The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (62 page)

Indulgence

S:
Isn’t it indulgent to try to improve your situation at all, to move geographically or try to get a better job? If you give up alternatives, do you simply stick with the boredom of your current situation?

CTR:
Changing jobs doesn’t have anything to do with it. Moving from an armchair to the sofa, which is more comfortable, or drinking tea instead of coffee—those don’t have anything to do with the larger situation. In talking about indulgence, I don’t mean that you have to punish yourself constantly. Changing your physical situation doesn’t make any difference. Indulgence is the general attitude of wanting to achieve a state of solid pleasure. That is the basic point. It is a psychological issue, a question of trying to secure your being.

S:
There might be a point where you need to make a choice.

CTR:
Choice is related to the present situation. You have only one situation at a time; you cannot have two situations happening simultaneously. You have the present situation and you have a possibility. When you make a choice, you start with the present situation rather than the possibility of some hypothetical situation that hasn’t yet materialized. That seems to be the point of having ground.

Loving Oneself

S:
By loving oneself more, do you mean not judging yourself for being in samsara, for being pleasure-seeking or involved in ego pain, but just accepting that that’s where you are?

CTR:
That seems to be the point. Loving oneself means accepting both the positive and the negative, whatever there is. It is not only loving, but also regarding the whole thing as fertile ground, as a workable situation—like a field with manure on it.

Trust in the Heart

S:
You talked about trust in the heart providing the energy that stirs you toward enlightenment. That is confusing because what we experience is so totally dependent on the confusion of our moods, on insubstantial stuff. I don’t really know how to get to the heart. It seems to suggest a ground.

CTR:
It does suggest a ground, but the ground doesn’t have to be flat ground. The ground could be the current that flows through, the ocean as ground as opposed to the land as ground. The ocean goes up and down, but it is still ground. Likewise, dissatisfactions could be regarded as ground. It’s a question of whether you are relating with the situation as workable or whether you are taking advantage of frivolity. Even frivolity could be related to as ground, somewhat, but you shouldn’t be possessed by it because in frivolity you are no longer experiencing the seriousness of the pain. Frivolity does not relate with anything except its own irony or foolishness. It is a mask. By relating with it, you might crush the mask. That seems to be the only way to relate with it.

You can’t really start with an ideal situation. In fact, as a product of discriminating intelligence, which compares grounds, you may find that the present ground is completely insubstantial—but there is still some energy going on that could be worked with. I think you have to allow yourself to have some kind of stepping-stone. It may not be as solid as you would like, but it is still a stepping-stone.

1
. In this discussion, the terms
hinayana
and
mahayana
refer to stages on the three-yana journey of hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana, rather than to the different schools of Buddhism.

TWO

A Golden Buddha

I
N THE MAHAYANA,
inspiration comes from experiencing the spark of intelligence or enlightenment in us. Discovering that potential is one of the fundamental characteristics of the mahayana. Having looked into our feelings of inadequacy, pain, and confusion, we see them as neither good nor bad, but as
workable
. In our day-to-day life, we find that the search for pleasure, either materialistic or spiritual, is unconvincing. Behind that whole approach is a sense of dissatisfaction and continual struggle. Recognizing that dissatisfaction and struggle is the discovery of the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, or duhkha. However, that discovery of the universality of pain is the discovery of buddha nature as well. That realization is not stupid or ignorant, but intelligent. So the struggle we go through is an expression of enlightened mind. The bad news in itself is good news.

The enlightenment potential, or buddha nature, has two components: fundamental intelligence and basic warmth. Fundamental intelligence, or discriminating awareness, allows us to look at situations in life critically—hopefully even to the point of searching for spirituality, the ultimate goal. Basic warmth means that even though we may condemn ourselves as bad, weak, or confused, by its very nature, such condemnation is an expression of warmth, strangely enough. By looking at ourselves critically, we expect something good will come of it, so there is a sense of ambition. Condemning ourselves is the ultimate hope, in fact.

Such virtues may be entirely spiritually materialistic or psychologically materialistic. Nevertheless, the driving force behind them, the very existence of such potential, is the buddha nature operating. At the same time, that potential is entirely dependent on the realization of pain. We start from that. So pain becomes a kind of crutch or stepping-stone to buddha nature. But at this point, buddha nature is still embryonic or potential. It is embryonic because it is
glimpse
of hope rather than an actual experience of complete hope.

The great teacher Taranatha talks about the embryonic awakened state of mind being solid, eternal, permanent. His approach is challenged by others, who say that is not the experience of real buddha nature but of ultimate ego. They say that it is precisely the function of ego—to be ambitious, to strive toward achievement, and to try to associate with what is solid, positive, and hopeful.

On the one hand, it is true that buddha nature could be regarded as ego. Enlightened mind becomes ego because a sense of security is imposed on it, a feeling that we will live forever. Ego is all those attitudes that are imposed on buddha nature. Buddha nature, or basic sanity, is exploited and used as backing to reassure us of our existence. Buddha nature is used to reassure us that we are secure and healthy, that we will never experience death. On the other hand, if there is no sense of permanent security, no sense of using buddha nature as a pawn, no sense of maintaining a relationship with simple-minded hope and fear—then buddha nature becomes just simple straightforward buddha nature, or enlightenment mind. So, on the whole, buddha nature, the attitude directed toward enlightenment, is very solid, very continuous. It is extremely definite, without any mistakes.

Buddha nature, or tathagatagarbha, has many attributes: it is unborn, unobstructed, and it does not dwell on anything. To begin with, it is continuous and solid because it is unborn. It is not based on or reinforced by something that already exists. Buddha nature does not have to be given birth to by effort or preconception, in the way that giving birth to a child requires a father and a mother. In this case, parents are synonomous with preconceptions. Buddha mind or enlightened mind is not dependent on such preconceptions; therefore, it is unborn, unoriginated.

Another attribute of buddha nature is that it is unobstructed. Its flow cannot be prevented by any causal characteristics that depend on karmic chain reactions. So it is free from karma. Our intelligence, our restlessness, does not need nursing or securing. It is constantly, intelligently, critical of pain. Our restlessness is unobstructed and does not need to be nursed.

Another attribute of buddha nature is that it does not dwell on anything, which means that we cannot categorize it as being associated with good or bad, pleasure or pain. Enlightened intelligence shines through both pain and pleasure; in other words, through any kind of cognitive mind. So the unconditioned cognitive mind that functions in our basic being is the true enlightened mind. There’s nothing very obscure about this. It has nothing to do with mystical experience or anything like that at all. It is functional, simple, direct, intelligent, sane, and pragmatic.

The basic point about buddha nature is that this restless mind is the buddha nature. Because it is so intelligent, therefore it is restless. It is so transparent that we can’t put any patch on it to mask over the irritation—if we do, the irritation still comes through. We can’t hold the irritation back or maintain ego-style comfort anymore. The purpose of ego is to search for permanent, solid comfort. Even though this search might cost a lot in terms of temporarily sacrificing and inflicting pain on ourselves, we hope that in the end we will finally achieve ultimate comfort or security—but each time we begin to achieve that, something else goes wrong.

In tantric literature, buddha mind is referred to as a lamp in a vase. If a vase is cracked, the imperfections of the vase can be seen because of the light shining through from inside. In mahayana literature, a popular analogy refers to enlightened mind as the sun and ego’s security as the clouds that prevent the sun from shining through.

The idea of buddha mind is not purely a concept or a theoretical, metaphysical ideal. It is something extremely real that we can experience ourselves. In fact, it is the ego that feels that we have an ego. It is ego that tells us, “My ego is bothering me. I feel very self-conscious about having to be me. I feel that I have a tremendous burden in me, and I wonder what the best way to get rid of it is.” Yet all those expressions of restlessness that keep coming out of us are the expression of buddha nature, the expression of unborn, unobstructed, and nondwelling.

It is said in the
Guhyasamajatantra
that all sentient beings are good vessels for the mahayana teaching, that we can exclude nobody. Therefore, we should take delight and cheer up. Also, in one of his opening speeches, so to speak, the Buddha discussed which vessels are appropriate to receive the teachings, who could be excluded and who could be included. He said, “Let everyone come and join. Invite
everybody!
” This approach of seeing buddha nature as all-pervading is one of the basic threads of tantra as well as of the mahayana. That upsurge of the energy of awakened mind is energy one can use and transmute in the tantric teachings.

In taking the bodhisattva vow, we are acknowledging that we have a great many family characteristics of the family of the Buddha. We are acknowledging that potential, or buddha nature. In fact, any kind of ambition we might have in our life, such as trying to maintain or advance ourselves, could be regarded as an expression of enlightened mind. It has been said that even the most vicious animals have the instinct to take care of their young and be loving to them, which is an expression of buddha nature.

When people have a glimpse of buddha nature, it is not a glimpse in the sense of viewing something: it is a gap rather than a glimpse. That gap is the experience that comes out of seeing through the veils of ego. But whether we have a glimpse of it or not, the buddha mind is still functioning in us all the time. It occurs in the most bizarre, cheap, and confused styles we might present, as well as in whatever extremely profound, dignified, and wise experiences we might have. All of those are the expressions of buddha nature.

One of the foundations of the mahayana approach to life is the realization that completely perfect enlightenment, samyaksambuddha, is no longer a myth—it is real. For the hinayanist, enlightenment is pure myth. First one has to attain the arhat stage, which is a stage of absorption, and from there one has to advance to the enlightened attitude. But in the mahayana approach, as Taranatha puts it, everybody carries in his or her heart a perfectly produced image of the Buddha, beautifully made, cast in gold.

Everybody has such an image in his or her heart. That seems to be true. It’s very real, delightfully real—and the unreality makes things
more
real! That is the ground of the great vehicle: before you think big, you have to think real. That seems to be the starting point of the Lion’s Roar, the proclamation of mahayana. Mahayana starts with the faith and conviction that nobody is condemned or confused.

D
ISCUSSION

Ego and Buddha Nature

Student:
Because of our confusion, because we don’t understand life, we may sit down to read a book on Buddhism. Are you saying that the impulse to try to find greater clarity or truth that prompts us to pick up the book is enlightened mind coming through?

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. Whether you understand it or not, that very attempt is buddha nature.

S:
Then where would the ego come in?

CTR:
Ego’s approach is the mentality of the lucrative, the profitable: “I should be getting something out of this book; otherwise my effort is wasted.” It’s an unrealistic, businesslike mentality, the idea that if things don’t make sense, your search is wasted.

S:
You said that the ego is buddha nature. Could you also dwell on your ego
without
having buddha nature involved?

CTR:
If you are trying to separate them, that is the work of ego. That very project becomes ego’s project. The impulse to go forward is buddha nature—any afterthoughts are ego. The first impulse, the first clear driving force, is buddha nature. If you lay an affectation over basic sanity, it becomes neurosis. Whether your attitude is that there is nothing good in ego, that there is no buddha nature, or you try to make things better or more solid, it is still an affectation.

S:
What attitude
would
bring forth buddha nature?

CTR:
Having
no
attitude, just being simple and straightforward.