The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (28 page)

The basic idea of this practice is actually very joyful. It is wonderful that human beings can do such a fantastic exchange and that they are willing to invite such undesirable situations into their world. It is wonderful that they are willing to let go of even their smallest corners of secrecy and privacy, so that their holding on to anything is gone completely. That is very brave. We could certainly say that this is the world of the warrior, from the bodhisattva’s point of view.

POINT THREE

Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Path of Enlightenment

P
OINT
T
HREE AND THE
P
ARAMITA OF
P
ATIENCE

Now that we have studied the ultimate and relative bodhichitta practices and the postmeditation experiences connected with them, the third group of slogans is connected with how to carry out all those practices as path. In Tibetan this group of slogans is known as lamkhyer:
lam
meaning “path” and
khyer
meaning “carrying.” In other words, whatever happens in your life should be included as part of your journey. That is the basic idea.

This group of slogans is connected with the paramita of patience. The definition of patience is forbearance. Whatever happens, you don’t react to it. The obstacle to patience is aggression. Patience does not mean biding your time and trying to slow down. Impatience arises when you become too sensitive and you don’t have any way to deal with your environment, your atmosphere. You feel very touchy, very sensitive. So the paramita of patience is often described as a suit of armor. Patience has a sense of dignity and forbearance. You are not so easily disturbed by the world’s aggression.

11

When the world is filled with evil,

Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi
.

Continuing with the idea of carrying everything to the path, the basic slogan of this section is:

When the world is filled with evil
,

Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi
.

That is to say, whatever occurs in your life—environmental problems, political problems, or psychological problems—should be transformed into a part of your wakefulness, or bodhi. Such wakefulness is a result of the practice of shamatha-vipashyana discipline as well as your basic understanding of soft spot, or bodhichitta.

In other words, you do not blame the environment or the world political situation. Certain people are inspired to write poetry and act in such a way that they sacrifice their lives for a social cause. We could quite safely say that the Vietnam War produced a lot of poets and philosophers, but their work is not in keeping with this mahayana principle. They were purely reacting against the world being filled with evil; they were not able to transform mishaps into the path of bodhi. Such poets may even regard evil as material for their writing. If the Vietnam War had never happened, we would have fewer of such poets and philosophers. According to this slogan, when the world is filled with evil, or even when the world is
not
filled with evil, any mishaps that might occur should all be transformed into the path of bodhi, or wakefulness. That understanding comes from your sitting practice and your general awareness.

This slogan says practically everything about how we can practice generosity as well. In our ordinary life, our immediate surroundings or our once-removed surroundings are not necessarily hospitable. There are always problems and difficulties. There are difficulties even for those who proclaim that their lives are very successful, those who have become the president of their country, or the richest millionaires, or the most famous poets or movie stars or surfers or bullfighters. Even if our lives go right, according to our expectations, there are still difficulties. Obstacles always arise. That is something everybody experiences. And when obstacles happen, any mishaps connected with those obstacles—poverty mentality, fixating on loss and gain, or any kind of competitiveness—should be transformed into the path of bodhi.

That is a very powerful and direct message. It is connected with not feeling poverty-stricken all the time. You might feel inadequate because you have a sick father and a crazy mother and you have to take care of them, or because you have a distorted life and money problems. For that matter, even if you have a successful life and everything is going all right, you might feel inadequate because you have to work constantly to maintain your business. A lot of those situations could be regarded as expressions of your own timidity and cowardice. They could all be regarded as expressions of your poverty mentality.

Having already experienced the possibilities of absolute and relative bodhichitta, and practiced sending and taking, you should also begin to build up confidence and joy in your own richness. That richness is the essence of generosity. It is the sense of resourcefulness, that you can deal with whatever is available around you and not feel poverty-stricken. Even if you are abandoned in the middle of a desert and you want a pillow, you can find a piece of rock with moss on it that is quite comfortable to put your head on. Then you can lie down and have a good sleep. Having such a sense of resourcefulness and richness seems to be the main point. Practicing that resourcefulness and richness, or generosity, is the way to become mahayanists or even vajrayanists.

We have found that a lot of people complain that they are involved in intense domestic situations: they relate with everything in their lives purely on the level of pennies, tiny stitches, drops of water, grains of rice. But we do not have to do that—we can expand our vision by means of generosity. We can give something to others. We don’t always have to receive something first in order to give something away. Having connected with the notion of generosity, we begin to realize a sense of wealth automatically. The nature of generosity is to be free from desire, free from attachment, able to let go of anything.

This slogan is the basic statement of the third point of lojong practice. Within this category, we have three further practices. The next two slogans are connected with the practice of relative bodhichitta, how to carry what occurs in your life onto the path of relative bodhichitta. The following slogan [“Seeing confusion as the four kayas / Is unsurpassable shunyata protection”] is connected with absolute bodhichitta practice, how you carry that out as your path. And the final slogan in this section [slogan 15] is connected with the particular actions that enable you to carry whatever occurs in your practice onto the path.

12

Drive all blames into one
.

This slogan is about dealing with conventional reality, or
kündzop
. No matter what appears in our ordinary experience, whatever trips we might be involved in, whatever interesting and powerful situations—we do not have any expectations in return for our kindness. When we are kind to somebody, there are no expectations that there will be any reward for that. Drive all blames into one means that all the problems and the complications that exist around our practice, realization, and understanding are not somebody else’s fault. All the blame always starts with ourselves.

A lot of people seem to get through this world and actually make quite a comfortable life by being compassionate and open—even seemingly compassionate and open. They seem to get along in this world. Yet although we share the same kind of world, we ourselves get hit constantly. We get blamed and we get into trouble—emotional problems, financial problems, domestic, relationship, and sociological problems are happening all the time. What is playing tricks on us? A popular phrase says, “Don’t lay your trip on me.” Interestingly, trips
are
laid on us, but not
by
anybody. We decide to take on those trips ourselves, and then we become resentful and angry.

We might have entirely the same lifestyle as somebody else. For instance, we could be sharing a room with a college mate, eating the same problematic food, sharing the same shitty house, having the same schedule and the same teachers. Our roommate manages to handle everything okay and find his or her freedom. We, on the other hand, are stuck with that memory and filled with resentment all the time. We would like to be revolutionary, to blow up the world. But who did that to us? We could say that the schoolteacher did it, that everybody hates us and they did it. But
why
do they hate us? That is a very interesting point.

The blame for every mishap that happens to us is always directed naturally to us; it is our particular doing. This is not just purely mahayana wishy-washy thinking. You might say that what we are discussing tonight is purely mahayana—once we get into tantra, we might get revenge on those people. But that doesn’t work. I would request you not to try that. Everything is based on our own uptightness. We could blame the organization; we could blame the government; we could blame the police force; we could blame the weather; we could blame the food; we could blame the highways; we could blame our own motorcars, our own clothes; we could blame an infinite variety of things. But it is we who are not letting go, not developing enough warmth and sympathy—which makes us problematic. So we cannot blame anybody.

Of course, we could build up all kinds of philosophies and think we are representing the voice of the rest of the world, saying that this is the world’s opinion, that is what happens in the world. “Don’t you see that you should not make me suffer this? The world is this way, the true world is that way.” But we are
not
speaking on behalf of the world, we are simply speaking on behalf of ourselves.

This slogan applies whenever we complain about anything, even that our coffee is cold or the bathroom is dirty. It goes very far. Everything is due to our own uptightness, so to speak, which is known as ego holding, ego fixation. Since we are so uptight about ourselves, that makes us very vulnerable at the same time. We consequently provide the ideal target. We get hit, but nobody means to hit us—we are actually inviting the bullets. So there we are, in the good old world. Driving all blames into one is a very good idea.

The intention of driving all blames into one is that otherwise you will not enter the bodhisattva path. Therefore, you do not want to lay any emotional, aggressive blame on anybody at all. So driving all blames into one begins with that attitude. On that basis, you drive all blames into one again at the level of vipashyana. This involves actually experiencing the real, visible, logical consequences of doing otherwise. For instance, you could drive all blames into Joe Schmidt, but instead you drive all blames into yourself. In this case, you actually begin to see the possibility that aggression and neurosis is expanded if you drive your neurosis into somebody else. So instead you drive your blames onto yourself. That is the basic point.

All of this seems to come under the general categories of compassion for others and having a loving attitude to oneself, known in Sanskrit as karuna and maitri. In other words, the experience of karuna and maitri is to drive all blames into one. So this slogan is connected with the basic discipline of the bodhisattva path, which is to refrain from any kind of ill-doing. The traditional listing of the forty-six ways in which a bodhisattva fails [see appendix] could be used in connection with driving all blames into one. They are connected very basically.

This slogan is the essence of the bodhisattva path. Even though somebody else has made a terrible boo-boo and blamed it on you, you should take the blame yourself. In terms of power, it is a much simpler and more direct way of controlling the situation. In addition, it is the most direct way of simplifying complicated neuroses into one point. Also, if you look for volunteers around you to take the blame, there will be no volunteers other than yourself. By taking that particular blame on yourself, you reduce the neurosis that’s happening around you. You also reduce any paranoia existing in other people, so that those people might have clearer vision.

You can actually say, “I take the blame. It’s my fault that such and such a thing happened and that such and such things took place as a result.” It is very simple and ordinary. You can actually communicate with somebody who is not in a defensive mood, since you already took all the blame. It is much better and easier to talk to somebody when you have accepted the blame already. Then you can clarify the situation, and quite possibly the person you are talking to, who might be the cause of the particular problem, would realize that he has done something terrible himself. He might recognize his own wrongdoing. But it helps that the blame, which is just a paper tiger at that point, has already been taken on by you. That helps.

This kind of approach becomes very powerfully important. I’ve actually done it thousands of times. I’ve taken a lot of blame personally. A person may actually do a terrible thing based on his or her understanding of my recommendation. But that’s okay, I can take it on wholeheartedly as my problem. In that way there is some chance of working with such a person, and the person begins to go along and fulfill his actions properly, and everything is fine.

That’s a tip for bureaucrats. If individuals can take the blame themselves and let their friends off to continue their work or duty, that will make the whole organization work better and allow it to be much more functional. When you say, “You’re full of shit! I didn’t do such a thing. It wasn’t me, it’s you who did it. There’s no blame on me,” the whole thing gets very complicated. You begin to find this little plop of a dirty thing bouncing around in the bureaucracy, something like a football bouncing back and forth. And if you fight over it too much, you have tremendous difficulty dissolving or resolving that particular block, plop, slug. So the earlier you take the blame, the better. And although it is not really, fundamentally your fault at all, you should take it as if it’s yours.