THE GREAT MAHASIDDHA Naropa, Guardian of the Northern Gate of Nalanda University, lived during the tenth and eleventh centuries in northern India. The approximate dates he lived, and many details of his life story, can be found in legends and miracle tales, exalted descriptions of this great scholar–practitioner, whose life exemplifies a significant movement in Buddhist development around the turn of the millennium, as the practices of the Mahayana led to the emergence of the Vajrayana ethos and the spiritual techniques for full liberation associated with it.
Naropa’s life story serves as a metaphor for this movement in Buddhist history. His example reveals that full liberation requires not only a complete understanding and absorption of the view of emptiness and compassion, but also the realization through direct experience of the essence and clarity of things as they are. On a wider historical level, Naropa’s life stands as a paradigmatic example of a movement that took place in Indian Buddhism from institutional, scholastic, and philosophical ideals to an emphasis on experiential, contemplative, and transformative skillful means, transmitted from teacher to student, all aimed at a way of being that is free, spontaneous, and in harmony with the truth of how things actually are—an embodied and fully present manifestation of reality itself.
One key aspect of Naropa’s story is his departure from Nalanda University, at the top of his career, to seek out and study with the mysterious guru Tilopa. To understand this radical shift in Naropa’s path, it is helpful to understand a little of what the Vajrayana is and how it works. Vajrayana, or tantra as it was more commonly known in tenth-century India, is an orientation and set of powerful practices that move the practitioner from fantasy to reality, from delusion to truth. Tantra’s sophisticated spiritual technologies reveal a way of being and living in deep harmony with the truth of reality, the truth of how things actually are, not how we imagine, hope, or of the tantric path, but also it is the the yogi embraces to travel that path and the that leads to the realization of that goal: tantra starts with reality; continues with reality; and culminates with reality.