The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (60 page)

S:
To maintain its state?

V:
To maintain itself, yes. But at the same time, the validity of ego is the question. Actually, there is no such thing as ego as a solid thing at all. Should we regard ego as a substantial entity? According to ego’s appearance in the past, the meditative path as well as our own experience shows that ego is not founded on solid ground, but ego is founded on playing with interactions. Ego is founded on relative situations. Unless there is the logic of relativity, ego cannot exist; it cannot exist independent of relative law. So ego becomes irrelevant from that point of view for the very reason that there is no such thing as ultimate ego. If there is going to be an ultimate one then it has to be free from relative notions. So ego is not relevant. Therefore its obligatory actions are also not relevant.

Student:
If it’s a false state, or a relative state, still it malfunctions possibly higher energy processes and it maintains the reduction, a pathological reduction of the energies of consciousness.

Vidyadhara:
It’s hard to maintain oneself. You’d rather stick to your whatever, your lie or your confusion.

S:
Without knowing?

V:
Without knowing. Even though you might know that it is a possible failure of establishing firm ground, still you may feel you should try to set up some kind of security, so you do it.

S:
You like the mistake, you like it.

V:
Try to like it.

Student:
Rinpoche, would spiritual materialism permeate as long as one has an ego? I guess it could be equated to that idea of gaining something spiritual.

Vidyadhara:
I suppose in the subtle sense, as long as there is ego there would be spiritual materialism, definitely, as a faint subconscious desire. But the crude quality of spiritual materialism could be understood, including ego. While you are not free from ego, you still can understand spiritual materialism and take certain solid and crude measures to avoid spiritual materialism. It is not really a refined thing, to the point of dissolving ego. One can do something about it. At the same time, that doesn’t mean there is no tendency of spiritual materialism at all. As long as there is ego, there will be some tendency of achievement, of getting somewhere, becoming a better person, whatever. There are always those tendencies there.

S:
I was wondering also why there seems to be such an overabundance of spiritual materialism in the West.

V:
Well, the Western mind operates in terms of achievement. If you are a climber of mountains, a mountaineer, you don’t just climb, you climb in order to get some reward, break a record, make world history, or whatever. So even if the search is supposedly a pleasurable one, still there is meaning behind it. You must be doing something always. You must be. You must not be idle. The same thing applies even if we are meditating. We try to prove to ourselves that we are not being idle, but we are productive people whether we meditate [or not]. We meditate in order to be more productive! [
Laughter
] That kind of relation goes on always. So it’s a natural tendency—losing grip is socially, economically, something that we don’t want to face.

S:
Is it ego, or ego image, that represses that? Because all these examples seem to be identical to the image we have of ourselves, in other words, ego image. Can’t ego exist without the image?

V:
That seems to be saying the same thing. Ego is built out of image, so if you don’t have image you don’t have ego either, because ego thrives on image. It’s saying the same thing. There is no such thing as a subtle ego. Ego is always based on some form, some particular energy which is obvious.

S:
You mean that without image there is no ego?

V:
There is no ego, that’s right.

Student:
Rinpoche, sometimes I just like to sit and do nothing, not even meditate, but just maybe feel my mouth get dry or my little finger hurt or something like that. But after a very short while I get panicky because so little happens. And yet I would like to be able to do that. It is like I’m enjoying that somehow, and then I’m not able to.

Vidyadhara:
You are enjoying that?

S:
Well, I think it’s only pleasure, I don’t know. The moment I’m doing it I’m enjoying it, but after a short while I feel panicky, like nothing is happening here at all. I can’t explain why I get panicky.

V:
I suppose we could say that when you lose your grip on something when you are alarmed; that always tends to happen. It’s a question of meditation being especially presented so that you lose your grip on ego. So it’s very frightening at the beginning. You begin to realize that you are losing something, but at the same time you don’t know what that something is. But something is leaving you.

S:
So should I forget about being panicky and just continue?

V:
Even if you try to forget the panicking, it will be there always anyway.

S:
Or should I accept the panicking and just go on?

V:
Rather.

S:
What?

V:
Rather.

S:
Rather? [
Laughter
]

V:
Mm-hmm. [
Laughter
]

Student:
Rinpoche, in terms of the image, the ego being in the image, when you look at us, do you see the image before our expression of ego distorting something very high?

Vidyadhara:
Hmmm! [
Laughter
]

S:
How can you make me see that?

V:
Well, if you were willing to see it, you could see it.

S:
I like my expressions, you mean.

V:
That’s what I mean.

S:
The momentum and the action of it is monumentally gripping!

V:
Yes. [
Laughter
] There is no question of how to do it, but if you are willing to do it, it’s there. That’s very difficult to accept because we want to know
how
to do it, which means another kind of security. You simply refuse: you can’t just do it, you have to be told how to do it. That is one of the biggest problems that a lot of my students have, it seems.

Student:
Sir, do various amounts of hopelessness develop along with the development of certain psychological states along the path?

Vidyadhara:
Well, it depends.

S:
But if it happens, it doesn’t happen all at once but different amounts of it tend to go along—

V:
Not necessarily. Depending on how much you give in to losing grip, that much development takes place.

Student:
What if a mountain becomes like a volcano?

Vidyadhara:
Then it is so. What about it?

S:
It’s pretty frightening!

V:
Delightful [
inaudible
], too.

S:
But is there a good way to pacify a mountain?

V:
No, it doesn’t sound like a practical thing to do.

Student:
What about surrendering?

Vidyadhara:
Even if you try to surrender in order to pacify, that in itself becomes a game. You are thrown back. You see, what we are doing in this case is dealing with natural forces. You can’t strategize and you can’t manipulate them because they are natural forces. You can think of different ways of touching fire—think this is not fire, think this is water, think it is going to be nice and warm—but nonetheless your hands are going to get burned whatever you try. [
Laughter
] There’s no way of fooling the elements. What we are dealing with is the most powerful element of all, which is called mind.

S:
But didn’t you sort of guarantee that the operation would be a slow, surgical thing, that the operation would be very slow—not like the Naropa thing.

V:
Well, there have to be some dramatic operations sometimes, as you say.

Student:
Rinpoche, Milarepa described his mind as residing in dharmakaya. I know he just said it, but nonetheless it seemed somewhat strange. And in the
Diamond Sutra
, Subhuti describes his enlightenment. The context there was “I think indeed that I don’t, so I am.” But he’s saying that he is! You’d think that a person in the dharmakaya would not care about that. Why would he say, “My mind resides in the dharmakaya?”

Vidyadhara:
The whole point is that you are not reduced to deaf and dumb.

S:
I was afraid of that answer.

V:
You become more intelligent.

S:
Is it the dharmakaya itself speaking at that point?

V:
Dharmakaya, yes. Dharmakaya is dharma body, the body which is the dharma itself. It has developed all kinds of skillful ways of presenting the teachings, so it could speak for itself.

S:
And it is aware of itself enough to.

V:
I wouldn’t say aware of itself, but it happens that way. [
Laughter
]

Student:
There is no way you could compare that mind to our own as we experience it now?

Vidyadhara:
Well, I suppose we could try very hard to compare, but it wouldn’t be accurate to do that. You have to speak through the language of metaphor. Then the metaphor itself becomes a hang-up. It’s like the old story of the person who points out the moon to his child. When the child asks, “What is the moon?” he points and says, “That is the moon.” And the child says, “Oh I never realized that the moon was oblong.” [
Laughter
]

Student:
Is the light inside the mind part of shunyata, or is it a sidetrack, some kind of diversion?

Vidyadhara:
The light?

S:
The light, the clear light.

V:
It depends on what you refer to as light. Obviously it is not just a visual matter.

S:
When you go inside your mind, it’s like there’s a bright light, and if you keep meditating it gets brighter and brighter.

V:
Does it?

S:
I think so. They say there are seven steps on the way to the third eye.

V:
Um—no! [
Laughter
]

S:
I was wondering what that had to do with shunyata?

V:
Doesn’t sound like it, particularly. [
Laughter
] Shunyata is very simple. That’s why it is called shunyata, empty. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing.

S:
But what is the light, what is that?

V:
Reflections, I suppose. [Injuries?] tend to make, create a spark.

Student:
When you talk about surrendering ego, at least to me, it is a very fearful thing. Without the fear though, could the surrender of ego be the first act of generosity from your point of view?

Vidyadhara:
But that seems to be what we have to start with. There’s no other way, you see. There’s no way of getting sedatives so that you won’t be afraid of surrendering and
then
surrendering. That’s not possible at all. We have to use the fear itself as a stepping-stone. That’s the style of practice that is always presented—using whatever is there as an obstacle, as a ladder, as a stepping-stone. That seems to be the only way that we can do it. We can’t start perfectly, but we have to start in a clumsy way. Finally, that clumsiness becomes perfection because we are willing to relate with it. It wears itself out. That seems to be the only way that we can do it—whatever we do.

S:
By attrition it wears itself out, by doing it?

V:
By actually pushing it, doing it—
as though
you are doing it, rather.

S:
Does that happen only through meditation, or are these things that you can consciously have in your life?

V:
Anything in your life. If your life is regarded as a learning process, there will be all kinds of opportunities to do that.

Student:
Rinpoche, is it possible that people who haven’t lost their ego yet will sometimes act in an egoless way?

Vidyadhara:
There are always possibilities. Glimpses of egolessness happen quite frequently. I wouldn’t say that you have to get to a definite state, necessarily. There are always possibilities of doing something by chance—apparently by chance.

Well, we might have to close our sermon on shunyata.

Student:
I have sort of a ragged question—in the
Jewel Ornament of Liberation
, Gampopa described a whole series of hells, eighteen hells, and I don’t know how many heavens. He also talks very definitely, that if you do this, the fate of that will naturally be that. How literally is all that supposed to be taken or what? [
Laughter
]

Vidyadhara:
Well, the thing is that it is possible. It is possible and it might be literal.

S:
You mean those hells actually exist in so many miles down in the depths of the earth? And you have beings boiling you in hot copper and putting things into your mouth and—

V:
Possible. [
Laughter
] I think saying it is not literal, that it is purely symbolic, has a different tone to it. Somehow it is not wise to say that it is purely symbolic. But on the whole, what is the difference between symbol and reality, anyway?

S:
We use the symbol as an expression of something which cannot be—

V:
Precisely, yes. So the intensity of the result of aggression can only be described by hell, descriptions of how grotesquely you could be boiled or punished or tortured.