The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (32 page)

Döns are like some kind of flu that takes us over and is usually unpredictable. It happens to us all the time, sometimes to a lesser extent and sometimes to a greater extent. The idea is to understand and realize that such things are taking place in us, that neurotic processes are beginning to pop up in us. We can be thankful for that. We could say that it is great that it takes place: “It is great that you actually snatched back the debt I owe you, that you confiscated the debt I owe you. Please come back and do the same thing again and again. Please come back and do so.” We do not regard the whole thing as playing trick or treat, that if we give them enough, they are going to go away—they come back again.

And we should invite them back, the ups and downs of those sudden attacks of neurosis. It is quite dangerous: wives might be afraid of getting black eyes again and again, and husbands might have fears of being unable to enter their home and have a good dinner. But it is still important to invite them again and again, to realize their possibilities. We are not going to get rid of them. We are going to have to acknowledge that and be thankful for what has happened. Usually such an upsurge coincides with a physical weakness of some kind, as if we were just about to catch the flu or a cold.

Sometimes you are careless. You don’t eat the right food and you go out without a coat and you catch cold. Or you do not watch your step and you slip and break your disk or you break your rib. Whenever there is a little gap, döns could slip in, in the same way that we catch cold. Things always happen that way. You might have complete control of the whole thing, but on the other hand, the problems have complete control also, which creates a loss of mindfulness. So a lot of döns can attack you. The idea is that if you are completely working with mindfulness twenty-four hours a day, you do not have döns, you do not have a flu, you do not have a cold. But once you are not at that level, you have all kinds of things happening. You have to face that fact. It could be said that at the level of mindfulness, such problems can be avoided absolutely. That is an advertisement for being mindful.

You welcome such attacks when you lose your mindfulness. They are reminders and you are grateful because they tell you how much you are being unmindful. They are always welcome: “Don’t go, please come back.” But at the same time, you continue with your mindfulness. It is the same as working with your teacher. You don’t try to avoid the teacher all the time. If you are okay, you will always have some kind of reference point to the teacher. But at some point the teacher might shout at you, “Boo!” and you still have to work with it. The reason why you welcome them is that their presence means something to you in terms of your direction, what’s going on.

Usually what happens with us is that we have a schedule and everything is going along smoothly and ideally, hunky-dory, everything is fine and nothing is problematic—and one day we are suddenly uptight, one day we are so down. Everything is smooth and ordinary, and then there are those ups and downs, those little puncturing situations in our lives. Little leaks, little upsurges take place all the time. The idea is to feed those forces with torma.

If we are trying to do that literally, probably we will still have the same fits all the time. The idea of offering torma is somewhat symbolic in this case. I don’t think we can get rid of our ups and downs by giving them some little Tibetan offerings. That would be far-fetched. Forgive me, but that is true, actually. It needs more of a gesture than that. If we have a real feeling about offering something which represents our existence and put it out as an expression or demonstration of our opening and giving up, that could be okay. But that comes at a higher level. In particular, people in this environment are not trained in that kind of ritualistic world, so people have very little feeling about such things. Ritualism becomes more a superstition than a sacred ceremony. That has become problematic. Few people have experienced anything of that nature and had it become meaningful. It means that we actually have to commit ourselves rather than just having somebody sprinkling water on us, trying to make us feel good and happy. We have not experienced the depth of ritualism to the extent that we could actually put out cakes for the döns so that they will not attack us again. In order to do that we need further suitability of our own state of being as well as a sense of immense sanity. So I would not like to suggest that you put out substitute doggie bags for anybody—although it might be good for the local dogs and cats.

Offering to the Dharmapalas

Number four is asking the dharmapalas, or “protectors of the teachings,” to help you in your practice. This is not quite the same as praying to your patron saint, asking him to make sure you can cross the river safely. Let me just give you a very ordinary, basic idea of this. You have your root guru, your teacher, who guides you and blesses you, so that you could become a worthy student. At a lower level, you have protectors of the teachings, who will push you back to your discipline if you stray into any problems. They are sort of like shepherds: if one sheep decides to run away, the shepherd drives it back into the corral. You know that if you stray, the protectors will teach you how to come back. They will give you all sorts of messages. For instance, when you are in the middle of a tremendous fit of anger and aggression and you have become a completely nondharmic person, you might slam the door and catch your finger in it. That teaches you something. It is the principle of corraling you back to the world where you belong. If you have the slightest temptation to step out of the dharmic world, the protectors will herd you back—
hurl
you back—to that world. That is the meaning of asking the dharmapalas, or the protectors, to help you in your practice.

The dharmapalas represent our basic awareness, which is not so much absorbed in the meditative state of being but which takes place or takes care of us during the postmeditation experience. That is why traditionally we have chanting taking place toward the end of the day, when it is time to go to sleep or eat dinner, and when it is time to wake up in the morning. The idea is that from morning to evening, our life is controlled or secured purely by practice and learning all the time. So our life is sacred.

Toward the end of our day, quite possibly we have possibilities of taking a break from sacred activity and meditative activity. At that time, quite possibly all kinds of neurosis beyond measure could attack us. So that is the most dangerous time. The darkness is connected with evil in some sense, not as the Christian concept of Satan, particularly, but evil as some kind of hidden neurosis which might be indulged and which thereby might create obstacles to realization. Moreover, our practice of meditation may be relaxed—so in order not to create a complete break from sitting practice or discipline, in order to continue, we ask these protectors of the dharma to work with us. They are no more than ourselves. They are our expression of intelligence or of mind, which happens constantly. And their particular job is to destroy any kind of violence or confusion which takes place in us.

Usually confusion is connected with aggression a great deal. It is adharma, or anti-dharma. Dharma does not have a sense of aggression; it is just simple truth. But truth can be diverted or challenged or relocated by all kinds of conceptual ideas. Truth can be cut into pieces by one’s own individual aggression. There is also the possibility that our individual aggression is regarded not as dirty aggression but as very polite aggression, smeared with honey and milk. Such aggression is known as an ego trip, and it needs to be cut through.

According to this particular application, it is very necessary to work with that kind of energy. To do so we have developed all kinds of chants here in the West as well as in Tibet. We have whole huge sadhanas of various mahakalas whose job it is to cut through bloodthirsty subconscious gossip which does not allow any sense of openness and simplicity and peace or gentleness. The idea is to relate with gentleness at this point. And in order to bring gentleness into effect, so to speak, we have to cut through aggression at the same time. Otherwise, there would be no gentleness. Traditional chants represent the idea that anybody who has violated the gentleness has to be cut through by means of gentleness. When gentleness becomes so harsh, it could become very powerful and cut right through. By cutting through, it creates further gentleness. It is like when a doctor says that it is not going to hurt you, it is just going to be a little prick. One little prick and you are cured. It is that kind of idea.

A further understanding of the mahakalas or the dharmapalas that we are inviting is connected with the presentation of the teachings and how it can be handled properly in an individual’s mind. That is one of our biggest concerns—or at least
my
biggest concern. If the teachings are not properly presented or are presented in the wrong way or in a somewhat cowardly way—if true teaching has not been presented, we all could be struck down by that. So we are asking the protectors to give us help and feedback through teachings, through bankruptcies, through organizational mishaps, through being millionaires, or through work in general. It is all included. We are taking a lot of chances here. We are not physically taking chances as much as we are taking spiritual chances. That seems to be the basic point of what we are doing. And giving offerings to the dharmapalas is what we have been told to do according to this commentary of Jamgön Kongtrül.

16

Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation
.

There are three sets of slogans connected with how to carry everyday occurrences into your practice on the path. The first set is connected with relative bodhichitta and includes the slogans “Drive all blames into one” and “Be grateful to everyone.” The second set is connected with absolute bodhichitta and comprises the slogan “Seeing confusion as the four kayas / Is unsurpassable shunyata protection.” The third set is the special activities connected with following the path. The headline slogan for that is “Four practices are the best of methods.” And having discussed those three categories, there is a tail end, which is this slogan: “Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation.” It is not necessarily the least, but it is the last. It is the last slogan of the third point of mind training, which is concerned with bringing your experience onto the path properly, and it is actually a very interesting one.

In this slogan, the word
join
has the feeling of putting together butter and bread. You put together or join situations with meditation, or with shamatha-vipashyana. The idea is that whatever comes up is not a sudden threat or an encouragement or any of that bullshit. Instead it simply goes along with one’s discipline, one’s awareness of compassion. If somebody hits you in the face, that’s fine. Or if somebody decides to steal your bottle of Coke, that’s fine too. This is somewhat naive, in a way, but at the same time it is very powerful.

Generally speaking, Western audiences have a problem with this kind of thing. It sounds love-and-lighty, like the hippie ethic in which “Everything is going to be okay. Everybody is everybody’s property, everything is everybody’s property. You can share anything with anybody. Don’t lay ego trips on things.” But this is something more than that. It is not love-and-light. It is simply to be open and precise and to know your territory at the same time. You are going to relate with your own neurosis rather than expanding that neurosis to others.

“Whatever you meet” could be either a pleasurable or a painful situation—but it always comes in the form of a surprise. You think that you have settled your affairs properly: you have your little apartment and you are settled in New York City; your friends come around, and everything is okay; business is fine. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you realize that you have run out of money! Or, for that matter, your boyfriend or your girlfriend is giving you up. Or the floor of your apartment is falling down. Even simple situations could come as quite a surprise: you are in the middle of peaceful, calm sitting practice, everything is fine—and then somebody says, “Fuck you!” An insult out of nowhere. On the other hand, maybe somebody says, “I think you’re a fantastic person,” or you suddenly inherit a million dollars just as you are fixing up your apartment which is falling apart. The surprise could go both ways.

“Whatever you meet” refers to any sudden occurrence like that. That is why the slogan says that whatever you meet, any situation you come across, should be joined immediately with meditation. Whatever shakes you should without delay, right away, be incorporated into the path. By the practice of shamatha-vipashyana, seeming obstacles can be accommodated on the spot through the sudden spark of awareness. The idea is not to react right away to either painful or pleasurable situations. Instead, once more, you should reflect on the exchange of sending and taking, or tonglen discipline. If you inherit a million dollars, you give it away, saying, “This is not for me. It belongs to all sentient beings.” If you are being sued for a million dollars, you say, “I will take the blame, and whatever positive comes out of this belongs to all sentient beings.”

Obviously, there might be a problem when you first hear the good news or the bad news. At that point you go, “Aaah!” [
Vidyadhara gasps
.] That
aaah!
is some sort of ultimate bodhichitta. But after that, you need to cultivate relative bodhichitta in order to make the whole thing pragmatic. Therefore, you practice the sending and taking of whatever is necessary. The important point is that when you take, you take the worst; and when you give, you give the best. So don’t take any credit—unless you have been blamed. “I have been blamed for stealing all the shoes, and I take the credit!”

In some sense, when you begin to settle down to that kind of practice, to that level of being decent and good, you begin to feel very comfortable and relaxed in your world. It actually takes away your anxiety altogether, because you don’t have to pretend at all. You have a general sense that you don’t have to be defensive and you don’t have to powerfully attack others anymore. There is so much accommodation taking place in you. And out of that comes a kind of power: what you say begins to make sense to others. The whole thing works so wonderfully. It does not have to become martyrdom. It works very beautifully.