| The MahaSiddhas
MahaSiddha means "Greatly Accomplished Master" and refers to the originators of Tantric Buddhism as well as a remarkable way of being embodied by the masters of the tradition.
When the path was elitist, excluded women and people of lower castes, the MahaSiddhas displayed how any person of any disposition, background or gender could realize awakening. In an environment of intensely elaborate ritual practices, the MahaSiddhas introduced people to the meaning of the teachings through their own lives. While other teachings served the scholastic and intellectually inclined, the MahaSiddhas expressed the path in every day language. In a time when the meaning and application of the teachings were inaccessible to ordinary people, the MahaSiddhas revealed how the meaning of the teachings can be found in unlimited forms. When the spiritual communities were corrupted by politics, sectarian bickering, and battling between schools, the MahaSiddhas demonstrated the wisdom beyond bigotry. When the path became too exotic, focused on transcendent experiences, the MahaSiddhas were there, revealing the indestructible sacredness in everyday ordinary awareness. When many were obsessed with authenticating their lineage and discounting others, the MahaSiddhas expressed the path as a unique and highly personal journey, born from the wisdom and compassion of one's own Root-Teacher. They shared simple path to awareness.
They were not missionaries trying to convert anyone. They were simply people who yearned for awakening and upon finding it, shared it with others. Their lives changed the history of Eastern spirituality, politics and culture, a path that reaches us here today as we celebrate and continue their lineage through our school, through our own lives.
The MahaSiddhas expressed the Buddha's teaching in the Tantric form on the eve of the spread of Buddhism to Tibet, Nepal and the rest of the Himalayas, during a time India of great cultural and material wealth. Their practice was distinctively simple, non-sexist, non-institutional and unconventional. It cut to the heart of the Buddha's teachings by emphasizing the main point of the Buddha's teaching as awareness itself, without which all practices, ceremonies, visualizations, and moral rules fall short.
The MahaSiddhas had wives and husbands, children and families. The MahaSiddha's Buddhism was a largely non-monastic. Artists, business people, healers, family people, politicians, nobility, outcasts, the MahaSiddhas and practitioners of their tradition have always been a diverse group of people who were practical, committed, creative and engaged with the world. Their revealed how spirituality can be in concert with every aspect of our ordinary lives, since ordinary life presents a such a joyous, intense and fertile ground for realization.
- Excerpted from a Public Teaching with Troma Rinpoche
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