The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (56 page)

Student:
If the hopelessness comes out in the body, as a feeling of wanting to throw up and terrible anxiety and your stomach going wild and you feel like you might lose your mind—if the hopelessness comes out in that way, is that because we are doing something wrong, that we are taking the wrong approach?

Vidyadhara:
Psychologically struggling too much.

Student:
Sometimes I feel the way he just described, maybe differently day by day, going too fast or feeling close to a certain kind of pain. And it’ll come time to meditate or I will be in my bed meditating and I’ll notice that after I meditate for an hour I feel better. Out of that experience I can’t help having some feeling about meditation, or attitude toward it, that it is salvation, or that it is at least a momentary release of something. Is that a good way to think about meditation or to connect those two? I don’t know if I’m making that up or anything.

Vidyadhara:
Well, in a primitive practice you might use meditation as a temporary service, temporary salvation, but in the absolute sense that doesn’t apply anymore. Meditation means giving up hope altogether. You just sit and do it.

S:
I don’t enter it with the hope that I’ll be released from some hangup I’ve been feeling, but it just so happens that I feel a lot better in terms of tiring and confusion and feeling my body much looser.

V:
I think that is a misunderstanding. In terms of feeling that certain ways of doing things might help you, there’s still a sense of therapeutic practice. Meditation is not therapeutic practice at all. We seem to have a problem in this country with the sense that meditation is included with psychotherapy or physiotherapy or whatever. A lot of Buddhists feel proud because meditation is accepted as part of the therapeutic system, a landmark of the Western world. But I think that pride is simpleminded pride. Buddhism should transcend the therapeutic practice of meditation. Relating with gurus is quite different from going to your psychiatrist.

S:
But out of that experience I’m afraid of falling into the trap of getting too involved in the therapeutic aspect, because it does in fact dissolve pain. I mean, that is an experience that I have.

V:
You shouldn’t dissolve pain.

S:
You shouldn’t?

V:
You should raise pain! [
Laughter
] Otherwise you don’t know who you are or what you are. Meditation is a way of opening. In that particular process, under-hidden subconscious things come up, so you can view yourself as who you are. It is an unpeeling, unmasking process.

S:
How is that related to freedom?

V:
Because there is a sense not of collecting but of an undoing process. You don’t collect further substances that bind you or further responsibilities. It is a freedom process.

Student:
There’s a tendency for people to come forth with a specific psychological problem and to have somebody say, “Well, why don’t you meditate?” But from the point of view you just expressed, that would be inappropriate and of no particular help.

Vidyadhara:
It depends on how you meditate. It depends on your attitude to meditation.

S:
For example, a meditation like Zen meditation or meditation as you’ve been describing it today has this quality of hopelessness. That seemed to teach me that it wouldn’t be appropriate to tell somebody to do it in order to try to help them with their problem.

V:
I think it would. To help with their problem is to bring the problem onto the surface.

S:
Isn’t that the same as therapy?

V:
I don’t think so. We don’t talk about curing.

S:
Therapy does make things surface.

V:
No, it doesn’t, actually. It is reputed to do so, but somehow you become a professional confesser so you know what language to use. In meditation there is no language involved at all. The whole practice is not involved with language, but just doing it.

S:
But you do talk to yourself in meditation.

V:
So what?

S:
So it uses a language.

V:
You don’t try to get involved with proving yourself to somebody else, which is a much heavier trip. Moreover you don’t pay yourself a salary or fees. [
Laughter
]

Student:
Does feeling pain have anything to do with feeling uncomfortable?

Vidyadhara:
Comfortable is pain, yeah.

S:
Comfortable is pain?

V:
Comfort brings pain.

S:
Comfort brings pain?

V:
Mm hm.

S:
Well, when you feel uncomfortable—

V:
—that brings pleasure. [
Laughter
]

S:
Sounds like masochists.

V:
I wouldn’t say that either; then you defeat your purpose.

S:
Masochists find pleasure from pain, same thing.

V:
I don’t think so.

S:
You mean they are different?

V:
Because you are relating with what you are, premasochists.

Student:
Does this hopelessness rise out of seeing that you have never been able to establish anything in your mind or keep it there?

Vidyadhara:
Hopelessness seems to come up because you can’t cheat yourself anymore. You can’t con yourself anymore. You can’t con the situation, and you can’t cheat anybody in that given situation anymore. Therefore you feel helpless and hopeless.

S:
You are not consciously attempting to con somebody or other.

V:
No. Psychologically, it’s built in already. There’s a tendency to provide as much personal comfort as possible.

Student:
What is your feeling about the original Sufi system, in the thirteenth century?

Vidyadhara:
What system?

S:
The Sufi mystical system of whirling dervishes, in which they use a process calls
sama’
incorporating dance, music, and singing. They approach this tremendous despair and hopelessness and then gain some sort of enlightenment and become illuminated. What do you think about that?

V:
Is that so? [
Laughter
]

S:
I don’t know. I’m just wondering if that kind of system might develop here in the Western world. It reduces your ego presumably, but it’s accompanied by music and dancing.

V:
It doesn’t have to be the Sufi system, particularly.

S:
Yeah, I know, that’s what I mean.

V:
They provide their own means once they are awakened, once they are opened. If you are trying to court certain practices of such a tradition, it is not particularly helpful. People could develop, and seemingly they are already developing, a way of communicating with themselves which leads to ways of loosening up. They provide all kinds of ways of loosening them up. It is already happening. So one doesn’t have to produce or to present certain set patterns of how to loosen up—it seems to happen automatically.

Student:
Isn’t one of the problems that one can invite hopelessness in order to find hope. Such hopelessness is really hopeful.

Vidyadhara:
Well, that tends to happen automatically.

S:
But if one knows this in advance?

V:
I don’t think so. You might know it intellectually, but when you actually experience hopelessness, it’s quite different. We could talk about hunger in theory, but when we are actually hungry ourselves, it’s quite different.

Student:
Is this hopelessness experienced as an emotional state?

Vidyadhara:
It is an emotional state, yes, definitely.

S:
Then what is the place of upaya?

V:
To watch the hopelessness. Quite simple.

S:
But it seems as if something more active is involved, at least in the way we were discussing it. The mind is doing something more active than merely watching.

V:
Mind is acknowledging its hopelessness. And mind has to give up its trips. It happens naturally.

S:
How is this arrived at? Is it arrived at by an active process of the mind?

V:
No, it is arrived at by the actual process of the situation, seeing the hopelessness of the situation.

Student:
Is the hopelessness a projection? Is it some type of ground that is not empty yet?

Vidyadhara:
That’s right, yes.

Student:
When you reach this point of hopelessness you don’t have to sit and meditate anymore. Do you see this process really without concept?

Vidyadhara:
You see, the whole process does not look like the mechanistic approach of what we should do after that, but it evolves out of the whole situation. And maybe you will find yourself meditating
more
after that process.

Student:
Does the path toward the experience of hopelessness necessarily include pain and despair?

Vidyadhara:
Definitely, yes. Because you have no ground to stand on.

S:
Does that mean we should actively seek out and attract these situations? [
Laughter
]

V:
Not necessarily. That’s generally what we are doing, actually. [
Laughter
] We seek out our permanent answer, nest, home. That in itself is heading toward hopelessness. That happens spontaneously.

Student:
What positive thing can possibly come out of a truly hopeless situation such as the tragedy in Bangladesh, a place where people are actually starving, not just in their minds? I mean, they are not simply deprived of comforts that we take for granted; they are deprived of even having a meal. What positive thing can arise out of that for anyone who’s involved in it?

Vidyadhara:
I suppose you could say that it is beginning to realize that there’s no ground, no psychological ground to stand on.

S: I
can realize it, but do you think that those people can? As they are starving to death, do you think they realize that there’s really no ground to stand on?

V:
Much more so! It is physically obvious that you have no roof over your head.

S:
But perhaps the despair leads right to death, so there’s no beginning of hope at all.

S:
Did you not say that mind watches the hopelessness?

V:
Yes.

S:
And doesn’t that need some kind of training, say through meditation?

V:
At this point it does not seem to be dependent on any particular training.

S:
So the people in Bangladesh perhaps do not have the necessary training to realize their hopelessness.

V:
No, but they begin to realize their solid idea of enemies and friends does not exist. The whole thing is purely a survival process, which is a very lucid situation. If an enemy comes and gives you food, you accept it gladly—as well as friends.

S:
It destroys ideas.

V:
There’s no idea of politics at that level.

Student:
In actual fact, the process of experiencing this seems pretty complicated, though. One part of it is a growing sense of hopelessness and of the ground emptying out. But as you come up from there, the sun is very hot, babies are terrific, love is great from time to time, and work is good a lot. There is this counterpull. How does that not get broken? Or does this just deepen into an actual crisis in time? How to think about that?

Vidyadhara:
I think the suggestion becomes deeper. Once you begin to realize that you can’t control your physical situation, you begin to give up hope of strategizing. And the whole thing becomes a much more living process.

S:
In this process, in regard to the bhumis of the last seminar, this seems to be “pre” any of them, is that right?

V:
It is the first path, the path of accumulation.

We might have to stop at that point, friends, and have further discussion at the end of the next talk. Thank you.

TALK THREE

Path

H
AVING DISCUSSED
the nonexistence of the basic ground already, we will discuss the nonexistence of the path. The basic principle of shunyata at this point, as far as the path is concerned, is a process in which the style of the path does not become a solid thing anymore. According to the shunyata principle, the style of the path is that it is an unconditioned path. It allows basic openness as well as basic confusion. Because of that particular nature, openness also could be regarded as confusion on the path.

Because of confusion on the path, because the whole path is confused, bewildered, one has to learn to relate with something. The way to relate with the path is by trying to relate with something that is there, which is the idea of compassion. The definition of compassion, or karuna, is basic warmth, the absence of duality, absence of comparison, clear and uncompassionate space. Because of that uncompassionate space, there is something basically healthy about that, solid about that. That is compassion. Something is actually happening, which is the idea of compassion.

The idea of compassion in this case is being basically open, willing to relate with what’s happening in this given situation as it is. You don’t expect reassurance and you don’t expect threat. Once you are on the path it is definitely a solid thing already, and because of that there is warmth. You are finally willing to make a commitment to unknown territory. Unknown territory becomes known territory from that point of view, because it is unknown. You are taking a chance, you are willing to take a chance. That is the idea of compassion, being willing to take a chance as things develop in their own basic nature. You are willing to communicate. You are willing to take a chance.