In the world of religion, it seems that one can find an abundance of crazy or eccentric people whose sayings and doings have found their way into folklore, or who are venerated by generations of people who incorporate them into their spiritual lives as if they were guides, family members or friends. Their apparent looniness is often a cover for a more serious message behind the façade and a way of drawing in listeners. In Russia, for example, we find the yurodivy or “Fools for Christ”, holy men who gave up their worldly possessions and went about flouting all the rules of society, sometimes getting drunk and running through the streets, and everyone knows about yogis in India who sleep on beds of nails, Diogenes, naked with his lantern in the middle of the day looking for an honest man and Francis of Assisi having lengthy conversations with birds. Even Martin Luther referred to himself on one occasion as a “fool for religion”. Lastly, Islam has the Turkish trickster-figure of Nasreddin Hoja (1208-1285), about whom literally thousands of stories are told, some satirical, others hilariously funny, but most having multiple layers of interpretation. Farther East, Tibetan Buddhism in particular seems to have been almost a breeding-ground for religious eccentrics; Elizabeth Monson tells us that “the tradition of saintly madmen is quite old in Tibet.”
The subject of Monson’s illuminating book, Drukpa Kunley (1455-1529), was an exceptionally interesting one, well-known today to people in Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal not just for his alleged crazy behavior, but for his profound knowledge and spiritual wisdom, although unfamiliar to most westerners. In fact, he’s now one of the patron saints of Bhutan. As Monson tells us, “On the surface people are moved to laughter at his outrageousness and daring,” but they soon come to realise that they’ve been in the presence of “a vast mind, mind beyond thought, beyond ideas and concepts of good and bad.” As Kunley says, presumably with a straight face, “May every pronouncement that I make, whatever it may be, be recognized as enlightened mantra.”

As Monson explains, writing a conventional biography would have been almost impossible, because “other than a few hints here and there, nothing definitive was known about the life-story of an historical Drukpa Kunley.” What she had at her disposal were folk-tales, orally-transmitted material put into writing, snippets of information in other authors, and written works which may or may not be by Drukpa Kunley, the most notable of these being a work entitled The Liberation Tales, “written primarily in the first person and is generally referred to as the autobiography.” Her solution to this was to combine elements of The Liberation Tales with other material gleaned from folklore, producing a work of “quasi-magical realism” which would allow her to present elements of Kunley’s actual life-story through the “outlandish and magical” tales which sprang up around him. And there is one actual set of Kunley’s writings, too, which gives the more “serious” side of his work, exposing his own tricks and attacking the hypocrisy of so-called religious practitioners whose main objective is to deceive people into following them. “Those who practice tantra [the ancient traditions of Buddhism] but have not attained the inner heat of realization,” he says, “are like donkeys dressed in leopards’ skins eating all the crops.”
The “crazy” (nyonpa in Tibetan) yogi, according to the present Dalai Lama, is a person who “completely transcends the conventional way of viewing the world,” but at the same time, as Monson writes, is a person “whose goals are pure, with the result that they are considered beyond dualistic notions of good and bad.” That’s how Kunley gets away with seducing other people’s wives or urinating on a holy text, to name two of his exploits. When Tzewang catches his wife in flagrante delicto with Kunley, he’s rendered powerless (giving details here would spoil the story) and finally says “I didn’t realise who you were,” subsequently inviting Kunley to move in with them! As Kunley says in a poem, “A lady who is not satisfied by a penis is ridiculous,” and Tzewang’s wife is perfectly satisfied until Kunley decides to move on. Indeed, Kunley’s penis may often be seen painted on walls or depicted in sculptures throughout Bhutan, so famous was its legendary power!
In another story a painter is induced to show Kunley a scroll he has made, “a beautifully-painted thangka [a religious painting on silk or cotton] of the Kagyu lineage.” Kunley admires it, but adds “you forgot something important,” and when the painter asks him what that was, “he pulled out his penis and urinated on it.” The horrified witnesses, who include one Lord Sumdar, are ready to beat Kunley up, but when the thangka is shown to Ngawang Chogyal, the abbot of Railar and a friend of Kunley’s, by Sumdar, the urine has changed into gold. This is the stuff of legend, but, as Monson assures us, “in [Kunley’s] own writings there is less evidence that he acted in these ways.” The Liberation Tales presents a less-unorthodox Kunley than the scurrilous and popular stories from Bhutan; indeed, he criticizes yogis who act this way just to get attention or gain notoriety.
Leaving the “craziness” aside, then, we discover that Kunley is a genuine “Dharma Lord”, that is, he knows and practices the law of universal truth. According to Kunley, those who realises this will “respect everyone they meet,” they are “friends to everyone”, but “do not depend too much on anyone else’s influence.” He goes on to say that “whatever arises for them in like snow on hot rocks—all phenomena arise as the display of reality,” which means, as Monson explains, “things as they are without the added layers of conceptuality with which most unenlightened persons perceive reality.” This sounds uncannily like the philosopher Joseph Butler’s maxim in his Fifteen Sermons (1729): “everything is what it is, and not another thing.” Kunley belonged to the Kagyu [“spoken”] school of Mahamudra Buddhism, which is concerned with preserving the tantric traditions handed down from Tilopa (988-1096) to Naropa (1012-1100), but also stresses, as Monson puts it, “the liberative nature of all experiences—things as they are, without conceptual elaboration or embellishments.” At one point, Kunley even refers to himself in a song as “the hero of the Kagyu”. As well, his title “Drukpa” defines him as a follower of Vajrayana Buddhism (also known as “thunderbolt” or simply Tibetan Buddhism) as taught by the great Milarepa (1052-1135). Even a crazy yogi like Kunley is situated within accepted traditions.
Monson takes us through Kunley’s life with a brilliant interweaving of factual material, folklore and legend, not forgetting the autobiographical writings. Kunley’s life presents a man rather like a cross between a trickster-figure (like, say, Loki in Norse mythology) and a picaro, a roguish person whose exploits are used to satirise the ills of society, and whose deeds are recounted in unconnected or loosely-related episodes. The picaro doesn’t have to be a low-life; Don Quixote has picaresque elements, and its hero is a bit crazy but no rogue, and, like Kunley, when you look closely there’s a serious side to the way he looks at the world. The craziness of Kunley entertains, but in the way the spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, and this is skilfully conveyed by Monson in this most engaging book. Monson has produced book that introduces those interested in Tibetan Buddhism to a revered figure whose legendary eccentric exploits have perhaps been allowed to overshadow his very real religious significance as a Kagyu master. These exploits, as Monson recognises, put Kunley out of the range of conventional biographies, such as those making up Shambhala’s Lives of the Masters series, for which Monson was originally commissioned to write this book. In a song Kunley asks “Please speak justly of me!” and Elizabeth Monson has done precisely that in her creative way of approaching the contrasting spiritual “lives” of Kunley.
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