Awakening can often sound like a lofty or unattainable goal. But according to Buddhist scholar Cortland Dahl, in the Vajrayana tradition, it is not a destination but rather the true nature of our mind in every moment.
Dahl is a translator, meditation teacher, and contemplative scientist based in Madison, Wisconsin. In his new book, A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism: The Path of Awareness, Compassion, and Wisdom, he offers an accessible introduction to Buddhist principles and practices through the lens of the three yanas, or vehicles: the foundational vehicle (sometimes called the Hinayana), the Mahayana, and the Vajrayana.
In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Dahl to discuss how meditation allows us to be honest with ourselves, practical methods for experiencing abstract concepts of no-self and emptiness, how different schools of Buddhism understand enlightenment, and what it means to be fully awakened within the messiness of samsara.
You say that the premise of the Vajrayana is that awakening is not a goal or a destination but rather the true nature of our mind in every moment. How can this be? In the Vajrayana, it’s not that the path is about achieving something that we don’t have, like we’re not compassionate enough and if we meditate, we’ll train ourselves to be more compassionate. The idea is that these are actually qualities we already have. Meditation at its most basic level is about getting to know ourselves. It’s not a process of self-improvement; it’s a process of self-discovery. And there are no obstacles in this approach because we’re getting in touch with fundamental qualities that are the very nature of every experience we have. Rather than viewing these experiences as something we need to overcome, we can explore them and discover qualities about them that we normally wouldn’t have seen.
The radical shift that happens in the Vajrayana is that these qualities are not seen as a latent potential but rather as the fully present reality of our own inner experience. It’s kind of the most radical expression of buddhanature: It doesn’t matter how neurotic you might feel or how overwhelmed you might feel by suffering or whatever emotional habits and patterns you might have. Awakening is not found in the absence or elimination of difficult experiences but as the nature of those experiences.
There are no roadblocks to awakening. Everything becomes an opportunity.
If you learn to look and view and explore those experiences from the inside, you will find deep insight into interdependence within that very experience. That very painful experience you’re having can be the gateway to awakening. And that, I think, is the promise of the Vajrayana view in working with the messiness of life. It’s giving us the tools to explore that in such a way that we can discover the buddhanature within every experience. There are no obstacles. There are no roadblocks to awakening. Everything becomes an opportunity.
You explain that while the Hinayana and Mahayana vehicles take a causal view, Vajrayana takes a fruitional view. Can you explain that distinction? If you look at the first two vehicles, the idea is that by traveling the path of awakening, we’re going to do X, Y, and Z, and eventually we will achieve the fruition of awakening. Awakening is basically the endpoint and what we achieve as a result of the process.
The Vajrayana view is different: In the Vajrayana, the view is that you’re already awakened. Your own nature in this moment is already as awake as it’s ever going to be, which is to say awareness, compassion, and wisdom are as present now as they will ever be. It doesn’t matter if you’re having a moment of inspiration or you’re feeling totally overwhelmed and stressed out. In all of those moments, the nature of those experiences is the awakened mind.
It’s not as though we’re going to get awakened in the future by doing X, Y, and Z. It’s that actually we’re fully awakened now, and the basis for our practice is learning to discover that. Everything is just a playful, experimental exploration of our own heart and mind so that we can learn to see awakening in everything, in everyone, and in every moment.
You say that in the Vajrayana, the clarity of awareness becomes our new home. What do you mean by that? There’s so much language in the foundational vehicle and the Mahayana that makes awakening into a very abstract, esoteric thing, and it can seem quite inaccessible. When you get to the Vajrayana, awakening becomes much more ordinary—not ordinary in the sense of mundane but ordinary in the sense that it’s always just right here.
This goes back fundamentally to the nature of awareness. In every moment of our lives, even in deep sleep, there’s a thread of awareness. We’re just getting in touch with the empty, ungraspable openness of that awareness that is always there. Because that’s always there, we can always get in touch with our own buddhanature.
In a sense, it’s really that simple. We’re just coming home to that quality of ourselves. We start the path living in our personal habits and narratives, and we equate our sense of self with the roles we play in our lives. Through this process, we start to see that, yeah, these are parts of who we are, but these are conditioned habits that change over time. This quality of the open, radiant quality of our awareness becomes our new home in the sense that’s where we’re living from. We never lose sight of that.
This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.