The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (42 page)

Question:
I really don’t understand. In the beginning you said that feeling could only function independently if it had concepts to work with, to relate itself to. Then right after that, when you mentioned mind and body, I thought right away that these are the concepts it’s relating itself to in order to be independent. Is that true?

Rinpoche:
Well, the feeling happens with the concept, but as it happens that whole movement becomes bewildering and the concept does not apply any more. Actually pain and pleasure, apart from the second skandha, just happen. They have nothing to do with concepts or criteria at all. Pain or pleasure does not have to be a comparative thing. There could be independent pain, independent pleasure. We can afford to experience pain and pleasure without feeling. Many people might feel this is extremely demonic, that if there are no strings attached, if feeling does not have to be connected to concepts, you might be experiencing that through destroying or hurting people. But this fear on the part of people of the demonic aspect of themselves comes from being afraid of an unknown situation. They are afraid of that space because they have not seen the other aspect of it that is without hope or fear. Once they get a glimpse of the possibility of pain and pleasure without hope and fear, they see it as demonic. Of course there is nothing to latch on to there. If you take away the hope and fear, then pain and pleasure remains as it is. There is no way of relating with it except directly.

Question:
So mind and body—one is not pain and the other pleasure, but both are sort of organs of pain and pleasure? Is that it?

Rinpoche:
Well, yes. But at the same time mind is more closely connected with pleasure, because mind invites imagination. It invites imagination about what might be good, it is hopeful about possibilities of gaining something. But body is very much down-to-earth; it constantly brings us back to what we have to face. It’s like the difference between taking the whole family to the theater or movies, which is the mind situation, and when we come back home and have to clean up our old dishes and cook a meal, which is the body situation.

Question:
Rinpoche, I don’t understand, because it seems that the imagination is just as inclined, in fact probably more inclined, toward the imagination of pain than the imagination of pleasure.

Rinpoche:
Well, you see, the whole point is that imagining pain and pleasure as a solid thing is not very appealing. But on the other hand, imagining pain and pleasure as a floating situation is much more appealing, because you can turn pain into pleasure in your imagination. You see the difference? In other words, nobody likes to face reality. The reality is physical, the body, the form of the first skandha that we created at the beginning. We have a body, “I am what I am.” It’s like an individual God-consciousness. Once you have that thing, “I am what I am,” then it becomes very solid.

Question:
So physical pain, then, could be translated into pleasure if it is seen as strengthening the “I am”?

Rinpoche:
All pain for that matter. You see, all sorts of double-crosses can take place. You are sitting down to meditate and you say to yourself, “I’m going to do it for twenty hours starting right now; and whatever physical pain comes up is fine. It will be part of it. Okay, let it come through. Let it happen all along. That will be okay.” And each time when pain comes you feel that you are overcoming the possessiveness of ego by feeling that particular pain. But in actual fact, by the time you finish your twenty hours of meditation, your ego has been strengthened because you feel that you worked so hard and you faced so much. You have been double-crossed by ego.

Question:
Is it possible to purify the feelings so that movement toward what is true feels good and movement toward what is not true does not feel good?

Rinpoche:
The question is whether or not we see that there is no point in playing the game of feeling which is the second skandha. If we see that, we are not concerned by that or this anymore. We go along very boldly, in a very stubborn way—we just sail along. We have our own plow, our own tank, and we are going to drive right along. Whether we are confronted by a house, a shop, or a supermarket, we are going to drive right on through. The whole point seems to be whether or not we have that bold attitude of being what we are and are willing to disregard the duality of that and this. We accept our negative side and the fact we are a fool. Okay—that’s fine. We use it as part of the meditation process. Nevertheless we are going to go on and on and on being ashamed or being proud of it. But we are just going to go on and on and on.

Question:
Rinpoche, I wonder if I’ve misunderstood. Are there basically four kinds of feeling, bodily pleasurable and painful and mind pleasurable and painful?

Rinpoche:
There seem to be, on one hand, pleasurable and painful feelings and, on the other hand, bodily and mental-type feelings. The bodily feelings seem to be very complicated in a sense or very subtle, because it is very difficult to relate with a particular bodily pleasure or pain. This is because so much imagination is involved. To put it in terms of a very simple metaphor, the mind aspect of feeling is like being high on marijuana or LSD; and the body aspect is like being high on school. The first is highly imaginary, the second is rather earthy but at the same time emotional. So it’s like two kinds of intoxication—high on chemicals, high on yeast. Feeling has all kinds of variations—more than four. Pain, pleasure, or indifference could be friend or enemy, mental or physical.

You see, all human experience is high on something. Whether we regard ourselves as sober or not, we are constantly drunk, drunk on one thing or another, drunk on imagination or drunk on conflicts on the bodily level. Otherwise we could not survive. So we could say that this idea of feeling is different kinds of intoxication. You are intoxicated with good and bad: intoxicated with good, godliness, spirituality, pleasure; intoxicated with bad, evil, destruction, pain. You are intoxicated in imagination—all sorts of imaginations are going on. You are intoxicated in the body in that you are irritated by that and this and therefore you would like to get revenge by imposing yourself on something, laying your trip on something. The whole thing, all of experience, is being intoxicated on something. That is a very important and revealing aspect of this question of feeling, of this second stage in the development of the skandhas. The first skandha is ignorance, bewilderment, confusion, and vague name and form. In the second one, already having some vague concept of where you stand, you would like to lay trips on something. This is what the feeling that happens—good and bad, body and mind—is about.

Question:
Is every feeling dualistic?

Rinpoche:
If it’s based on something, some concept or wishful thinking. You see, every feeling of that sort must have a target in terms of this and that, of this in relation to that. This where I begin and that where I want to get to. As long as feelings are involved with this and that, that is duality. In other words, in relating to this and that, you have no way at all of relating with yourself. You have lost yourself altogether because you are so fascinated with this and that.

Question:
You talked about the lonely journey and said that everything we do with other people is just projections, chasing our projections. So why do we need to relate with other people? It seems the obvious solution is just not to relate.

Rinpoche:
“Why” and “why not” are saying the same thing. Do you see what I mean? “Why so” and “why not” are the same thing. So then, why don’t we just plunge in?

Question:
I seemed to understand that earthly intoxication is better than heavenly? Is bodily feeling, then, somehow more helpful?

Rinpoche:
I think so, yes. Like the situation of a fistfight or making love—that kind of boiling situation brings you very much into the present moment.

Question:
Rinpoche, you speak of a heavenly trip which tries to elude pain, move away from the down-to-earth situation, and say that this is associated with pleasure. Is there a kind of intoxication which transcends the duality of pain and pleasure?

Rinpoche:
I think so, but that is not associated with heaven; that transcends heaven in the sense of that which is above as opposed to you below experiencing it. As long as you relate to heaven above and you down below, you do not experience it properly, you do not transcend. But when you see that heaven is below or that it is nowhere, that is the point where you transcend the whole process. That becomes an open and ultimate state, because then you are relating with the primordial ground. The primordial ground contains everything without being based on the relative situations of good and bad, this and that.

Perception

F
EELING
’
S RELATING PROCESS
consists of extremes, of polarities, of dichotomies. In other words, one cannot develop feelings unless there are two extremes of some kind. Following from that, because of having some sense of taking sides with this extreme as opposed to that extreme, the subtleties of feeling have a solid, grasping quality in dealing with the projection of the world outside, rather than responding purely and directly. It is like a personal relationship with somebody which is based solely on temperamental reactions. As we know, there has to be something more than that, otherwise the relationship will not last very long. But feeling is like that. Feelings have a bouncy quality of jumping from one extreme to another. Having already the basic qualities of form, one starts to relate, to insert oneself into certain situations, into the two extremes of good and bad, pain and pleasure, body and mind, and so on. It is like in rock climbing when you insert a metal peg. That is the feeling. But to continue the climbing you have to have rope running through that peg. The rope that you have to have running through the pegs is perception, the third skandha. Perception is necessary so that the two extremes have something continuing underneath as a common link, a common thread that runs between happiness and sadness of body and mind.

Perception is based on that which is manifested by form and feeling and that which is not manifested by them. These are the two basic qualities in perception. In the first case, something is manifested via the six sense organs. You perceive something and you relate to it; you hold on to certain senses and their perceptions, and then from there you relate with that content. That is the first touching and feeling process. Feeling is like a radiation radiating out. Within that radiation, perception takes place as the radiation begins to function as definite details of that and this.

In this case “feeling” is not quite our ordinary notion of feeling. It is not the feeling we take so seriously as, for instance, when we say, “He hurt my feelings.” This kind of feeling that we take so seriously belongs to the fourth and fifth skandhas of concept and consciousness. Here, in the case of the second skandha, it is the immediate, impulsive type of feeling of jumping to certain conclusions and trying to attach oneself to them. Perception could be called another type of feeling, the deepened feeling of experiencing that which is manifested and that which is not manifested in terms of the solid bodily situation.

You see, the whole idea of the manifested or the nonmanifested here comes from freezing space in our way of dealing with situations. Primordial consciousness flashes out, the unconscious flashes out, which creates tremendous open space. Within that space, ignorance and energy develop as we discussed before. Immediately then, when ego begins to take up its position through the action of the skandhas, there is a natural automatic tendency to relate to that open space as overcrowded. Ego tries to possess that open space, that awakened state, by overcrowding it. But it can’t overcrowd it with a lot of stuff, because there isn’t enough stuff at that point; ego is not yet fully developed with all its resources of imagination. It is still the first impulsive situation of ego’s development, so in order to crowd that space, one tries to freeze the whole space into a solid block. It’s like water freezing into ice. The space itself is regarded as a solid thing of ego. In other words, the principle of shunyata and nothingness, emptiness and openness, the awake state, is automatically in itself regarded as a sleep state, as overcrowded space. That kind of freezing of the space starts at the level of form, continues with feeling, and now manifests fully with perception.

Perception, in the sense of the third skandha, cannot exist without solidness, without solidifying. That is the manifestation aspect. The nonmanifestation aspect is the aspect of annihilation, giving up all hope of retaining any kind of ground, which is based on fear. The first is hope, the second fear. The manifestation, physical manifestation, the solidified content of perception, is based on hope. And the second aspect, nonmanifestation, is based on despair (disappear). That works by, when there is no hope of maintaining solid ground anymore, making that position of despair into solid ground.

A third and fourth aspect of perception after manifestation and nonmanifestation are involved with criteria again. The criteria here concern how much area the grasping of perception can cover. Ego is extending its territory as far as it can, that is, trying to label and define as much as it can. Automatically the notions of big and small, greater and less, develop. Even the notion of smaller can help define more ground. So these polarities develop.

Then the fifth aspect of perception is absolute nothingness. Absolute nothingness in this case could be said to be a spark of intelligence coming through, connected with the primordial ground. There was a dispute on that subject between scholars of two schools of thought. One school said it was a spark of intelligence coming through. The other said that it was still confusion, that there could be no question of awakened intelligence in the skandhas; at this state of perception there could be no hope of freeing oneself at all. But, in my view and as I have been taught, there is a possibility of a complete change in one’s perspective in relation to perception. An experience of absolute nothingness means giving up even hope itself or fear itself, and no longer perceiving in terms of grasping or clinging on to something. In that experience you are just trying to be brave enough to let go of your grasping a little to just feel around openly a bit in local areas, float around a little bit. So that aspect of perception means beginning to be pretty brave. This sort of bravery comes from tathagatagarbha, buddha nature, the basic intelligence. It is the basic intelligence that begins to show this bravery. On the whole, any notion of exploring or taking a chance in relating with one’s ego and projections is regarded as inspired by the enlightened mind. That is because you are not trying to hold on, to continue something, to prove something, but you are looking at other possibilities. That in itself is a very brave attitude and a very spacious one, because your mind is completely charged with curiosity and interest and space and questions. It is a sort of wandering process and is very hopeful and very positive in this particular connection. This absolute nothingness is the last stage of development of perception.