The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (98 page)

CT:
I don’t think we are talking in that sense. I think we are talking in the experiential sense, like eating Mexican food which has lots of chili in it. If you are somewhat hesitant before you eat it, and you ask the waitress how it is, probably the waitress will say, “Oh, it is okay.” Then when you eat you have the experience of Mexican food, and that is personal experience. Rather than debating with the chef and the cook about how it should be cooked, which is externalizing and debating the whole thing in the wrong way. It’s how sparked this place is in everybody’s mind. All the students taking cross-cultural courses of all kinds—the spark is taking place in them which makes them think twice. There is energy happening rather than completion. That’s an internal spark we are talking about rather than our having to institute a sort of dharma game.

RD:
Like Naropa Institute—which you just did by creating Naropa Institute.

MC:
Well, if I may paraphrase, it isn’t Buddhism that’s the point, it’s the gap between Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever that creates the spark. It’s juxtaposing the system to go beyond them. I can see that there is a more heavily Buddhist system here in a sense, but creation or solidification of the Buddhist system is not the point, the point is to cut through systems.

RD:
And I am saying that cutting through systems can be designed into the institution, as well as our saying inside, “Well, we know it’s a Buddhist center, but we really know that it’s not really a Buddhist center.”

CT:
I think the point is that we honor people’s experiences and their intellect so that they can conduct their own warfare within themselves while being sharp scholars in language studies, or T’ai Chi, or whatever. We don’t teach them how to conduct skeptical search.

RD:
Right. We don’t teach Battle I, II. We assume they know how to do it.

CT:
Because the situation is created already; there is pressure, there is enormous energy, there is internal experience.

Duncan Campbell:
Well, it almost sounds like the way that you were talking about the hot chili and the representation of Naropa Institute—it is saying that there are no answers. That no one is going to find an easy way to relate to himself and his own experience, but there is going to be that constant interaction, that spark, the flame between the intellect and intuition, between one tradition and another tradition, one culture and another culture, and that each one of us has to experience that. If it’s not being experienced, nothing is happening.

MC:
Right. One could look at any tradition as a trap and say that the purpose of the tradition is to build into itself an escape from its own tradition. And a tradition is good only to the extent that it provides the mechanisms by which you escape from it. Or by which you escape from cruder versions of it to more subtle versions beyond, to breaking through the systematization of it so that the idea of juxtaposing systems, and of juxtaposing intellect and meditation, creates an opportunity to further spark that kind of process.

RD:
Escape or entrapment?

MC:
Escape.

RD:
The predicament is that you don’t want to escape until you’ve been entrapped.

CT:
I think that’s the point, actually. Tradition provides you right in the beginning with a good setting and provides food, home, shelter, companionship, and someone to look up to, so you can copy his style, her style, whatever. Then at a certain point you begin to feel like you’re sinking down into the ground; you begin to find that tradition is entrapment, imprisonment. Then you begin to look at it twice, thrice, and find out more about it. Why are you imprisoned? Is it because the tradition is inadequate? That you are such a smart person?

RD:
Or has your stance toward the tradition been inadequate?

CT:
And then there is a strong possibility of a changing shift which creates a spark. And then again tradition comes back—but instead of being a jail—as a temple, a monastery, or a zendo. It’s rediscovering one’s imprisonment as a sacredness of some kind . . .

Education for an Enlightened Society

W
ELCOME, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
Tonight we are supposed to discuss education for an enlightened society. We are not talking in terms of how to educate an enlightened society which already exists. Our particular approach here is that such a thing as an enlightened educational system exists, which could bring about the enlightenment of the whole world.

The concept of enlightenment is an interesting one. Maybe we should look at that first. Enlightenment, according to the Buddhist tradition, is a self-existing state of mind, which contains a tremendous sense of wakefulness as opposed to sleep. It also contains tremendous richness, tremendous joy, and above all, a tremendous sense of sanity. Such a society, that actually possesses that possibility, is not far away from us. We are not talking about a Utopian world, and we are not particularly referring to any hidden corners of the world such as Atlantis, where things are supposedly properly organized, properly run. We are saying that a society of such caliber, so to speak, is here, right here. You are the enlightened society, every one of you, with no mistakes of course. If there were a mistake, you wouldn’t be here. Since there was no mistake, therefore you are here. So you are all the enlightened society. You are individuals with the possibility, the potential of enlightenment. Maybe you have already been exposed to such a situation, either directly or indirectly, but in any case you are all that type of person. That is why you are here.

I would like to emphasize again and again that I am not kidding. This state of mind is real, it’s definite. For one thing, it could be embryonic: suddenly you have had an urge to come and find out. Often, you don’t have an exact idea what you’re looking for, but you are looking for something, and that something has tremendous strength in your mind. It might be quite vague, but there’s
something
you are looking for. We’re not talking here about search particularly, but you have the sense of possibilities which are already in your basic existence. What is needed is just to touch on a certain point, so that the whole thing can be woken up, actualized and realized, properly and fully. So, ladies and gentlemen, let us not give up on anything at all. Let us proceed further and further. Let us go beyond and yet beyond. Let us cheer up.

When we talk about education, we are not talking purely in terms of making the illiterate literate. We’re not particularly talking about a learning process which constantly delivers a tremendous slap on the face and exposes your stupidity, a process in which the more you’re confronted with learned people, the more stupid you feel. We’re not talking about education as a form of insult to the learner. That has been the problem all along. The form of education we’re talking about is a celebration rather than a constant insult. We are talking in terms of celebration of some kind, which of course takes place in a certain systematic process.

First of all, a meeting of minds has to take place; you have to acknowledge your own existence and that of your teacher or teachers. Even though you might be studying something extremely simple, like how to be a seamstress, how to make bread, or how to sweep the floor, there has to be a meeting of the minds of the teacher and student. The teacher’s attitude is no longer that he or she is dealing with ignorant people, but instead that he is dealing with tremendous intelligence on the student’s part. Some kind of spark is taking place, some new form of friendship. So the student and the teacher form a tremendous friendship.

However, we should not mistake that to mean that the teacher is being casual, being nice to the student in a freestyle manner. This kind of friendship is based on mutual understanding. And this kind of friendship could become the kindling wood with which you set the fire of knowledge.

When you and the teacher meet together, there is tremendous dignity, almost at the level of stiffness but not quite. There’s some kind of awe obviously, but behind the whole thing, there’s delight. There’s a sense that you are entering into a world which is well thought out, well disciplined, well formed, well educated—which is quite lovely. After that, you begin to discover that you have stacks of things to learn. Sometimes you might feel slightly put off; there’s so much information, so many technicalities and so much wisdom that you have to pick up—stacks of things. When you look up, you see books reaching all the way up to the ceiling. The teacher says, “You’ll have to memorize all of this, and I’m going to help you. You’ll do it” and you say, “Yeah, I will?”

This is no joke; it actually does apply to us. You find a depth in learning which goes into the very core of your existence, and you find such a width or wideness in learning that you actually can’t see the edges. It begins to dissolve with the sky because it reaches so far and wide. It is like being in the middle of the ocean: when you look out ahead, you get confused about which is the ocean and which is the sky. It seems to be one big blue world. It’s such a vast thing. But we shouldn’t be put off or overwhelmed particularly. We should go ahead and do it.

According to the Buddhist tradition, there are three levels of learning. The first level is studying, that is, listening and collecting. As long as there is enough friendship and the meeting of the two minds is taking place, there should be no problem at all in learning. Obviously, there are no particular highlights or entertainment; there are no commercials in the middle. Learning is one gigantic, vast world that you get into. It could be delightful provided you raise your sense of richness. Often, students break down because they begin to feel poverty-stricken. Then the learning situation becomes tedious, a hassle. But that is not necessary. You could take a different attitude altogether and begin to find that learning is terrific, so good. Obviously, certain topics might seem like a struggle, but that kind of struggle is no longer regarded as problematic. Struggle in that sense is regarded as an expedition.

Some appreciation of challenge is absolutely necessary. If you begin to stick to your territoriality and look for security, for a home, for a place where you could lie down and take a rest; if you begin to hold on to whatever you can that’s familiar and reject anything that is not familiar, that is not so good. As students, you could feel a tremendous sense of journey or expedition taking place. Sometimes you come up with unfamiliar situations, territories, and landmarks—so what? Just keep going. Keep going that way, constantly going on. Then there will be no problem. A few months later, when you look at your stacks of books, they’re slightly lower. They have already begun to dissolve. If you look back at when you first came to your library, the stacks were so huge, and now they are slightly workable. A couple of years later, they begin to be even lower down; they become eye level. After several years, the stacks of books have dissolved, and you find that you know them all. And you’ll be surprised at yourself, at how you did all that. It is magic in some sense, educational magic.

When all the books have been dissolved and you end up in a big empty hallway, a big room with no books, when you have dissolved all the stacks and experienced all the books, still some further journey needs to be made. Then you have to contemplate what you’ve learned, what you’ve studied. That is the second stage: first
studying
, second
contemplating
. At this point, you find that you still feel strange. You’ve absorbed so much understanding and information, but still you don’t quite know how to handle those things, how actually to incorporate them into your lives, how actually to make use of them. So there’s a need for you to pay more attention to how you have learned, how you have experienced all of that—there’s a need for contemplating, thinking.

If the learning process is good and pure, then it always has applications to your life, all the time. There is no problem with that. But how to go about finding them is interesting. You have to categorize in your state of mind, how actually to put into effect what you’ve learned, how to integrate it into your lifestyle. Contemplating here means making everything you have learned part of your life. That is to say, the truths being taught should not be regarded as alien truths, but they should be made part of your whole existence. In that way, you no longer regard what you learn as some foreign element that you have picked up, but it becomes part of your system altogether.

Number three is
meditation
. Whatever you have picked up, whatever you have learned, should become a way to attain access to your neuroses. That might be regarded as a tall order, but it is possible. If you begin to pay attention to one particular theme that you’ve studied, you can use that as a way of actually understanding yourself. Having collected information and having identified with the knowledge, then next, you have to use what you have learned as a way to develop precision, meditation. Meditation here does not mean meditating on anything as such or filling your mind. Meditation here means an unconditional meditative state. This does not necessarily mean you go into a trance or experience any euphoric state of mind, but simply that you are
alert
on the spot. You are precise on the spot, and your intelligence is sharpened so much that you can actually be on the dot all the time. So you begin to experience some sense of freshness, which is the meditative state.

The concept of education in an enlightened society is no longer problematic at this point. It is very simple, but it requires a lot of effort and intelligence, and also genuineness. The purpose of education should not be to learn how to cheat the world, to gain points in one-upmanship. Obviously, it should not be that way. The purpose of learning, education, and study is to create further dignity in your living situation, which might be dealing with your grandfather, grandmother, your parents, brothers and sisters, your children. What you are learning, what you are about to learn, or what you have learned could implement waking up society in the sense of not allowing it to fall asleep. The final result is that there is no such thing as casualness or uptightness. Instead, there is some sense of balance, discipline, and, to put it into a very simple word, self-respect. You as individuals respect yourselves and you also respect your teacher and your environment. In turn there is no crime, no resentment, and no aggression. On the other hand, it’s not as flat as that may sound. There’s tremendous energy sparkling up all the time, so the enlightened society is kept well balanced, and that is very beautiful. Since we here are the enlightened society right now, we can actually do that. It has been done before, it will be done in the future, and we are doing it right now. Thank you.