The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (35 page)

21

Always maintain only a joyful mind
.

The point of this slogan is continuously to maintain joyful satisfaction. That means that every mishap is good, because it is encouragement for you to practice the dharma. Other people’s mishaps are good also: you should share them and bring them into yourself as the continuity of their practice or discipline. So you should include that also. It is very nice to feel that way, actually.

For myself, there is a sense of actual joy. You feel so good and so high. I suppose I was converted into Buddhism. Although I was not sticking bumper stickers on my car saying, “Jesus saved me,” I was doing that mentally. Mentally I was putting on bumper stickers saying, “I’m glad that my ego has been converted into Buddhism and that I’ve been accepted and realized as a Buddhist citizen, a compassionate person.” I used to feel extraordinarily good and so rewarded. Where that came from was no question: I felt so strong and strengthened by the whole thing. In fact, I began to feel that if I didn’t have that kind of encouragement in myself, I would have a lot of difficulty studying the vajrayana. I felt so grateful, so good. So this slogan means to maintain a sense of satisfaction and joyfulness in spite of all the little problems and hassles in one’s life.

This slogan is connected to the previous one. [“Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one.”] If you have been raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition of discipline, the idea of watching yourself is based purely on guilt. But in this case, it is not that way. We do not have any logic that acknowledges, understands, or presents a concept like original sin. From our point of view, you are not basically condemned. Your naughtiness is not necessarily regarded as your problem—although it
is
witnessed, obviously. You are not fundamentally condemned; your temporary naughtinesses are regarded as coming from temporary problems only. Therefore, to follow up on that, this slogan says, “Always maintain only a joyful mind.” It is a joyful mind because you do not have to be startled by any situation of wretchedness or, for that matter, sudden upliftedness. Instead, you can maintain a sense of cheerfulness all along.

To start with, you maintain a sense of cheerfulness because you are on the path; you are actually doing something about yourself. While most sentient beings have no idea what should be done with themselves, at least you have some lead on it, which is fantastic. If you step out into Brooklyn or the black hole of Calcutta, you will realize that what we are trying to do with ourselves is incredible. Generally, nobody has the first idea about anything like this at all. It is incredible, fantastic. You should be tremendously excited and feel wonderful that somebody even thought of such an idea.

There is a sense of joy from that point of view, a sense of celebration which you can refer to whenever you feel depressed, whenever you feel that you do not have enough in the environment to cheer you up, or whenever you feel that you do not have the kind of feedback you need in order to practice. The idea is that whether it is a rainy day, a stormy day, a sunny day, a very hot day, or a very cold day, whether you are hungry, thirsty, very full, or very sick—you can maintain a sense of cheerfulness. I do not think I have to explain that too much. There is a sense of basic cheerfulness that allows you to wake yourself up.

That joy seems to be the beginning of compassion. We could say that this slogan is based on how to go about maintaining your awareness of the practice of mahayana—literally and fully. You might feel uptight about somebody’s terrible job, that his or her particular shittiness has been transferred onto you and has fucked up the whole environment. But in this case, you don’t blame such a person, you blame yourself. And blaming yourself is a delightful thing to do. You begin to take a very cheerful attitude toward the whole thing. So you are transcending
oy vey
—getting out of Brooklyn, metaphorically speaking. You could do that. It is possible to do that.

This kind of cheerfulness has a lot of guts. It is founded in buddha nature, tathagatagarbha. It is founded in the basic compassion of people who have already done such a thing themselves: people like Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Jamgön Kongtrül, Milarepa, Marpa, and all the rest. So we could do it too. It is founded on a real situation.

If someone punches you in the mouth and says, “You are terrible,” you should be grateful that such a person has actually acknowledged you and said so. You could, in fact, respond with tremendous dignity by saying, “Thank you, I appreciate your concern.” In that way his neurosis is taken over by you, taken into you, much as is done in tonglen practice. There is an immense sacrifice taking place here. If you think this is ridiculously trippy, you are right. In some sense the whole thing
is
ridiculously trippy. But if somebody doesn’t begin to provide some kind of harmony, we will not be able to develop sanity in this world at all. Somebody has to plant the seed so that sanity can happen on this earth.

22

If you can practice even when distracted
,
you are well trained
.

We have all kinds of situations that we have to handle in ordinary life, even states that we are not aware of, but we are not particularly concerned about our existence; we are more concerned with our neurosis and our games. If we are in a very high level of uptightness, as soon as that happens there is no awareness. But we can also immediately experience a sense of awareness. Traditionally, any chaos that came up was regarded as a shout for some kind of holiness or help, blessing or prayer. In our ordinary, everyday life, in theistic traditions also, each time something suddenly comes up, we say, “Goodness, look at that,” or we utter sacred names. Traditionally, that was supposed to be a reminder for awareness. But we never use it that way these days; we just use swear words in the most degrading way.

The idea of this slogan is the realization that whenever situations of an ordinary nature or extraordinary nature come up—our pot boils over, or our steak is turned into charcoal, or suddenly we slip and lose our grasp—a sudden memory of awareness should take place. Jamgön Kongtrül’s commentary talks about a well-trained, powerful horse who loses his balance and suddenly regains it again through losing it. And the sutras talk about the bodhisattva’s actions being like those of a well-trained athlete who slips on a slippery surface and in the process of slipping regains his or her balance by using the force of the slipping process. It is similar, I suppose, to skiing, where you use the force that goes down and let yourself slide down through the snow—suddenly you gain attention and develop balance out of that.

So whenever there is the sudden glimpse or sudden surprise of losing one’s grip—that seeming fear of losing grip of one’s reality can be included properly. To do so there is a need for renunciation. It is not your chauvinistic trip, that you are a fantastically powerful and strong person and also have a sense of mindfulness taking place all the time. But when something hits you, which is a result of unmindfulness, then suddenly that unmindfulness creates a reminder automatically. So you actually get back on track, so to speak, able to handle your life.

We begin to realize that we can actually practice in spite of our wandering thoughts. I’m sorry to be such a chauvinist, but let me give an example of that. What used to happen was that I would be terribly hurt, psychologically depressed, and pushed into dark corners by my good tutor and by my administration in Surmang monastery. When I was more remorseful, more sad, and more helpless—but carefully helpless, deliberately helpless—I used to think of my root teacher Jamgön Kongtrül, and weep. After he departed from Surmang monastery, I kept thinking of him, and he actually did something to me, cheered me up. I used to try the vajrayana approach to devotion: I would say to all my attendants, “Go out! I don’t need to observe teatime at this point; I’m going to read.” Then I would lie back and cry for thirty minutes, or sometimes forty-five minutes. Then somebody would jump up. My attendants became very worried, thinking that I was sick or something. And I would say, “Send them back. Go away. I don’t need any more tea.”

But sometimes I found that was not very effective, that it was too early to introduce vajrayana devotion, because we didn’t have enough basic training. So I developed a new tactic, which was purely in accordance with this slogan. Whenever there was any problem or chaos, I would tell Jamgön Kongtrül about it when I visited him, and when I came back, I began to use a new method. Whenever there was any chaos or problem, or even when there was goodness or a celebration—whenever
anything
happened—I would just come back to my existence and my memory of him, as well as my memory of the path and the practice. I began to be able to feel a sense of awareness, quick awareness, very direct awareness. This awareness was not necessarily related with the memory of Jamgön Kongtrül; it was the awareness that comes when you are just drifting off and the process of drifting off brings you back. That is what is meant here. For instance, if you are a good rider, your mind might be wandering, but you will not fall off your horse. In other words, even if you are drifting off, if that process of drifting off can bring you back, that is the mark of perfect practice.

The idea is that you have been trained already, so you will not have any problem in continuing. When pleasurable or painful circumstances hit, you do not become their slave. You have learned how to reflect suddenly on tonglen and on bodhichitta mind, so you are not subject to extreme pleasure and extreme pain or depression at all. When you meet with a situation, that situation affects your emotions and your state of mind. But whenever your state of mind and your emotions are affected, because of that jolt, suddenly the situation itself becomes your awareness and your mindfulness. It comes to you, so there is less need for you to put effort into it from your end. You do not have to try to protect, to understand, or to be watchful. That does not mean that you should just give up and things will come to you all the time. There is obviously a need for you to develop basic awareness and mindfulness and to be alert altogether. But that alertness could be a fundamental frame of mind, which is connected with the paramita of meditation.

What we have been discussing in point five is quite straightforward. The main point is not to let yourself be wounded by the fangs of neurosis, the fangs of the kleshas. The way to do that is to realize that “all dharma agrees at one point,” which is the taming of one’s ego. That is the scale on which practitioners can be weighed. “Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one” means to start with your own judgment of how you are doing. “Always maintain only a joyful mind” means having a sense of cheerfulness. Because you are not trapped in heavy-handed discipline, you can experience a sense of joy, particularly when extremely evil or extremely joyful situations occur to you. And the mark of being well trained is that you can practice even when distracted.

If you practice some of this, I am sure we will not have any problem in producing thousands of buddhas and bodhisattvas in this century!

POINT SIX

Disciplines of Mind Training

P
OINT
S
IX AND
P
RAJNAPARAMITA

The paramita associated with the sixth point of mind training is prajnaparamita. These slogans are all connected with sharpening your intelligence in order to work with yourself. That is the idea of the sword of prajna. Prajna is regarded as the sword that cuts the bondage of ego. The way to cut the bondage of ego in mahayana practice is basically the same as in vipashyana practice—it is awareness, relating to the rest of your world and to your life. It is connected with a larger sense of your entire life and particularly with postmeditation experience.

Whatever occurs in your life is governed by prajna, which cuts through habitual or potential neurosis. Applying that tremendous sense of mindfulness and awareness comes from the great concentration that is developed through the bodhisattva path. With the help of the shamatha and vipashyana principles, you learn how to consolidate yourself as a mahayana practitioner—being in a state of compassion, kindness, openness, and gentleness.

On the other hand, you are also in a state of egolessness. There is no clinging, no working or dwelling on anything connected with ego, atman, or soul. When you are not dwelling on anything connected with ego, the activities described in the lojong text begin to permeate your life. They begin to manifest. You realize that there is no “I” to meditate on and, for that matter, no “I am” to propagate your existence. Because of that, you are able to exchange yourself for others. By first becoming able to sacrifice yourself, you are able to overcome obstacles. Then you can relate with the rest of the world. In that way, you learn how to deal with your journey on the path by means of the sword of prajna.

23

Always abide by the three basic principles
.

This slogan is a general description as to how we can practice the buddhadharma according to the three basic principles of hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana. It is connected with a sense of keeping the discipline of all three yanas—hinayana mindfulness practice, mahayana benevolence, and vajrayana crazy wisdom—all at the same time.

We may begin to behave in a crazy style unfounded in any particular tradition and disregard the dignity of other traditions, disrupting whole social setups founded on such religious traditions. That is not supposed to happen. We can actually relieve ourselves from doing such frivolous things. Basing our spiritual practice on our own self-snugness and self-delight seems to be one of the most dangerous things of all. We have our trip together: our philosophy is worked out, our quotations are on time; we have our grammar and language already set up—but after all that, we don’t want to give up our ego. We have some kind of ground to walk on, and we do not want to give up our most sacred and secret property. That becomes problematic; we are not actually following the journey properly. The text says that dharma should not be perverted on the basis of happiness, which in this case is any kind of confirmation existing within the dharmic realm.