The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (30 page)

“Loss and defeat” is not really pain in the fundamental sense, it is just a game. It is that you did not get what you wanted, so you feel somewhat irritated, the little things that go through our life always. It has nothing to do with real pain. We do not always get what we want and we are always frustrated with that. We are resentful toward something or somebody or even toward ourselves if we expend our money or if we run into somebody’s car or anything of that nature. It is not really pain, it is just hassle.

This whole approach is dealing with all kinds of hassles and transmuting them and working with them as a workable journey toward enlightenment. We are not talking about fundamental pain. I think one of the problems we have, particularly in the Occidental mentality, is that we make too much of a big deal of the whole thing. We complicate the whole thing unnecessarily, and we have no idea how to play games properly. It is not a big deal, it is an exchange. You are finally putting your name on the dotted line. It is a lighthearted situation—including death. Keep that in mind. Make a slogan out of that. Whatever takes place, you do not take all that seriously. Whatever comes up, you do not regard as the ultimate, final problem, but as a temporary flare-up that comes and goes.

This obviously needs a lot of understanding and training. A person cannot practice this without preplanning the journey and having worked with his or her state of mind. There is also a need for some understanding of the shunyata experience, basically speaking. There is no ground at all to begin with, so anything that takes place in the groundlessness becomes workable. Those things are actually very powerful—they used to be, anyway. When I was a teenager it really turned me on a great deal. It is so direct and very simple and helpful—particularly when you are facing hassles.

14

Seeing confusion as the four kayas

Is unsurpassable shunyata protection
.

In the slogan “Seeing confusion as the four kayas / Is unsurpassable shunyata protection,” the basic question is whom to protect, what to protect. All sorts of other questions are involved as well, but basically we are talking about having an understanding or realization of the way we perceive things as they are.

In perception, first there will be a sense of waiting or openness. There may be uncertainty as to how to perceive things, not knowing how to make a particular situation graspable. Then we have a clear idea of how to organize things. Thirdly, we begin to make a relationship between the two. And finally we have a total experience of the whole. That makes four states of mind that we go through, four stages of mind or mental process. These four processes are related with the four kayas: dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya, and svabhavikakaya.

The dharmakaya nature of our reaction to the world is usually uncertain, bewildered. Strategies are not yet formed, planning is not completely organized—it is just a sense of basic openness. The nirmanakaya aspect is the second stage of this process. At this point there is some kind of clarity in which we have a basic grasp of the situation generally. And in order to make a link between the uncertainty or openness and the clarity, we need sambhogakaya, which bridges the gap between the two and joins them together. So the dharmakaya and the nirmanakaya are joined together by means of the sambhogakaya. According to this particular tradition, that is the realistic way of looking at things.
¹

Svabhavikakaya is understanding the whole thing, total panoramic experience. When we begin to flash our mind to an object, when we have a grasp of it, when we begin to realize some kind of link between the kayas—that totality is what is known as svabhavikakaya.

The svabhavikakaya is a general state of existence, and that state of mind also contains what is known as transcending birth, cessation, and dwelling. Transcending birth means that thought process does not come up. There is no such thing as the birth of a mind or the birth of a thought taking place in our state of being at all, there is just simply existing and opening. Transcending cessation means that no thoughts actually subside unless they are replaced or overlapped by something else. And transcending dwelling means that thoughts do not dwell anywhere, although there is some kind of occasional something. So the idea of svabhavikakaya is seeing beyond the birth, subsiding, and dwelling of the thought process.

The reason that the four kayas—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya, and svabhavikakaya—become a great protection is that we begin to realize the way our mind functions, our state of being. We realize that whatever comes up in our mind is always subject to that flow, that particular case history, that nature. Sudden pain, sudden anger, sudden aggression, sudden passion—whatever might arise always follows the same procedure, so to speak, the same process. Everything is always in accordance with the four kayas. Although we might not regard our own mind as all that transcendent and enlightened or awake, its pattern is still that of the four kaya principles. So the nature of everything is nowness. Thoughts just emerge: you cannot watch their birth, they are just there. They die, they just [
Vidyadhara snaps fingers
]. They don’t dwell, they just [
Vidyadhara snaps fingers again
]. The whole thing is a natural process.

This slogan might seem slightly obscure, but it has to do with the absolute bodhichitta concept of understanding your mind by studying and watching yourself and by practicing shamatha and vipashyana. By practicing those disciplines, you begin to realize that the essence of your mind is empty, that the nature of your mind is light and clear, and that the expression or manifestation of your mind is active. That realization can only come about when you are sitting on the cushion. Only on the cushion can you see that your mind has no origin. There is no place from which thoughts arise, as far as you can judge by looking at them. You also have no idea where your thoughts go. Thoughts just come and they just vanish, disappear. Furthermore, you also have no idea where your thoughts dwell—particularly when you have developed a basic sense of mindfulness and awareness.

As you continue to practice mindfulness and awareness, the seeming confusion and chaos in your mind begin to seem absurd. You begin to realize that your thoughts have no real birthplace, no origin, they just pop up as dharmakaya. They are unborn. And your thoughts don’t go anywhere, they are unceasing. Therefore, your mind is seen as sambhogakaya. And furthermore, no activities are really happening in your mind, so the notion that your mind can dwell on anything also begins to seem absurd, because there is nothing to dwell on. Therefore, your mind is seen as nirmanakaya. Putting the whole thing together, there is no birth, no cessation, and no acting or dwelling at all—therefore, your mind is seen as svabhavikakaya. The point is not to make your mind a blank. It is just that as a result of supermindfulness and superawareness, you begin to see that nothing is actually happening—although at the same time you think that lots of things are happening.

Realizing that the confusion and the chaos in your mind have no origin, no cessation, and nowhere to dwell is the best protection. Shunyata is the best protection because it cuts the solidity of your beliefs. “I have my solid thought” or “This is my grand thought” or “My thought is so cute” or “In my thoughts I visualize a grand whatever” or “The star men came down and talked to me” or “Genghis Khan is present in my mind” or “Jesus Christ himself manifested in my mind” or “I have thought of a tremendous scheme for how to build a city, or how to write a tremendous musical comedy, or how to conquer the world”—it could be anything, from that level down to “How am I going to earn my living after this?” or “What is the best way for me to sharpen my personality so that I will be visible in the world?” or “How I hate my problems!” All of those schemes and thoughts and ideas are empty! If you look behind their backs, it is like looking at a mask. If you look behind a mask, you see that it is hollow. There may be a few holes for the nostrils and the mouth—but if you look behind it, it doesn’t look like a face anymore, it is just junk with holes in it. Realizing that is your best protection. You realize that you are no longer the greatest artist at all, that you are not any of your big ideas. You realize that you are just authoring absurd, nonexistent things. That is the best protection for cutting confusion.

This slogan is related with the idea of carrying everything onto the path at the absolute bodhichitta level. It is very tricky. There is some possibility that when you hear that if you just simply meditate on the four kayas, everything is going to be protected, you may think that your kid is going to be protected, your brothers and sisters, your property and your motorcars. But this protection is not quite at that level; it is shunyata protection, which is that you no longer have anywhere to dwell—you are suspended in shunyata. It is a very clever way of approaching the whole thing. You are not talking about egolessness here, you are trying to work out your protection. But you might find yourself being egoless and realizing that there is nothing to protect. So your protection is groundlessness. It is a very clinical approach in some sense. There can be no germs around if you have no ground on which to collect germs.

The idea of the four kayas is not particularly tantric; it is mahayanist high thinking. The kayas appear in the third turning of the wheel of the dharma in the
Uttaratantra
of Maitreya
²
and in the
Diamond Sutra
.
³
So this is not particularly a tantric idea. But at the same time, it is tantric in some sense. If I may say so, the idea of dealing with döns and with the protectors is highly influenced by tantra. [See the next slogan, “Four practices are the best of methods.”] The whole thing is based on mahayana principles, but there is an undercurrent of techniques that are borrowed from the vajrayana. So the understanding is presented from the mahayana viewpoint, but the techniques are tantric.

15

Four practices are the best of methods
.

This slogan is a rather difficult one, actually, but it makes a lot of sense. It refers to special activities, or anecdotes, for how to go about your daily life, translated as “best of methods.” These best methods consist of four categories: accumulating merit, laying down evil deeds, offering to the döns, and offering to the dharmapalas.

Accumulating Merit

The first application is accumulating merit, not in the sense that we are accumulating anything for our own ego trip, but from the point of view of trying to relate with what is sacred or holy. We are making a connection with sacred areas of reality: the very idea of the teachings, or dharma, and the existence of basic sanity, which is represented by works of art, images, statues, paintings, books, all kinds of symbols and all kinds of colors. We associate ourselves with that kind of thing. Creating merit is working with such situations and putting in as much of our effort and energy as we can. A sense of veneration becomes very important.

The accumulation of merit is also based on complete trust in the three types of encouragement. These three are not slogans; they are lines of encouragement for the slogans, so to speak. The three lines of encouragement are:

Grant your blessing if it is better for me to be sick.

Grant your blessing if it is better for me to survive.

Grant your blessing if it is better for me to be dead.

That is the ultimate idea of creating merit. That is to say, we cannot have a succession of merit completely filling the whole area absolutely. Before we beg, our begging bowl has to be emptied; otherwise nobody will give us anything. In order to receive something, there first has to be a sense of openness, giving, surrendering. It is not being concerned with yourself, it is simply letting things be. Whatever comes up, be grateful to it. It is not that you are not talking to anybody; instead it is like saying, “Let the rain fall,” or “Let the earth shake.” It is a magical word, simply. Something actually might happen when you do that, but you are not talking to anybody in particular. I don’t know how I can say that linguistically: “Grant your blessings” or “Just let it happen.”

Traditionally we create merit by creating statues and stupas and by making offerings to the sangha—donating our money and encouraging that kind of establishment. But we are not only surrendering our green energy. We are also trying to let go of our possessiveness altogether. For instance, if it is better for us to get sick, we let it be so. “Please let that be our blessing.”

We might regard this approach as that of a very naive person who will go along with absolutely anything all the time. But in this case, the approach has to be an extremely intelligent one which lets us go ahead and open ourselves completely to the situation. That seems to be a very important point—that we cannot just have blind faith. We have to have the intelligent faith of letting go of our holding back. Holding back creates a kind of business mentality: “If I don’t get this, then I have to sue the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha—metaphorically, realistically, or whatever. If I don’t get my money’s worth in return, then I have been cheated.” But in this case it is not so much tit for tat, but letting things be in their own way: “Whatever has happened, I would like to let go of this problem of holding back.” It is very simple. It is extremely simple and realistic. That is precisely what is meant by creating or accumulating merit.

We cannot accumulate merit if we have a macho sense of pride and arrogance that we already have enough truth and virtue collected and now we are going to collect some more. The person who collects merit has to be humble and willing to give rather than being willing to collect. The more a person is willing to give, that much more effective, in some sense, is the accumulation of merit. That is why there are those three subslogans or reminders. We could actually call the
incantations
, that might be a better word. The slogans themselves are reminders; so these incantations are reminders for the reminders.