I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

Kunley, was an open devotee of the left-hand path, notorious as the "Crazy
Yogi" or "Divine Madman" who taught his disciples that the energy of sexual
pleasure could be deflected from merely genital orgasm to a way of
illumination. According to legend, he practiced what he preached,
promiscuously initiating a myriad of women into his teaching during his
wanderings through Tibet as a holy beggar. Repudiating the disavowal of
desire taught in conventional Buddhism, Drugpa utilized emotion, desire and
erotic passion as instruments to awaken his students through delight.
Ridiculing conventional mores and applying shock tactics to awaken and
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disillusion his students, Drugpa's straightforward practice of the left-hand
path is rare among Tibetan Buddhists.
Usually, the sexual rites are kept strictly secret by the Tibetan monks
who practice them, as seems to have been the case with the late Kalu
Rinpoche, who allegedly presented himself outwardly as a celibate ascetic
despite his life-long use of female disciples as ritual sexual partners. Human
nature being what it is, naturally this secrecy can be a breeding ground for
sexual exploitation of the most unenlightened variety. For instance, some
elderly Tibetan monks persuade naive young female disciples to be their
sexual consorts with promises of "good karma" rewarded for compliance. In
such cases, one must suspect that the left-hand path mysteries of Vajrayana
are being used to justify mundane sex lacking any initiatory function. Of
course, this type of secular sexual exploitation played out in spiritual guise is
hardly exclusive to Eastern cultures; Western occultism has always been rife
with such pretense.
The metaphysical premises of Buddhist teaching are based on a
desire to completely disintegrate the individual consciousness into
nonexistence and a negation of all phenomena as maya, unreal projections of
the mind. These ideas are obviously less relevant to the goal of attaining an
independent divine consciousness inherent in the Hindu-based left-hand path
model.
Within the purview of the Hindu-heretic left-hand path, the complex
symbolism and artistic expression, sexual rites, gestures and spoken mantras
are understood as coded signs of some hidden aspect of reality. This hidden
reality, although obscure to waking consciousness, is understood
nevertheless to be a substantial phenomenon, something that exists. Adepts
of the Buddhist left-hand path – although they may utilize very similar
sexual rites, symbolism and techniques – are just as convinced that their
practices are ultimately nothing more than necessary steps to a great
Nothingness, an emptiness concealed behind the world of sensory
impressions. For them, nothing truly exists. This is a vast difference in
approach and should be kept in mind as we investigate the two branches of
left-hand path erotic initiation.
That being said, it is possible to interpret some left-hand path
Buddhist teachings, such as the aforementioned Vajrayana, as a means of
generating a sexually created self-deified essence that does not melt into one
with the non-being of nirvana. This is best exemplified by the tradition of
the Bodhisattva; the fully awakened adept who is neither reincarnated to
further suffering nor consumed into nirvana but who follows the left-hand
path to continued survival as a transhuman daemonic entity. The adept who
has remanifested as a Bodhisattva is said to wield the power of illuminating
less advanced humans, even from a non-corporeal state.
This concept, in a greatly simplified – not to say frequently
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fraudulent form – was drafted into the Western magical tradition's lore of the
"Secret Chiefs" and "Ascended Masters" supposedly overseeing mankind's
spiritual development. Such significant occult movements in the West as the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Theosophy, and Aleister Crowley's