The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (76 page)

But that nondiscrimination becomes grasping before the comfortable, snug ignorance finds its place. So this confused venture of passion is depicted in the symbol of the rooster. Passion feels inadequate, so it presents its spiky, sharp points in order to lure like a fishhook, to draw in so that it consumes and attracts attention at the same time. This display by the rooster of its colorful feathers, as well as its beak, can draw in the object of passion; so passion is seen as eliminating the beauty of the phenomenal world. Passion draws in these beauties by a succession of games. Where there is any possible threat to the success of drawing in, it appears that the only possible way of accomplishing the process is to subjugate the object of passion—either by putting out poison to paralyze it or else by overpowering it. This is much the way a snake would proceed, either projecting poison through its fangs or else coiling around that object of desire until it has been completely subdued. Thus the snake is the symbol of aggression. So the whole pattern of aggression and passion is seen as capturing that which is close or else destroying that which is beyond your control. This pattern is at the center of the wheel.

The essence of samsara is found in this turmoil, in this complex situation, as well as in the misunderstandings of bewilderment, passion, and aggression, so the situation also provides the possible means of eliminating these aggravations. But at the same time, unless you relate to these three as path—understanding them, working with them, treading on them—you do not discover the goal. So therefore, as Buddha says, “Suffering should be realized, origin should be overcome and, by that, cessation should be realized because the path should be seen as the truth.” Seeing the truth as it is, is the goal as well as the path. For that matter, discovering the truth of samsara
is
the discovery of nirvana, for truth does not depend on other formulae or alternative answers. The reality of samsara is equally the reality of nirvana. This truth is seen as one truth without relativity.

Seven Characteristics of a Dharmic Person

T
ONIGHT WE WILL
go through the seven characteristics of a dharmic person, which refers to how we can actually relate with ourselves in that vein. Such lists are very traditional. They are also connected with how our forefathers in the Kagyü lineage practiced their discipline fully. These lists were taught by the Buddha himself to his own monks. They represent a long-standing tradition of discipline. They are connected with how we can train ourselves and how we can actually organize our livelihood, how we can create a society of some kind.

P
ASSIONLESSNESS

Number one is passionlessness, which is an interesting theme for Westerners. You have all kinds of possibilities of organizing and creating occupations—from chewing gum to taking trips to the Bahamas. You are always looking for ways to solve your boredom, your boredom
problem
. In contrast, passionlessness means experiencing boredom properly and fully. You don’t immediately fill the gap with all kinds of things. You might have an itch on your hip because you realize that you have several packages of chewing gum in your pocket. You want to take some out and put it in your mouth.

Here in the West, whenever you have that itch, you reach right away for your gum. You are in such a hurry that you can’t even open the package properly: you just dump the gum into your mouth and chew it. [
Laughter
] And when the weather is cold, you can’t stand even a few seconds of chill; you must rush into your bedroom and get a sweater and put it on right away. If your tea is not all that good, if it is slightly bitter, you automatically reach for the sugar pot and put several more spoonfuls of sugar into your tea.

Things like that are a problem; you have not been properly taught any way of dealing with boredom. You are not able to stand that kind of hardship properly. We are not particularly talking about extreme cases: starving to death or freezing to death. We are not talking about going to extremes but about some sense of levelness in your life.

In Western society, when any little irritation comes up, there is always something to cure it. They even sell little pads to stick on your spectacles to keep them from sliding down, so that they will stay on your nose properly. From little things like pads for your spectacles to the biggest of the biggest, as long as anybody can afford it, the Western approach is to cure any kind of boredom, any kind of irritation at all. So passion is connected with being unable to relate with boredom—needing some kind of sustaining power. And a practitioner is someone who can maintain himself, who can relate with boredom.

C
ONTENTMENT

Number two is contentment. You have some feeling that you don’t have to expand yourself, that you are contained in your own existence. So contentment is very close to passionlessness and to overcoming the notion of laziness.

Contentment is also connected with appreciating what you have, with some sense of rejoicing, which is often very hard. You are constantly involved with possibilities of change, all the time changing from one thing to another. You cannot celebrate your own life as what you have, what you are. You are unable to celebrate the simplicity of the practice itself and the simplicity of life. But being contented with what you have
is
a celebration.

Supposing you feel an itch in your pocket, but you don’t have any chewing gum on that particular day. You should feel contented; you should feel relieved. “For heaven’s sake, I don’t have any chewing gum! That’s fine.” A chance to appreciate that simplicity has been presented to you. Ordinarily, people talk in terms of obstacles: “I had a bad time. I didn’t have any chewing gum in my pocket. I had a bad day.” [
Laughter
] But you could switch gears altogether: “It was such a relief to find that I didn’t have any chewing gum in my pocket. I feel fine; I just let go.”

You can have some appreciation of obstacles becoming simplicity. Maybe you didn’t get your liquor order today, and maybe you feel irritated by that. But on the other hand, that simplifies your life. You could experience some sense of celebration at that point, instead of blaming it on somebody else or on yourself or on the environment.

P
REVENTING
T
OO
M
ANY
A
CTIVITIES

Number three is preventing too many activities, or you could say, reducing too many activities. According to tradition, that actually boils down to cutting nonfunctional talking, cutting the baby-sitter mentality, the entertainment mentality. You can get yourself into all kinds of projects, all kinds of engagements. You can become chummy with the world so that you don’t have to hold your discipline, or your mindfulness, properly. You can jump from A to B to Z; you can just launch in, you just flip the pages and you have your thing prepared already. If you don’t like tea, you can have coffee. If you don’t like coffee, you could switch to Coca-Cola. If you don’t like Coca-Cola, you can drink scotch or tequila.

You involve yourself in constant, constant activity. Sometimes you don’t even know what you are doing, you just come up with the idea that you need to be occupied with something, but you can’t put your finger on anything: “Do I need sex or do I need money or do I need clothes? What do I need?” You feel like you need something . . . companionship? . . . One never knows.

It’s like going to a bookstore: you don’t know exactly whether you should read a magazine or a novel or whether you should buy—what do you call it?—
Playboy
or the other one—what is it called? You busy yourself with lots of activities. Usually, people have access to all those things; they occupy their whole life that way. People have problems with that a lot.

In fact, you have an immediate problem right here in this room where you are sitting. You might begin to choose which color to look at: whether you should look at the white or the black or the purple or the green or at the floral design. You are making choices all the time. At the same time you might be thinking of which fantasies to dwell on: your future; your past; your desire for food; the eccentricities of your friends and relatives; or various creative activities like sex, cooking, or buying clothes. You could think about anything; the possibilities are infinite.

Getting chummy with the situation involves lots of activity. According to the hinayana principle, you have to cut that down. When you become too chummy with your world, too familiar with your world, it becomes endless. You can study the whole thing and learn to be even more chummy—with things that you have never even heard of, never even thought of.

You can read about all kinds of things or you can ask your friends; there are infinite possibilities. That can actually lead you to suicide. You finally have everything—if you are all that good at being chummy with the world—you have a complete collection. And when you have collected the whole thing, it will drive you mad. You will end up taking your own life because the whole thing is too much: you can’t possibly do it all and you begin to feel that you are not capable of doing even one thing properly. That is the basic problem with materialism.

G
OOD
C
ONDUCT

Number four is good conduct, which is quite straightforward. It is a sense of mindfulness and awareness: whatever you are doing, you should try to see it as an extension of your sitting practice—your general sense of awareness and your refraining from too much activity. “Awareness” sounds like a problem. Ordinarily, when people talk about developing awareness, they mean being cautious, being careful. But ladies and gentlemen, I can convince you that when we talk about basic awareness, it is a question of waking up—simply waking up.

By the way, the opposite of waking up is falling asleep. That kind of sleep is not usually very pleasant. It’s very sweaty and energy-consuming; it downgrades you. It is like putting your head in the sand and trying to hide—ostrich-style. This kind of sleep is avoiding the possibility of any realization at all; you just feel bad about yourself and about the consequences of your existence, which is not as glamorous as you would like it to be.

But I don’t think you should be embarrassed about yourselves; there are all kinds of possibilities of celebrating. You could be so sharp or—we could even use such a simple phrase as that you could be so smart that you could look at yourself and smile. You could be awake and aware and, at the same time, on the spot.

Constant sunrise happens. You reflect that yourself, and you always look awake and aware of what you are doing. That is good conduct. You respect yourself and you respect the sacredness of your whole being, your whole existence. When you have that kind of self-respect, you don’t spill your tea or put your shoes on the wrong feet. You appreciate the weather, your coffee, your tea, your clothes, your shower. There is a tremendous sense that for the first time you have become a real human being and you can actually appreciate the world around you. That appreciation comes from being aware. So awareness is not necessarily self-conscious; it is simply looking at what you’re doing.

A
WARENESS OF THE
T
EACHER

Number five is awareness of the teacher and of other realized people who you are studying with. The idea is to be without shyness and to be able to relate with your teacher (who in the hinayana tradition is an elder) as somebody who has accomplished the path already. Because you are without shyness, you could relate with the teacher and emulate him properly and fully. You have some sense of appreciation that you are and will be part of a certain tradition, a certain discipline. You have as an example a teacher who is behaving in a way that you should behave, and you have some sense of sacredness in studying and listening to the teacher.

P
ROPAGATING
P
RAJNA

Number six is propagating prajna, or your intellect, fully and thoroughly. That is to say, you should find out and understand who you are and what you are made of. You should find out what your mind is made out of, what your mind’s projections are made out of, and what your relationship with your world is made out of.

According to the theistic tradition, you committed a big sin right at the beginning. That big sin is called “original sin.” Because of that, many possibilities have been completely cut down. Therefore you have to purify that sin, and only then
might
you have a decent chance. You might or you might not. Maybe you could go from purgatory to heaven. That myth can be wiped out by realizing and studying how your mind can be unwound by undoing what you are. There are positive and good qualities, or basic goodness, in everybody.

Sometimes in your study of the dharma, you are given long lists of things, and sometimes the way things work is explained very mechanistically and intellectually. But that approach is very helpful. You should understand the teachings logically: why you are here, why you have five skandhas, why you are what you are. That is good.

A
TTITUDE OF
G
OODNESS

Number seven, the last one, is a basic attitude of goodness, or a general sense of goodness, which comes from your own practice and discipline. There is nothing to say about it, particularly, except keep on sitting and you will find out that both sanity and insanity exist in you. Insanity is not particularly regarded as an obstacle; it is simply regarded as kindling wood. Because of your insanity, you are here. But you don’t stop there; you go beyond and you brighten up greater sanity by sitting and perfectly watching your activities.

So the hinayana approach has nothing to do with big explosions of enlightenment, big orgasms of enlightenment on the spot. We are talking about paying attention to details and to your mind and to your behavior pattern. When you wake up and before you fall asleep, just look and be genuine; you can’t fool yourself.

If you have been attempting to fool yourself, please don’t. It won’t work; it will be suicidal. In fact it won’t even be suicidal. The purpose of suicide is to kill yourself and put an end to consciousness. But in fact you will experience constant torture. You can’t even kill yourself. There’s no way to cut your torture by destroying your body. There’s no way to stop anything. The whole thing goes on all the time.