The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (94 page)

So the whole thing is based on conceptualization. If we have the attitude that life is good for us and we are supposed to gain something out of it, then gaining means finding a suitable, comfortable nest to dwell in, enriched by all sorts of environmental elements created for the ego, part of the maintaining of me, myself. Or there can be no concept, no particular aim; you can throw yourself overboard, off the cliff, let go, go along with the situation and let go of the process of learning. People might say this is ludicrous, impractical; they think you are supposed to have self-respect, you are supposed to be a proud person; you should have an aim, an object, a goal in mind. But such people have never approached the problem from the other angle at all, so they have no authority because they haven’t actually seen the other side of the coin. They daren’t see it; it’s too dangerous, too frightening for their egos. In fact, if there is another way of approaching the subject beyond self-respect, beyond pride, that may be the only way you can make friends with yourselves. You don’t have to put yourselves into the painful situation of the competitive process at all.

Work is related to ego. Either you like to work frantically, to fill all spaces and not allow any creative process to develop at all, or else there is a kind of laziness, regarding work as something that you should revolt against, which also means being afraid of creativity. Instead of letting the creative process be, instead of letting it develop, you tend automatically to impose the next preconception because there is this fear of seeing the basic origin, which is in a sense a defeat for the ego. Because it is embarrassing to see your basic quality of nakedness, you are afraid to embark on a further creative process as well as being afraid to see the basic space.

The general notion we have is, if you feel the need to work then work, and if you don’t feel that you need to work, then stop working and do something else. But if you have this attitude, it means that you don’t have the proper kind of feeling of the work itself. Work doesn’t necessarily mean earning money and doing a job; rather, it is the creative process of activity.

Let’s take the example of filling all spaces. In this case, work comes down to being a way of escape. Whenever a person finds something depressing or is afraid, or the situation of life is not going smoothly, immediately he begins polishing a table, or weeding the garden, trying to find something to do. It seems that the worker is reacting to the mental state created by ego, because he doesn’t seem to have a real communication with the actual work itself, although physically he is actually doing it. He doesn’t want to solve the basic problem, but seeks a kind of pleasure of the moment.

In one way, he is living in the now, living in the moment. But this is the wrong way of living in the moment because he doesn’t feel that he could cope with analyzing and looking back and learning from the basic problem. He is frightened of the space of any empty corner.

Often you can find an example in the way a house is decorated. Whenever there is an empty wall, you automatically put something else up, another picture or another thing, so the result is that each time there is a feeling of space, you fill it up, you fill up the gap; it becomes completely crowded. And the more it is crowded the more you feel comfortable because you don’t have to deal with any vacant area. Or even if you intentionally leave space, the space is solidified into self-conscious decoration. Not only that, but a lot of people when they stop working and are living on an old-age pension, for example, would again like to take a job to occupy themselves. Otherwise they might have to lose their speed, their constant going forward, which is a kind of occupation in itself and very much a neurotic process.

The other case—reacting against taking a job or working—is a blind approach which does not make use of the intelligence. We find that in many cases young people rebel against taking jobs, or working at all for that matter. But that is also refusing to associate with the practicality of life, refusing to associate with the earth itself, which means a great deal. Because of our tremendous basic intelligence we begin to see problems if we embark on a creative process: one kind of work involves the next kind of work and that means continuously working on oneself. You see, the whole point is that whatever we do physically is also associated with our state of mind, and every move that we make on a physical level has spiritual significance, in every sense. This may sound very airy-fairy, but it is so. True spirituality is not a sort of pious and religious thing. It relates with truth, fact, the isness, the actual fact of life. And every situation has bearing on our psychology, the true psychology, the absolute aspect of mind.

So a person could be very, very intelligent in escaping work. He feels too lazy to go into anything, he would rather daydream or think about something. This presents, I suppose, a kind of anarchistic element. If he does something constructive, practical, then it is connected with society, it is connected with taking care of something, and that seems to be very threatening because he doesn’t want to help maintain or defend society. But that seems to be the wrong end of the stick; you are doing the wrong thing. If you try not to help society, materialistic society, by not taking part in work and practicality, you only magnify your own negativity. That way not only are you useless in society, you don’t help anything at all. And if you really go on and on into this kind of nonparticipation in society, then the last thing is not eating, not breathing. Because the air that you are breathing also belongs to society and the world as well. So this could go too far.

A person develops a kind of intelligence that protects laziness. Immediately when he doesn’t want to do something, there is a kind of answer which automatically comes up. “I don’t have time, because . . .” The answer is very convenient and he is very intelligent in catching on to those particular kinds of answers. But this is misuse of knowledge, of intelligence.

The best way of using intelligence is learning when to act practically, when to go and really relate to the earth as directly as possible. It could be working in a garden, in the house, washing dishes, or whatever demands attention. If you don’t feel the relationship between earth and yourself, then something is going to turn chaotic.

We are constantly involved in this kind of chaos in dealing with money. In general we very rarely have the feeling of relating directly with the earth when it comes to money matters. Money is basically a very simple thing, but our attitude toward it is overloaded, full of preconceived ideas. These preconceived ideas could be very much a way of developing the pride of ego, the manipulative process of ego. Even the attitude toward the physical bills, just pieces of paper, is a very solemn thing; it’s very embarrassing in a way to see this bill. The mere fact of handling money means a very serious game. If you have ever seen someone buying diamonds, for example, there is something very meaningful, very solemn about their way of doing it, a sense of very great importance. And this place where they sell expensive things creates a very aweinspiring environment.

Somehow it is almost like a child building sand castles and selling tickets to the sand castles. The difference between playing as a child and playing as an adult is that in the adult’s game, money is involved. A child doesn’t think in terms of money, but you who have attained adulthood think of this as a solemn, serious game. You would like to charge people to get in to it.

It seems that money makes a tremendous difference in the process of communication and relationships because of our preconceived ideas about it. Suddenly, if a friend refuses to pay for your restaurant bill, automatically a feeling of resentment or separation from your friend arises, and immediately there is a break in your communication. This is all based on your attitude, your preconceived ideas. If you buy someone a cup of tea, it is just hot water and tea and a cup, but somehow there is this added factor of meaningfulness. So for us, money is not just related to a practical earthy situation, but it is the energy principle of our preconceived ideas. Therefore we never seem to feel quite clear about it. There is always an element of confusion, coming from an unbalanced state of mind.

Our balanced state of mind depends on how we do things. It could be something insignificant, like the way we pour tea, but it could mean everything. You can always tell whether a person has the feeling of work, for example, as dealing with the earth, or just as some casual thing or something that he has to do. That also applies to how you deal with life in general. If you don’t feel that every step, every situation has some spiritual significance, then your pattern of life becomes full of chaos, full of problems, and you begin to wonder where these problems came from. They make you feel that something’s wrong and wants attention. They just spring up out of nowhere, because you refuse to see the subtlety of life. Somehow, you can’t cheat, you can’t pretend that you can pour a cup of tea beautifully, you can’t act it. You have actually to feel it, feel the earth and your relationship to it.

Having started, we must also finish everything in work. It’s very interesting to watch the Japanese tea ceremony. It begins with collecting the bowl, the napkin, and teaspoon, and boiling water. Everything is deliberately done, properly done. Tea is served and the guests drink deliberately, with a feeling of dealing with things properly. The important thing is that the ceremony also includes how to clean the bowls, how to put them away, how to finish. Clearing away seems to be as important as starting. But generally when we do something, cook something for example, we collect a lot of things we like and chop them and cook them with enthusiasm. Then, having chopped, having cooked, having churned out a thing, we leave it. We don’t think in terms of how to clear it away.

Clearing away seems to be a problem always in materialistic society. There are endless advertisements about what to buy and how to make things, but they don’t say how to clear them away. Therefore we have a problem with disposing of garbage. That seems to be the biggest problem that we have. There is a saying in Tibetan: “Better not to begin; if you want to begin, don’t leave a mess behind.”

I think it is extremely important to work, as long as you are not using work as an escape or a way of ignoring the basic existence of a problem, particularly if you are interested in spiritual development. Work is one of the most subtle ways of acquiring discipline. You don’t need to look down on someone who works in a factory or produces materialistic things. You learn a tremendous amount from such people. I think that many problems about work come from a kind of sophistication of the analytical mind. You don’t want to involve yourself physically at all. You want to work purely intellectually or mentally.

This is a spiritual problem. Anyone who is interested in spiritual development thinks in terms of the importance of the mind, that sort of mysterious highest and deepest thing that we have decided to learn about. But strangely enough the transcendental thing, the profound thing, exists in the kitchen sink, in the factory. It may not be particularly blissful to look at; it may not sound as good as the spiritual experiences that we read about, but somehow the actual reality exists there, in the simplicity of people and working with people and dealing with every problem that we are given. Working in this way brings tremendous depth, tremendous experience in dealing with situations, in dealing with things. I think we are lacking the peasant quality, the earthy quality, a sort of tribal quality. If we have this quality of simplicity then, in fact, we won’t have any problems in dealing with our minds at all, because everything will work in a very balanced way, everything will be dealt with properly and thoroughly and simply.

Take the example of peasants in India, or American Indians, or Mexicans. They have a tremendous sparkle in their eye, they have a tremendous earthy quality, because they deal with situations with their own hands. They have a tremendous rough and rugged, powerful quality as well. If you look at their faces, it is almost impossible to imagine that they could freak out. Buddha and Christ were of such people. The people who wrote the Vedas and the
Dhammapada
and all the scriptures were not intellectual, high-strung people. They lived very simply, they spent a long time with the peasants, the simple people. In order to become completely immersed in skillful action, one has to simplify oneself to the ordinary level, the ordinary earthy level.

If we are able to simplify ourselves to that level, then, of course, we would be able to see the other aspect as well. Then there would be a tremendous difference in the state of mind. The whole pattern of thinking, the internal game that goes on, becomes much less a game; it becomes a very practical way of thinking in situations.

Awareness during the process of working also seems to be very important. It could be the same sort of awareness one has in meditation, the leap of experiencing the openness of space. This is connected very much with feeling the earth and the air together. You can’t feel earth unless you feel air. The more you feel the air, the more you feel the earth. That is to say that the feeling of space between you and the objects becomes a natural product of awareness, of openness, peace, and lightness. Automatically you begin to feel this. And the way to practice is not necessarily to concentrate on things or to try and be aware of yourself and try and manage the job at the same time, but to have a general feeling of acknowledging this openness as you are working. You then begin to feel there is more room to do things, more room to work. It is a question of acknowledging the existence of the openness of a continual meditative state. You don’t have to try to hold on to it or try to bring it about deliberately, but just acknowledge the vast energy of openness by a fraction-of-a-second flash to it. After acknowledging, then almost deliberately ignore its existence and continue with your work. The feeling of openness continues, and you begin to develop very much the actual feeling of the things that you are working with. The awareness that we talk about is not so much a question of constant awareness as an object of mind, but just becoming one with awareness, becoming one with the open space. This means becoming one with the actual things that you are dealing with as well. So the whole thing becomes very easy and a one-way process rather than one of trying to split into different sections and different degrees of awareness, the watcher and the doer. You begin to have a real relationship with the objects and their beauty as well.