomly, due to the inexplainable nature of karma..

I'm not sure my teachers would totally agree. In their view, there are random events and, at least in the Human Realm, there is a great deal of freedom of choice. But, in their view, the fact that Bill Gates became the richest man in the world is not the result of a mere concatenation of random events. For such a potent Effect, you clearly have Causes ripening from past lives stemming from Karma [meaning strictly "prior actions"].

They would say that, in all probability, Gates' riches resulted from his acts of generosity in prior lives--either fairly small actions from a past life very very many lives ago, or large actions of generosity in a nearer lifetime. These acts were undertaken at the time with the direct aspiration to be inordinantly wealthy in the future.

The fact that we have the opportunity to practice the Dharma is also not the result of random events, but, rather, of actions in past lives combined with aspirations to do so. This is why they speak of the Precious Human Birth, which is not just a cameo appearance in the Human Realm, but means being one among billions of people who actually encounters the Dharma and responds to it. The exact expression they use for this opportunity is "as rare as daytime stars".

Moreover, we have the direct comparison that can be made to beings in the Animal Realm who have absolutely no chance of practicing the Dharma in this life, but who, in many cases are constrained to kill to eat. The causes and results of these karmic actions in future lives will be exactly the same as those of any other such killing. In fact, animals, unlike beings in the Human Realm, have no serious choice whatever, in this life, about what happens to them in future lives.

Finally, my teachers would assert that in the Bardo immediately after this life, what happens to us will be almost purely the result of prior actions in this life, and we will have no control over it. This is why they stress that the prior practice of the Dharma in this life is so important for you at the time of your death. The more you practice now the more likely that what happens to you in the Bardo will be both positive and to your taste.

This really does seem to me to be quite a lot of detailed explanation about "inexplicable" karma. It is certainly the case that the complexity of the causal chains usually makes the time of karma's ripening indeterminate, but it does not change the basic pattern of Effects from prior Causes of past life actions.