The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (73 page)

R
IKPA

Then we have another layer of the definition of mind, which is beyond intellect. In Tibetan it is called
rikpa
, which means “a sense of fundamental intelligence.” The Sanskrit word for rikpa is
vidya
, which means “the knowledge that can comprehend subtle scientific experiences and demonstrations.” So rikpa is experience. It also could refer to particular disciplines, which could be regarded as rikpas of all kinds: the rikpa of scientific language or knowledge, or whatever.

Vidya, or rikpa, is intelligence, pointed intelligence. With this kind of intelligence, the mind becomes very sharp and so precise and completely proud of itself. It turns itself into a computer in some sense—not only in the sense of mathematics alone, but in the sense of self-respect. There is a sense of wholesomeness, of complete command of the discipline that you are studying. That sense of completely covering the whole area is rikpa. Rikpa, or vidya, can comprehend that fundamental sense of survival. What this particular computer is all about is appreciating that sense of survival, the sense of dualism, sense of behavior, sense of pattern—but fundamentally, it comprehends a sense of
being
.

Professor [Herbert] Guenther talks about analytical mind in his writings. That is a similar reference. There is a subtle sense of being which brings the actuality of a sense of being at the same time. Because you have subtle understanding, therefore you begin to relax more. You have less fear of your existence, your particular state of mind. Whatever goes on, everything is going to be okay. I can understand. I exist and you exist, so everything is going to be okay. There is nothing to panic about. Everything can be worked out mathematically and logically, or experientially. Things are workable. That fundamental, basic pride of ego is that there is something that is workable. That seems to be one of the basic points of mind.

T
HE
F
IVE
S
KANDHAS

Then the mind is divided into another five types of process. I don’t want to present you with a lot of figures, but I think this one is necessary for you to understand. There are five types of consciousness, which are called the five
skandhas
, or “heaps of collective things that happen in our mind.” We don’t exist from that point of view. Even our pride of self-existence, or sense of being, is by no means one entity. It is a collective entity of all kinds of things jumbled together. That is why the skandhas are called heaps. Maybe the closest to it, a free translation with a touch of humor, is “garbage.” When we talk about disposing of the garbage we have collected, we don’t usually talk about just one thing as garbage. We have collected lots of things to build such garbageness, that air of being garbage. Everything has been collected, and everything is related with each other—and it is decayed and smelly and unpleasant, and we want to get rid of that collective thing, or garbage. Skandhas are a similar situation.

The first skandha is called the skandha of
form
. It is a state of uncertainty. A sense of being is constantly operating in our state of mind, but we don’t really want to commit ourselves to it. There is basic bewilderment and uncertainty as to who is this being. Who we are, what we are, is uncertain. We think we do exist, we think our name is so-and-so, we think we have an ego of some kind, but we actually have no idea how and why, what exactly is the case. We are completely uncertain experientially. Of course, logically we can explain it in complete detail, but that seems to be simply trying to reinforce ourselves constantly.

Actually, personally, experientially, when we look into our state of being, this me that seems to be the experiencer—
I
seem to be experiencing me-ness, and
I
seem to be experiencing thisness,
I
seem to be experiencing there is something happening here. As we say, something is cooking. But what is this? It could be all kinds of things. For one thing, I don’t feel particularly good; therefore I feel very self-conscious myself. I feel my clumsiness and my uptightness—I did this and I did that and I don’t feel so good—therefore maybe this is a product of sickness of some kind. Maybe I am freaking out. That is the popular answer that you get, that bad message—here was something, but it’s gone rotten, therefore finally it’s giving itself in. Of course not! That is the state of being
in any case
, all the time.

That self-existing Danish blue cheese is constantly fermenting itself, whether you pass store after store of it or customers bought it and put it in their refrigerators. That Danish blue cheese is still fermenting itself, growing fungus after fungus in it. It’s taking place all the time. It is not because you behaved badly in a particular year, particular month, particular week, and therefore things have gone wrong. It has nothing to do with sudden chaos. It was the case all the time—or the basic reason that you don’t really exist. And trying to make yourself exist is like the blue cheese trying to maintain itself by overgrowing its fungus and becoming dissolved into nothingness.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the case. That is the perfect case. We don’t exist as one whole being, one whole entity at all. We are collective. We are a collection of lots of things, and all of those entities are uncertain whether that entity exists or not. Every cell of this consciousness is defeating itself and uncertain of itself. So there is no sense of being, really, fundamentally. It’s purely a dream we try to put together. That seems to be the basic point of the skandha of form.

Then we have the skandha of
feeling
. Having at least had some experience that if you have a bag of sand in your hand, the grains of sand are separate and perishable, still you try to hold on to the bag. That is the state of consciousness on the level of [feeling or] emotion. In this case, emotion is not a particularly highly developed state of emotion. It is emotion from the point of view of trying to feel out the textures of life. “If I get into this situation, will it be kind and harmonious? If I get into that situation, on the other hand, maybe it would be more friendly and harmonious to me.” You are constantly looking further and further—for a strong and solid bag that you can put the grains of sand that you collected into, trying to hold them together. That chaos that exists, that no-entity that exists, is trying to create a bag or container, territory.

Out of that feeling comes
impulse
. In the same way that there is the desire to take an immediate leap, you could communicate with that, as if there is a message of your existence coming back to you: “This experience is very aggressive to you, trying to fight you; this experience is very yielding to you, you can include it in part of your system.” We begin to celebrate that; we feel very good about it. We begin impulsively, very frivolously, to try to latch on to such information, such reinforcement coming to us. Whether it is aggressive or passive doesn’t really matter. We are looking for some kind of reinforcement, some kind of response. That is the point of impulse.

Impulse leads us into what’s known as
concept
. Concept is that we don’t only try to name or conceptualize particular shades of impulse into that quality or this quality. Now we begin to realize that we have magnetized enough reinforcement as our friend, as our army of soldiers, and we begin to give them authority: “You be my secretary; you should be my general; you should be my lieutenant; you should be my colonel; you should be my soldier.” You begin to label things so that you could protect
me, my existence
. Concepts of all kinds are being developed.

On the level of spirituality, a certain religious practice is very helpful, and that is going to reinforce my existence. A certain political move may be good to maintain myself. A certain domestic move might be good. Certain behavior and eating certain prescribed food might be good to maintain myself. Experiencing certain types of physical exercises might be good for me. Following particular disciplines would be good for me to experience. We can go haywire on that and collect so many things, from tuning in to cosmic consciousness and getting high and tripped out, to the point of being kind to your next-door neighbor. There is a long range of possibilities. Spiritually and domestically, there are all kinds of concept-oriented possibilities.

After that, there is what is known as
consciousness
. It is the state of consciousness that exists in the realm of past information and memories coming back to you and present thoughts coming to you all the time. In order to maintain ourselves, to at least hold on to our ego, we are trying to hold on to something that is there—which is subconscious gossip of all kinds, visual types of discursive thoughts, quotations coming back to you, past glimpses of experiences, and future expectations coming back to you. So the thought process acts as a kind of screening process for you: finally you have your castle, you have your soldiers, you have your army, and you have your subjects. You have become king of the ego realm. Everything is worked out from detail to detail. The emotions that exist in our state of being are related with the fifth skandha, the skandha of consciousness. Emotions of all kinds—such as anger, pride, passion, jealousy, and ignorance—are the highlights of the thought process. The less important thought process is the ordinary gossip that goes on through our mind. So finally we make ourselves a completely solid being out of nothingness.

The five-skandha process is by no means a personal experience we have already gone through. It is happening all the time. It is not that those experiences already happened and therefore all of that process is purely a myth at all, that once upon a time you had the first skandha and now you are at the level of the fifth skandha. What we are talking about here is a personal experience that happens constantly in our state of being. It becomes very real to us all the time. Every moment is a state of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth skandha. That seems to be the basic point.

M
EDITATION

The practice of meditation in relationship with that is to undo them step-by-step, constantly. Hold back the sense of frivolousness, but work with the inspiration. The first step of meditation practice is dealing with the fifth skandha of consciousness with the understanding that you have basic mistrust or confusion or bewilderment in your state of being—which is an understanding of the first skandha, the skandha of ignorance, bewilderment.

Understanding that and taking that as a basic standpoint, we then can work on the further skandha process, beginning with the fifth skandha.

It seems that there is no other way than the practice of meditation that you can deal with such an advanced subject, such a vast state of mind. There is no other way, absolutely no other way. That seems to be the only possibility. Otherwise, if you look into alternatives of all kinds, you may be able to find somebody who thought up some great idea in the corner of the universe, maybe a fantastic thing to try. However, its relationship to our state of being is uncertain. We are not quite certain.

This project is a huge project, an enormous project. It has been the battlefield between enlightenment and samsara for billions of years. It is the heart of spirituality. So it seems much better and more sensible at this point to get into that big project first, to try to deal with the greatest problem and difficulty that exists, rather than trying to pick up the crumbs first, saying to ourselves, “Well, let me try to pick the whole thing up before we get into this big thing”—because that means you are chickening out. You find all kinds of little things that you can tidy up to make sure that you don’t have to get to the big project, which is a very big deal. So it seems to be necessary to take some kind of leap or jump. It takes a state of heroism. We are launching into the big project without discussing the little details.

Even asking how to do it, “What is the way?”—whenever we talk about how to do it and what is the way, we are talking in terms of saving problems and pain. We are trying to buy a pair of gloves, a pair of pliers, so that we don’t have to strain our hands dealing with things. This particular approach is that we can use our naked hands to deal with our naked mind very directly, very precisely.

The attitude is not so much to destroy ego as a villain or evil force, but to work with that situation as a stepping-stone, as a process. At this point, the only material we have is ego. There is no other way to spirituality. Ego is the starting point. It is the only way, the only path we have in relating with spirituality and enlightenment. So in fact, from that point of view we should celebrate that we have ego. We have some hope of attaining enlightenment because we have ego, which is the starting point. That seems to be the attitude of the warrior.

The Birth of Ego

T
RADITION IS NOT NECESSARILY
a system developed by anybody, but tradition is the natural understanding of things as they are, which is based on why we see—and everybody agrees—that the sky is blue and the grass is green. Tradition is that way, rather than anybody’s established law and order or personal opinion of any kind. Therefore tradition is common sense at its best.

Enlightenment is also the height of common sense. Therefore it is regarded as a tradition. It is also regarded as infallible, as true and powerful. It never can be contradicted. Nobody can say “the sky is green” or “the grass is red”—maybe some people, but basically speaking, nobody can say that [laughs]. That basic logic—that hot is hot, cold is cold, daytime is light, and nighttime is dark—is tradition. That is the truth and at the same time it is tradition.

There is no notion of ego at all at the beginning, but there is the notion of intelligence. That particular intelligence begins to look at others, at one’s surroundings. Therefore one begins to develop awareness of other. Because others exist, therefore one begins to realize that one has to match up to them. It’s like a matching fund: if you have $40,000, then you ask somebody else to match that $40,000, so we can raise $80,000 together. I hope my mathematics are right there. In turn, we might begin to raise $16,000 beyond that, because we have already raised the first matching fund. And then we go beyond, beyond, and beyond, raising lots of funds because of the original matching fund.