The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (12 page)

S:
If one is preliminary to the other, can you explain the emphasis in Zen meditation practice on posture and the lack of emphasis in mahamudra?

TR:
Well, I think that the discipline which goes along with Zen practice is connected with the experience of being determined—being determined and willing to use up any dualistic notion. Therefore it is described in terms of struggle, or within the framework of discipline. Otherwise, if there were no framework around this notion of shunyata, or voidness, you wouldn’t have anything at all; you wouldn’t even have practice, because everything is nothing, absolute nothing. In order to bring out the notion of shunyata and voidness, you have to create a horizon, or some framework, which is discipline. That is necessary. That is what we all do in the practice of meditation: at the beginner’s level, we have disciplines or techniques, something to do. In the case of mahamudra, instead of putting discipline into situations, the situations bring out discipline
for
you. If you are lax, the situation reminds you, jerks you, and you’ll be pushed; if you are going too slow, if you are too careful, the situation will push you overboard.

S:
Are we beginners, or are we advanced enough to disregard the techniques?

TR:
It’s much safer to say that we’re all beginners, that we do need some act of sitting down and practicing. But, of course, the level of discipline in meditation practice is not only a conflict between mahamudra practice and the Zen tradition at all. It’s also connected with different styles of teaching, such as the Theravada tradition of Southeast Asia, Tibetan Buddhism, or the Chinese tradition. Each culture effects a different tradition and style of practice. Obviously, in the Zen tradition a lot of the formality is highly connected simply with Japanese culture rather than fundamental Buddhism. And the same thing could be said about Tibetan Buddhism as well—a lot of things came into it from the Tibetan cultural background, not from the actual teaching. Those cultural styles make a difference in some ways.

Student:
Do you have to have some preparation for working in a mahamudra way? Does one have to be particularly conscious of the transition point from Zen to mahamudra?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, it happens as you grow. It would be too presumptuous for teachers to say that now you’re ready for mahamudra—in fact, it would be dangerous to say it. But if a student finds himself in the situation of mahamudra under the pretense of practicing Zen, he’ll find himself in a mahamudra situation automatically. Then of course he’ll accept that as the next process. But there wouldn’t be a big deal about relaxing from one technique to another technique at all; it would become a natural process for the student.

Student:
When you say “situations,” do you mean the situations that arise in daily life?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I mean individual meditation experience as well as daily life and your relationship to it. Many people have heard about the principle of abhisheka and the initiations that are involved with mahamudra teachings or tantric teachings in general. But initiations aren’t degrees at all; initiations are the acceptance of you as a suitable candidate for the practice. There’s really only one initiation, and that’s the acceptance of your whole being, your whole attitude, as suitable to practice, that you are the right type of person. Beyond that, there’s no change of techniques and practices. It’s not like a staircase at all; everything’s a very evolutionary process. When you are on the first level, as you go along, you begin to develop possibilities and qualities of the next step. And then, as you begin to lose the idea that the first step is the only way, you begin to discover something else. You begin to grow like a tree. It is a very general process, and therefore it is very dangerous to pin down that you belong to a different type of experience, a different level.

Student:
Both you and Shunryu Suzuki Roshi speak of the path as being dangerous. I always wondered what the danger is that I should be avoiding.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
They are numerous. Danger is really a relative term, in terms of the relationship of ego and the relationship of being awake. The relationship of ego is regarded as a danger—the extreme or the confusion. But danger also comes from different levels of practice. Danger always comes with speed, going fast—very rarely from going too slowly. And generally we go very fast. There’s the possibility that if you go too fast you will get hurt. There’s the danger of going too slow as well, being too concerned and becoming ultraconservative. That’s not the case in the West, particularly; it is more the case in the East. Easterners go too slowly; they don’t go fast enough. In a lot of cases, according to the stories of great teachers and their relationship to students on the path, the teachers actually have to push their students overboard, kick them out. “If you hesitate to jump, then I’ll push you—let’s go!” That sort of hesitation is a problem of the Eastern mentality. And in the West, the problem seems to be one of going too fast, being unbalanced, bringing up pain and confusion in terms of ego.

S:
If the danger is of going too fast, don’t you intensify that danger for us by outlining the mahamudra practice as a superior one, because most of us tend to want to skip to a more advanced practice without experiencing fully the preliminary level?

TR:
Precisely. That’s the whole point. I do feel that I’m responsible for this. And precisely for that reason, in the practice of meditation I try to present everything as extremely dull and uncolorful. In fact, most people who practice meditation are going through the process of discovering that meditation practice is not a kick anymore; the whole practice is extremely dull and uninteresting. And I think we have to go through that process as well. But I don’t think there is anything wrong in mentioning mahamudra. It doesn’t have to be introduced as a surprise. There is this possibility if you go through it, but it needs patience and hard work—that automatically brings up a person’s inspiration, which is a very great thing.

Student:
Concerning the idea of different levels of hierarchies of practice, sometimes it seems like we’re in all these levels at the same time.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, we are passing through the six realms of the world all the time. I mean, you pass through those different states of the world every moment or every other moment, on and off. But the gradual development we’ve been talking about is more definite than that. You may have an experience of mahamudra as well as an experience of Zen happening all the time, but as your Zen practice develops, your experience of mahumudra becomes more frequent, and you develop in that way. And beyond mahamudra, your experience of maha ati also begins to develop more. The flash of that experience becomes more and more frequent, stronger, and more real.

Student:
All this seems endless.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think it is an extremely good thing to realize that the learning process is endless.

S:
I thought you said the whole idea is to stop collecting things, but you’re collecting more things.

TR:
It isn’t really collecting, but you’re involving yourself in it. You see, the whole point is that mahamudra is not introducing a new thing or new theme, but if you reach an absolute understanding of the shunyata principle, then that
becomes
mahamudra. And when you understand completely the level of mahamudra, then that become something else. So it’s a growing process. It’s not collecting anything at all, but it’s the way you grow. And each step is a way of unmasking yourself as well. You begin by realizing the shunyata principle and experience, and then you begin to see it as a foolish game. You begin to see the foolishness of it once you get to mahamudra experience. And once you transcend mahamudra experience, then you again begin to see that you unnecessarily fooled yourself. It’s a continual unpeeling process, a continual unmasking process. So it’s more of a continual renunciation than collecting anything—until there’s nothing further that you have to go through, no journey you have to make. And then you begin to see that the whole journey you made was a foolish thing that you never made at all.

Student:
You speak of the original understanding of voidness as something that you transcend more and more, rather than giving up one thing to proceed to another, as though you were climbing a ladder?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Each moment has possibilities or potentials of everything. Your experience of emptiness and form is empty at the beginning level as well, all the time, but somehow your experience becomes more and more deep as you go along. So in a sense it could be called a progressive process, but is not absolutely so—because all the possibilities or potentials of the various steps are present in one moment of personal experience.

S:
Is it as if the circle of one’s understanding keeps enlarging and includes more and more, rather than giving up one thing to proceed to the other?

TR:
Yes. It’s a process of going deeper and deeper. You are unpeeling, unmasking the crude facade to start with. Then you unmask the semicrude facade; then you unmask a kind of genteel facade; and you go on and on and on. The facades become more and more delicate and more profound, but at the same time they are all facades—you unpeel them, and by doing so you include all experiences. That is why at the end of journey, the experience of maha ati is referred to as the imperial yana (vehicle or path) which sees everything, includes everything. It is described as being like climbing up the highest mountain of the world and seeing all the other mountains underneath you: you have complete command of the whole view, which includes everything in its absolute perfection.

Student:
I don’t understand what is meant when it’s said that forms are empty. I don’t understand what emptiness means.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
When we talk of emptiness, it means the absence of solidity, the absence of fixed notions which cannot be changed, which have no relationship with us at all but which remain as they are, separate. And form, in this case, is more the solidity of experience. In other words, it is a certain kind of determination not to give away, not to open. You would like to keep everything intact purely for the purpose of security, of knowing where you are. You are afraid to change. That sort of solidness is form. So “Form is empty” is the absence of that security; you see everything as penetrating and open. But that doesn’t mean that everything has to be completely formless, or nothing. When we talk of nothingness, emptiness, or voidness, we are not talking in terms of negatives but in terms of nothingness being everything. It’s another way of saying “everything”—but it is much safer to say “nothing” at that particular level than “everything.”

Student:
What is the relation of kriyayoga, the Hindu practice, to mahamudra?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s the same thing. Kriyayoga, or kriyayana, is the first tantric yana, or stage. In kriyayoga, the basic notion of absolute is presented in terms of purity. Because your discovery of the symbolism of mahamudra experience is so sharp and colorful and precise, you begin to feel that if experience is so good and accurate, it has to be pure. And that fundamental notion of purity in kriyayoga is the first discovery that such an experience as mahamudra is there. In other words, it is excitement at the discovery of mahamudra, the experience of a tremendously valuable discovery. An extra attitude of sacredness begins to develop because of your mahamudra experience. That is kriyayoga, the first step. It is the first discovery of mahamudra.

S:
But kriyayoga is also a Hindu school.

TR:
Buddhist and Hindu kriyayoga probably use different kinds of symbolism, iconography; but the fundamental idea of kriyayoga in the two traditions is very close, definitely close.

S:
Is kriyayoga a definite technique?

TR:
It is. In fact, you could almost say it is ninety-nine percent technique.

Student:
Couldn’t one use the expression “truthfulness” instead of “purity,” since in the experience you are talking about, all pretensions are suddenly missing?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, that’s true.

S:
So why should one get rid of it?

TR:
Well, you see, there are different types of discoveries. The discovery that happens in kriyayoga is in some ways a sharp and absolute discovery, but it is still based on spiritual materialism, meaning spirituality having a reference to ego. You see, any kind of practice which encourages constant health, constant survival, is based on ego. And actually, any discovery of such a practice wouldn’t be absolute truthfulness or an absolute discovery, because it would have a tinge of your version of the discovery rather than what
is
, because you’re seeing through the filter of ego. Such discoveries, connected with spiritual development or bliss, are regarded as something that you should transcend.

I suppose we are talking about the definition of “absolute” and of “truth.” You see, absoluteness or truth in the ultimate sense is not regarded as a learning process anymore. You just see true as true. It is
being
true, rather than possessing truth. That is the absence of ego; whereas in the case of ego, you still feel you possess truth. That doesn’t mean that you have to start absolutely perfectly. Of course you start with ego and with confusions and negatives—that’s fine. Ego is the sort of ambitious quality which comes up throughout all parts of the pattern, a kind of continual, constant philosophy of survival. Ego is involved in the willpower of survival, the willpower of not dying, not being hurt. When that kind of philosophy begins to be involved with the path, it becomes negative—or confusing rather, in this case. But that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have any of these notions at all. At the beginning of the path, you have all sorts of collections, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, it is very enriching to have them, to work with them. So the point is, one begins with faults, one begins with mistakes. That is the only way to begin.