The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (81 page)

Q:
I know the point is not to get rid of your depression or anger, but do they wear out, like distractions?

TR:
No promise, my dear. Wait and see. Have more patience.

*
Attributed to Seng-ts’an.—Editor

Aggression

Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the dharma,

Grant your blessings so that dharma may progress along the path,

Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion,

Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.

I
N BINDING OUR MIND
to the dharma, we are able to realize the confusions that take place in our life and the amount of suffering created from our life situation. But we are still unable to accept the truth completely. So we have to become completely identified with the dharma, which is much more than believing in something, much more than taking a random step toward commitment. There’s a tremendous difference between commitment to the dharma and actually becoming part of the dharma: taking a step toward it has something to do with making decisions, but becoming completely committed is more than a decision—it is leaping off a cliff. The whole thing depends on a sense of trust. Some sympathy and trust and a sense of warmth need to be generated—to oneself to begin with and to others as one develops sympathy to oneself. It needs to be beyond the aggression level.

One of the obstacles to one’s mind being able to go along with or become part of the dharma is your sense of separation from it, obviously. That sense of separation comes from immense aggression, holding back, and the sense of fight or struggle. You’re ready to wage war with your world. Although you might regard your enemy as a real experience— dealing with an enemy and having a fight—the enemy is not you. So you constantly have a sense of separation between yourself and other.

There are several ways of becoming emotionally involved with the dharma. You may be inspired by a fascination with the teachings or by the fascination of friends who are involved in the teachings, or by a certain truth that it speaks. But inspiration does not seem to be enough. If grass is green, green is grass at the same time. You have to be soaked completely in the dharma, so that there’s no separation between the greenness of the grass and the grass itself. You have to be completely soaked in it, which requires a lot of sympathy and a loving attitude. Whenever there’s any resentment, the faintest resentment to some aspect of one’s life—that you’re an employee, the nature of your work, the atmosphere at large, the change of season, too many flies—you say, “This is not really resentment, this is just irritation.” Sure it’s irritation, but that is a form of resentment. We have created a gigantic cast-iron fortification. And even though we have particular irritations such as flies, mosquitoes, or whatever, we also express a constant sense of resentment in the form of immense aggression. Generally what has happened, particularly in the West, is that we have developed or grown up in a world that is a gigantic marketplace. You can bargain your way out and you can bargain your way in. If somebody’s cheating you, you can bargain with him or you can go to the next store and buy the same thing cheaper. Everything that we do in our life is businesslike because we are trained that way. We feel that if we pay for something we should get our money’s worth. We operate with an immense business mentality all the time.

At the same time, we also have a sense of warfare—who’s going to win the war? That sense of warfare becomes a natural, ongoing process. Needless to say, a lot of the conflict that takes place in this world is not based on just a simple disagreement or misunderstanding—our aggression actually created the problem. This kind of aggression becomes intense and it takes all kinds of forms—sometimes very controlled or sedate, sometimes very active and articulated. Sometimes we even become victims of our own aggression. When we try to bounce on somebody else, it bounces back on us as well. We begin to hurt ourselves, to make life miserable. The opposite of that is not so much a completely peaceful person. That isn’t particularly the idea. The idea is to understand that particular type of aggression and to work along with it in terms of our practice. It is an inspiration to relate with the dharma.

The first dharma of Gampopa is knowing oneself. That seems to be the meaning of one’s mind going along with the dharma. One’s mind begins to follow that particular pattern. You’re willing to experience yourself, to acknowledge how much time you waste through this particular style of aggression. You might say that acknowledging that is not quite enough. But we have more to talk about tomorrow—if you don’t leave. But first things first, as they say. And that first thing is to see what’s wrong with us. Then we can look further—what type of wrongness do we have?

Then—what can we do about it? How can we cure it? That’s the general approach.

The steps we are following in this case are the four dharmas of Gampopa. The first one is following one’s mind according to the dharma. It is actually acknowledging ourselves, understanding the nature of samsara and the nature of our pain and our aggression—which is very real and very personal. We’ve been living with ourselves all our life (and will be for the rest of our life). So we know ourselves better than anybody else. There’s no point in pretending that nothing happened, everything’s beautiful. We know that’s not quite true. If you think that your whole life—your past, future, and present—is great, I think you’re under some kind of hypnosis or trip of ego. You’re kidding yourself, fooling yourself. That’s a very serious matter. It is worth thinking about. So in the first dharma of Gampopa we are reexamining ourselves. We are not trying to find a way to cure ourselves, necessarily. But we are trying to find out where we are—the way and style in which we are imprisoned, the reason we ended up in this particular jail, how our situation came about. And once we begin to know that, we begin to know lots of truths, lots of dharmas.

But if we look at things from an arrogant as well as an aggressive approach, we may not be able to understand anything at all. We might say, “Everything’s okay, there’s nothing to worry about. We don’t need to listen to this particular bullshit.” But that is the voice of our aggression. Aggression could be highly articulate and very intellectual or extremely impulsive and emotional. It takes all kinds of forms. It’s not just one thing—purely an emotion. And it’s not as if you are telling somebody, “Just calm down and take a rest. Everything’s going to be okay.” It’s not as simple as that. It is very subtle. It’s very hard to discover ourselves. In fact, the particular type of aggression we are talking about is very difficult to discover until we have completely overcome the basic nature of ego. But at least we can make early discoveries of the crude aspect of it.

As far as this present situation of the world of ambition is concerned, aggression seems to be a success. Aggression made the world and we also have products of aggression: efficiency, richness, great learning. Everything has become the product of aggression—not only the product but also the seed. We are constantly involved in an ongoing chain reaction of aggression and its results, which created seeds of more aggression. You can’t buy an automobile if you never check where you buy the spare parts you might need later on. And if you’re buying a foreign car, it’s more difficult because they might have to ship them from overseas. We would like to make sure we know where we can get spare parts. It’s exactly the same with aggression. We would like to have spare parts available if we break down. We have all kinds of reserve supplies—new tactics, new techniques—stored in our minds all the time. We say, “I don’t have to use this at this point, but I might need it later on. Before I use my capital, maybe I should experiment with small thinking to get my position without spending capital. If worse comes to worse, I will strike.”

Whether you are a kind-mannered, mild-mannered, or aggressively mannered person, it is exactly the same. All the time there is this big barrier, which creates obstacles to understanding. There’s a big barrier, a big fence, between dharma and us, which prevents us from actually clicking or communicating. That seems to be the basic point: in order to become a follower of the dharma, one has to become nonaggressive, beyond aggression. In order to do that, there has to be some kind of warmth in oneself, gentleness to oneself, which is known as maitri, and there has to be greater gentleness to others, which is known as karuna or compassion. When we begin to make a connection to dharma, we are willing to open our gates, to tear down our walls. Then for the first time we begin to realize that the joke has been on us all the time. Accumulating ammunition and building fence after fence was our trip rather than something actually having taken place. We have wasted so much of our energy and economy on that trip. When we begin to realize the joke was on us and created by us, then we are actually following our mind according to the dharma.

Naturally, that discovery goes along with a sense of humor. It’s not another resentment at all. That would be the opposite direction—that you want to kill the person playing jokes on you (which is yourself) and keep going all the time.

Question:
You spoke against aggression, but don’t you think that sometimes the energy of aggression can produce a more harmonious situation?

Rinpoche:
Well, I think it’s a question of what kind of aggression we are talking about. Aggression with stupidity and confusion is self-destructive. It’s like aged wine turning to vinegar as opposed to aged wine.

Q:
Will you speak a little about aggression and change, bringing about change in our lives in a nonaggressive way?

R:
Well, you see, what we are discussing is not particularly how we could combat aggression. That would be impractical. What we are talking about is simply how we can realize its style of operating in the world. Then I don’t see any particular problems. You are actually approaching aggression from the back door, so to speak, and various aggressive activities could become part of the learning process at the same time. This particular discussion today is not really complete without going through the next three dharmas of Gampopa. Once we put all the pieces together, it will make it much clearer.

Q:
It seems that one of the obstacles to feeling aggression is feeling that aggression isn’t right.

R:
That aggression isn’t right?

Q:
Well, I guess that’s an aspect of aggression as well, feeling that it isn’t right or acceptable in certain situations.

R:
Yeah. So, can you say something more?

Q:
Uh, it’s difficult to get personal.

R:
Aggression is always personal.

Q:
Uh, in many instances, in my relating with you, there’s difficulty because I feel anger. And the anger seems to be not wanting to be exposed in many instances—and who are you to expose me? It seems to take that form, anyway. There seems to be a great difficulty there because of your place and my place, the guru-student relationship.

R:
Well, that’s not a particularly unusual case. [
Laughter
]

Q:
It may not be unusual, but it still presents problems.

R:
Sure, if you call it a problem.

Q:
At this point, it’s not a problem; at this point, it seems to be humorous.

R:
It’s not a problem. Something’s actually beginning to work. When you feel touchy, when the relationship is so much on edge—something’s about to spark. There’s obviously resentment. There’s obviously some kind of arrogance on your part that you have a right to have your ego and confuse the world. You don’t want anybody to mind your business, particularly. I’m sorry to put it so crudely, but that’s usually the case. I think that’s the beginning of working with the student-teacher relationship, when something like that begins to happen. It’s a very hot point obviously.

Q:
Egads.

R:
It’s just about to spark something. And that seems to be a very interesting point—you could go further with that, you could explore more. The relationship is like a mirror reflection—you could get angry with the mirror because it makes you look so fat.

Q:
I’ve never thought in terms of getting angry at the teacher though.

R:
Well, that’s exactly what happens, you know. That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. There’s somebody who minds your business and reflects back on you. That’s a highlight of one’s life, I would say—there’s something cooking.

Q:
I’m in complete agreement with that. [
Laughter
]

Q:
Could it be that in other relationships in which you feel resentment to a person whom you certainly don’t consider to be your teacher, that could also be a mirror in some sense?

R:
Sure, definitely, but the relationship may be less intense.

Q:
I often feel that I have confidence in a teacher as being a clear mirror, but some people are very, very muddy.

R:
But it’s still a mirror. Whether it’s a good one or a bad one, it’s still a mirror. That’s the difference between a teacher and other people. One is clear; the other is slightly clouded. But it is still a mirror, there is still some truth in it.

Q:
I feel that the direction in which one thinks determines the way one is. That is, if one thinks negatively, it seems to be that one becomes negative, and the same with positivity. And after working for many years in a teaching which followed the line that you are presenting, it got to the point where I was completely negative, a kind of negativity that I’d never had in my life. I got to the point of feeling that working toward seeing the negative facets of myself resulted in my being more negative than ever. I began to look for a teaching that stressed love and light and positivity. And at this point I’m just confused. Could you comment on that, please?