The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (18 page)

S:
What does Padmasambhava have to do with the dharmadhatu?

TR:
Nothing.

S:
Well, what is the difference then between the sense of possibility in dharmakaya, the sense of a pregnant situation, and expectation in the negative Buddhist sense of desire, of looking forward to something? In other words, you spoke of dharmakaya as a sense of possibility, as if you had your tea before you even drank it. How does that differ from wanting a cup of tea in the grasping way?

TR:
There’s no difference at all. If we look at grasping in a matter-of-fact way, it’s actually very spacious. But we regard grasping as an insult to ourselves. That’s why it becomes an insult. But grasping as it is, is actually very spacious. It’s a hollow question. Very spacious. That’s the dharmakaya itself.

S:
Is there a momentum that brings it beyond the sense of potential or pregnancy of the dharmakaya stage to the point where it is actually moving toward becoming something?

TR:
There is momentum already, because there is experience. Momentum begins when you regard experience as something experience
able.
The momentum is there already, so dharmakaya is a part of that energy. That’s why all three kayas are connected with energy. There is the most transparent energy, the energy of movement, and the energy of manifestation. Those three kayas are all included in that energy. That’s why they are called kayas.

S:
It seems as though within the pregnant space of the dharmakaya, there is also sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya.

TR:
Yes.

S:
It seems to me that in the journey from dharmakaya to nirmanakaya, if the manifestation is going to end up to be something samsaric and the dharmakaya is already pregnant with it, then there is a samsaric factor that is already part of the dharmakaya. For instance, if we have the cup of tea before we actually drink it, then there is all the conditioning from past tea-drinking experiences that is part of determining that experience.

TR:
You see, the whole point when we talk about Padmasambhava is that Padmasambhava is the trikaya principle, which is made out of a combination of both samsara and nirvana at the same time, so any conditions or conditioning are valid. At this point, as far as that experience is concerned, samsara and nirvana are one within the experience. What we are concerned with here is that it is purely free energy. It’s neither conditioned nor unconditioned, but rather its own existence is absolute in its own way. So we don’t have to try to make it valid by persuading ourselves that there is nothing samsaric that is part of it. Without that [samsaric element], we would have nothing to be crazy about. This
is
crazy wisdom, you know.

S:
What’s the nirmanakaya part?

TR:
The sense of relating with the tea as an external object, which is like cutting the umbilical cord. Relating with the tea as the teaness out there is the nirmanakaya. But this does not necessarily mean physically doing it, particularly. Rather, it’s that there are three types of solidification of experience related with tea, the threefold states of being of the mind.

S:
So the nirmanakaya is the sort of “ness.”

TR:
Yes, it’s the cupness and potness and teaness.

S:
So what’s the sambhogakaya?

TR:
The sambhogakaya is the sense of slight separateness, as opposed to the abstract idea of having tea. There’s some journey.

S:
There’s some sense in experiencing the potness and cupness that they might become exiled from the whole process of birth, cut off from the experiencing process that bore them in the first place?

TR:
That’s happened already. Once you are pregnant, it is already a statement of separation, and it is a further expression of separation when you give birth; then the final statement is when you cut the umbilical cord; that is the final state of separateness.

S:
And you accept that separateness fully?

TR:
Yes. Otherwise it becomes very confusing in terms of the partnership with nirvana or whatever you would like to call it—sanity, nirvana.

Student:
I don’t see how this relates with hopelessness. I mean, I don’t see how these first two lectures go together.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, hopelessness comes from the fact that this process we have been describing does not bring any comfort. We could say that dharmakaya exists, sambhogakaya exists, nirmanakaya exists, and each has its functions. But so what? Still there’s no recipe for how to make yourself happy. At this point, it has nothing to do with bringing happiness into our lives, or goodness or comfort or anything else like that. It’s still a hopeless situation.

Realistically, even if you know the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya from back to front, what does that mean to you? You will just understand the energy principle and the independency and potency of your energy. But apart from that, there’s no medication. It’s still hopeless.

Student:
Rinpoche, is seeing things as they are still experiential?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, we could say that seeing things as they are is not quite crazy enough.

Student:
Rinpoche, you’ve described the movement from dharmakaya to sambhogakaya to nirmanakaya as a movement of energy outward. Could that process be reversed? Does the energy also go from nirmanakaya to sambhogakaya to dharmakaya?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That also happens constantly. It’s sort of recycling itself. That’s no big deal.

Student:
You’ve said that we have a choice between gradual and sudden realization.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

S:
Yet hopelessness is there all the time.

TR:
Yes.

S:
Well, what is it that we could do, then?

TR:
There is an old saying that the path is the goal and the goal is the path. You make your journey, you get to your destination, and arriving at that destination brings on another question: how to proceed from there. In that way, each goal itself becomes the path. Particularly from the tantric point of view, you don’t achieve anything except path. Discovery of the path is achieving. You see what I mean?

S:
Well, what’s sudden about it?

TR:
It’s always sudden.

S:
All the time.

TR:
All the time, yes. Until you give up the path—and the goal—there’s still sudden enlightenment all the time. So the only
final
sudden thing is that you have to give up sudden discovery. That’s very shocking. And very sudden.

S:
But that sudden flash that goes on all the time, you’re saying, is different from the gradual path?

TR:
Yes, definitely. The nature of the gradual path from this point of view, if I may say so, is that the gradual path regards the goal as the goal and the path as the doctrine. And the sudden path regards the path as the goal as well as the goal as the path. There’s no room for doctrine. It is just a matter of personal experience all the time. If you had to give an Oxford dictionary definition of the difference between gradual and sudden enlightenment, that could be it.

Student:
Rinpoche, does this process of solidification from dharmakaya to nirmanakaya and the attitude toward it also apply on the psychological level to the process of projection—to your projections becoming more solid and your attitude toward that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Naturally. The whole existence of the three kayas is a kind of projection in which you manufacture the projections. So in other words, the very existence of the dharma itself is a projection. Insanity and sanity both are projections. And since everything is done that way, the whole thing becomes a projection and solidity at the same time.

Student:
In the story of the man worshiping Padmasambhava with so many mantras and recitations, I wasn’t sure of the point. Is that kind of devotional practice purely a waste of time? Or is there some value in it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, both are the same thing in a way. In order to gain valuation of time, to begin with you have to waste time, which is part of gaining valuation of time.

S:
So he was wasting time?

TR:
But he understood something out of it. He realized, finally, that he was wasting time, by wasting time.

S:
Is that all that was happening there?

TR:
Yes.

S:
It doesn’t sound like a waste of time at all.

TR:
That’s up to you. That’s what I’m saying.

Student:
When you say the journey need never be made, do you really mean that? We don’t have to make the trip?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
But then you don’t know what the trip is.

S:
Why do we need to know that?

TR:
To realize you need never make it—it’s a seamless web.

Student:
Is there a certain determinism involved in the dharmakaya? Is there a kind of inevitability in the progression from dharmakaya to sambhogakaya to nirmanakaya?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think probably the only determinism on the part of the dharmakaya is the self-consciousness of its own existence, of its own pregnancy. And that’s the first expression of dualism.

Student:
What’s the relation between the three kayas and the charnel ground you mentioned? Is there a relation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Each time you develop a manifestation, you create your own stuff—right at the beginning. Dharmakaya creates its own existence and its environment as well. The environment is the charnel ground—a place to dissolve, a place to manifest.

Student:
I don’t see that strong a difference between the sambhogakaya and the nirmanakaya. The dharmakaya seems to have parent status, so to speak, and the sambhogakaya seems to be like giving birth—you know, first expression. And I don’t see where the final step from the sambhogakaya to the nirmanakaya comes in. It seems that both of them represent completion of some sort.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, the sambhogakaya is acknowledging the energy, you could say, and the nirmanakaya is executing, like the analogy of cutting the umbilical cord. Apart from that, there’s no difference.

S:
But the sambhogakaya, you said, was analogous to giving birth. That also seems pretty final.

TR:
The sambhogakaya is acknowledging the energy in the sense of the receptiveness of reality. It is acknowledging that your projections are separate, definitely separate; and then what you do with the separateness, your projections, is handled by the nirmanakaya. The nirmanakaya could be described as the domestic matter of how to handle your kitchen-sink problem, whereas the sambhogakaya is like getting married to begin with to create the kitchen-sink problem. And the dharmakaya is like courting; it contains those possibilities, is already fraught with all kinds of possibilities.

S:
Before, I thought you said that this process of the trikaya, looked at in the context of the self, would be samsaric, whereas in the context of the dharmadhatu, it would be nirvanic?

TR:
We never discussed the nirvana aspect of it, because for one thing, it becomes too idealistic. For another thing, it becomes inaccurate, because we never see it. So we are speaking from the samsaric point of view of enlightenment at this point.

S:
Why don’t we see it?

TR:
We still want to have answers and conclusions, which is an experience of separateness, which is samsaric. You want logic, and logic depends on samsaric mind.

S:
It seems that this three-kaya process is a different perspective on the same process as the twelve nidanas and the six realms of the world and the different bardo states. Is that so?

TR:
Same thing.

THREE

Fearlessness

H
AVING ALREADY DISCUSSED
the three-kaya principle by way of preparation, we might now consider Padmasambhava as a representative of crazy wisdom as opposed to any other type of manifestation of a vidyadhara. We might say that the unique quality of crazy wisdom in Padmasambhava’s case is that of sudden enlightenment. The eight aspects of Padmasambhava are not a lineal process; they are simultaneous. In fact, the traditional expression is “eight names” of Padmasambhava rather than “eight aspects.

What is the name principle? Why is it called a
name
rather than an
aspect?
When we refer to aspects, usually we are referring to differences in basic being. We might speak of a man’s father aspect, his teacher aspect, his businessman aspect. In this ordinary usage, there is the idea of a change that goes with the different roles. This usual idea of different aspects—which would imply that Padmasambhava transformed himself, entered into different parts of his being, or manifested different expressions—does not apply to Padmasambhava. Rather, his having different names is connected with the attitudes of his students and of other beings toward him. The different names have to do with the different ways other people see Padmasambhava rather than with his changing. So “name” here has the sense of “title.” The Tibetan phrase is
guru tsen gye,
“the eight names of the guru.”
Tsen
is the honorific Tibetan word for “name.” Some people might see Padmasambhava as fatherly, others as brotherly, and still others might see him as an enemy. The views imposed by the way people see him are the basis for the eight names of Padmasambhava. Nevertheless, his only manifestation is that of crazy wisdom.