The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (50 page)

A lot of us are in a situation similar to that of this arhat—our present situation is that of having a certain dissatisfaction and wanting to find out more about it. A certain curiosity and dissatisfaction, curiosity and pain and pleasure and the knowledge that we have come across in our lives have brought us here together. Having arrived at this point of being here, you question your result. Not only do you look back by way of an intellectual researching process, you also practice and experience what you are thinking about. Having experienced what you are thinking about, all life situations become much clearer, precise and obvious, at this present moment, right here.

So this concept of auspicious coincidence, tendrel, is extremely interesting and important. If a person realizes that a whole chain reaction of incidents brought him into the present situation, that solves a lot of problems. It means that you have already made a commitment to whatever you are doing and the only way to behave is to go ahead, rather than hesitating constantly in order to make further choices. It is like knowing that a certain restaurant serves a particular dish that you have in mind to eat; rather than wasting a lot of time reading the menu after you have sat down in the restaurant, go ahead and order that dish and eat it. In a sense it is a time-saving device to know that the incidents that happen in the round of life are constantly creating a particular unique situation. This is a very powerful insight which brings us a sense of freedom. It is knowing that at one and the same time you are not committed to the present situation and you are committed to it. But what we do with the present situation as it relates to the future is completely up to us. It is an open situation.

This idea of chance or coincidence is fundamental to the abhidharma. What is described there has this character of taking place by coincidence, apparently by chance. This is a very important aspect of it. And it seems that today, by chance, we found our subject to talk about. Perhaps by chance we can have a discussion.

Question:
As regards that open future you were talking about, I find that certain thoughts are constantly recurring in individuals. Everybody has their own style, their own thoughts, but it is as though a script for their whole life has been written. When they try to be completely blank with no conceptualization at all, certain thoughts in their own style keep flashing into their minds. Is this underlying gossip the fifth skandha? Is the continuity of this little gossip narrator going on all the time, the person who is sort of writing the script of our lives? Whatever the case, that omnipresent script seems to keep the future closed rather than permitting it to be open.

Rinpoche:
Strangely enough, actually, nobody writes the script at all. It just mysteriously happens. That is sort of a Zen answer rather than one in the style of methodical Indian philosophy. The abhidharma would say it differently. But I think it is a much clearer way of looking at this particular situation to say that nobody writes the script—it just happens. It is because there is nobody writing the script that so many varieties of things keep popping up. It is not that the thoughts happen particularly according to some logical pattern. Logically they might be quite dissociated, but things just pop up. They just happen out of nowhere.

Question:
Is the fifth skandha the person who thinks he is writing the script? Making choices, giving coherence to your life?

Rinpoche:
Once a thought pops up, he has to acknowledge it. But he does not really dare to, really care to go back to the root of the thought. If he goes back to the root, he does not find any. He does not find anything at all.

Question:
I still do not understand why certain kinds of thoughts keep recurring to certain people, no matter what they try to do. Even when they try to change, they look back and their pattern is still there. Where does everybody get their own style of thought pattern?

Rinpoche:
Each person has his own style according to his type. There are different types of mentality—the mentality of aggression, the mentality of passion, and all sorts of others. Different types of individuality originate from different types of basic energy. These are basic energies that misunderstood themselves, right at the beginning, and differentiated themselves from the basic ground. That basic ground is an open one, but the energies it contains are colorful. There will be red with a tinge of yellow, yellow with a tinge of green, white with a tinge of pink. The certain basic energies which also carry the tinge of a certain style of emphasis. For instance, there could be hatred, which finds emphasis through passion; the basic quality is hatred but it develops in terms of passion. There could also be other combinations, such as a basic quality of pride with emphasis through ignorance. All sorts of combinations of sparks of light develop. Then they become individuals, detached from the main ground, like satellites. In this way, we each develop our particular version of ignorance, because of those particular colors, so to speak, that we had right from the beginning. Our particular individual style with its particular energies runs through all the processes of psychological evolution—the five skandhas, the twelve nidanas, and so on. But this is not a hang-up at all. It is our wealth. We each are a particular type of person with a particular type of mania; and that is good.

Question:
Could you speak a little more about the commitment to the present situation you were talking about, and particularly how to distinguish that from the ego’s commitment to extend itself?

Rinpoche:
Somehow the ego’s commitment to extend itself has no direction. The ego’s movement is not a flowing one. It is simply trying to maintain its own house. Since ego’s commitment involves purely this maintenance sort of mentality, there is really no sense of journey involved at all. In the case of the commitment to the present situation, there is a movement or journey. The sense of journey consists in the fact that, from the point of view of this commitment, every situation contains a unique drama.

Question:
Are you saying that one no longer finds everything familiar?

Rinpoche:
Situations need not be familiar. Ego’s commitment tends to rely on a sense of familiarity or feeling that nothing is happening. A person might sit down to meditate and feel that nothing is happening even though he is extremely agitated. He has pain in his back, pain in his neck, and flies are buzzing all around. He is extremely agitated and yet he feels that nothing is happening. But it is possible to experience every moment as having individuality in it. Once you are in a situation, you go along with the unique patterns of it, its particular textures and so on. This is quite different from ego’s commitment to maintaining itself as a solid thing. Ego would find acknowledging the unique individuality of every situation extremely threatening. But relating that way to each situation as it is is a path. There is a great deal of movement in it. You are constantly facing a drama of some kind.

Question:
But then there is no other direction than that of each situation?

Rinpoche:
That is a much more definite kind of direction than having a map or blueprint to follow. It is a real direction. Pain will be real pain and pleasure will be real pleasure. Confusion will be real confusion. Every situation will be a true situation, a precise one—and that is the guidance, that is the pattern that you go along with. Looking back we find that all the situations in which we have had a sense of making a journey were situations of living constantly in the present moment. There was no sense of predestination involved at all. The present situation is the destination as well as the path.

Many people wish to secure their destination in the future now. But the future is not here yet, that is why it is the future. It is amazing the extent to which we deceive ourselves, stretching ourselves to all sorts of territories and situations that are purely imaginary. It is as though the whole future is planned and a planned time has been stretched all the way back from the present moment and all the way forward from the present moment. Then everything is overcrowded. Looking at things this way we manage to set ourselves into a great deal of paranoia and panic. But if one really sees the present situation as it is, it is always a quite simple one.

Question:
Can you speak about when one is sitting in meditation and bodily discomforts arise and one is taken up by the feeling of discomfort and boredom? But then one oscillates from this to the commentary that the discomfort and so on is just something for one to cling to as an entertainment. But then one clings to the commentary. And somehow there is nothing there in any of these moments which is free. There is only oscillation back and forth between these various clingings.

Rinpoche:
It seems that the idea of the commentary and trying to make something out of it becomes self-destructive or confusing. There is an analogy used in the scriptures of discursive mind being like a silkworm. A silkworm has a web of its own substance around it. It survives by churning out more silk. You see, the situation is very simple. When bodily pain or pleasure arise, it is very simple. You just perceive it and just leave it. You do not have to put it through any process of any kind. Each situation is unique. Therefore you just go along with it, let it happen according to its nature.

Question:
I guess what I can’t quite understand is what you mean by “go along with.”

Rinpoche:
It is a matter of acceptance. Even though the acceptance of what is happening may be confusing, just accept the given situation and do not try to make it something else; do not try to make it into an educational process at all. Just see it, perceive it, and then abandon it. If you experience something and then disown that experience, you provide a space between that knowledge and yourself which permits it simply to take its course. Disowning is like the yeast in the fermentation process. That process brews a state of mind in which you begin to learn and feel properly.

Question:
Does it matter if the disowning is only another form of commentary in the beginning? Or is that inevitable?

Rinpoche:
You cannot start from absolute, complete perfection. Being perfect does not matter. Just perceive and experience and disown. It does not matter how and what. The problem is that we always want to start something and at the same time make sure that what we are doing is right. But somehow we just cannot have that kind of insurance. One really has to take a chance and accept the raw and rugged quality of the situation. You could have a commentary-type situation where there is constant analysis involved. But that analysis is just part of the process. Just leave it that way. It does not have to become final. There is nothing the matter with your commentary as long as you do not try to take it as a final conclusion. You should not try to make it into a definite, recorded message with the idea of playing it back when you need it. Because when you play it back, you will be in a different situation so that it will automatically be out-of-date.

Question:
In the moment when that commentary exists, there is so much clinging to that commentary.

Rinpoche:
The commentary, without being given special value, is okay. It is just chatter. That is okay. Let it be that way. You should not interfere with that energy that is going through.

Question:
When a conflict arises, I usually feel that I have control of the situation. I feel that I can make a choice. But now I am wondering whether I actually make a choice or not.

Rinpoche:
There is nothing the matter with the idea of choice. In dealing with a situation, the choice is there already. The choice consists of two aspects of the situation that are happening at the same time; those two aspects provide a basis for your making a relationship with either of the alternatives. The way to work with that is, in making that choice, not to go according to your sense of comfort but to go according to straightforwardness. If there are two choices, one is ahead of you, right in front of you, and the other choice is slightly off-center. There may be ten or twelve hundred choices, but there is one choice waiting for you on the road. The rest of them are waiting on the side, as sidetracks. Therefore the other choices waiting on the side become more attractive, like restaurants and drive-in movies on the side of the road. The choice has to be straightforward, based on common sense, basic sanity. Actually, it is transcendental common sense.

One could misunderstand what I have been saying. If I say that by going along with the present situation the future becomes quite clear, that could be misunderstood in the sense that everything is marked out for you. It could be misunderstood in the sense of there being divine guidance. You could think that everything has been prepared for you so you can immediately find your place, as in the saying, “The swan is in the lake and the vulture is in the graveyard.” This is not quite the case. Relating with the present moment is quite difficult and painful in many cases. Although it is straightforward, a straight road, it is quite a painful one. It is like the bardo experience mentioned in the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
. You have a brilliant light coming at you with the image of a certain tathagatha peering at you from within it. And on the side there is a less brilliant, less irritating light. The light from the side is much more beautiful because it is less glaring, only a reflection of the tathagatha. So there are two choices. Should we go into the irritating one or should we just turn off on one of the sidetracks.

This symbolism from the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
is very profound for our actual, everyday life situation. It does not have to refer only to after-death experience. Perhaps the after-death experience just typifies the kind of situation in which choices are most enlightening or stimulating and most immediate. In our ordinary life situation we have to open ourselves and investigate and see and then make a commitment. Without choice, there would be no leap and no moment of letting go at all. Because of choice, therefore, there is a moment of leap, and letting go happens. So it seems that it is not particularly comforting and blissful and easy. On the other hand, it could be inspiring. That much at least could be said.