The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (14 page)

Student:
Rinpoche, what is a hallucination?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, we could almost ask, what isn’t a hallucination? I mean, the things we see and perceive are there because we see and perceive. So the real reassurance of absolute proof is because we saw it.

Student:
If one is completely absorbed in the eternity, then how could one remember that it’s a passing experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Eternity experience in this case is not eternal. It’s a glimpse of eternity—then there will be a moment to appreciate the eternity, then there will be the eternity experience, and then there will be a gap to appreciate the eternity. It is like an artist painting, and then stepping back and appreciating it or criticizing it.

Student:
If everything is in the mind, yet we can have experiences of the truth occasionally of which we are absolutely convinced. That truth is an expression of one’s own being.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There is something to that. And that something has to do with the distance of the projections. You judge whether you’re experiencing something or not by the distance of the projections. From this point of view, there’s no such thing as absolute truth; on the other hand, everything is true.

Student:
Bardo seems to be the ultimate extension of ego—what’s the relation of that to the awakened state? In your analogy of the water and the islands, what is the bridge to the awakened state—the mountain?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s a very important point, seeing bardo as the path to the enlightened state. On each particular island, bardo is the highest point. In other words, it is the embodiment of the whole experience of each different realm. For instance, in terms of the world of the gods, eternity is the highest point of ego’s achievement. And because it is the highest point of ego’s achievement, therefore it is close to the other side as well, to the awakened state.

Student:
When we’re talking about the path to the awakened state, it is almost as if it is all something that has to occur within
us
, as if what is happening with other people is somehow less relevant and not really worth paying attention to. But you yourself seem to maintain yourself on the path by perpetual response to
other
people, almost as if you’re forgetting about yourself. Can you describe the path in terms of your own experience, which is more like constantly responding to other people? It seems as if you don’t pay much attention to developing yourself as you suggest that we do.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s a good one. I think it’s happening in exactly the same way in the case of others as well, because it is necessary for you to relate with others or to relate with me. I mean, you can’t develop through the path without relationships—that’s the fundamental point. But meditation becomes the starting point of relating; you learn how to create the right environment in order to relate to yourself. In terms of my own experience, that learning process takes place constantly, all the time, in terms of working with other people. You see, that’s the point when you regard yourself as officially teaching other people. When you regard yourself as a student on the path, that student would gain certain experiences and ideas by himself, through practicing meditation, going on retreat, being with himself, as well as by being with his version of the world. But he wouldn’t share his experience with others as much as a teacher would. That’s a very dangerous point, when you begin to work with other people as a teacher. Unless you are willing to learn from students—unless you regard yourself as a student and the students as your teacher—you cease to become a true teacher. You only impart your experience of what you’ve been taught, a package deal. And having done that, there’s no more to say—unless you just repeat yourself again and again.

S:
Your life seems to be so concentrated, in terms of practicing in regard to other people’s needs. But we seem to bypass that worldly side—we forget about practicing the perfections (paramitas) and just get into the meditation; whereas in your life you are always practicing the perfections.

TR:
The whole point is that it would be dangerous purely to try to imitate me, and it would be dangerous for me to try to make other people into replicas of me. That would be a very unhealthy thing.

S:
But aren’t there fundamental teachings in Buddhism about how people can best relate to each other on a daily basis? Those teachings seem to be forgotten on account of the fact that they are so ruleoriented.

TR:
You see, what we are trying to do here is to start purely with the practice of meditation. From that base, you begin to feel the need or the relevance of the other aspect, as you encounter all sorts of temptations. And then discipline based on individual conviction comes through.

S:
I’m reading Gampopa’s
Jewel Ornament of Liberation
, which you spoke of so highly in your foreword, and repeatedly he quotes the sutras as being step-by-step: you can’t practice the perfections until you’ve found a teacher; you can’t practice the second perfection until you’ve mastered the first, and at the end of those perfections he gets into meditation.
³
But you don’t tell us much about the practice of patience in everyday life, or charity, or strenuousness.

TR:
In actual fact, in following the path you have to have a commitment at the beginning, like taking refuge and surrendering yourself, and the basic practice of meditation always happens right at the beginning. The kind of meditation that Gampopa talks about is the fifth paramita, dhyana, or meditation. Dhyana is the highest meditative state the bodhisattvas achieve—which is different from the basic meditation of beginning practitioners. You see, in terms of patience and generosity and the other paramitas, the conflicts of life bring them out in any case. One doesn’t have to make big speeches about them. People find that meditation is all the time painful or difficult, and then they look for something. They begin to realize that something is wrong with them or they begin to find that something is developing in them. And these kinds of meditation in action we’ve been talking about, the six paramitas or disciplines, happen as a natural process. The pain of meditation takes on the pattern of discipline—you find that you are running too fast and you need patience to slow down, and if you don’t do that, automatically you are pushed back, something happens. A lot of people begin to find that they are facing a lot of problems if they’ve done something not in accordance with the pattern. And if you were a scholar, for instance, or a sociologist of Buddhism, you could try to match their experiences with the technical aspects of the teaching. But there’s no point trying to prove such an interpretation, anyway.

S:
Gampopa’s
Jewel Ornament of Liberation
provides an outline of the bodhisattva’s career. Is it helpful to us to study that, or is it a hindrance?

TR:
What do you mean by
study
? Practicing?

S:
Reading the book.

TR:
It is definitely an inspiration. I have recommended that most people read Gampopa, and we have also discussed bodhisattva actions. And each time I have interviews with people, almost without fail some aspect of aggression which they find a conflict with always comes up. And the bodhisattva activity of generosity and compassion comes up automatically, as a natural process.

Student:
Is sex the human equivalent of eternity?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Sex? I don’t think so. Sex is somehow too practical. It is governed purely by physical experience, whereas eternity is connected with imagination. Eternity has a very dreamlike quality; it has no reality, no physical action, and no involvement with earth. It’s purely living on imagination and dream world. I would say it is more like wish or hope.

S:
How about when you’re creating something, making a form or something? Is eternity something like that kind of creative ecstasy?

TR:
I think so, yes. The pleasure of producing something. Meditation is something like that.

Student:
In the clear light experience, how does one recognize whether it is egohood or the awakened state?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There’s a very faint, very subtle distinction between the two. When you begin to see the sudden glimpse but it’s not eternity—it’s all-encompassing rather than eternity—then that’s the awakened state of clear light. Whereas if you begin to see all this not as all-pervading but as something definite, solid, and eternal, then that’s the ego inclination.

Student:
In the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, it seems that they talk about the clear light as reality, but you talk of it as the ultimate ego experience. Is seeing it as eternity like seeing something which is more familiar? That seemed to be in there too, in the description of clear light experience as being like a son recognizing his mother.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s beyond ego’s range, the notion of son meeting mother.

S:
Does the complete human ego continue after the experience of death and then go through the bardo states in the process of its disintegration?

TR:
I don’t think so. Somehow it continues through all those experiences. I mean, you might have an experience of egolessness, but at the same time, beyond that experience, ego continues.

S:
Even past the bardo state?

TR:
Past the bardo state.

S:
And it’s the same ego as right now?

TR:
Well, that’s difficult to say. It wouldn’t be the same anyway, would it?

Student:
The distinction you made between the egotistical experience of the clear light and the awakened experience seems to me to be partially a difference in emphasis between time and space. The experience of ego involves the notion of endless time, and the awakened experience seems to involve all the spacious aspects.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In terms of ego, it seems that space and time are very solid. In terms of awake experience, the time concept is very loose. In other words, in terms of ego there’s only one center and the radiation from it; in terms of beyond ego, center is everywhere and radiation is everywhere. It’s not one center, but it is all-pervading.

S:
Is it a particular trick of ego to see things in terms of time?

TR:
In the ordinary sense of ego, there’s very little understanding of time. Ego’s understanding of time is purely based on desire, what you would like to see, what you would like to develop. It’s sort of wishful.

Student:
Is the clear light something you see? The way I see you now? Is it something you see with your eyes, or is that a metaphor?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It should be quite obvious that when we talk of clear light as all-pervading, you can’t see all-pervading. I know that there is a book on psychedelic experience and the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, which talks about some kind of glimpse of light that you experience.
⁴
But in actual fact, when we talk in terms of the awakened state of mind, that doesn’t mean that Buddha never sleeps. That he is
awake
doesn’t mean he’s devoid of sleepiness—he sleeps and he eats and he behaves like any other person.

S:
It’s easy to correlate the awakened state and clear light as verbal approaches to something that can’t be discussed, but the subsequent lights which are described in terms of blues and reds and such sound so visual. I never had that kind of visual experience.

TR:
They are metaphors. For instance, we talk in terms of a person’s face turning red when he’s angry, that doesn’t just mean the color of his complexion turns crimson; it’s a metaphor. It’s the same thing in the text, which speaks in terms of colors: the color of emotions, the clear light, and many other experiences. It is very complicated. Particularly when you get further into the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, it begins to describe all sorts of different divinities and iconographical details—and all these colors and shapes and symbolism are connected purely with one’s state of mind. If a person is open enough to his own state of being, completely absorbed in it, you could almost say the experience becomes tangible or visual—it’s so real, in that sense. It’s that point of view.

S:
For example, to experience these colors and forms, is it relevant whether or not your eyes are open?

TR:
I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all. In any case, if you experience them in the bardo after death, you leave your body behind.

Student:
When you were talking about ego as having the experience of eternity as something solid and then nothingness afterward, you used the analogy of hot and cold. I started to think about the Chinese yinyang symbol and the knot of eternity, trying to flash back and forth between the space, the light, and the so-called form.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, I tried to explain the aspect of experiencing hot and cold
simultaneously
, the possibility of two experiences coming at the same time, both confused and awake. In fact, that seems to be the whole idea of bardo altogether, being in no-man’s-land, experiencing both at the same time. It’s the vividness of both aspects at the same time. When you are in such a peak of experience, there is the possibility of absolute sanity and there is also the possibility of complete madness. That is being experienced simultaneously—in one situation, one second, one moment. That seems to be the highlight of bardo experience, because bardo is in between the two experiences.

S:
Does it have something to do with letting go in that instant when you decide which one you’ll plop back into? In other words, when the thing is over, you either end up awakened or back in samsara.