The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (23 page)

You do not have to push yourself into the practice of meditation but just let be. If you practice in this way, a feeling of space and ventilation automatically comes, the expression of the buddha nature or basic intelligence that is working its way through confusion. Then you begin to find the understanding of the “truth of the path,” the fourth noble truth, simplicity, such as the awareness of walking. First you become aware of standing, then you are aware that your right leg is lifting, swinging, touching, pressing; then the left leg is lifting, swinging, touching, pressing. There are many, many details of action involved in the simplicity and sharpness of being in this very moment, here, now.

And it is the same with the practice of the awareness of breathing. You become aware of the breath coming into your nostrils, going out, and finally dissolving into the atmosphere. It is a very gradual and detailed process and acute precision is involved with its simplicity. If an act is simple, then you begin to realize its precision. One begins to realize that whatever we do in everyday life is beautiful and meaningful.

If you pour a cup of tea, you are aware of extending your arm and touching your hand to the teapot, lifting it and pouring the water. Finally the water touches your teacup and fills it, and you stop pouring and put the teapot down precisely, as in the Japanese tea ceremony. You become aware that each precise movement has dignity. We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act of our lives can contain simplicity and precision and can thus have tremendous beauty and dignity.

The process of communication can be beautiful, if we see it in terms of simplicity and precision. Every pause made in the process of speaking becomes a kind of punctuation. Speak, allow space, speak, allow space. It does not have to be a formal and solemn occasion necessarily, but it is beautiful that you are not rushing, that you are not talking at tremendous speed, raucously. We do not have to churn out information and then stop suddenly with a feeling of letdown in order to get a response from the other person. We could do things in a dignified and proper way. Just allow space. Space is as important in communicating to another person as talking. You do not have to overload the other person with words and ideas and smiles all at once. You can allow space, smile, say something, and then allow a gap, and then talk, and then space, punctuation. Imagine if we wrote letters without any punctuation. The communication would be very chaotic. You do not have to be self-conscious and rigid about allowing space; just feel the natural flow of it.

This practice of seeing the precision of situations at every moment, through such methods as the awareness of walking, is called shamatha (Pali
samatha
) meditation. Shamatha meditation is associated with the hinayana path or the “lesser vehicle,” the disciplined or narrow path.
Shamatha
means “peacefulness.” There is a story concerning the Buddha which relates how he taught a village woman to develop such mindfulness in the act of drawing water from a well. He taught her to be aware of the precise movement of her hands and arms as she drew up the water. Such practice is the attempt to see the nowness quality in action, which is why it is known as shamatha, the development of peace. When you see the nowness of the very moment, there is no room for anything but openness and peace.

Q:
Could you say something more about allowing gaps to appear? I understand what you mean, but I do not understand how they come about, how someone allows a gap. How does one “let be?”

A:
Actually this question leads into the next topic, the discussion of the bodhisattva path, the mahayana path of compassion and freedom, the wide path. However, to answer the question from the hinayana point of view of simplicity, one should be completely satisfied with whatever situation arises and not look for entertainment from an external source. Generally, when we speak, we do not simply want to communicate to the other person, but we want a response as well. We want to be fed by the other person, which is a very egocentric way of communicating. We have to give up this desire to be fed, and then the gap automatically comes. We cannot produce the gap through effort.

Q:
You said we have to prepare ourselves to enter the path. We cannot rush into it. We have to pause. Could you speak a bit more about this preparation?

A:
In the beginning we have the feeling that the spiritual search is something very beautiful, something that will answer all our questions. We must go beyond this kind of hope and expectation. We might expect our teacher to solve all our problems, relieve all our doubts. But when we confront our teacher, he does not actually answer every question. He leaves many things for us to work out ourselves, which is a tremendous letdown and disappointment for us.

We have many expectations, especially if we seek a spiritual path and involve ourselves with spiritual materialism. We have the expectation that spirituality will bring us happiness and comfort, wisdom and salvation. This literal, egocentric way of regarding spirituality must be turned completely upside down. Finally, if we give up all hope of attaining any sort of enlightenment, then at that moment the path begins to open. It is like the situation of waiting for someone to arrive. You are about to give up all hope that he will ever come, you have begun to think that the notion of his arrival was simply a fantasy on your part, that he was never coming in the first place. The moment you give up hope, the person turns up. The spiritual path works in this way. It is a matter of wearing out all expectation. Patience is necessary. You do not have to push yourself too energetically into the path but just wait, just allow some space, do not be too busy trying to understand “reality.” It is necessary first to see the motivation for our spiritual search. Ambition is unnecessary if we are going to start our path open-mindedly, with a mind that transcends both “good” and “bad.”

A tremendous hunger for knowledge develops when we begin to realize the origin of duhkha. There will be a tremendous push to get beyond it. If we push ourselves too much, then the path of spirituality becomes instead the path of pain, confusion, and samsara, because we are very busy trying to save ourselves. We are too keen to learn something, too busy attending to our ambition to progress on the path rather than letting ourselves be and examining the whole process before we start. It is necessary not to rush onto the spiritual path but to prepare ourselves properly and thoroughly. Just wait. Wait and examine the whole process of the “spiritual search.” Allow some gap.

The main point is that we have this basic intelligence that shines through our confusion. Consider the original analogy of the monkey. He wanted to get out of his house and so became very busy trying to escape, examining the walls and windows, climbing up and down. The tremendous energy that drives the monkey is the primeval intelligence which pushes us outward. This intelligence is not like a seed which you must nurture. It is like the sun that shines through gaps in the clouds. When we allow a gap, then spontaneous, intuitive understanding of how to proceed on the path suddenly, automatically comes to us. This was the experience of the Buddha. After he had studied numerous yogic disciplines under many Hindu masters, he realized that he could not achieve a completely awakened state simply by trying to apply these techniques. So he stopped and decided to work on himself as he already was. That is the basic instinct which is pushing its way through. It is very necessary to acknowledge this basic instinct. It tells us that we are not condemned people, that we are not fundamentally bad or lacking.

Q:
How does one deal with practical life situations while trying to be simple and experience space?

A:
You see, in order to experience open space one also must experience the solidity of earth, of form. They are interdependent. Often we romanticize open space and then we fall into traps. As long as we do not romanticize open space as a wondrous place but rather relate that space to earth, then we will avoid these traps. Space cannot be experienced without the outline of the earth to define it. If we are going to paint a picture of open space, we must express it in terms of the earth’s horizon. So it is necessary to bring oneself back to the problems of everyday life, the kitchen-sink problems. That is why the simplicity and precision of everyday activities is very important. If you perceive open space, you should bring yourself back to your old, familiar, claustrophobic life situations and look into them more closely, examine them, absorb yourself into them, until the absurdity of their solidity strikes you and you can see their spaciousness as well.

Q:
How does one relate to the impatience that accompanies the waiting period?

A:
Impatience means that you do not have a complete understanding of the process. If you see the completeness of each action, then you will not be impatient any more.

Q:
I experience calm thoughts as well as neurotic thoughts. Are these calm thoughts something I should cultivate?

A:
In the practice of meditation all thoughts are the same: pious thoughts, very beautiful thoughts, religious thoughts, calm thoughts—they are all still thoughts. You do not try to cultivate calm thoughts and suppress so-called neurotic thoughts. This is an interesting point. When we speak of treading the path of the dharma, which is the fourth noble truth, it does not mean that we become religious, calm, good. Trying to be calm, trying to be good, is also an aspect of striving, of neuroticism. Religiously inclined thoughts are the watcher, the judge, and confused, worldly thoughts are the actor, the doer. For instance if you meditate, you might experience ordinary domestic thoughts and at the same time there is a watcher saying, “You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that, but you should come back to meditation.” These pious thoughts are still thoughts and should not be cultivated.

Q:
Could you say something more about using pauses as well as speech to communicate, and how this process relates to ego?

A:
Usually, when we communicate with another person, we are driven by a kind of neurotic speed. We must begin to allow some spontaneity to penetrate this speed so that we do not push ourselves onto the person with whom we are communicating, do not impose ourselves, do not overload the other person. In particular, when we speak of something in which we are very interested, we do not just talk but we leap at the other person. Spontaneity is always there, but it is clouded over by thought. Whenever there is a gap in the cloudbank of thought, it shines through. Reach out and acknowledge that first openness and through that opening the basic intelligence will begin to function.

Q:
Many people are aware of the truth of suffering but do not move on to the second step, awareness of the origin of suffering. Why is that?

A:
I think that it is largely a matter of paranoia. We want to escape. We want to run away from pain rather than regard it as a source of inspiration. We feel the suffering to be bad enough, so why investigate it further? Some people who suffer a great deal and realize that they cannot escape their suffering really begin to understand it. But most people are too busy attempting to rid themselves of irritation, too busy seeking distractions from themselves to look into the material they already have. It is too embarrassing to look into it. This is the attitude of paranoia: if you look too closely, you will find something fearful. But in order to be a completely inspired person like Gautama Buddha, you have to be very open-minded and intelligent, an inquisitive person. You have to want to explore everything, even though it may be ugly, painful, or repulsive. This kind of scientific-mindedness is very important.

Q:
In the awakened mind, where does motivation come in?

A:
Inspired motivation comes from something beyond thought, something beyond the conceptualized ideas of “good” and “bad,” “desirable” and “undesirable.” Beyond thought there is a kind of intelligence which is our basic nature, our background, an intuitive primordial intelligence, a feeling of space, a creative open way of dealing with situations. This kind of motivation is not intellectual: it is intuitive, precise.

Q:
Can one work on one’s mind by controlling the physical situation?

A:
Whatever you do with the situations of life, there is always a communication going on between mind and matter. But one cannot rely upon the gadgetry of matter alone; you cannot get around the problems of mind by manipulating things external to it. We see so many people in our society trying to do just this. People put on robes and renounce the world and lead very austere lives, renouncing every common habit of human behavior. But eventually they will have to deal with their confused minds. Confusion originates in mind, so one has to start directly with mind rather than attempting to go around it. If one is trying to get around mental confusion by manipulating the physical world, then I do not think it will work.

In the dance of life, matter reflects mind and mind reacts to matter. There is a continual exchange. If one is holding a lump of rock, one should feel the solid earth qualities of rock. One has to learn how to communicate with the rocklike quality. If one is holding a flower, then the particular shape and color of the petals connect to our psychology as well. We cannot completely ignore the symbolism of the external world.

However, in the beginning as we attempt to confront our own neuroses, we must be very direct and not think that we can evade the problems of mind by playing with matter. For instance, if a person is psychologically unbalanced, completely confused, like the monkey we have been discussing, and if we dress him in the robes of the Buddha or sit him in a meditation posture, his mind will still spin around in the same way. But later on, when he learns to settle himself down and becomes a simple monkey, then there might be a certain effectiveness in taking him into a quiet place or retreat.