The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (97 page)

S:
So for some people it would be true?

R:
It depends on if you are working with extreme desire, not just extreme desire, but desire in the sense of putting all your confusion into it in order to really get through it—which would be suicidal, in this case. But you cannot really make generalizations about anything. Everything very much depends on individuals’ attitudes and how they do it.

Perhaps we should end here.

Hearty Discipline

A
T
N
AROPA
I
NSTITUTE
we approach the whole educational system according to the principles of buddhadharma. We would like to present a traditional approach, similar to the Victorian style of education or other European approaches.

Recently, education in America has been based on entertainment. That is to say, the professors and teachers have become more and more cowardly. They don’t want to push their students to follow their instructions or the traditional educational format.

In the schooling of young children in preparatory schools or elementary schools, we begin to find more and more that children are told to use their toys to learn with. “We are not going to push you to do anything drastic. You don’t have to memorize; you don’t have to think, even. Just play nicely with the toys we provide, and you will learn something about our history, our mathematics, or alphabet, and our grammar.”

That is the idea of education that seems to have been created by the present generation, which had a terrible time with their schooling. Now they are in power, so they have invented a system of entertainment-as-education, so that children won’t have to go through terrible education situations. That approach is actually based on good intentions, excellent, maybe. But, on the other hand, it could mean the destruction of the educational system altogether.

We have to push our children and ourselves to relate properly with the principles of education, which means discipline, respecting our elders, that is to say our teachers, and putting ourselves through a certain amount of painful situations.

Knowledge is often regarded as a gigantic, monumental tablet. We might wonder how we can climb on that or comprehend that gigantic thing, those stacks and stacks of information, knowledge, and wisdom—accomplishments of all kinds. How can we actually achieve something? How can we climb up and conquer and be on top of that Mount Everest of knowledge at all? However, we could recognize that learning is not necessarily all that difficult, although it does require effort.

An educational system based on very hearty discipline is absolutely necessary for us. We have to push ourselves, lock ourselves in our studies, and simply relate with the information that is given to us. We have to appreciate what’s being taught to us; we have to memorize and experience the information, as well as relating to the challenge of discussion groups and all kinds of examinations. If we don’t do that, we find ourselves nowhere.

We don’t have to borrow toys to help us to study properly. Obviously, the concept of comfort, as well as entertainment, is out of the question. Comfort is not in the best interest of student or teacher. When we begin to present education as a toy or a lollipop, we begin to devalue our wisdom, and we reduce school to a candy bar approach, as opposed to a university or a center of learning. People have tried that many times, but it never brings success such as is achieved by someone who has learned orally, personally. There is no real experience taking place when we try to avoid discipline.

We are applying the Buddhist mentality or Buddhist approach to education at Naropa, rather than purely taking a religious approach to education. We are not particularly talking in terms of converting people to Buddhism, but we are talking in terms of bringing the inheritance of Buddhist methodology into our system of education.

At Nalanda University, Vikramashila, and other Buddhist centers of learning, the student, the practitioner, and the scholar concentrated one-pointedly, on the point. Education was a complete lifestyle. Students practiced and they concentrated one-pointedly. They memorized texts and thought about what was said in the texts, about whether the contents were valid or invalid.

When you follow these principles of education, you begin to use your logical, or critical, intelligence to examine what is presented to you. That critical intelligence is applied two ways: toward what is presented to you, the educational material, as well as toward who is going to be educated. So you work with yourself as well. The two blades of the sword work simultaneously. Then you begin to find yourself examining things constantly. The process of education becomes very precise and clear and absolutely accurate. There is no room for mistakes at all.

In order to study and learn properly, we have to pull up our own socks. If we want to learn properly and study properly, we have to work at it; we have to work on it. There is no other way. There is no savior or god of knowledge who descends on our heads, so that one minute we’re dumb and the next minute we are brilliant. Oh no! We have never heard of that. Nothing like that happens.

In the Buddhist tradition, we talk about individual salvation, or
sosor tharpa
. Everybody has to save himself or herself. Everybody has to prove himself. We are capable of individual salvation because we do possess our own inherent human dignity already, in any case. We are capable of learning properly, but we have to tune in to our dignity rather than trying to use lollipops and toys and gimmicks. So, no toy shop anymore.

Transpersonal Cooperation at Naropa

C
OOPERATION IN THE ORDINARY,
personal sense is usually based on having some common ground, some common point of view. You are good friends and would like to maintain your friendship by working together. You might have an unspoken agreement to ignore each other’s weaknesses, and you acknowledge each other’s flair. Sometimes the cooperation is based on a businesslike approach—making sure you know what you are going to get out of it. Your territories are clearly defined and protected with a contrast or a gentlemen’s agreement. Or there may be a common goal or a common enemy and the cooperation is based on a sense of mutual support. Very often schools and colleges are formed from some definite point of view—ethical or philosophical—and the wish to see this philosophy realized in practice, to help others directly or by setting an example.

This usual way of cooperation is based on the sense of sculpting a product rather than just letting it grow. When you would like to make a sculpture, you must first find the right material, picking and choosing, rejecting the unsuitable, until you find just what you are looking for. Then you form an image of what the final product will be and proceed to mold your material, making little adjustments here and there until you are satisfied with your creation. There is a sense of activity and showmanship. “Letting it grow” is not based on the end product; you are simply concerned with the developmental process. You nourish what needs to be nourished, care for what needs care, and destroy what needs to be destroyed. You are not particularly concerned with what the outcome will be or how long it will take. There is no need to dwell on the details of your own contribution. At the same time, to let it grow does not mean total wildness in which anything is allowed without discrimination. The chaos has to be acknowledged and worked with, as such, which requires a sense of discipline.

At Naropa Institute we are working with the discipline of trying to transmit wisdom while overcoming neurosis at the same time. The insight derived from the Buddhist outlook and meditative approach provides the atmosphere of sanity which is beyond dogma, rather than establishing yet another dogma. Knowledge, meditation, and skillful action are the three components of the traditional approach to teaching known as the “three turnings of the wheel of dharma.” Knowledge provides confirmation of experience of being, discovered in meditation practice. At the same time, knowledge is the vehicle for the communication to others of the sense of being. Knowledge and meditative experience are put into practice in everyday life as skillful action. That is to say, action which does not arise from any particular viewpoint but is direct cooperation with the energy of the situation as it is, without manipulation.

The idea of transpersonal cooperation is not necessarily to be involved in helping other people all the time, but rather to be fundamentally helpful to yourself. It is only through meditative discipline that the sense of cooperation with your basic being can develop. Perhaps we could say that transpersonal cooperation means noncooperation from the point of view of ego. If you do not cooperate with the trips and games of ego, then cooperation with your own basic being and that of others happens automatically. We cannot scheme or force cooperation; it develops organically when there is nonaggression, which boycotts ego trips.

The openness of nonaggression and the absence of dogma create the appropriate atmosphere for learning. The teacher’s role seems to be to provide this atmosphere. While respecting the tradition for which he is a spokesman, he does not hide behind the subject mater but still remains a student himself. There is a sense of freedom and also a sense of dignity. Freedom is often interpreted as looseness, the absence of the need for any kind of effort, almost a sense of frivolousness. But respect for tradition seems to be an important part of the learning process. We can regard tradition as the foundation and stepping-stone for learning rather than something to be rejected. You cannot grow if you cut off your roots. You will become a monster, having no relationship with your environment and no possibility of cooperation with it. Cooperation with one’s background beyond personal trips provides richness and precision rather than pure inventiveness and the glamour of newness or the museum mentality of dwelling in the past.

The sense of total commitment to one tradition brings about the perspective and wisdom to work with ways that have developed in other traditions. Other disciplines can then be seen as process rather than purely for their end product. Bringing various disciplines together has to be more than eclectic-minded. Merely collecting many ideas and methods and trying to find a common link seems to bring only more confusion. It is more a question of providing an atmosphere of basic sanity in which all disciplines have a chance to refine themselves. It is like putting different particles in a chemical fluid—some are nourished and grow while others dissolve and disappear. We do not have to work with each particular discipline in detail but simply have to create the atmosphere as a natural working basis. The basic ground is nonaggression derived from the meditative training that each individual has worked through. In this case, we do not mean aggression in the sense of anger, but in the sense of tightness—holding on to your own logic and what you believe is true. The particular tradition to which you relate does not have to become a filter through which other disciplines are interpreted and molded. Rather, the point is the personal experience involved. Having fully incorporated into one’s own life experience the knowledge and discipline learned through one tradition, you can then see the essential meaning of other traditions. When you are willing to let go and relax with experiences, not holding on to the sense of security in what you know, information becomes part of the learning process, and cooperation develops naturally.

Sparks

Marvin Casper:
I think what we are trying to do with Naropa is not to create a Buddhist university, but more an atmosphere that acknowledges the basic problems of spiritual materialism and meditation. To bring in traditions selectively insofar as they have the spirit of meditation and a sensitivity to the issue of spiritual materialism. And it is not so much a sectarian thing of which tradition is followed, but more what spirit was the tradition practiced in, expounded, lived?

Ram Dass:
But it still feels to me as someone teaching a Hindu tradition course here that this is an alien course to the general framework of Naropa. It doesn’t feel to me a totally integrated situation yet.

Chögyam Trungpa:
There is a particular philosophy of Naropa which is not so much trying to bring it together, like a spoonful of sugar in your lemonade so that it becomes more drinkable, but the point is more like a firework—not so much that each will fight with the other in the destructive sense, but that there is an enormous individualism in terms of the doctrines and teachings that are presented. All of them are valid but at the same time there is a meeting point which takes place in a spark!

RD:
I enjoy the spark, but you can create a field in which there can be an equal number of contestants coming together to spark. I mean, why go into a Buddhist field to spark? The spark can be just where we come together, like you and I come together to do our dance, and that’s the spark.

CT:
I think it is the same thing, actually. Someone has to have some background somewhere. We can say why can’t we do this in the Naropa ship going to the moon?

RD:
Are we?

CT:
But we’ve got to have it somewhere. We are doing it in the United States.

RD:
Yes . . .

CT:
In Boulder, Colorado . . . do you remember?

RD:
Yes, if I take a stretch I can remember! There are two phenomena that have happened: one, there is the Toward the One concept—which I think is a little premature and uncooked—which is to bring everybody together, and we’ll all love each other, and it will become an amalgam. That’s putting the sugar in with the lemonade, and it is all palatable and sweet but nothing much is happening. It’s all very nice, but it lacks the spark. But there is another way, a kind of arena, a fully collaborative arena to have the dialogue in. I am wondering, is that possible in America yet? Or do I have to go visit a Buddhist center, and then go fight with Yogi Bhajan, then go fight with Suzuki Roshi? I just go out and fight, I’m a freelance fighter! But there’s no place where we can all come into an arena together, all share putting up the money, share taking the losses, share the dormitories, share the administration, share the dynamics. Are we ready for that kind of collaborative sparking?