The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (64 page)

It is tremendously delightful that you could make friends with your parents and yourself, make friends with your enemies and yourself. At the same time, creativity still goes on. Something is beginning to break through. It is actually becoming real rather than imaginary. It is real because we don’t have any hypothesis about how a good person should be or how we should improve ourselves. It is no longer hypothetical—it is real. Something actually does exist: relationships exist; love and hate exist. Because they exist, we are able to work with them as stepping-stones.

We begin to feel that we can afford to expand, that we can let go without protecting ourselves. We have developed enough maitri toward ourselves that we are no longer threatened by being open. At that point, we are inspired to spirituality. In this case, the idea of spirituality is nothing religious or sacred; it is purely relating to something beyond ourselves. Spirituality is relating to something beyond the simple level of me and my pen, me and my relatives, me and my friends. It is going slightly beyond that. We can go beyond the limitations of our familiarities. We see that there are further areas to explore. That becomes important—prominent, in fact.

This is the level where we begin to relate with the “spiritual friend,” or kalyanamitra. In other words, unless the fortifications of home ground have been broken down, we can’t relate with the spiritual friend at all. The spiritual friend is somebody else, some other person quite different from our parents, relatives, or friends. He or she is the epitome of a foreigner. The spiritual friend is not our father, not our mother, not our friend. He represents what is outside of home ground—an entirely new area, a new perspective.

At the beginning, the idea of relating with such a person may be rather frightening. We prefer to come back home and relate with our own people, those whom we are used to having relationships with. That feels very safe—and this idea seems a bit dubious, uncertain. Nevertheless, there is inspiration; and that inspiration is constantly expanding. The radiation of maitri is still happening, so we can’t just keep holding on to incestuous and stagnant relationships, alternating from father to friend, friend to enemy. That becomes a bit too localized, too simplified. Instead, we develop the tendency to explore a greater area. In fact, that is precisely what
mahayana
means: it is the “great vehicle,” encompassing a greater area and a sense of exploration.

At this point an odyssey begins to take place. Although we don’t want to, we still can’t keep ourselves from relating with the kalyanamitra. We finally begin to make the right mistake; we fall into the right accident. We feel uncomfortable, but at the same time it is so tempting that we
have
to step out of our old realm and get into a new approach, a new perspective. We cannot help it. We feel that we are being very naughty, but we can’t help it. We can’t help being naughty. Our people, our friends, might say, “Don’t talk to those foreigners, we don’t know about
them
, they could be dangerous.” But we still want to find out more about those foreigners, for the very reason that they think differently, they behave differently, and their style is outlandish and fascinating.

The reason we refer to such a person as a spiritual friend rather than a guru is because the popular idea of a guru is of a person who possesses spiritual power and insight and is omniscient and wise. A guru is someone who has enormous understanding about life in the world and of reality and also has tremendous power and skill. A guru could cause the world to turn against us if we were on the wrong side of that person—in contrast, we ourselves feel embarrassingly small and stupid, undignified and frivolous.

Feeling so small ourselves and being in the presence of such a large situation is so threatening. Even if we have received spiritual instructions from such a guru, we still feel uncertain as to how to handle that message. We feel so unaccommodating, so poverty-stricken, that we couldn’t possibly digest it. We can’t even hold it in our hands. Our vision is so limited, our hearing is so limited, our brains are so small and inadequate, that we feel that we can’t do anything. We might try, but it still feels as if nothing is really communicated. It is like a flea trying to study with an elephant and one day trying to become one. That seems to be the wrong notion of guru. That idea of guru is a myth.

The right approach, according to Shantideva, Gampopa, and Buddha, is that a spiritual friend, or kalyanamitra, is much more powerful than a hierarchical guru. A kalyanamitra brings a sense of friendship. The spiritual friend is extending friendship to you as you have done already. You have made friends with yourself; you have prepared yourself to search for a spiritual friend—and you find somebody who is the spokesman of the world outside your home ground. You can work with him and talk to him. He speaks your language. That person is a human being, a full-fledged human being. He needs food to sustain himself, he needs to take a rest at night, he gets up in the day, has breakfast as we do, lunch as we do, dinner as we do, wears clothes and breathes like we do. The spiritual friend is a human being.

One of the attributes of Buddha is that he is referred to as the supreme being among men. Literally, the text says, “the supreme being among two negative ones”—which is referring to humans rather than birds. The Buddha is never referred to as a heavenly being outside of this world. He is referred to as the teacher of human beings, a leader of men. He is a man himself—but he is an extraordinary one, a healthy one. Nevertheless, we can still communicate. So the spiritual friend is not a person who undermines our existence and our neurosis, but a person who speaks the same neurotic language we speak. He or she is an extraordinarily adaptable person. It is workable to relate with such a person.

The spiritual friend represents the dharma, “the teachings,” the message of enlightenment. By judging this particular person we find that enlightenment may not be as far out as we had imagined. This person is a spokesman, soaked in this particular awake state of being himself, yet he speaks and behaves as we do. He has something to teach us, and he seems to be friendly as well—although at the beginning we may still be suspicious. That is the meaning of spiritual friend: you are working with a human being, the son or daughter of a human.

Relating with such a spiritual friend is our first introduction to the realization that our adventure is not a bad one after all. The spiritual friend does not speak our petty domestic language—but in a very strange combination he is able to speak our language while at the same time not being wrapped up in the things that we usually get wrapped up in ourselves. It is a very strange kind of performance. You could almost call it magic: being a human being and not being caught up in the pettiness. It’s an extraordinary thing.

We often wonder whether somebody doing that is an accomplished actor. Maybe it is our own fantasy. Maybe we are seeing somebody we want to see, but it is not actually happening. Those thoughts flicker in our minds naturally. I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. Such things are necessary. They give us a break from the heavy-handedness of our spiritual friend. We have a little snack, a little break, an intermission—which is good. We don’t expect to be heavy-handed ourselves or transform ourselves completely.

According to the scriptures and my own personal experience, a kalyanamitra, or spiritual friend, is a good person, good and trustworthy; and relating with a spiritual friend is a trustworthy situation. It is trustworthy because whenever there is doubt or fear, the spiritual friend does not try to justify himself, but bounces that back on you to remind you to awaken buddha nature. The spiritual friend is a very powerful mirror—a mirror that can reflect back your own reflection with super-clarity to the point of irritation. Even if you try to escape from that embarrassing encounter, that notion of escape is also recorded. It bounces back on you as well, so you can’t get out of it. You find yourself on the path in an encounter with a spiritual friend who will let you escape—but that escape itself becomes another encounter.

The spiritual friend can perform miracles purely by working with the ordinariness of life. It is nothing fabulous or magical, but a question of how much one is involved with the ordinariness of life. You would be surprised how much magic there is if one is being completely ordinary, if one is thoroughly and fully experiencing the highest quality of ordinariness or simplicity of life. While you are taking off into some fantasy, which you think is your ground—when you think that you have your ground already set up—that person who is at the ordinary level pops us. At the beginning you think it is a miracle, that somebody has conjured up chaos. But in fact it is not a miracle in terms of magic; it is a miracle in that self-existing energy has been connected. The spiritual friend is very powerful because he or she has direct access to the ordinariness of life, nothing fanciful.

Relating with the spiritual friend brings us out from our home ground of seemingly domesticated maitri to the level of compassion, or karuna. That seems to be the turning point of commitment to the teachings and to the agent of the teachings, who is the spiritual friend. The teaching is not a myth anymore; it is real, livable, workable, and pragmatic. At the same time, the intelligence of our buddha nature begins to function.

D
ISCUSSION

Sitting Practice and Maitri

Student:
It seems that sitting practice exercises maitri, that it gives us room. I have been following my breath, sort of shutting out the chaos, but I’m a little confused about this.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche:
Shutting out chaos is necessary at the beginning. Then, when you let go of the technique, you find that you have more space than you imagined. So the technique creates a situation, rather than the technique being valid in itself. It is like dropping your crutches—you begin to bounce. The idea of technique is to accentuate whatever comes afterward.

Maitri and Self-Acceptance

S:
How does one develop maitri and really accept oneself?

CTR:
When you talk about
how
to do it, you are asking for a technique that won’t bring you into an uncomfortable situation but at the same time will achieve what you want to achieve. Instead of using your hands, you want to use some machine, a pair of pliers or gloves. You are not willing to relate with things directly. So it seems that there is no
how
to do it, you have to
push
yourself. If you are pushed into the water, it may create a situation of panic—but, at the same time, you automatically swim.

S:
How does one relate to the spiritual friend when one cannot accept friendship with oneself or one’s family?

CTR:
The relationship with the spiritual friend demands a relationship with yourself, so it works two ways at once. You have to learn to relate with yourself, because the spiritual friend is trying to make sure that you have no other choice. The heavy-handedness of the spiritual friend is also bouncing back a mirror reflection on you, so you are also your friend, as well as the spiritual friend being your friend. Also, if you have a relationship with a spiritual friend, that automatically means that you have done some work already; otherwise you wouldn’t look for such a person at all. That must mean there’s something going on inside you.

Buddha Nature and Searching

S:
You said that buddha nature is not a peaceful state, that it’s still searching for questions. That kind of confused me.

CTR:
In describing buddha nature, I used the analogy of a revolutionary who is trying to throw off the expressions of ego. So ego is still there, of course. A revolutionary might act as if there’s no authority, but he still has to fight with the authorities. As long as buddha nature is “nature,” or garbha, it has to try to break out. The function of buddha nature is breaking out of the shell.

Buddha nature has cognitive mind, because it is “nature”; it is imprisoned within boundaries. So cognitive mind is buddha nature. In other words, you cannot have a revolution in a country if there is no suppressor. Suppression and revolution work together as an integral situation. It is like Mao Tse-tung’s theory that you have to have a cultural revolution repeating every ten years or so to make sure that things are refreshed. Without any person to attack, you can’t renew your revolution. This is an interesting point of tension, that an upsurge needs suppression. That’s exactly the job of buddha nature, seemingly.

Transcending Struggle

S:
Does the bodhisattva transcend the whole struggle of samsara and nirvana?

CTR:
There are ten stages of the bodhisattva path, and each stage is a struggle, so I don’t think the bodhisattva transcends struggle. You can’t get rid of struggle at the start; you need struggle, otherwise there’s no journey.

FOUR

Sudden Glimpse

T
HE WHOLE APPROACH
of loving-kindness, or maitri, is one of expanding. We are taking steps outward instead of internalizing, or developing maitri in ourselves alone. This is a crucial point in the bodhisattva path and the philosophy of mahayana altogether. Mahayana is a way of expanding, and the spiritual friend acts as the entrance to that journey. Having made a relationship with a spiritual friend already, that suggests that we relate not only with that one friend alone, but with many friends. There are friends everywhere, either seemingly threatening or seemingly attractive.

In bodhisattva language, the definition
of friend
is the idea of a guest. There is a phrase, “inviting all sentient beings as your guests.” An interesting point about the word
guest
is that when we invite a guest we have a sense of the importance of the relationship. We wouldn’t invite a guest unless that guest brought some highlight, some important friendship or exchange of hospitality. Guests are usually fed specially cooked food and receive special hospitality. The life of a bodhisattva is relating with
all
sentient beings as guests. He or she is inviting everyone as a guest, constantly offering a feast.