The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (36 page)

The three basic principles are also described as [1] keeping the two vows, [2] refraining from outrageous action, and [3] developing patience.

The first is keeping the promises you made when you took the refuge and bodhisattva vows, keeping them completely. This one is quite straightforward.

Number two is refraining from outrageous action. When you begin to practice lojong, you realize that you shouldn’t have any consideration for yourself; therefore, you try to act in a self-sacrificing manner. But often your attempt to manifest selflessness becomes exhibitionism. You let yourself be thrown in jail or crucified on a cross. You manifest unselfish actions because of your convictions—your so-called convictions in this case—but your actions are still based on your
idea
of being a decent person. You might act on a whim or become very crazy, involving yourself in unselfish exhibitionism of all kinds, such as going on long fasts or lying down in the street in the name of bodhisattva practice. Many of our American friends have done just those things. However, that approach should be regarded as pure exhibitionism rather than as the accomplishment of bodhisattva action.

Number three is developing patience. Usually, there is extreme confusion about patience. That is to say, you can be patient with your friends, but you cannot be patient with your enemies; you can be patient with people whom you are trying to cultivate or your particular protégés, but you cannot be patient with those who are outside of your protégé-ism. That kind of extreme is actually a form of personality cult, the cult of yourself, which is not such a good idea. In fact, it has been said that it is absolutely
not
a good idea.

Through prajna, you realize how much you are trying to become something. Having become somewhat accomplished in lojong practice and in tonglen training, you may begin to feel that it is time for you to branch out and become a leader or a hero. But you should watch out for that. This is one of the basic points of conduct or discipline. It is connected with the paramita of prajna: because you begin to discriminate who you are, what you are, and what you are doing, you are constantly watchful of all of that.

24

Change your attitude, but remain natural
.

Generally, our attitude is that we always want to protect our own territory first. We want to preserve our own ground—others come afterward. The point of this slogan is to change that attitude around, so that we actually reflect on others first and on ourselves later. It is very simple and direct. You usually practice gentleness and tenderness toward yourself and the opposite of that toward others. If you want something from outside, you will send someone else to get it for you instead of going out and getting it yourself. So this slogan applies to the attempt to impose your power and your authority on others. You also try to get away with things. For instance, you don’t wash the dishes, hoping that somebody else will do it. Changing your attitude means reversing your attitude altogether—instead of making someone else do something, you do it yourself.

Then the slogan says “remain natural,” which has a sense of relaxation. It means taming your basic being, taming your mind altogether so that you are not constantly pushing other people around. Instead you take the opportunity to blame yourself.

We are talking about changing your attitude of cherishing yourself. Instead of cherishing yourself, you cherish others—and then you just relax. That’s it. It’s very simple-minded.

25

Don’t talk about injured limbs
.

Because of your arrogance and your aggression, you prefer to talk about other people’s defects as a way of building yourself up. The point of this slogan is
not
taking delight in somebody else’s defects or injured limbs. “Injured limbs” refers very literally to people’s psychological or physical state: being blind or dumb or slow. It refers to all kinds of physical defects that a person might possess. This seems to be the general ethic already set up by Christianity, that nobody should be condemned on account of his or her physical defects, but everybody is regarded as a person. We generally don’t do that anyway, in any case.

This is not a puritanical approach to reality, but simply realizing that if a person has problems in dealing with his or her life, we do not have to exaggerate that by making remarks about it. We could simply go along with that person’s problems. If somebody is completely freaked out and exaggerating his or her particular realm of phenomena, or freaked out about having an encounter with somebody, that is not regarded as an ugly manifestation of that person. It is just a general sense of his or her response to reality, which takes place all the time.

26

Don’t ponder others
.

In this slogan, “pondering others” means picking on other people’s little misgivings and problems. One of the problems we have generally is that when somebody does something to us or violates our principles, we keep picking on that particular thing. We would like to get at him and make sure that person’s problems are subject to attack, subject to unhealthiness. For instance, because you have labored through your tonglen practice and worked so hard, you develop tremendous arrogance. You feel as though you have gone through so much and that your effort makes you a worthy person. So when you meet somebody who has not accomplished what you have, you would like to put them down. This slogan is very simple: Don’t do that.

I do not think there is very much difference between this slogan and the preceding one; they are basically saying the same thing. Both slogans are very simple and direct. All the slogans are points that come to you—not particularly traffic signs but reminders. And each time a particular point occurs to you, the slogans as a whole become more meaningful.

27

Work with the greatest defilements first
.

You should work with whatever is your greatest obstacle first—whether it is aggression, passion, pride, arrogance, jealousy, or what have you. You should not just say, “I will sit more first, and I will deal with that later.” Working with the greatest defilements means working with the highlights of your experience or your problems. You do not just want to work with chicken shit, you want to work with the chicken itself.

If we have philosophical, metaphysical, poetic, artistic, or technological hang-ups related with our particular neurosis, we should bring them out first rather than last. When we have a hang-up, we should work with that hang-up. It has been said that all dharmas should be applied in trying to tame it, but at the same time we should not try to arrive at certain results. So the idea is to purify and to work on the highlights that come up rather than regarding them as junk. We simply work on any highlight or problem that comes up in our state of mind directly and straightforwardly.

28

Abandon any hope of fruition
.

This slogan means that you should give up any possibilities of becoming the greatest person in the world by means of your training. In particular, you may quite impatiently expect that because of lojong practice you will become a better person. You may be hoping that you will be invited to more little clubs and gatherings by your protégés or friends, who are impressed with you. The point is that you have to give up any such possibility; otherwise, you could become an egomaniac. In other words, it is too early for you to collect disciples.

Working with the slogans does not mean looking for temporary revelation or trying to achieve something by doing little smart things that have managed to quell people’s problems in the past. You may have become a great speaker by giving one talk, or a great psychologist who has managed to conquer other people’s neuroses, or a great literary figure who has written several books or a famous musician who has produced several albums. Such things are somewhat based on relating with reality properly, being connected with reality. But you want to subjugate the world in your own particular style, however subtle and sneaky that may be.

By doing the same kind of trick, you hope to attain enlightenment. You have tuned in to a professional approach and become a professional achiever. So there is the possibility that you might approach practice in the same way, thinking that you can actually con the buddha mind within yourself and sneakily attain enlightenment. That seems to be the problem referred to in this particular slogan. It says in the commentary that any pursuit of this life’s happiness, joy, fame, or wisdom, or the hope of attaining some state of glorious liberation in the life hereafter, could be regarded as a problem.

29

Abandon poisonous food
.

If the practice of egolessness begins to become just another way of building up your ego—building your ego by giving up your ego—it is like eating poisonous food; it will not take effect. In fact, rather than providing an eternally awakened state of mind, it will provide you with death, because you are holding on to your ego. So if your reason for sitting or doing postmeditation practice or any other kind of practice is self-improvement, it is like eating poisonous food. “If I sit properly, with the greatest discipline and exertion, then I will become the best meditator of all”—that is a poisonous attitude.

This is a very powerful slogan for us. It means that whatever we do with our practice, if that practice is connected with our personal achievement, which is called “spiritual materialism,” or the individual glory that we are in the right and others are wrong, and we would like to conquer their wrongness or evil because we are on the side of God and so forth—that kind of bullshit or cow dung is regarded as eating poisonous food. Such food may be presented to us beautifully and nicely, but when we begin to eat it, it stinks.

30

Don’t be so predictable
.

The literal translation of this slogan is “Don’t be consistent,” but it is more like “Don’t be so kind and faithful, so guileless.” That is to say, an ordinary person or man of the world would have some understanding about his relationship with his enemies and his friends and how much debt he owes people. It is all very predictable. Similarly, when somebody inflicts pain on you, you keep that for long-term storage, long-term discussion, long-term resentment. You would eventually like to strike back at him, not forgetting his insult in ten or even twenty years.

This slogan has an interesting twist. To begin with, we could use the analogy of the trustworthy friend. Some people are trustworthy people, traditional people, maybe you could say old-fashioned people. When you become friends with people like that, they always remember your friendship, and the trust between you lasts for a very long time. In the example of the trustworthy person, you
should
always remember your connection with him or her and his or her connection with you. But if somebody gives you a bad deal, or if you have a lot of conflict with somebody, you should not constantly hold a grudge against him. In this case, the point is that you should
not
always remember someone’s bad dealings with you. This slogan is somewhat confusing, but the point is to give up altogether your long memory of antagonism.

Usually everything we do is predictable. When we have something good happen—for instance, when someone brings us a bottle of champagne—we are always trying to repay that kindness with something else, like inviting them for dinner or saying nice things. And how we relate when something bad happens is the same. We are usually predictable in how we do that as well. Slowly we built up society out of that.

When somebody is about to inflict pain on us, we usually wait until they actually strike us and are unkind to us. We wait for that person to begin to write bad articles about us. Then we have made an enemy out of somebody. That is not the proper approach. The proper approach is to make friends immediately rather than waiting for something to strike. Instead of waiting until a person commits a sin or acknowledges his aggression toward you, you communicate immediately and directly. So you are communicating directly rather than waiting for strategy. That is precisely what the commentary says, and that is what we are trying to practice at this point.

31

Don’t malign others
.

You would like to put people in the wrong by saying disparaging things. However pleasantly coated with sugar and ice cream, underneath you are trying to put people down, trying to get revenge. Disparaging people is based on showing off your own virtue. You think that your virtues can only show because other people’s are lessened, because they are less virtuous than you are. This applies to both education and practice. You might have better training in the dharma and say, “Somebody’s attention span in his shamatha practice is shorter than mine; therefore I am better,” or “Somebody knows fewer terms than I do.” Fundamentally, these are all ways of saying, “That other person is stupid, and I am better than he is.” I think this slogan is very straightforward.

32

Don’t wait in ambush
.

The Tibetan version of this slogan literally says, “Don’t ambush,” that is, wait for somebody to fall down so that you can attack. You are waiting for that person to fall into the trap or problem you want or expect. You want them to have that misfortune, and you hope that misfortune will take place in a way which will allow you to attack.

If you are having a disagreement with somebody, you don’t usually attack him or her right away because you don’t want to be in a powerless position. Instead, you wait for him to fall apart, and then you attack him. Sometimes you pretend to be his adviser, and you attack him in that disguise, pointing out to him how wretched he is. You say, “I have been waiting to tell you this. Now that you are falling apart completely, I am going to take the opportunity to tell you that you are not so good. I am in much better shape than you are.” That is a sort of opportunism, a bandit’s approach. That bandit’s approach is the meaning of waiting in ambush, which happens quite frequently.