The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (48 page)

Question:
In meditating you pick up a thought, a disturbing thought, out of this cloudy bank. What happens then to the thought? Does it go back to the bank? Does it burn out? Does it ever disappear? Does it ever resolve itself?

Rinpoche:
In many cases thoughts do not become resolved because the impression of a thought that you picked out still remains in the cloudy mind, a sort of reproduction of it remains there. In some cases, for instance during meditation, if we relate to thoughts as insignificant, that is, if we do not put them into categories of any kind, then they are not transferred back through the skandhas anymore. They are not put back through the process, so they are suspended on the level of consciousness and are finally resolved. That is the way of resolving thoughts—through complete nonevaluation. As long as there is nonevaluation, the skandhas have no function. They do not know what to do with a nonevaluated thought because their language is the language of duality and evaluation. That is why they keep thoughts in a
bank
.

Question:
So the job at hand would be to wipe out the cloudy mind through a kind of objectivity?

Rinpoche:
Well, that is an extremely long process. Eventually the bank will wear itself out; but in the meantime we must keep on collecting as well.

Question:
It sounds like duality has its own built-in pattern that ego is only part of. In other words, from what you’re saying, it is not that the ego is selecting and fortifying only on its own behalf, but it seems that that kind of selection and fortification is inherent in the nature of duality itself. It is as though the skandhas just automatically select and sort like that without any particular interest.

Rinpoche:
Yes, they are sort of slaves rather than intelligent. They have been given their job in accordance with their nature and they just react accordingly.

Question:
Is there any way of working with the cloudy mind other than meditation?

Rinpoche:
There does not seem to be any other way at all. In order to get free of the pattern of cloudy mind we have to create chaos in the efficient mechanism of consciousness, and nothing can do that except absolute nothing—which is meditation. That seems to be the only way.

Question:
Is it good to try to take some kind of positive step in working with your state of mind during meditation?

Rinpoche:
You see, meditation should not be regarded as a learning process. It should be regarded as an experiencing process. You should not try to learn from meditation, but try to feel it. Any tendency to categorize what goes on during meditation as learning is an obstacle to meditation. This also applies to exotic techniques. They are also an obstacle because, when you use a technique which has an exotic flavor, you are more conscious of the technique than its application. So any technique used in the practice of meditation should be a purely functional one with no implication of any kind to it at all.

Question:
How about reflection upon the nature of one’s mind, or rather just sort of recognition of it?

Rinpoche:
That is rather like contemplation in the sense of dwelling on something and going over it again and again. That means you have the subject you are working on and yourself separate. It becomes a sort of private show. You end up relating this to that, yourself to the subject matter. But meditation is an act of nonduality. The technique you are using should not be separate from you; it is you, you are the technique. Meditator and meditation are one. There is no relationship involved.

The trouble with contemplative practice is that there is always a relationship involved, some kind of criterion. Somehow this does not really cut the basic root of neurosis. The root of neurosis is conflict; neurosis requires the conflict of not knowing who you are, of not knowing what you are doing or how you relate with things. Neurosis needs to play this game of conflict. Therefore as long as some kind of resource for playing the game is provided, such as some subject matter, as long as some pretext is provided, you will go on and on with the game. Whether you do it in a genteel spiritual fashion or an ordinary fashion really does not matter. It is still a game.

Question:
In the arts, there are techniques that one learns for the purpose of overcoming techniques, in order to be able to get to the direct experience part of it. I was wondering if, besides meditation, there are any other techniques that you could speak of that could help one in this way, some means to open oneself or to get closer to being.

Rinpoche:
In addition to the sitting form of meditation, there is the meditation practice in everyday life of panoramic awareness. This particular kind of practice is connected with identifying with the activities one is involved in. This awareness practice could apply to artwork or any other activity. It requires confidence. Any kind of activity that requires discipline also requires confidence. You cannot have discipline without confidence, otherwise it becomes a sort of torturing process. If you have confidence in what you are doing, then you have real communication with the things you are using, with the material you are using. Working that way, a person is not concerned with producing masterpieces. He is just involved with the things that he is doing. Somehow the idea of a masterpiece is irrelevant. The masterpiece, the perfect work of art, comes as a by-product of this process of identifying with what you are doing. You should not be too much concerned with producing a masterpiece.

Question:
I’m confused about mindfulness and awareness. Is it that in doing everyday things, simple things, you practice mindfulness? And at the point where you forget what you are doing and go off into daydreaming, is that the point where you should start practicing awareness?

Rinpoche:
In mindfulness practice there is very definite precision; every move, every minute detail is noticed. In the case of awareness practice you have the general outline of what you are doing, which covers the details as well, naturally. In practicing awareness in everyday life, at a certain point the wandering mind itself, the daydreaming mind itself, turns itself into awareness and reminds you. If you are completely one with the idea of awareness as being intimate, it is a true practice. That is, as long as your relationship to the idea of awareness is a very simple one and as long as your awareness practice is connected with sitting practice. In a proper practice of awareness, the complete proper relationship is that awareness comes toward you rather than you going toward it. In other words, if awareness is not possessed or owned, then it happens. Whereas if you try to possess and own awareness, if you relate to it as “my awareness,” then it runs away from you. In order to understand this, you need to have the actual experience of it, rather than just reading the menu.

Question:
I am very involved with music and for me art can only have a sense if it makes a complete statement of a certain very clear quality. In this connection I have been very much struck by the quality that emanates from certain ceramic lohans that can be seen in Western museums. I would like to find a way to begin to approach a statement of that sort in my own life. Everything else seems so trivial.

Rinpoche:
Generally, the whole idea of appreciation is based, of course, on true understanding of things as they are. This means that you have to develop true understanding, which means understanding without other ideas put on it. If it is overlaid with other ideas, it becomes commentary or interpretation, rather than true understanding. True understanding is direct and simple appreciation, simple understanding without any criteria attached to it. I think this idea is expressed very clearly in a lot of Japanese art—flower arrangement, for example. Just a simple twig is chosen and just a couple of flowers are arranged in a certain way and the two elements are put together. Maybe there is a small rock beside them and a very simple plain background without any fancy designs behind, against which you can see the actual arrangement of flowers properly. The lohan that you mentioned also has that same simple quality. He just does not have any pretense of any kind. He just sits there. It reminds one of the Zen saying, “When I eat, I eat; when I sleep, I sleep.” It is the same sort of thing. When you sit, you sit properly. Just sit ordinarily. In fact the special quality of the lohan comes from the fact that he is so insignificant, absolutely insignificant; so ordinary that he is superordinary. It is because of that total ordinariness that he becomes special and radiates.

Question:
Rinpoche, how does insanity fit in with the five skandhas? How would you explain insanity in terms of that system?

Rinpoche:
Well, there seem to be two types of insanity—I do not know if
insanity
is the right word or not—two types of unbalanced states of mind. One of them is what we call “flipped,” really mad. Because the world has come to appear totally and powerfully uncompassionate to the mad person, he sees every new event in terms of this total distortion and he loses his natural logic. This is connected with the distortion of consciousness, the fifth skandha. It is complete distortion on this level; on this level all criteria are lost. He is completely mad. His language is incoherent and he does all sorts of things that do not have any coherent significance. The other type is not mad at all in this sense. This type of person functions naturally, normally, looks after himself or herself, but distance is always being distorted. This sense of distance is the basic requirement for skillful communication. To communicate skillfully a person must be aware of interpersonal distance—a sense of whether he should reach out or whether he should wait. That kind of distance becomes very distorted so that communication is handled unskillfully; and there is frustration about that blindness. This brings on aggression and the demand for pain. This type is the egocentric, the egomaniac. Its main characteristic is the basic confusion of losing the sense of distance and this is connected with cloudy mind on the primeval level, as the background of all the skandhas. The confusion here is at the level where the original criteria separating this from that developed, at the level of the first development of duality. That is where distance first develops, the distance between me and that, that and me. Because one becomes completely overwhelmed, involved, self-centered into so much
here
, one loses the distance. That is the extreme of egocentricity.

Question:
Is that accessible to cure?

Rinpoche:
I think both types can definitely be cured. But you see it is really tricky to cure problems like that. It depends very much on what sort of method you use. There are a number of methods which are seemingly good, but it turns out that the method itself can be turned into fuel. The process of cure itself becomes fuel for the disorder to live on. Somehow, the analysis method and the encounter-group-type method do not seem to be particularly the way. If you put a person in an encounter group, at the beginning the person might see things and do things completely honestly, in an open way; but then at a certain point the person begins to pick up the style of the other people taking part in the group and it becomes another kind of language. Quite probably, the person picks up a whole new style just for his participation in encounter groups. Very frighteningly, it becomes the ultimate kind of deception: the person is expressing everything, saying everything out, but at the same time there is a basic deception which is never expressed at all.

There is a certain danger in any purely analytic method. Somehow the word does not help very much at all. The word is actually the source of the confusion anyway. People who are “flipped” have a very skillful way of using words in accordance with their mad perspective; so the survival of their madness could be endless.

It seems that setting up a certain kind of general situation for the person is more effective. One starts with the basic physical situation of food and living environment. The whole idea of using the situation is to communicate with the unbalanced person so as to awaken him, so you start on the basic level of survival, the instinctive level, the level of the animal realm. The person should have some feeling of instinctive simple communication. Start that way. Then having established that kind of simple communication on the level of survival, the rest becomes much easier and quite obvious.

Question:
When these five skandhas are going along mechanically, just doing what they do, what happens when the individual who is part of these five skandhas becomes compassionate? What happens to the skandhas? Can you describe the process of compassion in terms of the skandhas?

Rinpoche:
The basic idea of compassion is communication, skillful communication. That kind of skillful communication develops through relationships. This begins on the consciousness level. But in fact compassion is the source of transmutation of all the skandhas into the five tathagathas, or five aspects of enlightenment, that we discussed earlier. Compassion makes the skandhas function independently rather than as part of a chain. Ordinarily, feeling is dependent on form, form is dependent on feeling, feeling is dependent on perception and samskara, and so on. They are all interdependent. They cannot be separate things. Whereas when the skandhas are transmuted into tathagatha principles, they become independent. In other words, all the skandhas have their independent mind and intelligence. This process of the skandhas becoming independent of each other begins from compassion. Communication based on this state of mind is the ultimate communication.

Question:
I keep seeing the skandhas as part of the psychology of an individual. I see the process of compassion as someone behaving mechanically and then suddenly becoming sensitive. I’m still forced to see it somehow as a dualistic relationship, even when the five skandhas become five tathagathas. I mean the relationship of, say, a compassionate individual to those with whom he is relating.