The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (55 page)

V:
Well, you don’t have to dissolve it. Just dwell on the problem and problem itself will begin to become hopelessness [
laughter
], which can’t be saved. You can’t be saved.

S:
I’m not trying to be saved.

V:
That’s the whole problem. [
Laughter
] Unless you realize you can’t be saved—

S:
Oh,
can’t
be saved. Different point.

V:
—there’s no other way. It is the hopelessness of the situation.

S:
Is it possible to look at wanting as an expression of the ground?

V:
It is the ground of something—it’s more of a platform than the ground. [
Laughter
] It is
something
undoubtedly, but it’s not the ground.

Student:
Rinpoche, saying that sounds very cold; is there any warmth at all?

Vidyadhara:
Well—

S:
Well? [
Laughter
]

V:
Unless you experience the coldness, you can’t experience warmth, can you?

S:
True.

V:
By logic.

S:
Then the fact that you’re cold indicates that there is warmth.

V:
Your ability to experience warmth is heightened by experiencing cold, or the coolness. As far as the ground of shunyata is concerned, there is no warmth. It is an unkind world, uncompassionate, ruthless. I think you have to give up hope, it’s a hopeless situation. When we discuss the path, that is the starting point of warmth, which we will get into next time. That’s true. It’s cold, it’s not very kind. [
Vidyadhara snaps fan
.]

S:
I just wondered if this is a process, if you have to keep going beyond this point over and over again, or if you just go beyond?

V:
I think you have to go through it over and over again.

S:
You go as far as you’ve gone before and then you can do so automatically, over and over.

V:
Yes. And once you begin, you cannot help taking some steps.

Student:
When a person is having this experience, does he or she become really cold in his relationships? Would it be natural for a person having this experience to become cold in their relationships?

Vidyadhara:
I wouldn’t say so. That sounds like we are discussing the path. We are discussing the starting point.

S:
Well, what would one’s psychological state be?

V:
One’s psychological experience is that there is no room to maneuver about or to strategize anymore. It’s a hard fact.

S:
Sounds like a dank hole.

V:
It is like a vajra. The vajra represents truth and shunyata at the same time. It is indestructible, a hard fact, indestructible fact. The sense should be harder than the words. It’s the uncompassionate truth.

S:
Then one would see one’s environment as being uncompassionate also.

V:
Well, the environment depends on you. It’s your environment. There’s no independent environment as such at all.

S:
Well, this is true. But you come down to this coldness, which is internal, right?

V:
Internal, yes, undoubtedly.

S:
And yet the external situation remains. I mean there are people and communities and gurus and wives and the whole stuff. That doesn’t go away. I mean there’s still stuff to relate to and you’re viewing it with this coldness inside.

V:
Probably the communities and gurus will enforce that coldness. They might say to you that you have no hope. You’re a hopeless case. “Much as I love you, I’m afraid you’re a hopeless case.” [
Laughter
] “Much as I’m your spiritual friend—” [
Laughter
]

Student:
With all this talking about hopelessness and giving up your uniform and not being able to conduct another tour, I keep going back to the experience of death. Is that at all comparable to shunyata in the sense that there’s an equilibrium between life and death in which life is death?

Vidyadhara:
That seems to be the whole process.

S:
One which all of us will go through collectively.

V:
Yes. The only security of any kind, if there is security, is discontinuity. It is the only security there is. In other words, hopelessness is the security. Hopelessness is the ground. Continual hopelessness is the ground; continual shunyata is the only ground. This could be said to be the hinayanist point of view of shunyata, but it is still valid at the beginning.

Student:
If total awareness of shunyata exists, can there still be action?

Vidyadhara:
Shunyata exists on reaction, comparison. Shunyata is emptiness. Therefore it constantly exists on, thrives on, existence as opposed to nonexistence. Shunyata is still experience. It is not an absolute state at all.

S:
What kind of experience?

V:
Shunyata is an experience.

S:
But can one act out of that experience?

V:
One cannot help it.

Student:
Rinpoche, can you describe the inspiration to see what you see?

Vidyadhara:
In what context?

S:
Say in meditation, or just in general.

V:
There’s inspiration. At the same time, disappointment becomes inspiration. In that sense, that something is not seen is the beginning of seeing. For instance, if you are studying music, the starting point is to realize how unmusical you are. If you are studying art, the starting point is to realize how unartistic you are. That’s a hopeful situation. That you have the intelligence to see how unartistic or how unmusical you are is the starting point. Hopelessness is the starting point. That is extremely powerful actually, and the most positive thought that you could have. It is an extraordinarily positive thing to discover how bad things are. [
Laughter
]

Student:
Why do you say that this would be great? What if after you actually discover how bad you are, you start deciding that you’re not so great? Isn’t there a danger of developing paranoia, becoming more and more paranoid about yourself?

Vidyadhara:
I think that’s the starting point. You can’t be intelligent unless you are paranoid. I mean [the Buddha’s teachings] begin with the four noble truths rather than the attainment of enlightenment. The first thing the Buddha said was that there is nothing but suffering, which could be said to be a slightly paranoid remark to make. [
Laughter
] Probably we would prefer enlightenment. He didn’t say that it is a beautiful world, he said the world consists of pain, misery, and suffering. That’s a very intelligent remark to make, extremely positive.

S:
The first thing the Buddha said was, “Wonder of wonders, all beings are intended to be buddhas.” If one had that experience, would one maintain faith in that?

V:
I think so, yes.

S:
So it’s not totally hopeless.

V:
But we have to be careful not to make a double twist.

S:
Let’s just take it as it is.

V:
Yes, but let’s not interpret.

S:
Yeah, but nonetheless, even if the ground is gone [
Gong is rung
]—I am what I am and nothing can change that, right? That seems to be a basically stable—

V:
No, I wouldn’t say that, I would say the opposite: I am
not
what I am, and for that reason it can happen. [
Laughter
]

S:
I can’t be anything else.

V:
Hmm?

S:
I can’t be anything other than I am.

V:
You can. You could go through the impermanence of what you are.

S:
Let’s go back to the “Battle of Ego” seminar [
laughter
] where you described the basic ground that ego is built on as stable.

V:
Somewhat.

S:
In its stability is an all-righteous, is there not?

V:
I think you are stretching too much. Elastic band.

S:
It’s a desperate situation. [
Laughter
]

V:
I sympathize with you on that. [
Laughter
]

S:
Considering the power of saying how bad things are, what kind of power could it be to use human good as an index?

V:
How about goodness, do you mean?

S:
In other words, you spoke of the power of feeling bad—not feeling bad but realizing how bad things are. Where is the index, which I often use, of feeling good? In other words, going in the direction that feels good, let’s say, and using that as an index.

V:
Well, to begin with, can you tell me what your idea of good is? A definition, so to speak?

S:
It’s when I feel loose and relaxed and not confused and clear.

V:
Not confused and clear. That’s reasonable. [
Laughter
] That’s reasonable! But that’s the whole starting point, you see. If you see how bad you are, you are not confused. You see
precisely
how bad you are! [
Laughter
]

S:
I don’t feel good.

V:
Somewhat. [
Laughter
] You feel definitely, anyway.

Student:
Did you say that the advantage of hopelessness is to accelerate the receptivity? If I have nothing to hold on to, including hope, that might make me more receptive to what is going to happen. No attachment.

Vidyadhara:
Can you restate that?

S:
Yes. If I have a hope, that will blind me to what’s happening around me.

V:
Yes.

S:
If I have no hope, that means I can react intuitively and completely to whatever happens.

V:
Well, to reach the low point of hopelessness, you have to have hope and then it becomes hopelessness, rather than that you are completely wiped out at the beginning.

S:
It’s not a negative statement, the way I see it.

V:
Well, you have to have a positive thing, to be hopeful, to begin with. Then you lose your hope. It’s a question of nothingness and blankness—you see what I mean?

S:
No.

V:
Hope is based on hopelessness; hopelessness depends on hope. To begin with you have a drive to be hopeful, you struggle all the time. Then you lose that hope, you begin to come to the conclusion of hopelessness. Whereas if there is no hope at all in the beginning, there’s no fertile ground.

S:
So that’s a condition?

V:
Somewhat, yes. It’s an interaction of some kind. If you say you have one eye, that automatically presumes that usually people have two eyes and you happen to have one eye. It is a logical process.

S:
Or you have
at least
one eye—you may have another one I don’t know about.

V:
And so forth.

Student:
What’s the difference between the hopelessness that people may feel before shunyata and the hopelessness that they feel after? There are a lot of people who feel very hopeless about their situation.

Vidyadhara:
We could say that the hopelessness of their situation before shunyata, as you call it, is shunyata experience already. There is room to work with because we feel hopeless. That is shunyata experience already. It is giving up that and this. You are completely lost, you don’t know how to fight or how to grasp. You feel completely hopeless, hopeless. That seems to be the starting point of shunyata experience. We could say that
is
shunyata experience, in fact.

S:
What happens after that?

V:
We experience the hopelessness of it and then we begin to experience warmth in that negativity. We are going to discuss that later on.

S:
Is it that you start meditation with the hope that you are going to get somewhere or do something for yourself, and you realize on the way that there is no such thing. Is that the hopelessness?

V:
Realizing that meditation is not going to save you, but you have to work on yourself. That is the idea of hopelessness.

Student:
How do you work on yourself other than by meditation?

Vidyadhara:
Nothing.

S:
Nothing.

S:
[
Another student chimes in
.] Nothing.

V:
That encompasses a lot of areas: meditation and meditation in action. But without that there is no other way.

Student:
Rinpoche, when you see the hopelessness and futility of the whole spiritual trip and of meditation, if you keep meditating anyway, wouldn’t that indicate that you still have hope? I mean there’s nothing out there, you know, it’s futile, so why do it? If you see how futile it is and then you continue to do it, it’s like beating your head against the wall.

Vidyadhara:
In this case you appreciate doing nothing but just being, which is the epitome of hopelessness. [Laughter] That brings compassion and enlightenment.

Student:
I think I read it or you said it, but what we call meditation in the beginning isn’t really meditation, it’s just playing. After this hopelessness, we really start something with our meditation.

Vidyadhara:
Yes. The whole idea of the mechanistic approach is “Before I do that, I’m going to get there.” You have to give up that approach as well.