The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (14 page)

It’s not a matter of being a great meditator who does a beautiful job of washing up. It’s without praise, without blame. As long as there is a notion of trying to prove something, you have the painful kind of self-consciousness, self-consciousness in the pejorative sense. That is the case as long as you’re concerned about the end product. “Look what a beautiful job I did. That’s because I studied and meditated.”

That is the kind of problem that a lot of Zen students fall into. There is some problem having to do with a sense of showmanship. “We sit and therefore we do a good job. Come to Zen!” It’s like every Zen student is a self-existing Zen advertisement.

The basic point is to be precise and direct and without aim. Be there precisely. There is a need for mindfulness, which is the equivalent of self-consciousness, if you like—light-handed self-consciousness, which does exist. As long as we feel we exist—which we don’t, but never mind about that problem; we actually don’t exist, but we think we do, and that provides us with a working basis; we don’t have to start 100 percent pure—as long as we feel we exist, let us be full. Let us begin that way. That seems to be the basic point for the practice of meditation. If I say too much, probably you’ll be confused, so let’s stop there.

Student:
When we speak of postmeditation awareness, does that mean we should try to be more aware or that it happens spontaneously because of meditation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
One
does
try; not try-try, but just try.

S:
Sounds like quite a fine line.

TR:
Yes, that is what we are talking about. It is a very special way, but it does not have to be a big deal, particularly. You just have this aura that you are part of this meditation livelihood—basically, that your life is the practice of meditation. In fact, you find it difficult to shake it off. You might say, “I’m sick of the whole thing; now I’m giving up my awareness and my meditation completely.” Okay, do so. But then you find that something is haunting you constantly. You gave up meditation, but there you are—you have developed more awareness, more mindfulness. That always happens to people. So this is not a matter of something being imposed on you, but there is that element of something-or-other that goes on all the time.

It’s like being in the world. You are in the midst of winter and you have that awareness; awareness of that wintry quality is there all the time. If you are in New York City, you don’t have to meditate on it. You don’t have to develop a special awarenesss of New-York-Cityness. You pick up the New-Yorkness anyhow, whether you are indoors or outdoors. There is an overall awareness, that you are in that particular location. So it’s more of a general climate than a particular effort. But that climate has to be acknowledged occasionally. That’s very important.

Student:
You were talking about breath and the movement of the breath being a mirror of the mind. Couldn’t that be extended to the whole body? Wouldn’t the movement of the whole body also be a mirror of the mind, the thought processes, and therefore another path of meditation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, you could stretch in that direction, but there’s a bit of a strain there.

S:
I don’t see that.

TR:
You don’t move all the time, unless you are restless; but you breathe all the time.

S:
No. Our human bodies are designed to move almost all the time. In fact, it’s almost impossible to sit perfectly still the way we are designed with our center of gravity.

TR:
I’m not trying to tell you you should fight your center of gravity, particularly. But there are moments of stillness, relatively speaking. It is the breath that makes your body move. Your lungs always expand and contract, but that’s sort of an accidental thing. The reason why meditation practice should be based just on your breath, not on your body, is that there are possibilities of exploring the parts of your body unnecessarily. You start to try to shape your body like your mind, which has a hint of neurosis in it. In fact, that happens a great deal in the sensory-awareness schools of meditation. And there has been a great interest in T’ai Chi Ch’uan that has gone along with the enormous interest in touch and bodily movement. But there is a limit on how you can do that. There is a tendency to create something special. Whereas when you just sit with the breath, you don’t have to breathe specially. You just do it naturally. It’s part of your pulse.

S:
But since most of our time is spent in movement, why not use movement as a form of meditation?

TR:
I think you can’t do that. At this point I have to be very orthodox. You can’t do that, because it would be very convenient and there would be no discipline. For example, you have to set aside a time for sitting practice that is especially allocated for that practice. Whereas with the approach you suggest, you could just say, “Well, I’m going to visit my girlfriend and I have to drive. So on my way to my girlfriend’s, I’ll use driving as my meditation.”

S:
But as long as it’s mindful, why couldn’t that be done?

TR:
That approach to mindfulness becomes too utilitarian, too pragmatic—killing two birds with one stone. “That way I meditate and I get a chance to see my girlfriend at the end too.” But something has to be given up somewhere. Some renunciation somewhere is necessary. One stone kills one bird.

Student:
You talked about mindfulness and breathing, and breathing as a portrait of the mind. You also talked about being mindful of the various thoughts and feelings that come and go. You described those as the branches of the tree, which I gather is what we’re supposed to attack.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
At this point we are not in a position to handle those, to deal with them, to cut them down. Now we just have to see that the branches do exist.

S:
I’m confused about this. Is breathing the tool we are fashioning to eventually cut down the branches?

TR:
No, the mindfulness.

S:
The mindfulness. Of which the breathing is—

TR:
The breathing is just crutches.

S:
Yeah. The breathing is the crutches to bring about the mindfulness, which we can then later develop toward the emotions. Okay, that’s it!

TR:
That’s it.

Student:
You say that we don’t exist, that we only think we exist. I see that as being part of the grand illusion. Could you elaborate on that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s a lengthy discussion. But maybe I could hear from you what you think about whether you exist or you don’t. Do you think you exist?

S:
I think that—

TR:
Be honest.

S:
We are here.

TR:
Yes?

S:
Whatever these vibrations are are here. We are here.

TR:
Well, who are we?

S:
Who’s asking the question?

TR:
That’s it. Yes. Who is it. But that’s no proof.

S:
Does the enlightened mind perceive—

TR:
It doesn’t matter about the enlightened mind. Let’s talk about
this
mind, samsaric mind. When we talk about enlightened mind, it tends to become a myth. You expect the enlightened mind would see rainbows all over the place. But how about us, who see garbage all over the place?

S:
I’m not sure how we can exist and not exist.

TR:
You don’t. Where are you at this moment?

S:
I’m here.

TR:
What’s here?

S:
Planet Earth.

TR:
Planet Earth. Well, that’s a good beginning. What location on Planet Earth?

S:
It doesn’t matter.

TR:
Oh, come on. You are in Vermont! We have a tent above our heads and we have ground to sit on. Maybe you’re sitting on a cushion to make yourself comfortable. And you’re wearing a sweater so that the cold doesn’t become too heavy-handed on you. So we are here, in the tent in Barnet, Vermont, Tail of the Tiger. But then who is here? I don’t mean your name. Other than your name. What is here?

S:
Some sort of consciousness.

TR:
What is that? Consciousness of what?

S:
Self-consciousness.

TR:
That’s just a catchphrase. What does that mean? Consciousness of what? [
Pause
] Don’t think too much.

S:
Consciousness of the breeze.

TR:
What’s behind the breeze?

S:
My mind.

TR:
What is that?

S:
I wish I knew.

TR:
You don’t know?

S:
I guess that’s why I’m here.

TR:
You mean that’s why you’re not here? [
Uproarious laughter
] Good luck, sir.

Student:
Is the problem that I do not exist, in other words, that there’s nothing existing, or is the problem that something exists but it isn’t I? It isn’t the I that I think I am, but there is the existence of something.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s saying the same thing. Something equals nothing. If you are the number one, one necesssarily depends on zero. One is something and zero is nothing. In order to have one, you have to have zero. Which is nothing. It doesn’t make any difference—something and nothing are the same. Otherwise you couldn’t have a cash register. I think there’s no problem with something and nothing.

On the other hand, there’s something else, which is nothing that’s real, but it’s something that’s nothing. That’s where we get confused—when we’re trying to figure out the whole thing. This is a long research project, and I don’t think we can sort it out tonight. But you are very courageous.

Student:
In your previous talk, I got the impression that thoughts and emotions were dependent on duality.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

S:
But it seems that people who have overcome duality, saints and so on, still have thoughts and emotions.

TR:
Yes.

S:
Well, I think you have to bring in a third factor in order to complete the picture.

TR:
Well said. So what’s behind that? You didn’t finish your statement.

S:
Well, this is why I asked the question.

TR:
Maybe that’s your statement. Making things into a question is a very easy thing to do. This is part of the problem. In fact, the question mark is a symbol of nonexistence. You write a little poem and then you send it up like a balloon into the air. Hopefully, someone will catch it and appreciate it. That’s a question—it goes up. But perhaps we are branching off from our basic thing.

Student:
I don’t know if this is branching off even further, but this practice you’ve been describing seems very sensible in a way—becoming more aware, becoming more in touch with what’s happening in your own mind and outside of you. But I wonder why tantra is necessary. Why isn’t this enough, if one could eventually do it properly?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think it’s a matter of attitude, actually. Tantra is not something that is there to save us from a problem. And tantra is absolutely not necessary at this point. This is a complete thing. But this thing becomes tantra eventually. You might say you always want to remain a teenager. “I have everything in my life, I know everything, I go to school and learn everything. This is my life. Why do I have to get old?” You don’t have to get old, but you do become old one day. This particular experience we are talking about becomes tantra at some point, rather than tantra being imposed on you as a necessary requirement. The shamatha-vipashyana experience matures. That is tantra. It happens automatically.

S:
So tantra is just sort of an exposition of what happens.

TR:
Yes. That’s why we can speak of the three yanas being linked together. The whole development is regarded as a maturation process rather than something that is imposed on you. Nobody says to you, “Now you are finished with hinayana, you should change to second gear and do mahayana, then change to the top gear, which is tantra.” You don’t ever change that way. It’s a gradual process of development that becomes tantra automatically when it reaches maturity. You don’t ask, “Why is it necessary to have fruit on the trees?” This particular plant is beautiful, and it’s doing its best. It’s necessary to look at the situation wholeheartedly at this point. And maybe that kind of looking actually could be a tantric view.

THREE

The Portable Stage Set

W
E SHOULD PROBABLY
discuss the various types of backgrounds with the help of which we operate in our lives. These backgrounds are vague, uncertain, dubious for us. I am talking about the kind of background we create in our minds in every situation—when we enter somebody’s room, when we sit by ourselves, when we meet someone. This kind of background is partially made up of the sense of basic space that we carry around with us all the time, and it is also colored by our particular mood of the moment. It is a kind of portable stage set that we carry around with us that enables us to operate as individuals. We constantly produce a display, a theatrical scene. For each situation we create the appropriate backdrop and the appropriate lighting. We also have the appropriate actors, mainly ourselves, who appear on the stage. We carry on this kind of play, this theatrical game, all the time, and we are constantly using our antennae, so to speak, to feel out the total effect our stage set is having.

In vipashyana meditation, we deal with this kind of background, our portable theater. Whether we are a big deal or a small deal, there is always some kind of a deal happening. Vipashyana works with that big deal or small deal, that great deal, large deal, littlest, expansive, cunning, or clever deal—whatever setup you have chosen to establish. In practicing vipashyana, instead of keeping very busy setting up your theater, your theatrical stage, your attitude is changed so that there is a sense of questioning how we produce this background, why we do it, whether we have to do it or might not have to do it. This is still on the level of inquiry in some sense, but at the same time it is experiential.