The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (82 page)

I am glad we have had an opportunity to begin to study the Buddhism of Tibet. This
is
the Buddhism of Tibet, and the most practical and safest way of looking at it at this point is to consider the beginning. We have to see how to begin, how to use the stepping-stones that exist in our lives as part of the spiritual journey. There may be a lot of people reading this who are extremely advanced. No doubt. But even advanced people have to begin their next stage, so they also could be regarded as beginners. Beginning at the beginning is the most useful approach for all of us, since we are beginning all the time. We cannot re-create the past, we cannot involve ourselves with the future—we have to live in the present. Life constantly begins at the beginning, always fresh. Therefore it has been said, “The dharma is good at the beginning, good in the middle and good at the end.”

We could have discussion now if you would like to ask questions.

Question:
What is the best way to work on your neurosis? I mean how do you focus on it as a practice?

Rinpoche:
Well, if you try to focus on it as a practice, that is an escape; and if you try to suppress it, that is also an escape. So the process is to relate with the neurosis as it is, in its true nature, the actual simplicity of it as it is. Then we begin to make some progress, so to speak. The reason why neurosis is seen as neurosis is that it contains conflict. It is formed out of preconceived ideas and expectations and wishful thinking of all kinds, so actually there is no such thing as a neurosis as a lump entity. What there is are these constituents of “neurosis,” grasping and rejecting, and so on. In the process of doing this grasping and rejecting, you are not satisfied with what is happening, and then you begin to distrust your whole process. You think you may be losing your grip, your footing, and you panic—which brings out what is known as “neurosis.” But if you are able to see and acknowledge all those little mechanical constituents of neurosis, then it can become a tremendous source of learning. And then the “neurosis” dissolves by itself, works itself out automatically.

Q:
What is the purpose or purposes of living our lives?

R:
We are always thinking in terms of purpose, aim and object, goal. That seems to be the problem altogether. We might look in another area, that of the purposelessness of life. Perhaps that sounds grim.

People often ask about the meaning of life or the purpose. But if you look for purpose you are defeating its purpose, you are separating yourself from the purpose, segregating yourself from the goal. So our life situations should be the path. The path should be the goal and the goal should be the path. In that sense you could say there is no purpose of any kind. Just live.

Q:
When the teacher, meditation teacher, is giving instruction, is there anything more going on than just the meaning of the words?

R:
Communication is going on.

Q:
But besides the meaning of the words . . .

R:
There is the silence between the words. Which enables us to understand the words. The punctuation is the silence. In fact that is probably the most important factor in communication—the generosity of the silence that each person communicates. You are not hurrying to speak, hurrying to overpower the student or control him. The silence that goes between the remarks is also important.

Q:
Isn’t the idea of enlightenment some kind of goal? Isn’t trying to become a buddha the same thing as the golden crutches? Don’t you have to throw away the idea of Buddha and the golden crutches and just be?

R:
Well, I think more or less you have said it. Trying to become an enlightened person is one point of view, and enlightenment would have to be all points of view. So if you are trying to be an enlightened being or buddha, you are defeating your purpose altogether. You are looking for totality from an inadequate vantage point. Therefore, in the Buddhist tradition there is the bodhisattva vow, which is to give up the idea of attaining enlightenment until all sentient beings have been saved. This is giving up the approach that
I
want to attain enlightenment, that you are at this end and enlightenment is at the other end. This approach automatically makes a polarity; you are already separating yourself from Buddha. So in order to become Buddha you either have to give up the idea of Buddha or give up the idea of you. Both ways are applicable. Both mean the same thing at this point. You could start from either end.

Q:
What I meant by giving up the idea of enlightenment is that by giving up the idea of becoming this and becoming that and instead by just being, you are Buddha. What I want to know is whether this takes as long as some schools would like you to believe.

R:
That is a question of how much we regard the whole practice as formal, as a big deal. The more we make a big deal out of the practice, the slower the journey is. It is purely up to us. People can attain enlightened understanding in one moment, but for some people it takes eons and eons. It depends on how much we regard the whole practice as ritualistic, ceremonial, as opposed to identifying it with our own basic being. In other words, if there is fundamental trust that we are Buddha actually, not that we might be, but that we are Buddha . . . that kind of positive thinking is necessary. It has nothing to do with arrogance or pride in the conventional sense; but it is the actual truth, the true positive thinking.

Q:
How can we be egoless and have self-respect at the same time?

R:
Usually the ego does not respect itself. That is common knowledge. It tends to hate itself, so there is no such thing as self-respect as far as ego is concerned. Its whole attitude is terror, fear of losing something; you are missing something all the time. So, you see, egolessness is the only self-respectful attitude we could have.

Q:
What do you think of the approach of Western psychology and psychoanalysis to this whole type of subject matter as opposed to the practice of meditation?

R:
Well, that is a very broad subject, actually. We cannot make generalizations on the whole thing. Each psychologist and psychiatrist has his or her own understanding, his or her own way of relating with mind. As well as his or her own development. A lot of modern psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts do meditation themselves. Therefore their work with their patients can be very enlightened as well.

One of the basic things that can be not so good is if the therapeutic approach is based purely on analysis, based purely on analytical mind, just analysis of the case history as such without any sense of human contact with the patient. Then the whole thing becomes like you are being put under a microscope and examined. That very mechanistic approach is almost the same as saying that you have no hope: because your past is fucked up, therefore you have no hope in the present. Somehow that process becomes very uncompassionate if there is no human connection, no trust in the nowness or the human dignity, so to speak, of the person’s neurosis of the time. As far as the patient is concerned, it is worth a great deal of respect. And it is, because the person’s basic intelligence must be getting through from somewhere, otherwise he or she would not be having psychological breakdowns.

So, basically, if any compassionate work is being done through Western psychological methods, I think it is very good. I think in general it depends on the psychologist.

Q:
The suffering and dissatisfaction you were speaking of seems to be related to our everyday-life situation. Wouldn’t the solution be simply to get out of our everyday-life situation and take refuge in spirituality?

R:
Well, basically there is no difference between mundane, domestic life and spiritual life. Mundane and domestic life is the spiritual thing. All your pain is psychosomatic pain, whether you have a problem with your kid or you have a problem with your pets or with your landlord. Whatever it is, it is a psychosomatic problem that stems from the fact that
you
are there.
You
are there, therefore the problem exists. If you were not there, the problem would not be there. But one cannot look to the simple solution of committing suicide. That does not solve the problem at all, because you still need a killer to kill yourself. Fundamentally speaking, you cannot destroy yourself completely, because you would like to watch yourself die as well as to make sure that the whole job was done perfectly.

So without you, these problems would not arise; or because of you these problems do exist. Therefore you are a very fertile person for dealing with these particular problems. That is the practice of the path.

Q:
I find it very hard to conceive of getting rid of your ego. I think it is necessary in your life situation. You relate with people with your ego. Otherwise they walk all over you. I really think it is necessary.

R:
Well, you see, on the whole we do not regard ego as a villain at all. Without ego, or without ego’s problems, as I have already mentioned, the enlightened state would be redundant. Without samsara, nirvana is redundant. And we use ego as a stepping-stone constantly. It is like wearing out a shoe—we use ego, we tread on it, we work with it. Of course we need ego at the beginning as a stepping-stone. That is very important and we do not want to look at ego as something we should throw away or abandon. In fact, we cannot do that, because that which would begin to throw ego away would also be ego. So the starting point is not abandoning ego as bad, but going along with it and letting it wear itself out.

Q:
Do you need a guru? Some say you do and some say you don’t.

R:
The guru is not regarded as a master or a professor or a big brother. The guru is regarded as a friend with whom you can communicate, with whom you can share experience. Relating with the sanity of such a person is necessary at the beginning; otherwise we can get into all kinds of extravagant fantasies—about how we have received messages and therefore what we are doing is right and so on. If we do not relate with a person who has seen through ego’s deceptions, an actual human person, then we can manipulate ourselves into all kinds of self-deceptions.

The process of relating with the guru goes through several stages. At the beginning you find it very difficult to surrender. Then you decide that that person is your friend and you begin to communicate with him. Then at some point you go through a phase of feeling self-conscious; you feel that he just might know what you are thinking and he is watching you all the time. You feel that he acts in some sense like a mirror, that if you present yourself as a confused person, he might let you see how you are confused—and you do not want to receive that message! You do not want to be flushed out. All kinds of such things go on, but at some point you give up that pride of hiding your inadequacy. You begin to communicate as between really good friends. Communication takes place ideally and at some stage becomes extremely comfortable. Now you do not have to do anything for yourself; just go to that friend and he tells you exactly what to do. The whole thing becomes automatic. Very efficient service. At that point usually what happens is that, either physically or psychologically, the guru becomes distant and you are forced to work things out for yourself. Then you begin to relate with your life situation as guru. Everything that comes up in your life is part of the guru. The guru is everywhere. At that point the inner guru begins to wake up.

So we might make that distinction between the spiritual friend, the human person, and the inner aspect which wakes up, which is the guru.

The Three-Yana Principle in Tibetan Buddhism

T
HE
T
IBETAN APPROACH
is unique in that it sees Buddhism in terms of three yanas, or vehicles. Not just the hinayana, or mahayana or vajrayana, but all three are included in the approach to enlightenment.

Hinayana
means “narrow path” and is the beginning stage. One begins by using one’s present state of being as the working basis. This is the intent of Buddha’s four noble truths. Our lives are involved with achievement and pleasure-seeking, which automatically means trying to correct the existing situation. Therefore there is constant discomfort; we are constantly in a state of unwillingness to accept things as they are. Acknowledging this is the realization of the first noble truth. The cause of this discomfort is grasping, aggression, and lack of recognition. This is the second noble truth. The third truth is the glimpse that the workings of this plot can be sabotaged. This can be done by treading on the path of meditation, which is the fourth noble truth. Many different meditation techniques were recommended by Buddha in order to expose the deceptions of ego, constantly attempting to consolidate its territory.

The hinayana discipline is narrow. It permits no entertainment, but works on the basic patterns of life. This way it provides a solid foundation for spirituality.

Having developed a certain basic sanity, there is a further need to share this with the world.
Mahayana
means “open path.” It involves a commitment or vow to work with all sentient beings without heed to ego’s dictatorship. Following the example of the bodhisattvas, one practices the six transcendental actions: generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and knowledge. The sense of egolessness then expands. One breaks through one’s primeval sense of identity and becomes the embodiment of clarity and skill.

Vajrayana
means “goal is path.” The practitioner finds that the goal of enlightenment is the path. Mantras and mudras and visualizations arouse the vividness of the awakened state of mind. The clarity and skill inherited from the mahayana discipline become indestructible power.

The practitioner is able to tread on the spiritual path through the guidance of a competent teacher, who is a holder of wisdom through a lineage of masters. Transmission is possible only through personal contact with a living master.