The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (96 page)

But there must be something wrong with you, as well, if that person reacts that way. You can’t always be right. Perhaps you look through too sharply with your desire; perhaps you are too penetrating. Since you possess such beautiful, keen eyes of penetrating passion and wisdom, you don’t want to abuse that, you don’t want to play with it. I’m not talking in terms of trying to win that person over necessarily, but in general, there must be something else wrong with your application of that passion. And it tends to happen automatically that, if you possess some particular power or gift of energy—it is quite natural with anybody, everybody, most people—you tend to abuse that power, to misuse it by trying to penetrate through every spare corner, every spare part. Something’s lacking there, which is quite obvious—a sense of humor—which also means panoramic awareness, a feeling of space and openness.

It was often the case, according to a lot of stories in the scriptures, that the application of a bodhisattva’s work failed because the bodhisattva did not have a sense of humor. If a bodhisattva is too honest, too deadly serious, if he or she knows the whole application but doesn’t want to put anything in to accompany that application, which is a sense of humor, then it will be blunt bodhisattva action. In this case, it’s the same thing. You have all your wisdom, all your compassion and everything, but you haven’t got a sense of humor, which is dhyana, or meditation.

So if you try to push things too far, that means you don’t feel the area properly. You only feel the area because of your relationship to it: you see what’s wrong there, what’s wrong here, but you don’t see what’s on the other side. You don’t see the profile vision of the whole thing, which accompanies it. That very much needs a sense of humor. Sometimes people run away from you because they want a game from you. They don’t want straight, honest, serious involvement with you. They want to play a game with you. In that case,
if they
have a sense of humor and you don’t, then you become demonic.

This is the particular point where lalita, or dancing with the situation, comes in.
Lalita
means “dance with reality,” “dance with apparent phenomena.” In the case of vajra passion, when you want something very badly, you don’t just extend your automatic hand, you don’t extend your automatic eye and hand—you just admire it. Instead of making a move from your side, you automatically expect a move from the other side. That is learning to dance with the situation.

We often feel that we are very blunt in situations. Generally in life, if we disagree with something, we begin to feel tremendously self-conscious. We don’t know how to end that particular scene, because we put that scene together. That is a kind of unskillful action. The point is that you don’t have to create the whole scene at all. You just watch the scene, work with the scene, and learn to dance with it. So that scene doesn’t become your scene, it becomes a mutual scene, a dancing together.

Then, in fact, you get an ideal situation: no one is self-conscious, because it is a mutual scene. Self-consciousness means stagnation: one doesn’t know how to go beyond that scene. Otherwise, beyond that self-consciousness, it becomes very creative. The relationship becomes tremendously creative and progressive. In the case of vajra passion and wisdom, the relationship also could be very beautiful, because both partners are relaxed completely, both people are taking part together completely, so no one has to play the lead. It seems that the sexual relationship is one of the most important examples of such communication, but it could apply to other forms of communication as well.

In all kinds of communication, there is the feminine principle and the masculine principle. There is always the skillful aspect and the chaotic aspect, or the skillful aspect and the seductive aspect, in any kind of relationship—whether it is purely conversation, or correspondence, or a relationship with nature, or whatever it may be. There is always prajna and upaya; wisdom and skillful means always follow along. In the sexual relationship, it seems to play very vividly, very obviously. That is why in the yogic tradition it is one of the most inspiring symbols of all. A very interesting point about that symbolism is that the symbol does not become purely a metaphor for something at all; it becomes the real, living application. The sexual relationship becomes a living, basic example or symbol, mudra, as you call it.

In all cases, unless a kind of all-pervading openness, or open space, is created, communication cannot take place anywhere at all—whether in the relationship of two people, the relationship of friends, or any other situation. So a leap is very, very important. It is a process of leaping. Yourself as skillful means, leaping into the air, which is the feminine principle of wisdom. Wisdom must be accompanied by skillful action, which is how to deal with that wisdom, how to swim in that ocean of wisdom. Wisdom also inspires tremendously the other aspects of life: if that aspect of life is basically set, properly, right, and in a good way, then there is also the other, creative aspect of life.

The twofold principles—the masculine and feminine aspects of life—begin to create in their own way, very beautifully. And that develops into what is called in the vajrayana tradition, “the four karmas,” or four actions. That is to say, with this kind of harmonious relationship, you could bring about peace, you could gather richness, you could subdue or conquer whatever you wanted to subdue, and destroy whatever you would like to destroy or overcome.

This relationship of masculine and feminine principles is the basic formula of the mandala: the ground where you build the mandala is the feminine principle of openness, or prajna, and how you use that ground in a skillful way in constructing the mandala is the masculine principle of skillful means, or upaya. I’m sure that if you saw the iconographies of any vajrayana tradition, they would always display these two basic principles—always. And they could be very inspiring.

Would you like to have any discussion?

Student:
What about this free passion? It is certainly going to operate with more than one person, and that leads to trouble, doesn’t it? Say you’re married and you are attracted to somebody else, then what?

Rinpoche:
I don’t think that is really free passion at all. It is a reaction against something that makes you feel attracted to someone else. Because you married, you are stuck together, and therefore you psychologically begin to feel an anarchist attitude. I don’t think that is free at all. It is a kind of dissatisfaction, that the relationship is not right—and the sooner the relationship could be reconciled the better. You see,
free
is a very interesting word. It could be “free-free” or it could be “free-wild.”

S:
Could you talk a little more about what you mean by “free-free” and “free-wild”?

R:
Well, “free-free” is that you are free not because you have been freed by somebody else, but because you discover that you can do what you like—you discover that you have the space to move about. “Free-wild” is that you begin to feel you have managed to snatch freedom from somewhere else; it is reacting against imprisonment.

Then, instead of creating space, you automatically tend to fill up the space by all sorts of other things. It becomes wild because it is like an echo—once you shout more, the sound will come back to you more as well. It is that kind of continual creation of your own spider’s web. It becomes wild at the end: it has to be wild because it is frantic. It is wild in the sense of neurotic. Immediately when you realize you’ve got freedom in the “free-wild” sense, you begin to shout, you begin to fill the whole of space. And the sound comes back to you. You shout more and more until finally the whole thing becomes complete chaos. You are creating your own imprisonment under the pretense of freedom. So it is a question of space or not.

S:
What is the relationship of mahasukha, great bliss, to vajra passion?

R:
It is the meeting point, ultimate communication. When you meet, when you are able to establish ultimate communication, there will be tremendous joy, because there is no chaos with the dance anymore. It is like the meeting of teacher and disciple, a kind of ultimate meeting point, great joy. The sudden realization of such communication could exist and does exist.

S:
I have a question about the expression of passions. Generally, just sitting still, I’ll feel a certain passion and I seek to express it through artistic expression—painting, writing, dancing, or something like that. Then I feel temporary relief. And then a new passion or desire arises. Each time I work myself up completely, and that is only to temporarily get rid of a small passion. What will I do when it’s unlimited?

R:
Vajra passion doesn’t particularly inspire you to fill the space at all, rather than use the space. In this case, where you have the desire to do this and that, it sounds like whenever any space is created, you would like to fill those gaps by doing things, which is a kind of panic. But in terms of limitless passion, I don’t think you can do anything at all, because you become completely powerless. Vajra passion, open passion—transcendental passion, so to speak—doesn’t inspire you to fill the space immediately at all. It inspires you to create
more
space. So you don’t necessarily have to do anything immediately—instead you enjoy the space more.

S:
Could you say something about celibacy and the emphasis on the practice of celibacy in so many traditions?

R:
As I said in the beginning of the talk, celibacy is one way of dealing with desire. In the case of celibacy, you don’t try to suppress desire at all, but you try to examine the mental aspect of passion and you try to see the chaotic quality of its physical application.

I don’t know about Christianity, but certainly in the Buddhist tradition you are not trying to suppress any kind of desire that comes into your mind. Instead you are supposed to look at it, become familiar with it. Then it automatically wears out. When you realize the physical application purely as an extension of that desire, you see the childish quality of it. But you still have to make communication; the communicative quality has to continue. You have to channel your energy into the communication process, which automatically simplifies life.

The basic monastic tradition, as a whole, is not based purely on suppression or ascetic practice at all. It is based on simplification, simplicity, the simplicity of life, the simplicity of noninvolvement, the simplicity of being alone. There’s a great deal of emphasis made on the physical, geographical relationship with situations, which is a basic kind of thing. Therefore, when any mental desire or passion comes up, you have to work with it. You have to become familiar with it first, then you begin to see the simplicity of the aloneness, the loneliness. That quality of loneliness provides a kind of consort, or company. The loneliness is company, and it begins to inspire as the feminine principle your active desires, whatever you have in mind. Therefore, in the Buddhist tradition, people who are in the celibate or monastic life must continue to practice the discipline of yoga. Mentally, they must go through it.

S:
What is feminine about the wisdom principle?

R:
Wisdom is learning, knowledge, isn’t it? Knowledge could be creative, producing further knowledge, so it is the mother principle. Knowledge also could be destructive, because you know further how to create chaos. Therefore, there is a destructive quality as well as a creative quality. It’s the mother principle, basically.

And upaya, or skillful means, is the masculine principle because, depending on how you deal with the wisdom, it could be creative or destructive. If you do not deal with it skillfully, it becomes destructive. It is like the relationship of the ground and what you plant in the ground.

The feminine principle would be the basic ground, which nourishes the action you put on it. It is the same principle as father and mother.

S:
In Genesis, it says that Eve wanted to know and be wise. That was what her temptation was. But if she knew and were wise, then she would be as God, and that was why she was punished.

R:
That’s a very interesting point, because the feminine principle contains that inquisitive quality as well: wisdom, wanting to learn, wanting to know everything, wanting to survey every corner. There is an inquisitive quality, because she realizes she’s the ground of everything and she would like to explore it. That is what you call the “dakini principle” in the Buddhist tradition, which is a similar thing.

S:
Is the idea that the masculine principle is supposed to control that?

R:
In the sense of showing the feminine principle the skillful move to put its pattern in the right order, so to speak, because wisdom is knowing, pure knowing. It is not connected with action. So this is rather like the contrast between practice and philosophy, or theory.

S:
Many people seem to feel that giving physical expression to one’s sexuality hinders spiritual development. What do you think of this kind of thing?

R:
I think, as is said in the scriptures—particularly yoga texts, strangely enough—it depends on the individual, whether you are putting all your possessiveness into the process. If you put all your greedy quality into it, then because your energy is transformed into real passion, sort of heavy passion, I think that is going to affect your spiritual life.

But if you could regard it as a communication process, I don’t think it will affect you spiritually at all. In fact, it’s going to inspire it, because it is a symbolic gesture, a physical gesture, the same as prostrating in front of the lineage, yogic exercises, or circumambulations. All sorts of physical exercises have been given to use your energy and learn to contact your body to the earth in order to work with spiritual energy, in order to inspire further. This could be said to be the same thing. But it is very much dependent on individuals.