Chögyam Trungpa brought Vajrayana Buddhism from Tibet to the West, but very few seekers in the West actually understood the most fundamental concept of that tradition even after the publishing of his books, which run into several wonderful volumes.  I am therefore going to promote the view that the most fundamental concept within Vajrayana Buddhism is Basic Sanity, which I am going to explain from the Universal viewpoint of Shambhala, which is not merely a hidden colony of advanced Vajrayana Buddhists of Tibet.  In fact, this more Universal viewpoint on Basic Sanity is more basically sane than an identification with Tibet or Vajrayana Buddhism.  Basic Sanity therefore actually begins with a deep and genuine appreciation of Vajrayana Buddhism instead of a narrow and dogmatic identification.  Therefore, it was not necessary, is still not necessary and will remain unnecessary for Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhists to capture immature Western seekers into their culture and turn them into identified, second-class Tibetan Yogis or Meditators of an exclusive tradition-bound type of sub-intelligent mind.  Vajrayana Buddhism is there for the seeker of Truth and Higher Development; the seeker is not there for Vajrayana Buddhism.  Traditionally identified, second-class Westerners, often giving themselves Tibetan names, are no different than the pathetic Westerners who identify with Islamic Sufism and give themselves Arabic names.  Conversion to a dogmatic identity of one or another of the traditions of the East is not Basic Sanity, but an aspect of Spiritual Materialism. 

What then, is Basic Sanity?  We are going to investigate it without identification, dogma or prejudice.  Basic Sanity does not conform to any culture, religion or philosophy, nor can one conform to it.  There cannot be actual Basic Sanity where there is conformity or blind, unquestioning faith.  If you can see this, then we can proceed farther, but if you cannot see it, then you might as well go away now and forget about Basic Sanity, for it is not actual Basic Sanity that you are after.

Basic Sanity is the full reality of your own Being, your own actual state of consciousness, at any time day or night, without pretending to be something you are not, without building up imaginary spirituality of yourself.  It is to really face it squarely that you are rather undeveloped, that you do not rise easily (if at all) beyond your sensory states or vague dreams into developing yourself on higher planes of existence, that you are not a miracle-working superhuman adept, and that you cannot help others with problems of the kind you yourself still need help with.  Basic Sanity means that your imaginary spirituality fully stops, that your attempts to dominate others in the spiritual field fully stop, that your socializing and gossiping about the latest New Age or Eastern spiritual authorities fully stops.  It especially means that you will fully stop trying to be a personal Guru, teacher, guide, mentor, counselor or healer of others.  It means you will fully stop trying to be “recognized” or gather a following or form a new cult or spiritual movement.

Basic Sanity means you have cleared away all the false spiritual imagining and socializing from your life, which leaves you with the simplicity of your actual state of body and mind in your actual everyday life.  It also means you are no longer desperately trying to produce higher states or miracles that are obviously beyond your reach.  Instead, you are going to work very fundamentally on the sober steps of real personal transformation without going into manic assumptions or heavy give-it-all-up depressions.

One sober step of transformation is to sometimes let yourself be deeply quiet and extensively aware without turning it into a “meditation practice”.  In Tibetan Yoga, this is called Mahamudra, the Great Attitude.  When you enter into the Great Attitude you are working with Basic Sanity in the field of your actual conscious existence.  This means you are not trying to get out of your body or attempting to produce a miraculous, exciting event.  It also means you are not clinging to sensations as if they are “Reality” nor to physical activities as if they are continuously “practical and necessary”.  In the Great Attitude you are not fixated on the everyday ordinary world and you are not trying to get into an extraordinary world for Carlos Castaneda type experiences as such.  In quiet, extended awareness, both the ordinary and the non-ordinary worlds are treated as simply fleeting contents of consciousness and inseparable from the nature of consciousness.  Nothing is to be clutched at or rejected, pursued or denied.

In the sober step of deeply quiet extended awareness, other sober steps begin to come to light that you will recognize as transformational functions of Basic Sanity.  As these come to light, you will find yourself with increasingly new priorities in your life, a different kind of action and a revolution in the field of your “will”, your Intent, Initiative and Aspiration, which is the new kind of motivation or decision-making that happens in Basic Sanity without leaving Basic Sanity.

As you move into Basic Sanity, you discover that almost all of your usual noble plans and activities are rather neurotic and filled with assumptions about your personal transformation as avoidances of actual sober steps of genuine, patient and real transformation.  This can very well mean that certain kinds of activity that you previously thought of as non-spiritual or somehow below you are now revealed to be working aspects of transformation within Basic Sanity.  When this overthrow of neurotic mind takes place, you find yourself acting strangely “out of character”.  Along with this, you begin to experience the ordinary as strangely extraordinary and the extraordinary as strangely ordinary.  It is this fusion of the ordinary and extraordinary that the Tibetan way calls Drala or Ordinary Magic as opposed to the magical or miraculous as something away from or opposed to basic, sane, aware living.

In the midst of Drala, which is perceptible and substantial to quiet extended awareness, it turns out that to simply be naturally quiet and aware is itself the fundamental miracle or Siddhi.  You cannot force quiet awareness, which is why it is the fundamental miracle or Siddhi.  It is therefore quite enough to take the position of Basic Sanity, which naturally gravitates into accepting states of deep silence and extended awareness because they are no longer considered inconvenient to neurotic plans and activities.  The more one finds oneself in the quiet awareness states of Basic Sanity, the more one says to oneself, “there is just nothing to do right now that is real, even if my present quiet awareness does not seem to be producing anything spectacular or occultly important.”

Now, if you enter into Basic Sanity and the Great Attitude of quiet extended awareness, you can consider yourself anonymously initiated into genuine Vajrayana without having to become a socially identified second-class Tibetan Buddhist.  You will thus extract Vajrayana out of Tibetan Buddhism as the honey bee extracts nectar from a flower without setting up house in the flower.