Crazy Wisdom - The Divine Madman

This book is about The Sublime Life and Songs of Drukpa Kunley, Translated by Keith Dowman.
Illustrated by Lee Baarslag.
By Pilgrims Publishing. Varanasi. Kathmandu.

There is Foreword by Choegyal Gyamtso Tulku.
Editor's note and Translator's note too.

Drukpa Kunley as per editor, deserves our full attention for 2 reasons:-

1. Because he counts among the most celebrated Adepts of the Himalayan countries,

2. Because he belonged to the tradition of "Crazy Wisdom", of which precious little is known in the West.

Like other great and in the West best known Tibetan Adept Milarepa, Drukpa Kunley was a "madman", an Enlightened "eccentric".
But unlike Milarepa, who was a celibate teaching by means of poetry and song, Drukpa Kunley used poetry, song, dance, humor, drink, and not least sex to Teach his contemporaries the great Lesson of spiritual life; that the individual being, with its countless likes and dislikes, is constantly immersed in the universal Reality-Bliss beyond all personal preferences, feelings, and thoughts; that the phenomenal world (samsara) is indeed co-essential with the transcendental Reality (nirvana).

Drukpa Kunley, in the style of teh "divine madman" before and after him, was a relentless critic of what the modern Crazy Adept Da Free John calls the "usual man" - whether he has donned a monk's grab or labors in the field.
Drukpa Kunley mocked the secular and religious establishment, railed against common-place morality and conventionalism, and lashed out against narrow-mindedness of the earthling who does little more than stake out and defend his own insular existence.

The Spiritual Master is indeed a voice that rises in this wilderness, to Awaken every neighbor from the illusion of his acre of land, his ordinary pond, his body-mind.
It is the necessary voice, the voice that sounds whenever the Truth of human experience is Revealed to one who is Awake.
Therefore, such a one speaks, even with urgency and anger.
It is the prophetic voice, the awful shout, expressed with all the gestures of frustrated Divinity!

The motivation for Drukpa Kunley's unusual exploits was not personal gain or self-aggrandizement, but the spontaneous desire to Enlighten others.

"What I do is not the way I am, but the way I teach" is the Master Da's explanation of the Crazy Adept's unorthodox Teaching methods.

"Care-free renunciation, an excess of compassion, total lack of inhibition, skillful use of shock-therapy, tears and laughter, are the specific characteristics of the divine madman, "writes the translator of this volume.

In the West, bu8t also in the East - wherever religious fundamentalism or a dualistic metaphysics hold reign, spiritual life is characteristically viewed in opposition to material, bodily existence.

If it is regarded as legitimate at all, as it barely is in our society, it is generally promoted as an other-worldly, ascetical, and ethereal pursuit.
Such spirituality is based on the presumption that Man is disembodied, unfeeling, sexless, and relationless entity.

Crazy Wisdom Adepts have an altogether different view of Man and Life in general.
For them, Enlightenment is a whole-bodily Realization that does not pre-suppose a world-negative attitude, a disposition of mystical inversion, and esoteric ascent of awareness.
They know Reality to be here and now and non-distinct from the creative struggle of life.
As Master Da Free John writes:

We must surrender to and into the Present God.
God is not elsewhere in relation to us now, God is always Present, Alive as all beings, Manifest as the total world.
Our obligation is not to invert and go elsewhere to God, nor to extrovert and exploit ourselves in the self-possessed or anti-ecstatic mood that presumes God to be absent or non-existent.
Our obligation is to Awaken beyond our selves,
beyond the phenomena of body and mind,
into That in which body and mind inhere.

When we are thus awakened, our lives become the Incarnation Ritual of Man, whereby only God is evident and only God is the Process of the present and future.
That Way of Life is not bound to this world or any other world, nor to any form of attention in body or mind.
Rather, the Way of Life is Ecstatic, God-Made, Free, Radiant, and always ready Happy.


The above is part of Editor's note.

Go read it! :)

The above is pretty informative, and I decided to share excerpts! :)

** God to Christian and Buddha for all Buddha's students.


Om Guru Lian Sheng Siddhi Hom
Lama Lotsuchef