The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (21 page)

Notes

1
. The implication is that since the technique remains with the natural simplicity of what we are doing already anyway instead of being a clever or innovative departure, there is very little provocation for turning our meditation into a goal-oriented project. Even the attention to the breath, the most deliberate aspect of the technique, cannot be turned into a “big deal,” since it is to receive only a light, 25 percent touch.

Spiritual materialism
refers to the approach of trying to use spiritual techniques to achieve the goals of ego, such as becoming calmer, more efficient, more magnetic, or simply happier. This attitude toward spirituality, always widespread, was particularly rampant in the “spiritual supermarket” days of the 1970s, when these talks were given. A major feature of Trungpa Rinpoche’s early teaching was a thoroughgoing critique of this attitude, and his first major book was called
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
. He sought to show that the true approach to meditation, and spirituality in general, was continuously surrendering the reference point of ego rather than finding ways to fortify it.

2
.
Lhak-thong
literally means “superior seeing,” which is taken to mean seeing clearly. It is the Tibetan term for the form of meditation, common to nearly all traditions of Buddhism, known as vipassana in Pali and vipashyana in Sanskrit. This is the principal subject of the second seminar in this book. Here Trungpa Rinpoche translates this term as “awareness.” Usually, however, he translates this term as “insight,” and thus refers to vipashyana as “insight meditation.” Nonetheless, he regularly refers to the primary experience of vipashyana practice as awareness, contrasting it with mindfulness, the focus of shamatha practice.

3
. Mahayanists might prefer to argue from the principle of shunyata, nothingness, which teaches that all things are devoid of an essence. Thus the self, too, they would say, is devoid of an essence: There is no ego to which one can cling. But the direct experiential logic presented here is more suited to the simplicity of hinayana, and coincidentally very well represents the vajrayana approach to egolessness as well.

4
. These are described in detail in Chögyam Trungpa,
The Heart of the Buddha
(Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991), pp. 21-58. See Volume Three of
The Collected Works
.

5
. One of Trungpa Rinpoche’s frequent descriptions of the process that goes on in the first stages of meditation is “making friends with oneself.” An account of this is found in Part Two of this book, chapter 2, “Recollecting the Present.”

6
. “Akashic records” is a semijocular allusion to a notion popularized by the Theosophical movement. Trungpa Rinpoche apparently makes use of this term, familiar to many people in his audience, in order to avoid having to get into a technical explanation of his own at this point.

The idea is that the record of one’s good and bad deeds, one’s karma, is kept in some transcendental realm (
akasha
is Sanskrit for “space”) and continues to affect one throughout subsequent lifetimes. The Buddhist notion corresponding to some extent to this is the so-called storehouse of consciousness (Skt.
alayavijnana
), where past actions leave imprints or memories. These karmic imprints produce a tendency in the future toward repetition of actions similar to the ones that produced them. The Buddhist notion, though fulfilling a roughly equivalent function, differs significantly from the Theosophical one. It is more impersonal, since in the Buddhist view, there is no definite ego or self that transmigrates from rebirth to rebirth. Also, there is no deity or other watcher who judges the karma good or bad, other than the specious watcher trumped up by ego.

7
. Here Trungpa Rinpoche is once again referring to the clumsy and painful sense of me-ness connected with the basic split, duality.

8
. The heart of the Buddhist tradition is a lineage of students and teachers who receive and transmit the awakened state of mind as a living experience from one generation to the next.

T
RAINING THE
M
IND AND
C
ULTIVATING
L
OVING
-K
INDNESS

E
DITED BY
J
UDITH
L. L
IEF

Acknowledgments

W
ORK ON THIS BOOK
began many years ago and involved the efforts of many people. Members of the Nālandā Translation Committee worked closely with the Vidyadhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, on an initial translation of the Kadampa slogans in 1981 and a subsequent revision in 1986. Translators involved at that time included Lama Ugyen Shenpen, Sherab Chödzin, Dorje Loppön Lodrö Dorje, Robin Kornman, Larry Mermelstein, and Scott Wellenbach. In preparation for this volume, the Translation Committee carefully reviewed its work on this text again, which resulted in some further revisions included here. Committee members involved with this latest revision include Lama Ugyen Shenpen, Jules Levinson, Larry Mermelstein, Mark Nowakowski, John Rockwell, and Scott Wellenbach. At the same time, a translation was prepared of “Forty-six Ways in Which a Bodhisattva Fails.”

Sarah Coleman of the Vajradhatu Editorial Department worked on the original manuscript and was also present at the initial translation meetings with the Vidyadhara. She later held a series of meetings with the Vidyadhara to clarify and refine the commentary. Tingdzin Ötro of Gampo Abbey did a fastidious job of compiling on computer the Vidyadhara’s teaching on the practice of the Kadampa slogans, which was scattered throughout many years of Vajradhatu Seminary Transcripts. In addition, the recording, transcribing, and preservation of Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings have taken the work of countless Vajradhatu Archive volunteers, to whom I am most grateful.

Ken McLeod’s pioneering translation of Jamgön Kongtrül’s commentary on mind training, given him by Venerable Kalu Rinpoche and first published in 1974,
The Great Path of Awakening
(Shambhala, 1987), has been a continuing resource for students and of great help in the preparation of this manuscript.

I would like to thank Mrs. Diana Mukpo, who has provided ongoing support for the Dharma Ocean Series and given her permission and encouragement to publish these teachings.

Most especially, I would like to thank the Vidyadhara, Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who showed us a pragmatic way of cultivating kindness and who was persistent in encouraging us to make these teachings available for the benefit of beings in these difficult times.

J
UDITH
L. L
IEF

Editor’s Foreword

T
HIS BOOK IS A
translation by the Nālandā Translation Committee of
The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind
by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, with a commentary based on oral teachings presented by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In his teaching on this subject, Trungpa Rinpoche utilized as a central reference the commentary by Jamgön Kongtrül the Great, titled in Tibetan
Changchup Shunglam
(The Basic Path toward Enlightenment), which was included in the collection of the principal teachings of Tibetan Buddhism that the latter compiled, known as
The Five Treasuries
. (Trungpa Rinpoche’s own teacher, Jamgön Kongtrül of Sechen, was an incarnation of this leading nineteenth-century teacher.)

The seven points of mind training are attributed to the great Indian Buddhist teacher Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana, who was born of royal heritage in Bengal in 982
C.E.
Thus, the list of mind training slogans compiled by Chekawa is often referred to as the Atisha slogans. Having renounced palace life as a teenager, Atisha studied and practiced extensively in India and later in Sumatra, with his principal teacher, Dharmakirti (also known as Serlingpa in Tibetan), from whom he received the instructions on bodhichitta and mind training. Upon his return to India, he began to reestablish these once-lost teachings and took a post at Vikramashila, a famous Buddhist monastic university. Invited to bring the teachings on mind training to Tibet, he taught there for about thirteen years, until his death in approximately 1054, having transmitted this body of wisdom to his closest Tibetan disciple, Dromtönpa, the founder of the Kadam lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.
¹

For some time, the Atisha slogans were kept secret and transmitted only to close disciples. The first to write them down was the Kadampa teacher Lang-ri Thangpa (1054–1123). They became more widely known after they were summarized by Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1101–1175) in
The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind
. Geshe Chekawa encountered many lepers in the course of his teaching and instructed them in mind training. It is said that several of them were thereby cured of their disease. His teachings were thus sometimes referred to by the Tibetans as “the dharma for leprosy.” When Chekawa noticed that these teachings even seemed to benefit his unruly brother, who had no interest in the dharma, he decided that it would be appropriate to make them more widely available. Atisha’s teachings on mind training are thus now practiced by all the major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, and have been for centuries.
²

The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind
is a list of fifty-nine slogans, which form a pithy summary instruction on the view and practical application of mahayana Buddhism. The study and practice of these slogans is a very practical and earthy way of reversing our ego-clinging and of cultivating tenderness and compassion. They provide a method of training our minds through both formal meditation practice and using the events of everyday life as a means of awakening.

This volume is not based on a single seminar, as are many other books in the Dharma Ocean Series, but rather is a compilation of teachings and remarks given over a period of years. The Vidyadhara
³
first presented the mahayana teachings of the Kadampa slogans in 1975, at the third annual Vajradhatu
⁴
Seminary, one of thirteen three-month advanced teaching programs he taught between 1973 and 1986. In subsequent seminaries he further elaborated upon the theory and practice of mind training.

Mind training, or slogan practice, has two aspects: meditation and postmeditation practice. In Tibetan, the meditation practice is called
tonglen
, or sending and taking, and is based upon the seventh slogan: “Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. / These two should ride the breath.” Trungpa Rinpoche introduced the formal meditation practice of tonglen to his students at the 1979 seminary and he encouraged them to incorporate tonglen into their daily meditation practice. He also encouraged them to work with the postmeditation practice of joining every aspect of their lives with meditative discipline through the application of the slogans.

In working with his own students, Trungpa Rinpoche placed great emphasis on the practice of formless meditation, the development of mindfulness and awareness, as the foundation. He initially transmitted tonglen practice only to senior students who already had extensive experience in sitting meditation and the study of Buddhist teachings. When the study and practice of mind training are presented in such a context, the danger of interpreting these teachings in a moralistic or conceptual fashion is reduced.

Later the practice of tonglen began to be introduced to students upon the occasion of taking the bodhisattva vow, a formal statement of their aspiration to dedicate their lives to the benefit of others. Over time, tonglen practice was introduced in a variety of contexts. The Naropa Institute, a Buddhist-inspired university in Boulder, Colorado, includes tonglen training in its clinical psychology program. This training has also been offered as an aspect of the Buddhist-Christian dialogues offered at the Naropa Institute. Participants in one-month-long meditation intensives, called dathüns in Tibetan, are now regularly introduced to tonglen practice, and if they desire more intensive training, they may take part in specialized tonglen dathüns. Tonglen is included in a monthly practice for the sick as well as in Vajradhatu funeral ceremonies.

Through slogan practice, we begin to realize that our habitual tendency, even in our smallest gestures, is one of self-centeredness. That tendency is quite entrenched and affects all of our activities, even our so-called benevolent behavior. The practice of tonglen is a direct reversal of such a habit pattern and is based on the practice of putting others before self. Starting with our friends, and then extending to our acquaintances and eventually even our enemies, we expand our field of awareness to accept others and be of benefit to them. We do this not because we are martyrs or have suppressed our self-concern, but because we have begun to accept ourselves and our world. Slogan practice opens up a greater field of tenderness and strength, so that our actions are based on appreciation rather than the ongoing cycle of hope and fear.

Coming face-to-face with this most basic contrast of altruism and self-centeredness takes considerable courage and daring. It gets right to the heart of the spiritual path and allows no room for even the slightest deception or holding back. It is a very basic, nitty-gritty practice.

Tonglen is a particularly powerful way of dealing with pain and loss. In relating to illness or death—our own or another’s—tonglen helps us overcome our struggle with and rejection of such experiences and relate more simply and directly.

The formal practice of tonglen, like mindfulness-awareness practice, works with the medium of the breath. In order to begin, it is essential first to ground oneself by means of mindfulness and awareness training. That is the foundation upon which tonglen is based. Tonglen practice itself has three stages. To begin with, you rest your mind briefly, for a second or two, in a state of openness. This stage is somewhat abrupt and has a quality of “flashing” on basic stillness and clarity. Next, you work with texture. You breathe in a feeling of heat, darkness, and heaviness, a sense of claustrophobia, and you breathe out a feeling of coolness, brightness, and lightness—a sense of freshness. You feel these qualities going in and out, through all your pores. Having established the general feeling or tone of tonglen, you begin to work with mental contents. Whatever arises in your experience, you simply breathe in what is not desirable and breathe out what is desirable. Starting with your immediate experience, you expand that to include people around you and other sentient beings who are suffering in the same way as you. For instance, if you are feeling inadequate, you begin by breathing that in and breathing out your personal sense of competence and adequacy. Then you extend the practice, broadening it beyond your personal concerns to connect with the poignancy of those feelings in your immediate surroundings and throughout the world. The essential quality of this practice is one of opening your heart—wholeheartedly taking in and wholeheartedly letting go. In tonglen nothing is rejected: whatever arises is further fuel for the practice.