If we adopt the act-consequentialist understanding of Tantric ethics I have proposed, we can offer another, complementary reason why the Tantric path is said to be dangerous. Act-consequentialism is itself dangerous. Since it removes all moral rules that might interfere with bringing about the welfare of all beings, it can require those agents who practice it to perform actions that directly cause serious harm or death to sentient beings, so as to prevent even greater harms, or to bring about very important goods. If the agent develops attachment to these ruthless actions, she could easily turn into a monster. And if the agent’s information is inaccurate, she runs the risk of causing terrible damage without actually benefiting anyone. But a skillful act-consequentialist with correct information can prevent great disasters, and achieve great goods, in cases where other kinds of agents would be too scrupulous to act. Doing so requires overcoming our moral squeamishness, our attachment to our own integrity — indeed, all the inhibitions in human nature — precisely what the Vajrayāna path is designed to eliminate.

The events in the Copper Temple Life Story are obviously mostly fictitious, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume they are known facts. If we are act-consequentialist, and we regard the spread of Buddhism and the achievement of the spiritual goals of Buddhism as goods, we must see Padmasambhava as having acted in a morally praiseworthy way, despite the reckless, chaotic, and merciless character of so many of his actions. If we do not see Padmasambhava as an act-consequentialist, we have little other choice but to regard him as completely immoral, or perhaps amoral; and such an interpretation would require us to ignore how careful the text is to point out that his actions produced more good in the end than harm.

The picture of the master Padmasambhava that emerges from this text is of a man who is highly altruistic in his ends, but astonishingly ruthless in his means. In his youth, Padmasambhava is living as a prince in a palace; the king and ministers do not wish to allow him to leave and become a religious wanderer. Therefore, he kills the son of the most influential minister and is banished as a punishment, allowing him to seek ordination as a monk.17Close In order to survive a famine, Padmasambhava, while living in a charnel ground, eats human flesh and wears clothes made of flayed human skin.18Close He seduces the daughter of Arshadhara, the king of Sahor, and runs off with her without her father’s consent, making her his partner in Tantric sexual rituals.19Close He kills four recalcitrant non-Buddhist teachers with a shower of meteors.20Close These actions, however shocking they may be, pale in comparison with the story of King Shakraraja. Since some might find it hard to believe that a passage of this kind could occur in any text purporting to be Buddhist, I will quote the story in full: During this time, in the district of Uddiyana known as Gaushö, there was an evil king named Shakraraja. He was forcing the people under his domain onto an errant path from which later they would go to the lower realms. The prince [Padmasambhava] considered that there was no other way to convert them than through subjugating and wrathful activity. He tied up the hair on his head with a snake, donned a human skin as his shirt, and made a tiger skin his skirt. Holding in his hands five iron arrows and a bow, he went to that country of evil deeds. The prince killed all the males he came across, ate their flesh, drank their blood, and united with all the females. He brought everyone under his power and performed the tanagana ritual of union and liberation. Therefore he was named Rakshasa Demon.21Close On the basis of this passage alone, we may legitimately conclude that, at least according to the Nyingma sect, there are no limits to the destructive actions that are permitted to an enlightened Tantric master.22

I am claiming that to transcend ethics is to make a transition from a state in which we frequently reflect on, and carefully try to follow, moral rules, to one in which we do not consciously think about the rules at all but obey them in a considerably more adroit way. Such a transition is not as mysterious and unusual as it sounds. Francisco Varela has pointed out that the same kind of transition happens to practitioners of perfectly ordinary skills, such as the game of chess. Beginners at chess need to think frequently about the rules, reminding themselves, for example, of which moves are legal for a particular piece. But chess masters don’t explicitly think about the rules. Due to their long training, they see patterns in the positions of pieces, and intuitively recognize dangers and opportunities. Of course, these masters are still perfectly capable of formulating the rules of chess. When they teach the game to beginners, or explain the rationale behind their moves to those who are not at their level of skill, they will explicitly allude to rules. But their expertise is such that their decision-making processes don’t any longer involve explicit consideration of the rules of chess. Varela makes an analogy to ethics: he argues that spiritual masters are relevantly similar to chess masters, in that they act skillfully for the benefit of all beings, without ever explicitly thinking about ethical rules.