Essential Characteristics of Vajrayana Q&A with Lama Shardröl Wangmo

Photograph taken in Montana in 2004. Lama Shardröl answers questions regarding ‘Essential Characteristics of Vajrayana’

Question: What is devotion, exactly? Everyone talks about how important it is, but it is hard to find a clear explanation.

Ngakma Shardröl: So far, the best definition I have been able to come up with is ‘harmoniousness with the Lama’. Like having no resistance to anything combined with a strong attraction toward that person in any sense at all, but especially in terms of seeing that person as an actual embodiment of the enlightened state.

Question: Devotion has been called an ‘intelligent emotion.’ What does that mean?

Ngakma Shardröl: It’s ‘intelligent’ in the sense of being in tune with Reality. It’s intelligent (natural) to be attracted to the quality of nonduality as we catch glimpses of it, mainly in the form of something that seems somehow more joyful & more free than we feel ourselves to be.

Question: What are some other examples of intelligent emotions?

Ngakma Shardröl: Hmmm, falling in love with someone who falls in love with you? The feeling of being drawn to things which are noble & heroic, etc? Wanting to help beings who need help.

Question: Is it how one feels what is essential to devotion, or what one does? Or are both required?

Ngakma Shardröl: I think it is both. The feeling animates the practice & the practice generates the feeling so it is a kind of self-reinforcing dynamic.

Question: Would it be correct to say that devotion is not something you have to understand, you just have to do it?

Ngakma Shardröl: Well, speaking as a great compulsive understander, I am beginning to think that maybe I cannot understand it, I can only experience it. But I also would not say you ‘just have to do it’, it is more like you need to be able to let it happen. I guess the outer form of devotion can be practiced deliberately but only the outer form. You can try to keep the view in mind, but basically I think it generates itself from the inside or not at all. The outward forms could be some sort of gateway but that’s all. . .

Question: Devotion has been described as ‘seeing someone else’s nondual nature.’ Might one not do this without any particular emotion?

Ngakma Shardröl: I would not say exactly ‘seeing someone else’s nondual nature’. More like experiencing it, & in that particular moment actually sharing it, or some aspect of it, & knowing & experiencing that, which is really the only kind of recognition possible. You cannot really ‘see’ someone else’s nonduality from outside it, you can only ‘experience’ it from within it. For some reason that I do not particularly understand, this experience seems to be accompanied by a lot of emotion. How could you not be emotional if you’d been locked in a cage for 40 years & you suddenly found yourself momentarily outside it, not even in the same universe as it had been, & this experience was due to the intervention of another being. At the very least you would be pretty darn grateful, I imagine.

Question: If so, it would seem that emotion is not critical to devotion?

Ngakma Shardröl: I do not know much about taking the route of emotion to devotion, but I would say that devotion generates its own emotion, & inevitably so.

Question: If one had a well-developed capacity for pure vision, one might see the enlightenment of many people. One would not have devotion for all of them, would one?

Ngakma Shardröl: Well as I said, I don’t really think that devotion means seeing the nonduality of someone else. More like experiencing it. How could one have a well-developed capacity for pure vision without also having a well-developed capacity to appreciate one’s own innate nonduality? I think if one is experiencing oneself as generally dualistic - but having occasional experiences of the nondual state facilitated by one’s relationship with a Lama, then one feels devotion toward that Lama. If one has a well-developed capacity for pure vision & is generally having experiences of the nonduality of many people then what one would feel toward them would not be devotion, exactly, but more like bodhicitta. One would want to do everything possible to get the person to be able to experience that enlightenment themselves.

Question: It is said that some students mistake strong positive feelings for authentic devotion. How is it possible to discriminate between the two?

Ngakma Shardröl: I think a lot of times it isn’t, especially in the beginning. But any kind of strong positive feeling can transform into genuine devotion through experience of practice. If one has trust in the Lama, one does not need to worry about discriminating the nuances of one’s positivity, one can just trust that the Lama will be able to work with it in some kind of useful way. If it’s just something like a crush, & not really serious, it will probably evaporate when its expectations are disappointed, which will inevitably occur. Maybe you can tell the difference between devotion & infatuation by how you react to that.

Question: Devotion is sometimes compared with falling in love. In what ways is it similar, and in what ways different?

Ngakma Shardröl: I think it’s similar in the sense of the feeling of intense attraction. The difference is that the person you are falling in love with is not operating by the same deluded pattern. They are working ceaselessly for your benefit so that, aside from having one’s expectations disappointed & other versions of not getting what one wants (which may cause occasional fits of petulance), the situation is orchestrated by the Lama in order to facilitate one’s realisation. And since one’s feeling of love, however deluded, contains a large proportion of gratitude, it can evolve into something that is not neurotic.