Stepping Into Air - The Art & The Skill Of Crazy Wisdom by Adamas


Crazy Wisdom is activity in accordance with the final, absolute view, the ultimate way of perceiving and being, the snowflake dissolving. We no longer compulsively repeat the same habitual actions but instead act with crazy abandon, renouncing nothing. If we do something, it is fine. If we do not do it, it is fine. There are no longer any rules to follow.
- p71, Wonders Of The Natural Mind
Image: Geironimo
To even talk about Crazy Wisdom is challenging, as by its very nature it is talking about the act of just doing what you feel to be right in the moment, without recourse to rationality or even sense sometime. To SO trust your own instinct wherever it may lead you in that moment, is the practice. It is quite hard to explain because you either feel it in that moment or you don’t. As the door opens in front of you at that moment, you step through it without hesitation, trusting that you placed the open door there for yourself in order to walk through it. The more you do this the more natural it becomes and the faster you procede as you become more confident, completely trusting the random manifestations that arise in your reality. Trust The Perfection For example, a friend phones you out of the blue to invite you to a party. The Crazy Wisdom response is of course, to go. There is no obligation to go but the fact that it arose in your reality seemngly randomly, is the indication for you to go. Crazy Wisdom maps beautifully on top of the "trust the Perfection" ethos, as you are admitting that strange and unusual things WILL arise in your reality as part of your own manifestation, and it is your obligation to engage them. Those moments when you all of a sudden feel like taking a different road home and end up seeing something really beautiful or just happen to avoide a police roadblock on the way, is the perfect example of Crazy Wisdom. We cannot say why we did what we did, we just followed the mood of the moment and went with our seemingly random emotion and things turned out beautifully! The more we allow this trust in the purity and inconceivability of the reflection, the more it shows up to meet us and the more interesting things are revealed. From personal experience I can say that the more you do this the faster your whole process runs, as you are giving yourself permission to explore any aspect of your reality that arise, without limitation. This allows you to explore deeper areas of the subconscious and the unconscious, areas that we often only have access to in dreams. I am not talking about jumping off bridges here but the commitment to just being completely open to whatever course of action arises for you at that moment, without prejudice or preconception. Chögyam Trungpa describes Crazy Wisdom as an innocent state of mind that has the quality of early morning—fresh, sparkling, and completely awake Come Naked To The Moment Crazy Wisdom also ties in beautifully with the "come naked to the moment" ethos as we are literally deciding in that moment what it is we really feel like doing. Naturally there might be a lot of fear involved in this, especially if we are stepping out of our comfort zone. But if we can overcome the fear by trusting the perfection of our own manifestation we often leap over years of fears, because if you do something once properly then it is done, and need not be done again. In Practice My urge to raise my Kundalini is a perfect example of Crazy Wisdom - no pre-thought, no expectations, some fear but the overwhelming sense that it was the right thing to do at that moment and that it needed to be done. It turned into one of the most deranged, beautiful and beneficial periods of my life. Gazing at the sun was another Crazy Wisdom example as it just felt like the right time to do it, and once again overcoming the bit of doubt inside me about going blind I dived in and watched as reality broke up into swathes of color. I did not go blind, but I overcame my fear of staring at the sun, and going blind and I did it when and how it felt right. It also helped overcome my doubts as to the fact the sun and I were one and the same thing. Since it WAS me it did not hurt me, which allowed me to deepen into the realization that 'All is Self' - a core precept of Dzogchen. Feel Your Way Through Of course I realize that Crazy Wisdom is not everyone’s cup of tea but I maintain that it is one of the fastest methodologies for working through ones personal list of desires, fears and latent curiosities. Crazy Wisdom should never be forced or pre planned otherwise you are missing the whole point and purpose of the practice in the first place. Crazy Wisdom is like stepping onto air to find a step appearing before you but without the knowledge of where it leads. Once the first step somehow magically forms yup beneath your feet, you have more confidence that the next one will appear as well, until you find yourself running with abandon on steps that appear before you in the air. If you do not feel it in that moment then it is quite simply not Crazy Wisdom. Another way of putting it would be having no idea what you are going to do next but having absolute trust that whatever it is that you are going to do, will be the perfect thing to do. There is always a bit of trepidation when engaging life with Crazy Wisdom since it is often entirely unique to you, with no obvious precedents to fall back on. At the same time when right in the middle of it, there is the powerful sensation that it just feels somehow strangely like the perfect thing to be doing at that moment.Outwardly, I live for my pleasure
and inwardly I do everything in the right moment.
Outwardly I am a ragged beggar
and inwardly a blissful Buddha
- Drukpa Kunley, The Divine Madman Putting It To The Test I once spontaneously decided to confirm the 'All is Self' principle of Dzogchen beyond a shadow of a doubt while walking through a forest and eating every mushroom I came across. Naturally there was the fear that I would poison myself but there was also the realization that if I crossed this bridge, I would destroy a whole lot of my own fears about EVER being poisoned by anything ever again. After having eaten about fifteen different mushrooms as I walked, I did not even get mildly sick. This did an immense amount to stabilize my practice and give me confidence in the fact that 'All' was indeed 'Self', not just as a pretty concept but a profound reality. Pay Attention I am not advocating jumping in at the deep end. I had worked myself up to this point with smaller steps, but the more smaller steps you take the more comfortable you feel when taking bigger steps, especially the first one. Learn to walk before you run, run before you fly and never practice your flying from rooftops, try from the ground first. Crazy Wisdom also opens you up to the "loving everything and fearing nothing" view. The overcoming of fear is immensely beneficial as it often hinders you in doing what you really want to. Never forget though that fear has its uses at times to ensure that your own stupidity doesn't cost you your life. Crazy Wisdom is not about a race to a certain point. It is a speedy, and highly effective methodology for engaging Reality at large by opening oneself up to new experiences while conquering fear and doubt. Once again do not force yourself to do stuff, let it arise in its own time and engage it as part of your knowing that this is exactly what you are meant to be doing at this moment. A Bona-Fide Path My view is that one is either a Crazy Wisdom practitioner or not, it is in your nature or not, and even to attempt to cultivate it is a bit ridiculous. On the other hand if one opens the door to the possibility of this as one of the speediest techniques to enlightenment, you might discover that it suits your nature and get immense benefit from it. It is definitely one of the more unorthodox practices and saying anything about it beyond examples is almost ridiculous. You will probably already know if this is your nature or not and the good news is that if it is - Crazy Wisdom is one of the fastest paths to enlightenment in existence. I feel that there are a lot of Crazy Wisdom practitioners out there doing it anyway and once they see it for what it truly is they will be able to use it to its full potential, content in the knowledge that it is a bone fide Buddhist practice with extensive historical precedents. This just allows us to be more secure in the fact that we are not the first people stepping out onto air and finding a step beneath us yet our step will always be truly ours and truly unique. This methodology could also be translated as "inconceivable intuitive wisdom" but I personally find that Crazy Wisdom just sounds sexier."WONDERS OF THE NATURAL MIND", a book about Bon Dzogchen states:When you act according to Crazy Wisdom
you are a real vessel of the Dzogchen Teaching.
This is arriving in the gold dimension ... which continues,Do anything without any indecision or hesitation.
Without expectations or doubts,
all actions are completely free... To summarize Crazy Wisdom one could say, jump in with full trust and openess and figure out the path as it reveals itself to you. From the Ashes of the Atomic Fires
Adamas

For more check out www.buddhabrats.com