The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (72 page)

When thoughts arise, you just look at them and you notice “thought.” It’s not “good thought” or “bad thought.” Whether you have a thought of wisdom or a thought of evil, you just look at it and say, “thought.” And then you come back to the breath. By doing that, you begin to develop the notion of putting the saddle on the horse. Your mind begins to be trained. It becomes less crazy, less drowsy, and more workable at that point.

This particular practice of meditation is known as
shamatha
, which literally means “dwelling in peace.” In this case, peace is not a euphoric or blissful state but simply a basic and down-to-earth situation that results from cutting out hassle and turmoil. We aren’t trying to achieve any goal or attain any particular state of being, in either the religious or secular sense.

When we practice in this way, we find that thoughts which perpetuate neurosis melt or evaporate. Ordinarily we don’t pay any attention to our thoughts. We unknowingly cultivate them by acting according to whatever they command. But when we sit down quietly and look at them, without judgment or goal—just look at them—they dissolve by themselves.

In shamatha meditation, one’s attention span is naturally extended, and one’s open-mindedness is developed. You become more steady and also more cheerful—free from turmoil. That is why it is called “shamatha,” dwelling in peace.

So that is the first stage in learning: learning how to learn. That is the first step. First you cut through the basic notion of ego, of holding on to neurosis. Beyond that, there is what is known as
vipashyana
, which literally means “insight,” practice. In this case, insight is seeing things as they are—not adding passion or aggression to them. Now we are beginning to step outside the meditation compound and examine how we relate to our world.

The world that we live in is fabulous. It is utterly workable. We see motorcars going by in the street, buildings standing as they are, trees growing, flowers blooming, rain and snow falling, water flowing, and wind clearing the air, ventilating . . . whether there is pollution or not. The world we live in is all right, to say the least. We can’t complain at all.

We should begin to learn how to appreciate this world, this planet on which we live. We should realize that there is no passion, aggression, or ignorance existing in what we see. We begin by developing mindfulness of our steps, as we walk. Then we begin to experience the sacredness of brushing our hair and putting on our clothes.

Activities such as shopping, answering the telephone, typing, working in a factory, studying in school, dealing with our parents or our children, going to a funeral, checking ourselves in at the maternity department of the hospital . . . whatever we do is sacred. The way we develop that attitude is by seeing things as they are, by paying attention to the energy of the situation, and by not expecting further entertainment from our world. It is a matter of simply being, being natural, and always being mindful of everything that takes place in our day-to-day life.

That develops naturally from shamatha meditation. Sitting meditation is like taking a shower. Vipashyana, or awareness practice, is like drying your body with a towel and then putting on your clothes.

So there are two aspects to our journey, to our learning process: there is learning by sitting meditation and learning by life experiences. And there is no problem in joining these two together. It is like having a pair of eyes and then putting on glasses. It is the same thing.

Meditation

A TALK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

H
AS ANYBODY TALKED
to you about meditation? The basic idea of the sitting practice of meditation is that it is what the Buddha did, and because of that, he attained enlightenment. That’s the basic point. And we have been told how to practice that way too, so that in turn, we can attain enlightenment.

One of the basic ideas is that generally, when we are about in the world, we want a lot of things and we can’t get them. And sometimes we get angry with other people. Then we want to destroy them. Sometimes we have so much desire to get something to hold on to. All those things are called obstacles to meditation. They are the problems that we face.

Because of these things we suffer quite a lot, and nobody is basically comfortable with themselves because they are filled with all these feelings of anger, passion, and all the rest of it. Sometimes people say they are happy but, at the same time, they are restless all the time and in the depths of themselves they are suffering quite a lot. Such pain and suffering come from having too many thoughts and the confusion of passion, aggression, and ignorance—which is called ego. You know about that: ego? Right.

The idea of meditation is not necessarily to just get rid of these thoughts and feelings right away, but simply to work with them. As you sit, first you begin to feel some sense of yourself. Then as you sit more, you begin to find lots of thoughts coming out. Just look at them and don’t necessarily push them aside or cultivate them, but come back to your breath.

Holding the meditation posture is doing what the Buddha did. The idea is that if you make this gesture of good posture, that straightens your sense of discipline and presence. And then, experiencing that, you feel your breath and go along with the breath. The basic idea is that you don’t have to push the thoughts away, but you can almost get underneath thoughts. Out of that you could develop some sense of calmness, but sometimes it goes away. It’s like trying to catch a fish in the water with your naked hand. It slips away.

The idea is to remain with the discipline and to slowly overcome, first of all, the thought process, and then after that, to slowly overcome passion, aggression, and ignorance until, at some point, they begin to become meaningless—until they no longer are a big deal.

Then your ego begins to diminish a little bit, become less, become less of an ego. You begin to have a glimpse of what is called egolessness, which is the first step toward enlightenment. In order to do that, you also have to work with your everyday life situations. Sometimes when you’re not sitting, you might suddenly develop mindfulness. When that happens, look at yourself and try to be calm with some sense of not holding on to anything; just be steady, still. That doesn’t necessarily mean to say that you physically have to hold steady, but psychologically you do.

If you’re about to have a fight, just flash, and then hold steady. The idea of wanting to have a fight begins to dissolve, and, in turn, because of that, one begins to develop what is known as compassion. You begin to have more trust in yourself, less destructiveness in yourself, and less pain. And because you have less pain, therefore you’re able to communicate that to other people. Working with oneself that way, in turn, you begin to work with others. That seems to be the basic point of why you have to practice meditation.

If you have any questions, you are welcome.

Student:
Why do you follow your breath and concentrate on your breath instead of your finger or whatever?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, well, that’s a good point. You see breathing is actually a communication between your mind and body. Body is too solid to concentrate on because it’s too gross a level. And you can’t hold on to mind because it’s constantly moving. So breathing is something in between, which communicates mind and body together.

S:
I thought that when you got egolessness that you were enlightened, and instead, it’s just one step toward enlightenment?

TR:
Well, it’s like removing a cloud. The sun is there already, but this is removing the clouds. So you have the sun already, but ego is a layer or covering rather than anything fundamental. Therefore, basically we are good but we’ve been covered up. So we are removing coverings. That’s why you can actually undo them. Otherwise, if the clouds were permanent, you couldn’t do anything with them, right?

S:
It’s like have a clear mind.

TR:
Absolutely, that is clear mind.

S:
But my parents are telling me that people are all enlightened but they just don’t know that. . . .

TR:
Well, we might say that we know there is a sun, but still it is very cloudy. You see that is the only reason that enlightenment is permanent: it is not manufactured. It’s there all the time. And anything beyond that, such as ego and passion, aggression and ignorance, are impermanent. They come and go. Therefore we can handle them. And they come back too: sometimes when you remove them, they come back. So you keep on clearing out.

S:
What would happen if you didn’t have a clear mind?

TR:
Then you suffer a lot. You’re constantly tortured. You know, people are trying to please themselves but there’s no way of doing it, even if you’re a millionaire. They have everything physically that they want, lots of money and a comfortable situation, but they’re not very happy fundamentally.

S:
Thank you.

TR:
You’re welcome.

The Spiritual Battlefield

W
HEN WE TALK ABOUT
the word
mind
, we are talking about the different levels or states of consciousness. It does not have anything to do with higher levels of consciousness, whatever that might be. We are talking about mind and its different functions—the literal mind, or simple thought process that takes place in our everyday life: before you drive, you check that you have a key in your pocket; before you smoke cigarettes, you make sure that you have a match in your pocket; before you eat, you make sure the meal’s been cooked, and little things like that. That kind of reasoning mind is intelligent, and it functions constantly.

Of course, depending on adulthood or adolescence or infanthood, that kind of logic begins to grow and become somewhat more sophisticated. As you become a grown-up person and after that, an old man or woman, your training as to how to work things out develops so that you don’t run into unnecessary chaos. Our parents used to train us, and our elders used to criticize us, so that finally we think we’ve got our trip together, so to speak. If you are going to see somebody, you call them first and make sure they are at home or that it is convenient for you to visit. Simple little situations like that are the basic intelligence taking place.

In the business realm, domestic realm, and ordinary everyday life, whatever you do, there is a sense of priority. You know what you are going to do and everything is planned. Often people make lists of things in notebooks and put them in their pockets. You have your style of making sure everything is okay and in order so that you don’t run into any unexpected chaos and problems. The important thing is that things don’t bounce back on you, that you don’t lose control of them. So you make sure that everything is under control, that you have control over everything.

We do everything in a very meticulous way, very special, very careful. We would like to take care of ourselves as much as we can. Although we are abused and blamed by our elders or our parents saying, “You don’t care for yourself. You should pull yourself together!” nevertheless we think that we are doing a pretty good job of ourselves, taking care of our food, housing, and clothes. Whatever way you would like to present yourself to the world, you just buy the appropriate clothes, appropriate haircut, appropriate way of speaking. All of that is a function of what is called mind. The Tibetan word for that [aspect of mind] is
sem
, which means “whatever can communicate to the object world.”

L
ODRÖ

Then we have another type of mind, which seems to be an entirely different angle—maybe not entirely, but relatively different—which is that we have whole avenues of unexplored areas of all kinds. We have memories of the past, we have expectations of the future, we might become somewhat proud of ourselves occasionally. We look for resources, maybe through the information that we learned in high school or at the first-grade level. We look back at our grammar, look back at our mathematics, look back at our science course. We look back and if we cannot find anything at those levels, we try to work our reasonable logic. Usually we can do a pretty good job of that. We can dig up some kind of intelligence or continuity.

We don’t have to give up the whole thing as if we had a complete mental blockage. Sometimes we panic, thinking we might have a mental blockage. We are completely freaked out and thinking of dropping out of school. Maybe you have done so already or are about to do so. All kinds of things happen. The language of philosophy and metaphysics may be too complicated even to relate with. At the beginning, it turns out to be a mishmash of all kinds of jumbled-up large vocabulary which is almost incomprehensible. Particularly if you have an attitude against Greek and Latin, when you look back on our language, you are intimidated. You don’t have any understanding about the languages we have used to understand philosophy, science, mathematics, or cosmology. But if you push yourselves hard enough and are diligent, you usually make a good job out of that. That’s common knowledge. If you don’t freak out and panic halfway through, if you push yourself hard enough and indulge yourself in the pride of becoming a scholar, one day you are going to make it. There is a strong possibility of doing that.

That particular stage is called
lodrö
in Tibetan, which means “intellect.” The Sanskrit word is
mati. Lo
is “intelligence,”
drö
is a sense of “warming up the intelligence.” So there is a sense of warmth, or heat. You don’t chicken out. When we talk about chickening out in this case, we are talking about when we feel cold, as when we say, “I’m getting cold feet about something or other.” You don’t get cold feet, but you get warm feet—warm head. Heat or warmth takes place. We feel we can exhaust ourselves and push ourselves to the limit, that we could pull ourselves up to understand and study. That is the lodrö level, which is intellect. We can
use
our mind from that point of view.