The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (11 page)

Student:
You said that even we don’t exist, we’re a myth. Is enlightenment also a myth?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You. You don’t exist. Nor I. I don’t exist.

S:
Does enlightenment exist?

TR:
Not even enlightenment exists.

S:
Does devotion exist?

TR:
Devotion is knowing that you don’t exist. It’s the information that someone gives you that you don’t exist. And you experience that, that it’s true: “I don’t exist.” That’s the act of devotion. Devotion is language, media to communicate that message. Devotion acts as a mailman who brings you mail.

Student:
You talk about having a personal experience of the teacher, the enlightenment experience. But what I’ve understood you to say about enlightenment is that it isn’t an experience. So what’s happening at that moment? Is it enlightenment, or is it still an experience? Is there still somebody there experiencing something?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Enlightenment is no longer regarded as experience. Experience is like blotting paper that absorbs ink. The blotting paper has a good experience by absorbing the ink. This requires two entities to work together. But in this case, it is not experience from that point of view. It is total. The notion of a razor blade cutting itself.

S:
If it was total at that moment, why would it end?

TR:
It doesn’t end, that’s the whole point. Enlightenment is eternal. It doesn’t end. I mean that’s the whole point of liberation—once you are liberated, it is forever.

S:
So the experience with the spiritual friend is just a glimpse—

TR: A
glimpse of that freedom.

S:
And if you went to see your spiritual friend and wanted to surrender your ego to him and didn’t have a glimpse, was that because—

TR:
You’re still wrapped up in the notion of freedom. The whole thing about the glimpse seems to be very simple.

Student:
Enlightenment doesn’t begin either, right?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
What do you mean by that?

S:
It doesn’t end because it doesn’t begin.

TR:
Well, that in itself is a beginning. Because it doesn’t end, it doesn’t begin, and it
is
.

Student:
If I don’t exist, why bother?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I beg your pardon?

S:
If I don’t exist and enlightenment doesn’t exist, why bother trying to . . . I don’t have the right words . . . why bother?

TR:
That is the sixty-dollar question. (It has gone down in value.) Everybody’s asking that: “Why bother?” But in order to find out why you should bother, you have to find out why not? That problem hasn’t been solved. As long as the twelve nidanas—the links in the karmic chain reactions—continue to exist. . . .

Student:
In some of the Tibetan literature I’ve read in translation, I ran across one phrase that really stuck in my mind. “The attainment of human birth is a mighty opportunity that is not to be frittered away.” Could you comment on that in the light of what has just been said about nonexistence and why bother?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s very simple. This life is very valuable. Human birth is very important. You have a chance to practice, a chance to learn the truth, and still the question of “Why bother?” keeps cropping up again and again. You see, the path actually consists of “Who am I? What am I? What is this? What isn’t this?” all the time until enlightenment is actually achieved. The question “Why bother?” has never been answered. It becomes one of the mantras of the path. “Why bother?” goes on all the time.

Student:
You said that enlightenment was a real experience and also said that enlightenment doesn’t exist.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Because it doesn’t exist, therefore it’s real. When something exists personally, experientially, and unconditionally, it becomes a mirage, fake. A lot of people maybe find that the experience they have at Disneyland is more real than the experience they have in their city life. The mirage seems to be more real.

Student:
It’s like a mirror. You think the mirror is real.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You are real in the mirror, that’s right. But that still is the mirror’s interpretation of you. And therefore it doesn’t exist. But nonexistence is the most valid thing of all. The highest existence is nonexistence.

Student:
So enlightenment as a real experience is just a mirror.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
More than a mirror. A supermirror. That’s why in tantric language, we speak of mirrorlike wisdom—the real experience of nonexistence. Cutting through all kinds of conceptualizations and everything. The experience of vajralike samadhi.

Student:
What does making friends with yourself mean?
⁵

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That you are very rich, resourceful, and that there is a working basis in you, working bases of all kinds. That you don’t have to reform yourself or abandon yourself, but work with yourself. That your passion, aggression, ignorance, and everything is workable, part of the path.

Student:
Are you talking about self, oneself, selves?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There’s no self.

S:
So you’re working with thought?

TR:
There’s no thought. There’s
is
. Thoughts are interpretations of what
is
, spokesmen of nonexistence. The clouds exist because the sky exists. The sky exists because there’s light that shows us blue sky. But once you get out to outer space, you don’t even see blue sky. You don’t even see clouds anymore.

Student:
If there’s no self, how do we really make friends with it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Because of that. Since there’s no self, there’s no threat. You are not threatened by anything, because you don’t exist. Therefore the world is a bank of compassion.

S:
So everything is all right?

TR:
So to speak.

Student:
You said hope was very necessary. Usually you talk about giving up hope and encourage us to adopt hopelessness. And I actually experience that the more I hope, the less I’m able to breathe. It’s like if I have a lot of hope, I can’t even move, because I’m so afraid I won’t get what I’m hoping for. I’m so concentrated on getting something. It seems only when I give up hope, just for a minute, that I have any choice or any room.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, giving up hope is also an act of hope. You have been encouraged to take that path of hopelessness, so it is actually more of an encouragement.

Student:
Does energy exist or love exist? Or are they just myths?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I hope they exist. Better if they exist. But maybe they don’t exist. Maybe love doesn’t exist, but it
is
. Love is. Energy is. Rather than “exist.” It’s the same kind of distinction as: if you don’t exist, you are. If energy doesn’t exist, energy is. If love doesn’t exist, love is.

Student:
How does one work on oneself?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
One just begins at the beginning. It’s very simple. There’s no how. When you ask how you should do things, it’s like trying to buy a pair of gloves, so you don’t have to touch, so you don’t have to stress your hands. One doesn’t have to think about how, one just does it.

Student:
Rinpoche, if there’s no self, no enlightenment, no thought, and no memories, then how is it that you’re able to tell us what you’ve experienced and what you know?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Because they don’t exist. Seriously. Because things don’t exist, things
are
. In fact, actually it might be more correct dharmically to say, things
is
. It’s not quite grammatical, but things is. There’s enormous clarity out of nonexistence.

S:
What perceives that nonexistence?

TR:
By itself.

Student:
It came to me that all the three yanas are happening simultaneously. So then, does one have to isolate the hinayana from the mahayana and vajrayana in order to reach the goal of the hinayana?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think it would be safer, much safer to begin at the hinayana level, because we need a lot of training. A lot of students have to start with the path of accumulation, which is the level of the ordinary person. At that level, just learning to be an ordinary person plays an important part. That’s the starting point, and one has to start in one place at a time. It’s like having to chew properly before you swallow. Of course, if you chew efficiently, maybe you can chew and swallow at the same time, but that depends on your experience.

S:
Is it possible, though the hinayana is where one starts and that is one’s focus, that the rest may be happening anyhow, though that is not one’s concern?

TR:
Anyhow, yes. There is a star of Bethlehem anyhow. There is enlightenment. It actually does exist, and people have achieved it. It is real. You could experience it.

Student:
What is the difference between the hopelessness you have described previously and the hope that you talk about now?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Same.

Well, friends, we should close our seminar. I have to go out to New Jersey and perform a wedding at a Jewish country club. But before I go, I would like to emphasize that it is worthwhile to think very seriously about the fact that if you are interested in treading the path of meditation practice, before you learn any gimmicks, you have to get yourself together. Renunciation and desolateness and aloneness or loneliness is very all-pervading. But at the same time, you cannot have a sense of renunciation, a sense of the spiritual path, without that openness of crisp, clear, winter-morning air. From the point of view of openness, meditation is not regarded as either particularly pleasurable or particularly painful. And by no means is it regarded as a magic trick that will give you instant enlightenment or instant bliss. It is a very manual experience, a very personal experience. One has to explore. One has to sit and discipline oneself constantly, all the time. Which occupies twenty-four hours of one’s day.

I would like to mention that I have written a book called
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
, and it is worthwhile getting that book, which is a kind of extended seminar of the type we have had here. A lot is written there about what we have discussed, and it is particularly suited for a Western audience. Another very powerful book is
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
, translated by Garma C. C. Chang. Also the late Suzuki Roshi of Zen Center in San Francisco has written a book,
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
, which is a very powerful book, very direct, very domesticated, very personal experience. His is a fatherly voice of some kind, which is very powerful and important. My other book
Meditation in Action
, like
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
, tries to communicate very simple ideas to people about the spiritual path. Also, if you have further interest in the techniques of shamatha, vipashyana, and satipatthana, there is a book called
The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
by Nyanaponika Thera.

It is very necessary to do these readings to establish a knowledge of the fundamentals of buddhadharma. People in the past have worked hard and put a real and definite effort into their practice, their discipline. They have worked very hard for you people, ourselves. We should appreciate those people who worked hard on their discipline in order to be able to transmit energy and wisdom to us. They are worthy of admiration. Thank you.

Part Two

BARNET, VERMONT

SEPTEMBER 1974

ONE

Me-ness and the Emotions

W
E ARE GOING
to discuss the meaning of “awake,” which is connected with the practice of vipashyana, or insight, meditation. As a starting point, in order to work with the process of meditation, we have to understand our basic psychological makeup. That could be a long story, but to be concise at this point, let us say that mind has two aspects. One aspect is cognition. That is to say, there is a sense of split between I and other, me and you. This basic sense of split helps us to identify who we are, what we are. Conveniently, we are given names—I am called John, or I am called Michael, and so forth. In general we have no idea beyond the names. The names given to us are so convenient that we don’t have to think behind them. We just accept ourselves as being named so-and-so. If someone asks you, “Who are you?” and you say, “I am Tom,” that’s regarded as a very smart answer, and usually nobody asks, “Well, who and what is Tom?” But if you are asked further questions, the next thing you go to is, “I am a banker” or “I am a cab driver.” You shift to your profession. You end up jumping back and forth among those external identifications, and usually you never get back to the “me” level. That’s the way we usually handle our life. But this time we are going to go beyond the names to the basic mind. We are actually going to find out who we are and what we are. This is the starting point for understanding the mind.

Our mind has this quality of “me-ness,” which is obviously not the other, not you. Me-ness is distinct from you, other, the rock, the tree, or the mountains, the rivers, the sky, the sun, the moon—what have you. This me-ness is the basic point here.

There is a general sense of discomfort when you refer to yourself as “me,” which is a very subtle discomfort. We usually don’t acknowledge or notice it, because it is so subtle, and since it is there all the time, we become immune to it. There is a certain basic ambivalence there. It is like dogs, who at a certain point begin to relate to their leashes as providing security rather than imprisonment. Animals in the zoo feel the same thing. At the beginning they experienced imprisonment, but at some point this became a sense of security. We have the same kind of attitude. We have imprisoned ourselves in a certain way, but at the same time we feel that this imprisonment is the most secure thing we have. This me-ness or my-ness has a painful quality of imprisonment, but at the same time it also represents security rather than just pure pain. That is the situation we are in at this point. Every one of us is in that situation.