From ‘Divine Madman. The Sublime life and songs of Drukpa Kunley’ Translated by Keith Dowman

…..stories about the Adept Drukpa Kunley …..are the favorites of the people of Tibet and the surrounding regions…….he belonged to the tradition of “Crazy Wisdom” …..was a “madman” …..an Enlightened “eccentric” ……Drukpa …..used poetry, song, dance, humor, drink, and not least sex to Teach his contemporaries the great Lesson of spiritual life…..was a relentless critic of …..the “usual man”…….railed against commonplace morality and conventionalism, and lashed out against the narrow-mindedness of the earthling who does little more than stake out and defend his own insular existence……. “Care-free renunciation, an excess of compassion, total lack of inhibition, skilful use of shock-therapy, tears and laughter, are the specific characteristics of the divine madman” …….. always “relaxing in the stream of events”….. “never working, letting reality hang loosely” ……..in the seventh stage of life, the soul is awake …….All obsession with experiences, objects, and others is transcended. There is constant re-cognition of all arising conditions of experience, but all the while there is natural abiding in the Ecstatic Love of God through radical intuition of the Condition of everything. ……..There is only Ecstasy, or Perfect God-Love…….the Enlightened being sees the non-binding nature of all arising conditions – and encounters them with a sense of irrepressibile humor……he neither shies away from anything nor becomes obsessed with any experience or idea. ……he can also abstain from them without repressing any latent desires or tendencies. ……In his God-intoxication ……he is prone to behave at odds with the all-too-sober world of social convention. In the eyes of the world, therefore, he is a radical, an anarchist or eccentric, a lunatic. His very existence calls into questions the established order……he has no need of any self-limitation. His entire life is a towering symbol, a constant demonstration, of the fact that the limitations of the “usual man” presumes are merely neurotic strategies to introduce a semblance of stability and orderliness into the incessant flux of events that constitutes phenomenal existence. …..By his anomalous and erratic behavior he spotlights the absurdity of all fixed, man-made rules and prescriptions. …….In India such a great being is known as an avadhuta. ….word is explained in the Kularnava-Tantra ……

A = the Immutable (akshara)

Va = the Excellent (varenya)

Dhu = shaken off (dhuta) the fetters of the world

Ta = “That Thou art” (tat tvam asi)

……Siddha-Siddhanta-Paddhati …..describes the Crazy Adept

He who is firmly stationed in the center of the world,

devoid of all [fearful] trembling…….

Who moves with his inner-being into the Unthinkable

into the remote region within …….

who delights in the world through Play ……

Who is sometimes an enjoyer, sometimes a renouncer,

sometimes a nudist or like a demon, sometimes a king,

and sometimes well-behaved – he is styled an avadhuta

…..a trickster who can turn himself into anything at all……..understandably, discipleship under such a God-Realized Adept is a hard school, but conceivably also the most direct way to Realization. For, the student will have to abandon all ideas of predictability and emotional security.

………Swami Samarth, also known as Akkalkot Maharaj…….would cause much upset by his eccentric behavior …….in every instance there is a deliberate infringement of egoic expectations, a bursting of customary forms of self-limitation.

……..there is a little known tradition of “divine madmen” even within Christianity ……the exemplary lives of Symeon of Emesa, Thomas of Coelesyria, Andreas of Constantinople, Lucas of Ephesus……”Fools for Christ’s sake”  …….St. Francis of Assisi …..referred to himself and his pupils as “jesters of the Lord” …..on one occasion he preached stark naked in church ………

Everyone is enchanted with un-Reality, enchanted with the conventional appearance of every moment, and therefore we cannot merely talk to people and break that spell. …..they are altogether associated with this moment in such a fashion that they are incapable of being Awake to their actual Condition….you must cut them in half with a big sword. You must blow their minds…….You must be wild to truly Enlighten people. …….Breaking that spell requires the Mad Work, ….of the Adept………the ”divine madman” …..He is lodged in – he is – the still eye of the hurricane……..

……….Drukpa …….His style, his humour, his earthiness, his compassion, his manner of relating to people, won him a place in the hearts of all the Himalayan peoples – the Sikkimese, the Assamese, the Ladakhis, the Nepalis, the Kunnupas, and the Lahaulis.

Drukpa Kunley’s attacks upon monasticism and organized religion are consistent with the spirit of India’s perennial Siddha tradition. ……..Outrage and laughter are the skilful means he employs to shock people out of their lethargic acceptance of the neurotic status quo of their minds ……

A word …..of the Tibetan people. Please do not delude yourselves that they are a bawdy bunch. Although they have few neurotic obsessions regarding sex, they have a strong sense of shame. Tibetan women will blush at the mention of sex and look askance at the ‘liberated’ western girl. Likewise monks are inordinately embarrassed by even the milder of Drukpa Kunley’s jokes….