The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (9 page)

I’m sure the mahayanists would sneer and think that this is terrible logic, very crude. They probably would not hold high opinions of it. But from the point of view of hinayana, that’s extraordinarily fantastic logic. Razor blade cuts itself; fire burns itself; water quenches thirst by itself.
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This is the egolessness of vipashyana practice.

Traditionally, we have the term
smriti-upasthana
in Sanskrit, or
satipatthana
in Pali, which means resting in one’s intelligence. This is the same as awareness. Awareness here does not mean that the person practicing vipashyana meditation gives up his or her shamatha techniques of, say, anapanasati—mindfulness of the coming and going of the breath—or of walking in walking meditation practice. The meditator simply relates with that discipline in a more expansive way. He or she begins to relate with the whole thing. This is done in connection with what is known as the four foundations of mindfulness: mindfulness of body, of mind, of livelihood, and of effort.
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If you relate with every move you make in your sitting practice of meditation, if you take note of every detail, every aspect of the movement of your mind, of the relationships in everything that you do, there’s no room for anything else at all. Every area is taken over by meditation, by vipashyana practice. So there is no one to practice and nothing to practice. No you actually exists. Even if you think, “I am practicing this particular technique,” you really have no one there to relate to, no one to talk to. Even at the moment when you say, “I am practicing,” that too is an expression of awareness at the same time, so you have nothing left, nothing whatsoever, even no “I am practicing.” You can still say the empty words, but they are like a lion’s corpse, as it has been traditionally described. When the lion is dead, the lion’s corpse remains lying in the jungle, and the other animals continue to be frightened of the lion. The only ones who can destroy the lion’s corpse are the worms who crawl up from underneath and do not see it from the outside. They eat through it, so finally the lion’s corpse disintegrates on the ground. So the worms are like the awareness, the knowledge that realizes egolessness through awareness—vipashyana.

Student:
You characterized shamatha as mindfulness and vipashyana as awareness. Then you went on to speak of the combination of shamatha and vipashyana. How would you characterize that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s a combination of the two, of being precise and at the same time being open. Precision is shamatha and openness is vipashyana, and it is possible to have both of those happening together.

S:
But don’t they already happen together in vipashyana? Isn’t the development of vipashyana based on the precision of shamatha, which vipashyana then goes on to include in its openness or awareness?

TR:
That is precisely why we talk about shamatha-vipashyana. One of the interesting points is that even at the level of maha ati or the mahamudra experience—on the tantric level of awarenesss—shamatha and vipashyana still function. They are still valid, because you have developed this basic way of taming your mind, and it is still developing.

S:
But if vipashyana includes or is based on shamatha, why do we have to bother to speak of shamatha-vipashyana?

TR:
Further clarity and further precision develop. Shamatha comes back again at the level of the sixth bhumi of the bodhisattva path, when the bodhisattva has achieved the paramita of prajna. He still comes back to shamatha, and vipashyana comes back again as well. There is a second round.

S:
Maybe it’s that vipashyana is a stance of openness, and as such, maybe it’s a little too loose.

TR:
That’s right. It loses its perspective, so there is a constant renewal of things happening. Then the same thing happens again on the tantric level of kriya yoga, which is the first of the six yanas of tantra, involved with purity. You begin your precision once more. Then it happens again at the level of the yanas of the higher tantra, mahayoga yana, the first of the ati yanas. There again, you bring back your precision of relating with certain mandalas and the experience of phenomena. So there’s a constant recalling, again and again throughout the nine yanas. The precision of shamatha practice is always recalled, again and again.

Student:
Rinpoche, could you clarify satipatthana a little bit?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Satipatthana, or smriti-upasthana, as it is known in Sanskrit, is the basic mindfulness practice that goes on in both shamatha and vipashyana. It is made up of the four foundations of mindfulness,
drenpa nyewar shakpa shi
in Tibetan, which means resting your cognitive mind, mindfulness. That is always a very important point. Without that, it is impossible to begin on the Buddhist path at all. It is the foundation of your building. Without going through that process, you have misunderstandings of vajrayana, misunderstandings of mahayana, and of course misunderstandings of hinayana. So satipatthana is the only way that is taught. It is a very important basic beginning. A person cannot begin any spiritual discipline without that, because his mind will not be tamed. Basic sanity will not be developed. No reconciliation, or acceptance, will have developed at the beginner’s level.

S:
It’s not easy.

TR:
It’s very hard, very difficult. That’s why we call the beginning level hinayana, the narrow path, which is very severe, extremely severe. It’s not a matter of being happy and having fun, particularly. It’s verrrry difficult.

S:
It has to be conquered.

TR:
Has to be reconciled, or rather, you have to become reconciled to it. That’s why there are going to be very rare Buddhists who are actually going to involve themselves with such a process. They will be what is known as golden Buddhists, who have been burned and hammered and have finally turned into pure gold, beyond the twenty-four-carat level, very fine gold. This is very difficult, but it is better to have golden Buddhists than copper Buddhists.

Student:
Rinpoche, in meditation practice, when you’re beginning to develop vipashyana and you become aware of the space around the breath, is there is no longer a watcher involved?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There is still a watcher involved, but the watcher is no longer regarded as problematic. The watcher is regarded as a vehicle.

S:
So should one encourage the watcher during meditation?

TR:
One doesn’t do anything with the watcher. One just lives with the watcher.

S:
How is the watcher a vehicle?

TR:
Well, we don’t have anything else but the watcher for a vehicle. At that point, the only intelligent voice that you have is the watcher. For lack of a better choice, that’s it. Sometimes the watcher is referred to as self-consciousness. In the Christian tradition, it might be referred to as a guilt conflict—whatever.

Student:
If you put 25 percent concentration on the breath and 25 percent on relaxation, and so on—the way you described—does that create a problem with identifying with the breath as you have taught us to do?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Absolutely not. It provides more possibility of identifying. Take a very simple example. People find it very conducive when they’re watching movies to eat popcorn. Twenty-five percent, maybe 50 percent of their attention is on the screen, and another 25 percent is on popcorn, and another 25 percent is on their companion or their Coca-Cola or whatever. Which makes the whole experience of going to the cinema very pleasurable. That’s precisely the whole point. You develop enormous concentration. You follow the dialogue in the movie and you follow every detail of the story, and you have a good time at the movies.

Student:
It seems to me that once you gave some instruction before we were going to meditate like, “Don’t be the watcher.”

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You can’t be the watcher anyway, but if you try to be the watcher, that just creates further problems. It’s like leprosy: once you have one sore, that expands and develops another, and another sore is constantly developing. So the less watcher, the more clean-cut. But rather than trying to abandon the watcher, you just don’t take part in the watcher’s trip.

S:
Is the watcher your reference point?

TR:
Reference point
is
the watcher. The reference point referring to itself is the watcher. There is no other watcher other than the reference point. That’s the whole point—that all kinds of reference points become the watcher.

Student:
When I’m meditating I see words, and some of them seem to be other people’s thoughts and some of them seem to be communications from somewhere else, and some of them seem to be directions. And it’s very hard to really distinguish what’s what.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Why bother?

S:
Just to clarify.

TR:
Why bother?

S:
I suppose I can just try to ride through the confusion, but—

TR:
There’s no point trying to sort out whose confusion is whose. That would be like trying to sort out whose dollar is whose, and every nickel and every cent. The whole thing becomes very complicated. Maybe some analytical disciplines might encourage you to sort out the problem of the universe bit by bit, but we Buddhists are very sloppy, I’m afraid. We don’t bother to count our pennies. We just deal with dollars, or twenty-dollar checks, or seven-hundred-dollar checks. It’s just simply money. It doesn’t matter who each cent came from. That doesn’t seem to present any problems.

S:
I’m a writer. I try to record it.

TR:
Well, you have to write very simply. The possibilities are you might become a more successful writer if you simplify the plot. Make it very clean-cut, which is very intriguing at the same time, maybe very mysterious. That makes a best-seller.

S:
I don’t know. I wouldn’t really know how to simplify.

TR:
Don’t try to. That’s the starting point.

Student:
Making friends with yourself.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well said.

Student:
Can you make a distinction between hope and expectation, which is one of the things that you listed for 25 percent attention? You once said it was necessary to give up hope, and I really don’t see too much distinction there.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Hope is future-oriented. Expectation is much closer to reality, but still not quite getting to the reality. It’s on the verge of reality. Hope is like saying, “I hope I could be the mother of a child.” Expectation means you are already pregnant, that it is already happening in real life, that you are going to bear a child. Which is much more immediate.

Student:
What is perfect enlightenment, which you mentioned in your talk?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The Sanskrit term is
samyaksambuddha
, which traditionally means enlightenment without any reference point. So there is no certainty whether you have actually attained enlightenment or not. You
are
. If you look at it from our angle, it might be very dull, disappointing. But once you are there, you find it is completely spacious. The whole thing doesn’t sound that glamorous, eh?

Student:
How do you avoid creating a better speedy, confused situation by doling out your awareness into concentration and expectation, et cetera? It seems to me that in meditation practice, just as in the rest of your life, you try to keep on top of what you’re doing and create space at the same time. And it only creates more confusion.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think the only thing to do is try not to sort out what is better and what is not better. Sorting out produces further problems. Gesundheit.

Student:
Is there a point in meditation practice where you practice letting go of the watcher or reference point, or is it something that just falls away by itself?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There’s no telling. No promise.

S:
Is letting go of the reference point something you consciously practice?

TR:
No promise. Duhkha, suffering, is regarded as the first noble truth. Discovering duhkha is also regarded as one of the noble truths. And the path is regarded as a noble truth and the goal is regarded as a noble truth. All the four noble truths are equally valid in themselves. One can’t say which one is the best truth. All four are noble truths. Good luck!

S:
I don’t understand at all.

TR:
Well, think about it. You can’t sort out which is the best one.

S:
The question I think I was asking was related to the practice itself: whether letting go is something active or something that just happens through the practice of watching the breath.

TR:
Both are saying the same thing. Letting go is watching the breath, watching the breath is letting go. Saying the same thing.

Student:
Could meditation and these techniques you’ve been talking about be regarded as a form of psychotherapy?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Psychotherapy is analyzing oneself and providing medication—being therapeutic. But meditation is not regarded as medicine or even as therapeutic. It is just an unconditional way of being in life.

S:
Well, is it parallel at all to existential therapy in philosophy and practice?

TR:
Somewhat, but the Buddhist approach is more boring. There’s no glamour involved.

Student:
I’ve been wondering what dangers one can encounter in meditation, if there are dangers that exist.