The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (20 page)

S:
Maybe it’s the word
boredom
itself I don’t understand. Is that interesting boredom the same as, for example, if you’re working on a building or a piece of sculpture every day for six months, every morning there’s something—there’s a bug. But if you look at it from a larger perspective, it’s just the same boring challenge every day.

TR:
Yes, yes.

S:
So in other words, at the same nine-to-five job, you could either get fat and stupid, or you could look around.

TR:
I think so. I mean we can’t carve something extraordinary out of boredom. And we’d better not do that.

S:
So then the problem is perhaps just not seeing that as boredom. Which means that you’re not looking.

TR:
That’s right. Yes.

Student:
You’re recommending that everyone should find a teacher for themselves who they could have a relationship with. How do you go about identifying a person who could be a good teacher?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Finding a good teacher is not like buying a good horse. It’s a question of relationship. If the teacher actually speaks in your style, connects with your approach, if what he says has some bearing on your own state of mind, if he understands your type of mentality, then he is a worthwhile teacher. If you can’t understand what the teacher has to say, that’s a lot of hassle at the beginning. Then, after he’s said it, you have to try to interpret, and there’s a lot of room for misunderstanding. So there should be a sense of the teacher’s clarity and some kind of link between you and that teacher. The type of mentality and the type of style have to be synchronized.

S:
But also the teacher has to have something else. I mean, you could have good communication with a member of the sangha, maybe, but you’re both in the same boat. Whereas the teacher has to have something more to give.

TR:
Yes, the teacher has to be a leader in some sense. Otherwise, he couldn’t keep up with the sangha. The sangha would get to be over the teacher’s head. The teacher would go down and down. Obviously, yes. But at the same time the teacher should be a traveler too, someone who is traveling with you. That’s very important. Rather than being stuck with enlightenment and unable to go beyond it.

Student:
Back on the question of loneliness, are you saying that one sees one’s loneliness in someone else? And if you’re saying that, does that lead to the conclusion that one can never find release from loneliness in being with anyone else?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s right. And loneliness can stretch as high as to enlightenment, which is a greater loneliness. Hopeless, eh?

S:
Just a drag.

TR:
Maybe a transcendental drag, actually.

SEVEN

Creating a Little Gap

U
NFORTUNATELY,
for lack of time, we haven’t had a chance to go into the subject of vipashyana in great detail. But I think you must have some idea of the approach that should be taken. At this moment, I would like to place further emphasis on the idea of postmeditation awareness. That seems to be the heart of Buddhist meditation practice, along with the actual sitting practice.

If you have any sense of openness to the practice of meditation, the important point is to commit yourself to the practice. This brings a sense of reality, that the practice is no longer a myth. It’s a real experience. And having become a part of your lifestyle, the practice could be utilized as a reminder, a way of taking a look at your heavy-handed thoughts, which are known as emotions. A complete new world, an old new world, of meditative life could be established.

There is so much joy that goes with that. This is not frivolous joy, but a sense of being connected with the earth. Finally, you are no longer kidding anybody, including yourself. There is something here that is very basic, that is founded on very solid ground. There is real discipline taking place, and you don’t have to depend on hocus-pocus anymore as comic relief or a way to cheer up. I think that this particular experience could be said to be the beginning of basic sanity, which begins to dawn on us. Now your life contains discipline, and discipline reminds you of awareness, and awareness also reminds you of discipline. So an ongoing process is developed.

With the help of a teacher, with the help of fellow sangha members, and with the help of the examples of lineage holders, life becomes a very full one—completely full but at the same time very spacious.

The basic notion there is that once you have developed a sense of awareness, a glimpse of awareness, that glimpse of awareness cuts through the karmic chain reactions that reproduce karmic debts, because it creates a little gap that sets chaos to the karmic chain reactions’ productivity. So the karmic chain reactions are cut, and that slows down further reproduction of ego-centered karma. So the basic logic is that awareness practice is the way we can stop or transmute samsara.

One can’t stop samsara immediately, because samsara is at the same time the inspiration for freedom. Without samsaric experience, we are unable to reach this level of working toward freedom, and because of samsara’s hang-ups, we are able to do so. So there is no particular regret about samsara.

Still we have to realize that the practice of awareness does not represent the ultimate hope or the ultimate salvation in the evangelical sense. But it is real, and a very honest and earnest step we are taking in committing ourselves to the practice of meditation. It’s not particularly colorful. It’s something that everybody on the spiritual path does, and everybody does it relatively accurately. Otherwise they wouldn’t be on the spiritual path. At the same time, it contains a lot of sophistication. A lot of training toward prajna, or transcendental knowledge, takes place through it. An educational process takes place. We begin to learn how to look at things, how to look everywhere, anywhere, with a certain reference point that is other than the reference point of duality. We are able to see things very clearly, very precisely, and maybe there is a tinge of joy—which is not necessarily an extraordinarily happy one. It’s not particularly pleasurable, but there is a sense of joy, a sense of lightness, and at the same time a sense of fullness that takes place constantly.

Having said too much about that, I think perhaps we should have a short discussion, and then we should close our seminar.

Student:
All through this seminar you’ve been talking about boredom. Now you talk about joy. Can one experience boredom and joy together?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Making friends with the boredom is the joy. We are not talking about two different subjects or trying to run the hot tap and then the cold tap and put the two together into some great happy medium. We are saying that boredom
is
openness and joy is also openness.

Student:
Yesterday we were talking about love and relationships. In terms of Buddhism, what is the validity of having a relationship with one person if falling in love just comes from loneliness? Is the validity of such a relationship just another illusion?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, illusion is not supposed to be looked down upon. In any case, everything’s illusion, so you can’t say this is
just
an illusion, therefore it does not have enough worth. When you have a very close personal relationship with a person such as your mate, your husband or wife, that person becomes the spokesman for the rest of the sangha. When you live with somebody long enough, there is intense irritation and intense warmth. Often you regard each other as being very cute and sweet, but sometimes as a living devil or devilette. There are a lot of unexplored areas of experience, and you only get to use your microscope with your own mate. With others there’s no time to use it. Nobody else will sit there and let themselves be scrutinized and take the trouble to scrutinize you. Only your mate will put up with that, which is a very generous thing, fantastic. So in that way, your mate becomes a spokesman for the rest of the world. That seems to be a very important part of one’s life. You can’t just shake it off or take it lightly.

Student:
You talked a lot about a commitment to meditation, and I couldn’t help connecting that with something I have heard of called the refuge vow, which I understand is part of the Buddhist tradition. Could you say something about that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Very simply, the idea of the refuge vow is becoming a Buddhist. This entails ignoring sidetracks. From the point of taking the vow onward, you take a straight and narrow path. You are no longer fascinated by sidetracks, so your shopping trip is over. You no longer shop around for something else.

Of course this is very much related to the practice of meditation. You might ask, “How is it possible to really connect with the practice of meditation? What positive move could I make to get into that situation?” It is making this commitment to give up shopping for something else. This is not like committing yourself to the church or the pope or the bishop. Rather, you make a commitment to yourself that you are going to work on yourself through the practice of meditation. That is actually necessary. And as I have already said, there is a need for a definite date, a definite occasion like a birthday celebration. You do need a certain time and space, so people can come and watch you taking the vow in a ceremony conducted by your preceptor. It is saying that from today onward, from this very hour on, you are going to be a meditator. That is the point.

In the long run, I think it is very important and necessary for people to do that. But in the short run, I wouldn’t recommend to people just to jump in, not until they know what they are doing. They should have a self-existing commitment already evolved in themselves before they take such a vow—which is dangerous. Once you have done it, you are stuck there. You can’t undo it. It is very claustrophobic, and no one can save you from it. You can’t untake the refuge vow. That is unknown. But when a person is involved in working with himself or herself, then at that point, there is a need for taking the refuge vow. But taking the refuge vow is not like going on welfare and getting free service. You become a refugee, you become homeless. You don’t have any home ground. You are stateless, you don’t have a passport anymore. You’re stuck with the area where you are. You have become a refugee and you can’t travel around with your passport anymore. The basic point is cutting down speed and neurotic playfulness.

Student:
I thought being a refugee meant going to another country to take shelter.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Not necessarily, not in this case. Here being a refugee means you lost your country.

S:
So you take refuge in yourself?

TR:
You take refuge in the Buddha as example, the dharma as path, and the sangha as companionship. In other words, you take refuge in how other refugees carried out their refugeeship.

S:
And no land?

TR:
No-man’s-land. You don’t have to pay tax.

Student:
How do you know if you’re meditating correctly or not, apart from the fact that you get bored?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think you know that it’s not particularly a metaphysical situation. It’s a real situation. You have experience. There’s a constant awareness continuing, rather than that you meditate in the verbal sense. But if you sit for two hours and you are only there twice for one second, then something must be wrong there. You can tell there’s something wrong if the rest of the time you were completely gone. You are not there. It’s very simple.

S:
When you say you’re gone, what’s the difference between that and sitting there and your thoughts going other places?

TR:
If you are aware of your thoughts, there’s no problem. Whereas if you are fantasizing a complete journey, to the point of packing your suitcase, buying an airplane ticket, and flying off to India, if you work out what places to visit, what stuff to buy, what gurus to visit, then come back, arrive at the airport in your country, your people greet you at the airport, and then the meditation gong rings ending the session—then there’s some problem there.

S:
So the difference would maybe be that if you did that trip but came back and said, “Oh, I just did that trip,” then that’s meditating?

TR:
Meditating here is a very definite thing—it’s being aware, meditating with what’s happening. It’s the developing-awareness thing we’ve been talking about for the past few days.

Student:
I heard you once said that being in nowness was not necessarily being aware of the present thoughts, the discursive thoughts, that that wasn’t essentially being in nowness. In meditating, if you’re aware of the discursive thoughts that are going on—

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s just awareness.

S:
But that’s not necessarily being aware of nowness?

TR:
No, which is impossible to do. So we do our best. Nowness-like is awareness.

Well, we have to close our seminar now. I would like to request you to continue to pay heed to what we have discussed and try to do something about it, do something about your meditation practice. A lot of you sat and practiced, and hopefully you will be able to continue that way, to give the practice a certain amount of time in your life. This will help you a great deal. And also then the time and energy that we put in here will not be wasted. Then this property of ours will not have served for the further reinforcement of karmic debts but as a cause to free people from their karma. So I hope you’ll be able to work harder on your practice. Please, please, please do so. It is very important. It may seem that we have a lot of time to get around to things, but at the same time it is very urgent. Neurosis is constantly creeping in. A lot of people are being put into painful situations by that insanity. So we have a lot of responsibilities. You should consider relating to your friends, your parents, and your key people, whoever you are associated with. It’s up to you whether you are going to relate to them in terms of bringing down a samsaric mess on them or trying to give some help. This doesn’t mean to say that you should convert everybody to Buddhism. You have to behave yourself first. And in order to do that, you need to do lots of practice, lots of sitting meditation. There is a chain reaction that takes place. You personally hold a very important place in your universe. Thank you.