The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (28 page)

Having accomplished faith, vigor, awareness, meditation, and prajna, then we begin to become somewhat proud of ourselves. We feel good. There is a sense of well-being. We do not have to reduce ourselves to the level of bullshit. We are Mount Meru.
⁴
We are the great mountains of the Himalayas. We are worth being proud of. We have understood faith, energy, awareness, meditation, and knowledge. We have gone through all those with the help of the six paramitas. We now begin to feel that maybe we could stick out our necks again, once more. We are noble sons and daughters of Buddha. We
are
Buddha. We have Buddha in us. Why should we crunch ourselves down and deform our state of being? Why don’t we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being? We have perceptions and energies and inspirations. We have everything. We have a spiritual friend, we have the teaching. We have everything. What more do we want? We have everything in this whole universe. We have everything there. We have intelligence and understanding and the materials to understand. We have everything. We can afford to extend ourselves a bit more. That is why this approach is called the mahayana, the great vehicle, the bodhisattva path.
⁵
It is heroic.

We beat the drum of dharma, sound the trumpet of wisdom and compassion, celebrate the feast of intelligence. It is very joyous. And the reason that it is so joyous is because the whole thing is so hopeless. It doesn’t provide us with any hope. Once we become hopeful, we are taking the approach of poverty. We are adopting a penniless mentality. We are locking ourselves into the ghettos of the samsaric world.

We have an enormous sense of delight. There are wonderful things taking place in us. That is the sense of the bodhisattva path. That is also connected with tantra, because in tantra, the whole thing is based on pride, vajra pride, as we call it, indestructible pride, adamantine pride. An enormous sense of delight begins to take place. There is no room, absolutely none whatsoever, for misery.

This has nothing to do with being “love-and-lighty.” We don’t have to furnish ourselves with goodness, whiteness, cleanness. We don’t have to adopt the conviction that finally we are good and beautiful, loving and lighting. Rather we are what we are. We are sons and daughters of noble family, in the direct line of the Buddha. We have our heritage, our lineage. We can take pride in ourselves. It’s fantastic.

That is the preparation for tantra. I suppose we could talk about it in terms of looking. We have seen already; then we begin to look.

Student:
I didn’t quite get the difference between seeing and looking. It seemed that looking involved discrimination and seeing didn’t. Is that the distinction?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Looking is premature discrimination, and seeing is discriminating wisdom. But you can look once you have seen.

Student:
How do you see if you don’t, at some point or other, make the effort to look?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You don’t deliberately try to see. That would be looking. You perceive, you just perceive. And having perceived things as they are, as we say, you begin to find yourself looking at them. It’s very much like buying an antique. You don’t look at the details of the piece you want to buy. If you start looking, you’re going to be a loser. You’re going to make wrong decisions. If you want to be a good buyer, a competent buyer, you see the antiques. You see antiqueness. You just see it, you feel it. Seeing is feeling. Then, having seen it, you begin to look. You begin to question the state of that particular antique—whether it is worth buying, whether it has been corrupted, restored, whatever. You see the piece, then you look at it, then you buy it.

If you go to an antique auction and you look at the pieces, you make the wrong choices. You bid at the wrong time. You hit yourself, hurt yourself. When you go to an antique auction, don’t look, see.

Student:
Seeing is more panoramic, Rinpoche?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

Student:
It’s intuition as opposed to thought?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well said.

Student:
If you don’t get sucked into looking—you know, it does occasionally happen that you don’t—and you find yourself seeing instead, at that point are you still in the five skandhas?
⁶

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think you are.

S:
In?

TR:
Yes, both. You are in and out.

S:
Could you expand on that?

TR:
You are already subject to the skandhas. But there is the possibility of being free from them at the same time.

S:
In other words, it’s like life and death happening continuously.

TR:
Continuously, yes.

S:
Do you find you yourself personally in and out of the skandhas all day long?

TR:
Sure. As long as you have a body. As long as you have to shit and eat and make love.

Student:
The hopelessness is about certain goals, isn’t it? It’s not a total hopelessness about yourself.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Whenever there’s hopefulness about yourself, there’s also a problem related to a goal. Hopelessness is hopeless all over. But there are some gaps. What’s the Jewish word for that?
Chutzpah
, yes. There’s still chutzpah.
⁷

Believe it or not, hopelessness is encouragement. It’s fantastic. From our point of view, it means we are starting on a new dimension of reality. With vigor, virya, chutzpah.

Student:
Isn’t that because you have nothing left to defend, so you have nothing left to fight against?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, that’s right.

S:
So you can do anything you want.

TR:
Precisely, sure, yes. It’s your universe. It’s your world. Let’s celebrate.

Student:
But still you have to keep an awareness all along of being in an ocean of gray shit? If you began to think that you weren’t in it, then you would begin to fear falling back into it. You’d be back in hope and fear again. So do you have to continue to be aware that you’re in the gray shit anyhow?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
And take pleasure in it. I’m afraid the whole thing is as gross as that. It’s far from the three
H
’s: happy, healthy, and holy.

Student:
Is there any separation between daily life and art in terms of seeing?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
No. Everybody’s an artist.

Student:
Do you learn to trust yourself from feedback you get from people and situations around you, or does it just come from yourself?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Both. You relate to situations as well, obviously; otherwise you have no reference point. Your guru is your situation as well.

Student:
I still don’t understand about seeing and looking.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Do you see me?

S:
I think so.

TR:
You do see me. Unless you’re blind, you see me. But you haven’t looked yet. Until you look, you’re color-blind.

FOUR

The Basic Body

W
ITH THE PREPARATION
we have made in the foregoing talks, perhaps at this point we could discuss tantra.

Fundamentally, tantra is based on a process of trust in ourself that has developed within us, which is like a physical body. Tantra involves respect for our body, respect for our environment. Body in this sense is not the physical body alone; it is also the psychological realization of the basic ground of sanity that has developed within us as a result of hinayana and mahayana practice. We have finally been able to relate with the basic form, the basic norm, basic body. And that body is what is called
tantra
, which means “continuity,” “thread.” That body is a sense of a working base that continues all through tantric practice. Thus tantric practice becomes a question of how to take care of our body, our basic psychological solidity, our solid basic being. In this case, the solidity is comprised of sound, sight, smell, taste, feeling, and mind. Body here is the practitioner’s fundamental sanity. The practitioner has been able to relate with himself or herself to the extent that his or her basic being is no longer regarded as a nuisance. One’s basic being is experienced as highly workable and full of all kinds of potentialities. On the tantric level, this sense of potential is called
vajra
, which means, “adamantine,” or “diamond,” or “indestructible.” A sense of indestructibility and a strong continuous basic body has developed.

The notion of mahamudra is prominent in tantric teaching.
Maha
means “great” and
mudra
means “symbol.”
Maha
here means “great” not in the sense of “bigger than a small one,” but in the sense of “none better.” And “better” even has no sense of comparison. It is “none better,” on the analogy of “nonesuch.” And mudra is not a symbol as such. It refers to a certain existence we have in ourselves, which is in itself a mudra. Eyes are the mudra of vision and nose is the mudra of smell. So it is not a symbol in the sense of representing something or being an analogy for something. In this case, mudra is the actualization of itself. The idea is that physical activity has been seen as something workable; it is something very definite and at the same time highly charged with energy.

Particularly in Buddhist tantra, a lot of reference is made to the idea that pleasure is the way, pleasure is the path. This means indulgence in the sense perceptions by basic awakened mind. This is the mahamudra attitude. Things are seen clearly and precisely as they are. One does not have to remind oneself to be in the state of awareness. The sense objects themselves are the reminder. They come to you, they provide you with awareness. This makes awareness an ongoing process. Continuity in this sense does not need to be sought but just is.

Nobody has to take on the duty of bringing the sun up and making it set. The sun just rises and sets. There is no organization in the universe that is responsible for that, that has to make sure that the sun rises and sets on time. It just happens by itself. That is the nature of the continuity of tantra that we have been talking about. Discovering this is discovering the body.

We have a basic body, which is very intelligent, precise, sensitive to sense perceptions. Everything is seen clearly and the buddha-family principles are acknowledged. There is vajra intellect, ratna richness, padma magnetizing, karma energy of action, and the basic, solid, contemplative being of buddha.
¹
We have acquired such a body, which is not a new acquisition. It is the rediscovery of what we are, what we were, what we might be. With the rediscovery of that, a sense of being develops, a sense of vajra pride, to use tantric language. That is, there is a sense of dignity, of joy, a sense of celebrating the sense perceptions, sense consciousnesses, and sense objects, which are part of the coloring of the mandala experience.

Now the dawn has awakened us. We see light coming from the east. We see the reflections on our window, showing that the light is coming out. It is about to be daytime, and we begin to wake up. That is the discovery of the basic body. In the tantric tradition, it is called the dawn of Vajrasttva. The basic discovery has been made that daylight is just about to come, and one is ready to work with one’s sense perceptions.

We wake up and then we get out of bed. The next thing, before eating breakfast, is to take a shower. That corresponds to what is called kriyayoga, the first tantric yana, which is connected with cleanness, immaculateness. You have woken up and discovered that you have a body, that you’re breathing and are well and alive again and excited about the day ahead of you. You might also be depressed about the day ahead of you, but still there is daylight happening, dawn is taking place. Then you take a shower. This is the kriyayoga approach to life, which has to do with beautifying your body, taking care of your body, that is, the basic body we’ve been talking about.

The basic idea of kriyayoga is to purify our being of anything unnecessary. Such dirt does not provide any necessary steps toward enlightenment, but is just neurosis. Here of course we do not mean physical dirt. This is a psychological, psychosomatic type of dirt. It is neither transmutable nor workable. So we jump in the shower.

You can’t take a shower with fire and you can’t take a shower with earth or air. You have to take a shower with water, obviously. In this case water is the basic crystallization of one’s consciousness of waterness, the water element, which is connected with basic being. The chillness of water, the coldness of water, and its sparkliness are also a process of cleaning oneself, cleaning one’s body. When you take a cold shower you wake up. You’re less sleepy when the water from a cold shower pours over you. So this is also a waking-up process as well as a cleansing one.

You can’t take a shower with just water pouring on your body. You also have to use soap of some kind. The soap that you use in this case is mantras, which go between your mind and your body. Mantras are an expression of unifying body and mind. The Sanskrit word
mantra
is composed of
mana
, which means “mind,” and
traya
, which means “protection.” So the definition of
mantra
is “mind protection.” Here protecting does not mean warding off evil but developing the self-existing protection of beingness. You are proclaiming your existence. You proclaim that you are going to take a shower because you have soap and water and body there already. Water as a symbol is related with consciousness in general; and body is the thingness, the continuity of thisness, solid basic sanity; and mantra is the tune, the music you play. When you dance, you listen to music. And you dance in accordance with the music.