The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (30 page)

On the other hand, the idea of insanity we are looking into here does not mean that you should drop your ordinary sanity and be swinging and hip, to use current conventional terms. I am not saying you should change your entire perspective around, that instead of being clean, you should be dirty because that’s a more hip way to behave, or that you should adopt any of the rest of that kind of approach. That is not quite the point. People might think that Naropa’s hang-up was that he was not hip enough to experience Tilopa’s doctrine or teaching. That is not quite so. There is a problem in communicating this situation to late-twentieth-century Americans. We have an enormous problem there.

One of the biggest problems we face is the popularity of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist works of art. Everything is regarded as fabulous, a fantastic display. “It is so fantastic! It matches what I saw in my acid trip! It’s fabulous!” Looking at it with this attitude, the style of Naropa and his hang-ups and the style of Tilopa and his teachings might be seen as pop art, with people just thinking, “It’s a far-out thing.” Tibetan wrathful deities in paintings and thangkas demonstrate a crazy-wisdom quality, which is pop art from the point of view of those who regard connecting with the teachings as a hip thing to do.

There are problems with that. Take the example of going into retreat in a cabin in the woods under severe conditions. That should not be regarded as an alternative form of luxury. The retreat cabin you meditate in has nothing to do with your reaction against your central-heated home or your penthouse. It has nothing to do with that at all. It just provides another life situation, and that’s all. Meditating in retreat in a cabin in the remote countryside is not pop art. The same is true for visualizing all kinds of deities and mandalas as some American students have been instructed to do. The first impact on them seems to be, “At last I am able to relate with those beautiful, colorful, groovy things that are in the Tibetan thangkas. At last I have managed to get to relate with that. At last the dream comes true, and I am able to live real pop art. I’m not only thinking of them or painting them; by visualizing, I’m becoming part of them. It’s an exciting, outlandish thing to do.” It’s a kind of pop art.

To come back to Naropa, this seems to be precisely Naropa’s hangup. He had so much fascination about Tilopa and receiving the tantric teachings from him that he also looked at it as the next groovy thing to do. And he walked and walked and walked and went on and on. But at each point he got hit because he regarded the whole thing as pop art, according to the conception of that particular age. And it is possible that we ourselves might experience the same kind of situation as well, if we impulsively regard the whole thing as pop art—as colorful, inspiring, and, at the same time, artistic. As long as we regard it as something we might tune in to at any time, whenever we like, thinking that as soon as we do, it will relieve us from all our pressures and tensions—as long as we regard it as another escape, another sidetrack—being hit like Naropa could happen to us too.

All the successive situations that Naropa went through in experiencing Tilopa’s different qualities—the leper woman, the decaying dog, the criminal, and so on—involve a psychological expectation that is an extremely confused one. And we try to make pictures out of that psychological confusion. And the only kind of picture we can come up with is a beautiful, colorful, artistic kind of picture with a dreamy quality connected with possibly achieving a goal, an aim, an object. In other words, our picture is connected with the idea of reaching heaven. That seems to be the problem—because such an idea has nothing to do with truth or reality as the Kagyü lineage speaks of it, nothing to do with the mahamudra experience. Such ideas are not real truth. Bliss is not the real truth. Meditative absorption is not the real truth. It seems the real truth is naked and direct, uncolored, unshaded, and not manufactured—the simple existence of a solitary rock—which seems to be extremely boring to experience. We might think, “If I’m not going to get any excitement or understanding out of experiencing such a truth, what the hell am I getting into this trip for?”

And that seems to be our problem. When we try to get into something, we expect a lot—entertainment, precision, an answer, reassurance, clarity. We expect all kinds of things. By expecting clarity, we are confusing the whole issue; we are producing confusion. By expecting reassurance, by expecting to be reassured that the trip we are getting into is right, we are creating more paranoia. Paranoia and reassurance speak the same language; they’re on the same level; they’re always interdependent. By looking for precise understanding, we are arousing fear of confusion; we are making more confusion constantly. When we think of bliss, we are making a reference point out of this blissful state, therefore we are arousing fear of pain; we are creating further pain under the pretense of trying to create bliss. These are the things that Naropa experienced in his search for Tilopa. And that is also what we are experiencing. That is what generally happens. We try to grasp every situation of confusion as fast as possible; we grasp it, dwell on it, make it into a mother, suck as much milk as possible out of it, dwell further on it, bounce on it.

In a sense, it is beautiful that we can relate to Naropa’s confusion as our confusion. It is extremely beautiful that we can relate with him. We can also relate with his understanding. We ourselves could become like Naropa, the father of the Kagyü lineage. This whole room we are in together is filled with potential Naropas, because the whole room is filled with the potentiality of Naropa’s confusion. It is quite beautiful.

It seems that in relation to the whole thing we are talking about, Naropa’s attainment of enlightenment is not that important. It is Naropa’s confusion that is important for us as ordinary people. Connecting with that provides a basis for progress, for a step toward understanding. So let us relate with his story that way. All the hang-ups that Naropa experienced, all his imaginations—his visual mind, his auditory mind as he experienced them—are part of our makeup as well. And there are possibilities of stepping out of that confusion.

Student:
I am confused by some of the things Naropa was asked to do. Seemingly there shouldn’t be any contradiction between a guru’s teaching and the Buddha’s teaching. And yet in the visions there seem to be a lot of them. For example, asking him to kill lice seems to be a direct contradiction. On the one hand, his “sane,” sensible mind is saying, “Don’t do this”; on the other, it is saying, “Do this.” It seems either way the poor guy turns, he gets cut down. What would have happened if he had killed the lice? He still would have been in violation, so to speak.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Probably at that moment there was no such thing as lice to be killed. Physically there may have been no lice at all.

S:
Still, you’re killing, whether it’s only a projection or not. If you kill somebody in a dream, isn’t that the same as actually carrying out the action?

TR:
It’s quite different. You’re dealing with your own projections in a dream. If you dreamed that you became a millionaire, you wouldn’t actually become a millionaire.

S:
It still sounds suicidal. Even if the lice aren’t there, something exists.

TR:
Yes, something exists, which is your projections, your dogma, your resistance, which has to be killed. Of course there is something there; not only something, but
the
thing is there.

S:
If it’s killed, you’re still left a killer aren’t you?

TR:
Attaining enlightenment could be described as killing ego.

S:
It sounds suicidal and hence not complete.

TR:
It is complete. When you attain enlightenment, the killer of ego is so efficient and precise that ego cannot arise again at all, not even a memory of it. It does a very fine job. When we kill somebody in the literal sense, we cannot kill them completely. We can’t kill their name, we can’t kill their relatives—something is left. But in killing ego in connection with the attainment of enlightenment, we do a complete job—the name and the concept are killed as well.

S:
Sometimes you talk about meditation in terms of making friends with yourself. Is this what you call making friends with yourself?

TR:
What self?

S:
It just doesn’t seem very friendly.

TR:
It is the act of a friend, an act of compassion. Ego is murdered out of compassion, out of love. Usually murder takes place out of hate. It is because the murder of ego is done out of compassion that, quite surprisingly, it is complete. The murder of ego is a complete murder, in contrast to the other kind.

S:
Putting it out of its misery.

TR:
Not quite. Respecting the misery.

Student:
Rinpoche, it sounds as though you’re saying we have to go beyond, transcend ego, before we even have the right to get into tantra.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Go beyond? I think we have to, yes. It seems that in the current situation in America, we are in the stage of being haunted by the lady with the thirty-seven ugly marks as Naropa was. We haven’t developed to the next stages of Naropa’s search for Tilopa at all yet. We have just stayed at the beginning. At the moment we seem to be just discovering the difference between the words and the sense. The discovery of the word seems to be the sense, but that is not quite the case. Discovering the words was what Naropa was doing reading that particular book with his back to the sun. Reading a book on logic. We seem to be at that level. So we have a long way to go.

Student:
Is each one of these situations that Naropa goes through a step in developing out of his confusion?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Each situation has a different symbolism related with that, yes.

Student:
Who is arranging all these visions?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Nobody. It just seems to happen that way.

Student:
Rinpoche, could you say more about the madness or insanity you were talking about?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It is madness beyond the conceptualized point of view of ego. For example, if you are in an outrageous state of hatred and trying to relate with somebody as an object of that hatred, if that person doesn’t communicate back to you in terms of hate, you might think he is a mad person. You think he is mad because he doesn’t fight you back. As far as you are concerned, that person is mad, because he has lost his perspective of aggression and passion as it should be from the point of view . . .

S:
From the point of view of samsara?

TR:
Yes. From the point of view of samsara, Buddha is mad. There’s a story in the Indian scriptures that in a particular country, a soothsayer predicted to the king that there would be seven days of rain containing a substance that would make people mad. Whoever drank the water would go mad. So his whole kingdom was going to go mad. Hearing this prediction, the king collected gallons and gallons of water for his private use to keep himself from going mad. Then the rain fell and everyone else went mad. Then they all began accusing the king of being mad. Finally he gave in and decided to drink the water of madness in order to fit in with the rest of the kingdom. He couldn’t be bothered keeping himself “insane.”

Student:
In the different visions that Naropa has, he doesn’t want to do the things he’s asked to do, presumably because he thinks they’re immoral. So are we to conclude from this that morality and the moral law are purely something that operates in the ego realm, and that an enlightened person in the position of Tilopa follows no moral law?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Tilopa does follow the moral law in its absolute perfection.

S:
What does that mean?

TR:
The conventional moral law purely has to do with relating with your conscience rather than dealing with situations. Dealing with situations, with what is right and what is wrong in situations, is Tilopa’s fashion. If you relate with a situation in terms of your conscience or your perceptions, it means you don’t actually relate with the situation at all; you don’t even have any idea of understanding the situation. This seems to be what happens in general in life. You have to try to understand situations as precisely as possible, but there are situations that you regard as bad to understand. For example, if you had to investigate a murder case, you might want to dissociate yourself from the case altogether, thinking, “I don’t want to be involved with murder at all.” Then you have no way at all of understanding how and why one person murdered the other. You could let yourself become involved with that murder case and try to understand the rightness and wrongness of what was done as scientifically as possible. You could look into the situation in terms of cause and effect and gain some understanding of it. But on the other hand, if you think, “Becoming involved with murder will just get me in contact with bad vibrations, so I’ll have nothing to do with that,” then you seal yourself off completely.

That is exactly the same thing that seems to be happening in presentday society. Particularly the young generation doesn’t want to have anything to do with society—let alone understand it—because it’s something ugly, something terrible. This creates tremendous confusion and conflict. Whereas if people were to get into society and try to understand what is wrong, there might be some intelligence coming out of that. Complete rejection without discrimination seems to be the problem.

Student:
So should we register to vote?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Why not? Add your energies to the country’s.

Student:
Don’t you think there have been some things we’ve all learned from that rejection you were just talking about?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes and no—both. A lot of people have rejected Christianity and gone to Hinduism or Buddhism. They feel that they no longer have any associations with Christianity at all. Then later—from the point of view of aliens—they begin to realize that Christianity speaks some kind of profound truth. They only see that from the point of view of aliens, having gone away. They begin to appreciate the culture they were brought up in. Finally they become the best Christians, people with much more understanding of Christianity than ordinary Christians.