WIE: What is it that gets a person to the point where they're willing to choose life, even though it means giving up everything that they've had and that they've known and that they've done?

LL: Personally, I think it's love. And whether that shows up in a tradition of bhakti or in a tradition of jnana, love is not some kind of weepy, sentimental, misty-eyed, sighing kind of thing. Love is the life-essence of creation. I think that if we want that badly enough or are committed to serving that deeply enough, at some point we're willing to go on past our own assumed, illusory handicaps.

WIE: I've heard you refer to yourself as a crazy-wisdom teacher, a divine jester, and a fool for God.

LL: I like to think of myself as a subtle crazy-wisdom teacher.

WIE: What do you mean by that?

LL: I call myself a subtle crazy-wisdom teacher because, generally speaking, my manifestations are extremely conservative. Some of my students say, "Oh, but your energy is so revolutionary." That's well and good, and in the early days of the school, I would do a lot more things with students, like we'd go dancing or I'd do strange things. But in the last ten years, I'm just comfortable living on the ashram and having the same daily schedule and eating my salad. To all external appearances a crazy-wisdom teacher is someone who acts in a crazy way to provoke or to shock students into a kind of shift of context. I do that so rarely anymore that I think it's very nice of my students to continue to refer to me as a crazy-wisdom teacher. In effect, that's what I am, but personally I think the subtleties of that are so obscure that I'm always surprised when someone sees them.

WIE: What is crazy wisdom?

LL: One of the primary aspects of crazy wisdom is that crazy-wisdom teachers are willing to use any behavior, no matter how shocking or irreverent or disturbing, if, and only if, that behavior has a very high likelihood of provoking a shift in the student, a deepening in the student. Of course, in this day and age, because of the communications industry, we hear about every idiot throughout the world whose ego takes on a crazy-wisdom function and then goes about using shock techniques whenever they feel like it, with complete disregard for the timing of the matter. Everything is timing. Gurdjieff was a master of timing. He didn't just produce shock like a research scientist to see what would happen. He only produced shock when the likelihood of its being effective, in terms of deepening a student's relationship to the Divine, was high. It didn't always work because it is only a likelihood, but still he wasn't random about it. And the teachers who I call charlatans today are teachers who are completely irresponsible in their use of power and crazy manifestation. I would consider a crazy-wisdom teacher someone who might use anything, but who is never arbitrary, and never follows their own personal motives. They only use dramatic and shocking manifestations under specific circumstances at exactly the right time. It's like faceting a diamondif you don't understand the structure of the stone and you just take a chisel and hit it, all you get is diamond dust. You've got to know exactly the structure of the diamond because you've got to tap it along a particular fracture point. If you tap it in the middle of two fracture points, then you just smash the stone instead of getting a perfectly faceted jewel. Human beings are the same way. They've got what we could call revelation lines, so to speak, or enlightenment lines. A crazy-wisdom teacher is a master at faceting. A charlatan is someone who just takes the hammer and chisel and whales away and hopes that there are some beneficial resultsor maybe doesn't even care but just loves the euphoria of the exercise of power and people groveling at his or her feet.

WIE: The way you're describing crazy wisdom, it sounds like it's a very precise science.

LL: The thing is, though, the scientist is completely spontaneous and instinctual. It's not a science of mind. It's a science of function.

WIE: I think a popular notion of crazy wisdom is that because ultimately we can't understand Reality with the intellect, the crazy-wisdom teacher acts in ways that demonstrate that to kind of blow the conceptual mind.

LL: That's one of the revelations that can deepen a student's relationship to the Divine. So one might do something under a specific circumstance to produce the revelation that reality is nonlinear. But ordinarily, one wouldn't function like that all the time just to prove that point. One would do that only when the student was just on the edge of the real possibility of getting that point, beyond just knowing the party line. Another important consideration is that the kind of behavior that would demonstrate the absurdity of linearity would not tend to be violent behavior or the kind of behavior that would psychologically scar someone.

WIE: Many of the crazy-wisdom teachers who you hear about wouldn't necessarily draw any lines like that. I know that you have been known to be outrageous, provocative, and unpredictable at times, so that, in a sense, puts you in the crazy-wisdom camp. Yet I also know that among your students, you have particular protocols or norms that are required. For example, people generally have to be either celibate or monogamous. You don't allow promiscuity.

LL: I wouldn't say we don't allow promiscuity; we don't recommend it. So if someone is promiscuous, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're no longer a student or they get kicked out of the school. There's very little promiscuity in the school because I'm so Victorian in my attitudes. But the rules are not the kind that exclude people who bend them.

WIE: Similarly, I think you recommend that people don't use alcohol, at least at the ashram.

LL: Or cigarettes or caffeine. Talk about no fun! No sex, no alcohol, no caffeine, no tobacco, no drugs. That's why we're such heavy movie-goers.

WIE: But when you think about people like Trungpa Rinpoche or Osho, it's a very different kind of scene. So it seems that to put yourself in the crazy-wisdom camp, so to speak, isn't completely appropriate. You seem different from most of the people who would be identified with that.

LL: That's part of my crazy-wisdom style. It's a funny thing because I hold Trungpa in absolutely the highest, highest regard. To me, Trungpa could do no wrong, even though he did some pretty heavy shit. There are other teachers who do far less than Trungpa did, who I wouldn't even consider to be teachers of any stature whatsoever, who I think are completely deluded, and who I would call charlatans. So who I respect and who I don't is purely an instinctual thing. It doesn't rest on linearity because there are certain teachers who are considered crazy-wisdom teachers because of their behavior who I think are just crazy, periodand not teachers at all. And yet Trungpa, whose behavior was really pretty much as wild as it gets, I hold in absolutely the highest regard.

WIE: There's no question, at least in many people's minds, that Trungpa had a great deal of realization. He had a tremendous effect on many people. And the kind of crazy wisdom that is as precise as a diamond cutter is, of course, what his students would claim for him. Yet the results of some of his behavior, it seems, haven't been so great. Look at the scandal involving AIDS and sex that occurred around his successor, Osel Tendzin. And Osel Tendzin and other students became alcoholics, for example. I think that one thing that happens is that students often tend to imitate their teacher and take on in many ways, perhaps unconsciously, the behaviors and attitudes of their guru. So, when you have someone like Trungpa carrying on the way he did, I think it was almost predictable that some of his students would do similar things.

LL: Well, that's a danger, and there's no way around that, I think. A really good teacher will work toward discouraging that in students, but there's no way around it. Students are going to copy the teacher, and in some cases, they'll bring integrity to it, and in most cases, they won't. So what you see are the most cases in which there's no integrity brought to it. The fact that students copy the teacher and the teacher can't stop it is not necessarily a mark against the teacher, the way I view it. Every new student coming into my school is supposed to really get a lecture, "Do as I say, not as I do." So, I highly discourage students from copying my behavior.

WIE: Don't you hold yourself to the kinds of standards that you would like to see your students live by?

LL: Absolutely not.

WIE: Why is that?

LL: I could give you a good justification for it, but it might not be exactly the reason. The way I teach is instinctually designed to optimize the possibility of my students duplicating my state of consciousness, and behavior has nothing to do with it. So I highly discourage students from mimicking my behavior. Some do, to varying degrees, anyway. The function of the teacher is designed to optimize the duplication of the state of consciousness of the teacher, not necessarily to produce a carbon copy of the teacher.

WIE: But it would seem that behavior would be relevant to showing the condition that you described earlier as your spontaneous slavery to the will of God. And that's the kind of behavior that you'd want to see in your students.

LL: Well, no, because my function is different from my students' function. My function is to bring my students into alignment with the will of God. What their function is after that is up to the will of God. It has nothing to do with me or them. I'm not training teachers. If any one or more of my students woke up, they might become teachers, but they also might not. That's up to the will of God. It has nothing to do with my wish or their wish. I don't think that everybody who wakes up teaches.

WIE: Even so, it seems like there must be some essence, as indefinable or subject to many different manifestations as that may be, of how awakening functions in the world.

LL: I have integrity in my work. And so, regardless of the manifestations of my activity, if people can see that I have integrity in my work, that's something that they can learn. That is a model for people. So there are, I suppose one could say, subtle aspects or internal aspects of my work that do act as a modeling mechanism, but not my activity. The integrity of my commitment to my work, the integrity of my commitment to my teacher, those kinds of thingsyes.

WIE: One of the major things that you do is lead a rock band. As far as I know, you're the only spiritual teacher who is doing that.

LL: I hope so. I wouldn't want it to become common.

WIE: Do you see your rock band, Liars, Gods and Beggars, as a way to communicate your teachings, possibly even on a large scale?

LL: I think that Liars, Gods and Beggars has the potential to communicate some essence of the teaching, even if subtly, on a large scale. However, I would never presume to think that the real work and yoga of the teaching could possibly be communicated on a large scale under any circumstancesalthough I see Liars, Gods and Beggars as a kind of subtle spiritual virus that can touch a vast environment. But vast quantities of people just aren't drawn to the type of practice that produces the effects designed by this kind of work.

WIE: What is it that makes someone a really serious practitioner?

LL: Being willing to sacrifice anything and everything that is required for the realization of the Divine.

WIE: After twenty-five years of teaching, are you happy with the results?

LL: I'm relatively happy with the results, but I can't be entirely happy with the results because the results are relative. So, I suppose what would make me really objectively happy is if my function were duplicated in one or more students. So far, that hasn't happened. I've had students who have even spent months in awakened states but somehow have taken on qualities that are not yet completely 100 percent finished. I'm happy with the results in terms of a comparison with any other community, and in terms of the embodiment of the teaching in my students and their ability to transmit it, but it's a relative happiness. There is so much work to be done. And you know, even if an individual student's work is complete, then there are always more people who need what this is. So I think that happiness or satisfaction is not an issue. I'm as busy as I can be; there's no lack of work.

WIE: What do you see as the ultimate achievement that you'd like to see in this community?

LL: I'd like to see everybody in a working, happy relationship. You know, loving one another, completely free of violence and competitiveness. That would be enough. Or not in relationship, but by choice. So in a relationship by choice or not in a relationship by choice, but living a life that is completely nurturing and free of violence and manipulation.

One of the primary things that has changed in twenty-five years is the way that I use language. In the beginning, everything was "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" And now, it's like the gracefulness required to wake up is such that it seems to happen in the process of our lives together. We don't need to focus on that except as a kind of obvious reason to be together. We wouldn't be together if that weren't the reason for being together, so we don't have to dwell on it. What we dwell on is being kind to one another in general and developing intimacy that's free of promiscuity and flirtation and gaminess and so on. That's plenty.