Crazy Wisdom
In Tibet there is a tradition known by the name 'crazy wisdom.' The phenomenon for which this term stands can be found in all the major religions of the world, though it is seldom acknowledged as a valid expression of spiritual life by the religious orthodoxy or the secular establishment. Crazy wisdom is a unique model of teaching, which avails itself to seemingly irreligious or unspiritual means in order to awaken the conventional ego-personality from its spiritual slumber.
The unconventional means used by adepts who teach in this risky manner seem crazy or mad in the eyes of ordinary people, who seldom look beyond appearances. Crazy-wisdom methods are designed to shock, but their purpose is always benign: to reflect to the ordinary worldling (samsârin) the 'madness' of his or her pedestrian existence, which, from the enlightened point of view, is an existence rooted in profound illusion. That illusion is the ingrained presumption that the individual is an ego-identity bounded by the skin of the human body, rather than the all-pervasive Self-identity i.e., the âtman or Buddha-nature. Crazy wisdom is a logical extension of the deep insights of spiritual life in general and it is at the core of the relationship between adept and disciple - a relationship that has the express function of undermining the disciple's ego-illusion.
The crazy-wisdom message and approach are understandably offensive to both the secular and the conventionally religious establishments. Hence, crazy adepts have generally been suppressed. This was not the case in traditional Tibet and India, however, where the 'holy fool' or 'divine madman' has been recognized as a legitimate figure in the compass of spiritual aspiration and realization. Thus, the 'saintly madman' (Tibetan: lama myonpa) has been venerated throughout the history of Tibet. The same is true of the Indian avadhûta who has, as the name suggests, 'cast off' all concerns and conventional standards in his ecstatic intoxication.
The Christian equivalent of the saintly madman of Tibet and the Indian avadhûta is the 'fool for Christ's sake.' Yet the large conservative faction among both the clergy and the laity has long driven the unorthodox figure of the 'fool' (Greek: salos) into oblivion. The modern Christian knows next to nothing about such remarkable holy idiots at St. Simeon, St. Isaac Zatvornik, St. Basil, or St. Isadora, the last being one of the few female examples. ...When Mark the Mad, a desert monk of the sixth century C.E., came to the city to atone for his sins, the townspeople considered him insane. But Abba Daniel of Skete instantly recognized his great sanctity, shouting to the crowd that they were all fools for not seeing that Mark was the only reasonable man in the entire city.
St. Simeon, another sixth-century fool for Christ's sake, was a skilled simulator of insanity. Once he found a dead dog on a dung heap. He tied his cord belt to the dog's leg and dragged the corpse behind him through town. The people were outraged, failing to understand that the mad monk's burden was a symbol of the excess baggage they themselves carried around with them - the ego, or conventional mind, lacking love and wisdom. The very next day, St. Simeon entered the local church and threw nuts at the congregation when the Sunday liturgy began. At the end of his life, the saint confessed to his most trusted friend that his eccentric behavior had been solely an expression of his utter indifference (Greek: apatheia, Sanskrit: vairâgya) to things of the world. Its purpose was to denounce hypocrisy and hubris.
...In their wild and eccentric behavior, the crazy adepts constantly challenge the limitations that unenlightened individuals presume and thus confront them with the naked truth of existence: that life is mad and unpredictable, except for the inescapable fact that we are thrown into the chaos of manifestation for only a brief span of time. They are a perpetual reminder that our whole human civilization is an attempt to deny the inevitability of death, which makes nonsense out of even the noblest efforts to create a symbolic order out of the infinite plastic that is life.
- Georg Feuerstein, in his unprecedented scholarly work, 'The Yoga Tradition.'
The unconventional means used by adepts who teach in this risky manner seem crazy or mad in the eyes of ordinary people, who seldom look beyond appearances. Crazy-wisdom methods are designed to shock, but their purpose is always benign: to reflect to the ordinary worldling (samsârin) the 'madness' of his or her pedestrian existence, which, from the enlightened point of view, is an existence rooted in profound illusion. That illusion is the ingrained presumption that the individual is an ego-identity bounded by the skin of the human body, rather than the all-pervasive Self-identity i.e., the âtman or Buddha-nature. Crazy wisdom is a logical extension of the deep insights of spiritual life in general and it is at the core of the relationship between adept and disciple - a relationship that has the express function of undermining the disciple's ego-illusion.
The crazy-wisdom message and approach are understandably offensive to both the secular and the conventionally religious establishments. Hence, crazy adepts have generally been suppressed. This was not the case in traditional Tibet and India, however, where the 'holy fool' or 'divine madman' has been recognized as a legitimate figure in the compass of spiritual aspiration and realization. Thus, the 'saintly madman' (Tibetan: lama myonpa) has been venerated throughout the history of Tibet. The same is true of the Indian avadhûta who has, as the name suggests, 'cast off' all concerns and conventional standards in his ecstatic intoxication.
The Christian equivalent of the saintly madman of Tibet and the Indian avadhûta is the 'fool for Christ's sake.' Yet the large conservative faction among both the clergy and the laity has long driven the unorthodox figure of the 'fool' (Greek: salos) into oblivion. The modern Christian knows next to nothing about such remarkable holy idiots at St. Simeon, St. Isaac Zatvornik, St. Basil, or St. Isadora, the last being one of the few female examples. ...When Mark the Mad, a desert monk of the sixth century C.E., came to the city to atone for his sins, the townspeople considered him insane. But Abba Daniel of Skete instantly recognized his great sanctity, shouting to the crowd that they were all fools for not seeing that Mark was the only reasonable man in the entire city.
St. Simeon, another sixth-century fool for Christ's sake, was a skilled simulator of insanity. Once he found a dead dog on a dung heap. He tied his cord belt to the dog's leg and dragged the corpse behind him through town. The people were outraged, failing to understand that the mad monk's burden was a symbol of the excess baggage they themselves carried around with them - the ego, or conventional mind, lacking love and wisdom. The very next day, St. Simeon entered the local church and threw nuts at the congregation when the Sunday liturgy began. At the end of his life, the saint confessed to his most trusted friend that his eccentric behavior had been solely an expression of his utter indifference (Greek: apatheia, Sanskrit: vairâgya) to things of the world. Its purpose was to denounce hypocrisy and hubris.
...In their wild and eccentric behavior, the crazy adepts constantly challenge the limitations that unenlightened individuals presume and thus confront them with the naked truth of existence: that life is mad and unpredictable, except for the inescapable fact that we are thrown into the chaos of manifestation for only a brief span of time. They are a perpetual reminder that our whole human civilization is an attempt to deny the inevitability of death, which makes nonsense out of even the noblest efforts to create a symbolic order out of the infinite plastic that is life.
- Georg Feuerstein, in his unprecedented scholarly work, 'The Yoga Tradition.'