Crazy wisdom, also known as holy madness, is a manifestation of certain spiritual adepts where they behave in unconventional, outrageous, or unexpected fashion. It is considered to be a manifestation of spiritual

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 accomplishment evident in such Dharmic Traditions as Sanatana Dharma, Tantra

Tantra

Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....

, Vajrayana

Vajrayana

Vajrayāna Buddhism is also known as Tantric Buddhism, Tantrayāna, Mantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Esoteric Buddhism and the Diamond Vehicle...

, Zen

Zen

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

 amongst other traditions such as Sufi, Bonpo and Taoism

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

 for example and is often evident in human cultural spiritual universals such as shamanism

Shamanism

Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...

. Crazy wisdom is also a modality of communication, in which the adept employs esoteric and seemingly unspiritual methods to awaken an aspirant's consciousness.

Nomenclature, orthography and etymology

'Crazy wisdom' shares a semantic field

Semantic field

A semantic field is a technical term in the discipline of linguistics to describe a set of words grouped by meaning in a certain way. The term is also used in other academic disciplines, such as anthropology and computational semiotics.-Definition and usage:...

 with: sacred fool, divine madman & madwoman, village idiot

Village idiot

The village idiot in strict terms is a person locally known for ignorance or stupidity, but is also a common term for a stereotypically silly or nonsensical person. The term is also used as a stereotype of the mentally disabled...

, divine ecstasy, and the Tarot archetype of The Fool

The Fool (Tarot card)

The Fool or The Jester is one of the 78 cards in a Tarot deck; one of the 22 Trump cards that make up the Major Arcana. The Fool is unnumbered...

, etc.

• 'crazy wisdom' or 'yeshe chölwa'

Avadhuta

Feuerstein

Georg Feuerstein

Dr. Georg Feuerstein is a German-Canadian Indologist specializing on Yoga. Feuerstein has authored over 30 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism...

 (1991: p. 105) frames how the term 'Avadhuta' (Sanskrit) came to be associated with the mad or eccentric holiness or 'crazy wisdom' of some antinomian paramahamsa

Paramahamsa

Paramahamsa , also spelled paramahansa or paramhansa, is a Sanskrit religio-theological title of honor applied to Hindu spiritual teachers of lofty status who are regarded as having attained enlightenment. The title may be translated as "supreme swan," and is based on the swan being equally at home...

 who were often 'skyclad' or 'naked' (Sanskrit: digambara

Digambara

Digambara "sky-clad" is one of the two main sects of Jainism. "Sky-clad" has many different meaning and associations throughout Indian religions. Many representations of deities within these traditions are depicted as sky-clad, e.g. Samantabhadra/Samantabhadrī in Yab-Yum...

):

"The appellation "avadhuta," more than any other, came to be associated with the apparently crazy modes of behaviour of some paramahamsas, who dramatize the reversal of social norms, a behaviour characteristic of their spontaneous lifestyle. Their frequent nakedness is perhaps the most symbolic expression of this reversal."

Feuerstein (1991: p. 69) equates the Avadhuta as a 'sacred fool':

"The crazy wisdom message and method are understandably offensive to both the secular and the conventional religious establishments. Hence crazy adepts have generally been suppressed. This was not the case in traditional Tibet and India, where the "holy fool" or "saintly madman" [and madwoman] has long been recognized as a legitimate figure in the compass of spiritual aspiration and realization. In India, the avadhuta is one who, in his [or her] God-intoxication, has "cast off" all concerns and conventional standards."

The root and basis of crazy wisdom

From a particular Buddhadharma spiritual lexicon

Lexicon

In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...

 and perspective, Feuerstein (1991: p. 70) implies nonduality in his equating the essence of Samsara

Samsara

thumb|right|200px|Traditional Tibetan painting or [[Thanka]] showing the [[wheel of life]] and realms of saṃsāraSaṅsāra or Saṃsāra , , literally meaning "continuous flow", is the cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth or reincarnation within Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön, Jainism, Sikhism, and other...

 and Nirvana

Nirvana

Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...

 as the root of crazy wisdom:

"Crazy wisdom is the articulation in life of the realization that the phenomenal world (samsara) and the transcendental Reality (nirvana) share the same essence."

Generally, the difference between Sanatana Dharma and Buddhadharma conceptions of 'Samsara' and 'samsara' respectively are the former which is a proper noun denoting a relative apparent locality and the latter is an interiority or state of mind, the two are resolvable when understood from a nondual perspective.

Feuerstein (1991: p. 70) then enters the spiritual lexicon of Advaita Vedanta

Advaita Vedanta

Advaita Vedanta is considered to be the most influential and most dominant sub-school of the Vedānta school of Hindu philosophy. Other major sub-schools of Vedānta are Dvaita and ; while the minor ones include Suddhadvaita, Dvaitadvaita and Achintya Bhedabheda...

 with what may in an etic Anthropological discourse be proffered as its culturally relative

Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...

 memes, archetypes, literary motifs and cultural tokens of 'Atman

Ātman (Hinduism)

Ātman is a Sanskrit word that means 'self'. In Hindu philosophy, especially in the Vedanta school of Hinduism it refers to one's true self beyond identification with phenomena...

', 'Brahman

Brahman

In Hinduism, Brahman is the one supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead which is the Divine Ground of all being...

', 'Paramatman

Paramatman

In Hindu theology, Paramatman or Paramātmā is the Absolute Atman or Supreme Soul or Spirit in the Vedanta and Yoga philosophies of India....

' and 'Satcitananda' (which Feuerstein glosses to the contraction of 'Being-Consciousness' with bliss implied or transcended) to identify the root of crazy wisdom:

"Seen from the perspective of the unillumined mind, operating on the basis of a sharp separation between subject and object, perfect enlightenment is a paradoxical condition. The enlightened adept exists as the ultimate Being-Consciousness but appears to inhabit a particular body-mind. In the nondualist terms of the Indian teaching known as advaita vedanta, enlightenment is the fulfillment of the two truths: the innermost self (atman) is identical with the transcendental Self (parama-atman); and the ultimate Ground (brahman) is identical with the cosmos in all its manifestations, including the self."

Crazy wise adepts

Feuerstein

Georg Feuerstein

Dr. Georg Feuerstein is a German-Canadian Indologist specializing on Yoga. Feuerstein has authored over 30 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism...

 (1991: p. 69) lists Han-shan (fl. 9th century) the Taoist and Zen poet, herbalist

Herbalist

An herbalist is:#A person whose life is dedicated to the economic or medicinal uses of plants.#One skilled in the harvesting and collection of medicinal plants ....

 and mountain recluse (who as a pointed aside, was held in such regard by the Dharma

Dharma

Dharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...

 inspired poetic beatnik

Beatnik

Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...

s of the Beat Generation

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

) as one of the crazy-wise:

"Han-shan, the legendary Chinese adept with a Cheshire-cat grin, lived alone in the most desolate mountain areas gathering roots and herbs. When people would try to talk with him about Zen, he would only laugh hysterically."

Feuerstein (1991: p. 69) also lists Ikkyu

Ikkyu

was an eccentric, iconoclastic Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet. He had a great impact on the infusion of Japanese art and literature with Zen attitudes and ideals.-Childhood:...

 (15th century), a Zen

Zen

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

 master, famed for the crazy-wisdom of sporting a skeleton around town and the pithy Sufi storyteller Mulla Nasruddin (fl.

Floruit

Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

 13th century) as one of the crazy-wise:

"Among the Sufi, some of the best teaching stories

Teaching stories

Teaching stories is a term used by the writer Idries Shah to describe narratives that have been deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom...

 feature Mulla Nasruddin, the holy fool whose unreasonable behavior reflect the deepest truths."

Christianity has the blessed St Isadora, a sterling example of a female exponent of crazy wisdom.

Crazy wisdom and divine madness approaching a human cultural universal

McDaniel (1989: p. 7) in her work on the divine madness of the medieval bhakti

Bhakti

In Hinduism Bhakti is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine.Within monotheistic Hinduism, it is the love felt by the worshipper towards the personal God, a concept expressed in Hindu theology as Svayam Bhagavan.Bhakti can be used of either...

 saints in Bengal, mentions the Greek tradition of Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Phaedrus:

"Divine madness is not unique to Bengal, or even to India. It has been explored in various traditions: in both Eastern Orthodox and Western Christianity, among the Hasids of eastern Europe, among the Sufis, in possession and trance dancers around the world. Plato distinguished two types of mania in the Phaedrus: one arising from human disease, and the other from a divine state, "which releases us from our customary habits." He notes four sorts of divine madness sent by the gods: the mantic, from Apollo, which brings divination; the telestic, from Dionysus, which brings possession trance (as a result of ritual); the poetic, from the Muses, which brings enthusiasm and poetic furor; and the erotic, from Eros and Aphrodite, which brings frenzied love. He states, "In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift."

The bhakti divine madness may show itself in a total absorption in the divine, complete renunciation and surrender to divinity and the participation in the deity and divine pastime rather than its aping or imitation. Though the participation in the divine is generally favoured in Vaishnava bhakti discourse throughout the sampradayas rather than imitation of the divine 'play' (Sanskrit: lila), there is the important anomaly of the Vaishnava-Sahajiya

Vaishnava-Sahajiya

Vaishnava-Sahajiya is a form of tantric Vaishnavism that centred in Bengal, India, that had bellwethers from the 14th century but originated proper from the 16th century...

 sect.
The divine madness may be seen in the biography, hagiography and poetry of the Alvars

Alvars

The alwar or azhwars were Tamil poet saints of south India who lived between the sixth and ninth centuries A.D. and espoused ‘emotional devotion’ or bhakti to Visnu-Krishna in their songs of longing, ecstasy and service. Sri Vaishnava orthodoxy posits the number of alvars as ten, though there are...

, the Mahasiddhas of Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 and Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

, and it has parallels in others religions, such as the Fools for Christ in Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, and the Sufis in Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

.
In the Tibetan Buddhist

Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...

 tradition it is known as yeshe chölwa, and is held to be one of the manifestations of a siddha

Siddha

A Siddha सिद्ध in Sanskrit means "one who is accomplished" and refers to perfected masters who, according to Hindu belief, have transcended the ahamkara , have subdued their minds to be subservient to their Awareness, and have transformed their bodies into a different kind of body dominated by...

 or a mahasiddha

Mahasiddha

Mahasiddha is a term for one who cultivates those teachings that lead to becoming perfect. They are a type of eccentric yogini/yogi in both Sanatan Dharma and Vajrayana Dharma, given by Siddhartha. Mahasiddhi are those practitioners, or tantrikas who have gained sufficient understanding and are so...

. Teachers such as the eighty four mahasiddhas, Marpa

Marpa Lotsawa

Marpa Lotsawa , sometimes known fully as Lhodak Marpa Choski Lodos or commonly as Marpa the Translator, was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher credited with the transmission of many Buddhist teachings to Tibet from India, including the teachings and lineages of Vajrayana and Mahamudra.-Biography:Born as...

, Milarepa

Milarepa

Jetsun Milarepa , is generally considered one of Tibet's most famous yogis and poets. He was a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.- Life :...

 and Drukpa Kunley

Drukpa Kunley

Kunga Legpai Zangpo , was also known by other names such as Drukpa Kunley, Drukpa Kunleg , and "The Divine Madman of the Dragon Lineage" Kunga Legpa...

(also known as the Divine Madman) are associated with this type of behavior.