Vajra Māna

The Pride that’s not Prideful

Painting by Yuko Murakoshi

Vajra Pride

Vajra māna is Sanskrit for “vajra pride.” 

Māna here refers to self-honoring or self-valuing. In other contexts, māna refers to the chronic activity of measuring that supports ordinary pride.

“Vajra” means both adamantine or diamond-like and lightning bolt. The lightning bolt flashes and cuts through the darkness to reveal what is. The fierce flash of the light of wisdom reveals our indestructible real nature, indestructible like a diamond.

The vajra is the weapon of the sun God, Indra. The sun is a symbol of prakashakaya - the light of consciousness - and the vajra is made of that light. 

Vajra pride flows from a deep, abiding sense of wonder and appreciation for the nature of the Self and its indestructible wisdom and beauty. 

When we see the jewel-like, magical nature of the Self, of reality, even for a moment, we know that we are also that. By repeatedly recognizing our real nature, we become unshakable in our appreciation for ourselves and others, even with our incapacities and stumblings.

Confidence is fragile

Our experience of ordinary confidence is painfully tethered to our experience of ordinary lack of confidence.

If we are meeting our own expectations and other people are approving, we feel some semblance of confidence or self-appreciation. If we make mistakes, or other people don’t like what we’re doing, or circumstances are hard, we crash into self-doubt, recriminations, and shame.

Our confidence is fragile because it’s dependent on circumstances and other people. Our experience is rough and uneven.

This kind of dependent confidence is like a little cart traveling back and forth along a train track going nowhere. We fill the cart with reassurances, accomplishments, and compliments, and we travel to the confident end of the track. Then someone questions our worth or we fail at something, and the cart travels to the insecure end of the track. 

We are always measuring what is in or not in the cart. Our ordinary feelings of confidence and insecurity are both really insecure!

Being “proud of” can be scary

I saw a social media video in which a little girl of about 5 years old was playing the piano. When she was done, her momma said, “I’m proud of you! Are you proud of yourself?” The little girl replied “Yes!” 

Then her mom answered, “Well you should be!” 

Momma was trying to instill confidence in her child, but she was setting the stage for a confidence train wreck.

When a parent or a friend or partner says, “I’m proud of you,” we know this to be conditional. Someone is proud of us because of what we have done or because we have some quality that has been identified by another as being “good”. 

If later we fail, or that quality proves to be less than stellar, or we just change, we don’t feel our friend is still going to be proud of us.

So any conditional pride we experience might feel good for a moment, but it is just a respite from the nagging question of our real worth.

There’s nothing wrong with compliments. But if we are dependent on external validation for our sense of self-worth, we are revealing that we are not certain of our worth. And of course, we are constantly trained to look for value outside rather than to our indestructible essential nature. 

We are echoes

Our search to find self-worth is driven by of our longing to discover our indestructible value or vajra nature. We just aren’t looking in the right places.

Ordinary confidence is an weak echo of actual confidence. We long to discover vajra māna, but we also often disown or discount it because we are so heavily conditioned.

But through our sadhana, particularly sadhana that involves exploring and resting in the heart space,¹ we easily have a direct experience of the real nature of the Self. Then we need to find the persistence, courage, and surrender to reclaim that and allow it to guide our everyday lives.

Vajra māna=bedazzlement

This alive-aware reality is not about accomplishing or evolving or expanding. God has no mission.

Everything here is a self-expression. God is an artist, a magician, a trickster, and a delighter in the infinite cascading reflections of the nature of the Self out of itself.

What? You think feeling good about yourself is all about achievements, right? Or identifying and holding onto shiny, special qualities in a sea of lesser-thans. Nope.

As my Dzogchen teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche used to say: We relax. We enjoy.

Or as Lalleshvari, the 14th century Kashmiri poet and yogini put it: The experience of God is continuous amazement.

The only thing to accomplish is to discover what you have always been all along. You already are that. Your indestructible value is built in from the beginning. There is nothing to cultivate, achieve, prove, or measure. The self you already are is dazzling, gem-like, and full of wisdom.

So just do some practice until you discover your real nature. Then enjoy.

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1. The heart space, or the cave of the heart, is the space we experience when we meditate in the center of the chest. It is not the physical heart. Many Trika practices involve the heart space. If you want to become more familiar with the heart space, you can join me for livestream practice every Tuesday morning at 7:30am Pacific time. I livestream to my Facebook profile and to Jaya Kula’s YouTube channel.