The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (43 page)

On the whole, the relationship between perception and the previous skandhas is that form creates the ego and ignorance and basic things, and feeling brings the spike quality or sharpness within that, of something trying to maintain itself. The perception comes as extending ego’s territory and trying to define its position even much more. There is in perception a lot of referring back to the central headquarters of ego and then extending and exploring further and further always in relation back to it. This establishment of territory in relation to a central reference point seems to be the general pattern of the development of ego.

Question:
I only got four developments in perception. Manifestation, nonmanifestation.

Rinpoche:
Big is the third one, and small is the fourth. The fifth is absolute nothingness.

Question:
Could you go over nonmanifestation again?

Rinpoche:
It has to do with fear. It is based on the fear of not having a solid situation anymore. Solidified space is hope. It is hopeful in that you manage to solidify the space as something to hang on to. In nonmanifestation, you have found nothing, and there is complete despair and giving up hope. But that is in itself a double-cross of ego, because giving up hope is in itself clinging to something.

Question:
So in the case of manifestation I’m very taken up by the things I can see around me, whereas in nonmanifestation I’m more occupied by the things that I can’t see that I wish were there.

Rinpoche:
By the frustration of it. In nonmanifestation you are occupied with the frustration of not having what you want.

Question:
And those two, hope and fear, would continually re-create each other?

Rinpoche:
Yes, definitely. Wherever there is hope there is also survival of hope, which is based on fear. Maintenance of the hope is based on the fear of its nonfulfillment.

Question:
What’s the difference between big and small? Big and small what?

Rinpoche:
The third and fourth ones are just two polarities. It is connected with outside and inside—expanding your vision outward and exploring, deepening your vision inward. Certain scholars in Tibet have spoken of perception as “hungry perception.” It is dying to look for new material to eat up. It is constantly looking for possibilities for hanging on to something. The development of big and small particularly corresponds to this hungry notion of perception. Perception is much hungrier than feeling, because feeling is already partly secured. In the case of feeling, we have a form, a solid thing, and then we radiate out from the form, we extend and stretch ourselves, exploring very gently, very gently. But when we reach the level of perception, this sort of forced gentility begins to wear out and we become a bit desperate.

Question:
Would these five parts of perception ever be simultaneous or are they separate psychological stages?

Rinpoche:
It seems that they are separate psychological stages because you can concentrate on only one at a time. You see, the five skandhas are a very evolutionary thing. Form and feeling can manifest by themselves quite spontaneously, but when we get to perception and samskara, there are more and more separate things involved.

Question:
I don’t understand the evolutionary quality. I thought that all the skandhas had to work together, so that even though we speak of form first, it’s not possible without perception, for example.

Rinpoche:
That is true also, yes.

Question:
You said form and feeling can exist on their own, but in order for there to be form, don’t you have to perceive it?

Rinpoche:
Yes, you definitely have to. What’s wrong?

Question:
Well, you say, “that comes later on” or “when we get to such-and-such skandha” as if that was the order of being, that we form and then we feel and then we perceive. But aren’t they happening simultaneously?

Rinpoche:
Well, it depends on our notion of time, of “simultaneously.” We described the other day how the first stage of ego and its extensions develop by thousandths of a second. In that way, the whole thing develops by stages. But on that time scale, you could also say they happen simultaneously. So that process happens simultaneously or progressively. There is a beginning and an end, but the application of notions of time becomes rugged and crude here. When we get to the level of consciousness, the last skandha, it becomes cruder still. That last skandha contains form and feeling and perception and samskara; but as far as the way of flashing is concerned, there is the evolutionary pattern. The first flash is the form and the next, feeling. As you flash further and further, the content becomes more and more involved. When you flash perception, that contains feeling and form; when you flash consciousness that contains all the other four.

Question:
So the first flash of seeing something hasn’t reached the stage of perception yet because it’s without feeling?

Rinpoche:
The first flash is just blank. Then a question, then an answer, then solidifying that and relating to it in terms of love and hate and so on. But very quickly, in a fraction of a second.

Question:
Is it possible to continue to exist without this process? It seems if that would stop, I would be in great danger.

Rinpoche:
That is what you think. There are people who have managed to do without it. After all, all this information about this pattern of the five skandhas comes from the point of view of those who have seen it from above, from an aerial view. It is not necessary to go through these complicated patterns of skandhas. It would be extremely simple not to go through them anymore. You do not have to keep giving birth to the whole process. You can just perceive and go along with that perception, whatever arises.

Question:
Is that kind of perception you were just talking about outside the ego’s confine?

Rinpoche:
Well, that becomes inspiration. Outside the ego, perception becomes inspiration. But that is getting onto the tantric level, which may be too difficult to understand.

Question:
Inspiration for what?

Rinpoche:
For that. Itself.

Question:
It seems that there are hints of tantric teachings in all of this.

Rinpoche:
Of course, yes; if it were without connection to the earlier teachings, tantra would be a solitary planet. Actually some of the details of tantric iconography are developed from abhidharma. Different colors and feelings of this particular consciousness, that particular emotion, are manifested in a particular deity wearing such-and-such a costume, of certain particular colors, holding certain particular scepters in his hand. Those details are very closely connected with the individualities of particular psychological processes.

Question:
If you understand the abhidharma really clearly you can get into tantra, then?

Rinpoche:
Yes, that is what happens. Actually a great deal of the tantric symbolism, the mandala, for example, is based on the terminology of the abhidharma. It runs right through. The abhidharma is a way of seeing; the psychology that it describes is not just a lump sum, a theoretical generality. There is individuality in every aspect of human emotion, human psychology. It is very rich. Each aspect of mind has its own individuality, and as you go along further and further, deeper and deeper, you begin to see these individual aspects as really living forces. At that point you also lose ego, because you no longer have to label experiencing as one big lump sum of “me” and “mine” and “I” anymore. That has become useless, absurd.

Question:
Does one identify with these details? Is there a technique of identification happening?

Rinpoche:
Well, if you identify with all these details going on in personal experience, that is very much a shortcut. You don’t have to look for outside answers, because answers are there already. It happens on a personal level.

Question:
What is the process when you say “identify with something”? Say I’m sawing a piece of wood, and I remember to identify with that, is it somehow like putting my mind on my hand? How does this fit in with the skandhas? Is it like connecting the sixth or the seventh or the eighth type of consciousness with the visual consciousness?

Rinpoche:
You are quite right to raise that question. It is quite dangerous actually when we talk about identifying. You could identify outwardly with things as they are, so there is no center, but just fringe everywhere, expansion everywhere. Or you could identify inwardly, that is, you could identify with things that are happening with yourself as a solid entity.

Identification should be open identification, centerless identification, in other words, without a watcher. That is the whole point. If there is no watcher, then identification becomes real identification, really making a connection with things as they are. Whereas if you identify inwardly then you are identifying in accordance with some concept, in accordance with your own categories.

Question:
Identifying inwardly would be connecting your mind with the thing?

Rinpoche:
With the thing, a solidified notion, yes. That is what we call materialism, spiritual or psychological materialism.

Question:
What is the other kind? Identifying outwardly is just being aware of what’s happening, without any—

Rinpoche:
Well, you are not watching your body and your physical motion of sawing wood, but you just become one with wood itself. You do not watch yourself being identified, but you become completely one with the action or object of what you are doing.

Question:
What about when Buddha taught the woman at the well how to feel the rope and attend to the motion of drawing water? What about the practice of mindfulness?

Rinpoche:
That is like using the breathing in meditation, it is the motion of the two arms—as outsiders. It has nothing to do with me and my arms, but it is just two arms doing a regular functional thing—drawing up water.

Question:
So there is nothing built up that way? No territory or sense of ownership?

Rinpoche:
Nothing is built up that way. Breathing is just breathing happening there. It has nothing to do with
my
breathing, so that I should have to breathe specially.

Question:
Becoming one with the wood, is that becoming intoxicated?

Rinpoche:
We could say that, yes. Once you are in the experience there is some logical pattern to follow, which becomes a sort of perpetually creative process; you begin to see the colorfulness, the vividness of things.

Question:
Could you explain the relationship between fear and identification?

Rinpoche:
Well, identification is surrendering and not referring back; not checking back with central headquarters but just going on with what is there. Fear is referring back to yourself and making sure that your relationship with what is happening is quite secure. If you don’t check up on yourself, you might have to panic. Suddenly you stop identifying because you fear something is wrong—you begin to lose your grip. This is because in identifying, the carpet of security is pulled out from under your feet.

Question:
Rinpoche, you said that nonmanifestation is based on fear, whereas it seems to me that the quality of fear is a more solid thing than hope. I see something more spacious about hope than fear. I don’t understand how nonmanifestation is based on fear.

Rinpoche:
Well, nonmanifestation is based on fear in the sense that it becomes despair. Fear projects a situation in which there is nothing to hang on to and you have lost every contact, every connection; so you are dwelling on that—which is despair. It is creating another type of ground to hang on to, dwelling on fear, enjoying fear or sadness as an occupation.

Question:
Why is there a problem about this fifth state of perception, absolute nothingness, that some schools of Buddhism would consider this to be a cloudy mind or a clinging mind?

Rinpoche:
I think there was tremendous distrust in the definition of the absolute, of absolute mind, buddha nature, and its intelligence. That connects with our previous discussion about viewing Buddha as a great scholar. From the point of view where being enlightened is being a great scholar, any kind of feeble intelligence or feeble inspiration is regarded as a manifestation of samsara. The people holding this view thought that in order to have a really good glimpse of the absolute you had to have fantastic dramatic flashes. They themselves had not had these experiences, but they imagined that should be the case. The other school, our school, says that awakened mind has to be something that is part of our everyday experience of ego. The experience of awakened mind is extremely simple; it does not have to be dramatic. The faintest expression of intelligence is part of the awakened state of mind. So you do not have to build up a mythical notion of enlightened experience. It is something realistic, and flashes of it happen constantly. That viewpoint also coincides with the tantric teachings.

Question:
So all through these skandhas, the awakened state of mind is the thread that everything goes on, and somehow the complications built up by each skandha live on this thread which they obscure.

Rinpoche:
That’s right, that happens all the way along.

Question:
So that the awakened state of mind is actually doing all the work that everything else is living on?

Rinpoche:
Exactly, I mean even uprisings, agitation, aspects of living in the samsaric world like guerrilla warfare and political intrigues and everything—all are based on a fundamental sense that something is not right, and seeing that something is not right is based on intelligence.