The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (20 page)

That no-man’s-land quality of bardo is the answer, in some ways; it is the way of breaking through. Further on, once you are able to see that particular precision of the in-between experience, that no-man’s-land experience, you may begin to see that “you should” and “you shouldn’t” have been childish. You can either do that or do this, but there is no
permanent
experience, no permanent security, involved. You begin to see that some kind of basic core of continuity is taking place, rather than trying to change from one black to another white. So confusion and tension, in this case, are extremely useful and helpful. Without that, there would be no pattern of seeing the situation, or learning process, at all. In other words, confusion and uncertainty are like the letters or initials for each step that you have to go through. That is the bardo experience of the dream world. That dream bardo that you go through, you walk through, is an extremely important and very personal experience.

Student:
If you make a decision, it is going to bring you tension because you don’t know how it is going to work out, whether it’s going to be good or bad. Do you just go along and continue to accept it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, ultimately decisions don’t come out in terms of yes and no, black and white. The ultimate answer, so to speak, would say you’re right but at the same time you are wrong.

S:
So that brings up the tension?

TR:
That
releases
tension, the ultimate tension. If you are involved with something, and if you reject or accept it absolutely, one hundred percent, then the tension is going to remain all the time. There is no way of solving the problem of tension by making black-and-white decisions, in other words. The only way of transcending that tension is through the acceptance of all aspects.

S:
That’s in the future someplace. Immediately, you can’t have this lack of tension—you have to wait for the situation to clear itself.

TR:
Exactly, yes. Nothing is going to be a magical sedative. But strangely enough, once you begin to accept that, then half of the problem has been solved.

Student:
You seem to stress that the tension coming out of indecision is more detrimental than the disaster which may arise from making the wrong decision. For instance, in your book
Born in Tibet
, you had to decide which of three passes to go through.
⁵
I would have been in absolute stitches, because there would really be no way to judge. Then you made the decision as to which way to go, and you did the right thing. In that moment, do you also accept that it may
not
be the right thing?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That sounds good. Yes, exactly. I suppose you could boil all this down to saying that as long as there is no expectation of magic, then everything is in its proper order. I wouldn’t say everything is perfect; I would say everything is in its absolute order. You see, once you begin to ward off something, thinking that you are going to be the perfect decision maker, then, like a lot of politicians we know, it works in the opposite way, because you are exposing yourself to criticism, to negative, unhealthy situations, and to chaos.

S:
How about in relation to meditation, where you said you accept the possibility that you won’t get anywhere at all—or you might, who knows; I don’t know. It seems like I’ve sat and sat and sat and all I have gotten is a sore ass.

TR:
Yes? That is the essence of what we have been talking about all the time, in fact. It seems that you might go crazy or you might attain something.

S:
I don’t worry about going crazy. It just seems dull. A lot of people sit around in these discussion groups and everybody says, “Oh, I had this great experience. I met this lama and all of a sudden I was . . . it took me three weeks to get back down to earth.” But I just see people and they say hello and I say hello. And I ask you a question and you say, “Mm-hmm.”

TR:
You see, the point is that you can’t have a 100 percent absolute waiting period at all. Whenever there is any kind of process going on, there are always ups and downs—little flickers of doubts and little flickers of understanding. This goes on and on and on. Maybe we don’t need dramatic flashes of bardo experience, but detailed bardo experiences are equally good. And these little details, which we generally ignore, or little problems that come up, are the only way. It could start from the absolutely insignificant level—the very fact of your relationship to your ass is in itself very interesting.

Student:
Rinpoche, what is the root meaning of these three words:
magic, miraculous
, and
miracle
?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, I suppose you could look that up in a dictionary.

S:
No, not from the dictionary.

TR:
The Oxford dictionary? It’s generally pretty clever in giving definitions. But I think the fundamental idea of miracle, or magic, is having something that you don’t believe in, in order to prove your belief. That is, your belief is challenged by its opposite. If you expect the world to be this way, downside up, and if you suddenly see it upside down, that’s a miracle. There are numerous acts of magic and miracles that we have heard of and that we know about, such as water changing into fire and all sorts of little details like that. But somehow they also bring a kind of faith or trust which is based purely on mystery. You don’t bother to understand anything, but you are willing to submit to that mystery. For instance, you are not interested in studying how an aircraft works mechanically, but you are still willing to fly. It is that kind of laziness: such-and-such a thing works, but I just want to get service; I don’t want to go into the details of how it works. That seems to be the most damaging attitude of all: that we expect things to work purely because we want them to, rather than because they are.

Fundamental miracles usually only occur at the situational level. For instance, there is the miracle of our being here together. Such an incident takes place that I came all the way from Tibet, and generally every individual here has their own story about how they happen by accident to be here. That type of miracle works continuously, all the time. It happens. You can’t change it. You can’t divert the pattern of that miracle into another one, because the miracle has already happened.

Student:
You said that the acceptance of the situation solved half of the problem of making a decision. I wonder if the other half—actually having to go ahead and decide—grows out of the acceptance.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, the acceptance is faith and gentleness; therefore, it could be said to be compassion. Once you see the situation as it is, then you just involve yourself in it and it takes you along. In fact, you can tell what the end is going to be. That is developing egoless common sense. Egoless common sense is not based on “because-of-anything,” but it is based on “it-will-be-so.” You could project your future quite accurately or take the right path quite accurately if you had that general egoless common sense. With such precision and clarity, as well as egolessness, you are not dwelling on hope or fear. Then things take place naturally.

S:
Can things take place completely passively in that way? I read a passage in the scriptures comparing wisdom and skillful means, and it said that to abide in wisdom without skillful means would be a one-sided nirvana at best. I want to know if there’s an active side to the picture.

TR:
Of course, the physical situation of committing yourself and taking actual symbolic gestures, so to speak, is itself an earth-grounding quality.

S:
Can that active side be described? Is it moving like a cow? Is it leaping? Is it being like a warrior?

TR:
Yes, definitely. It is a warrior type of experience. I mean chance, of course, all the time taking chances. You have to be brave.

S:
Does a warrior go back and forth? Does he or she sometimes just sit and watch? That image of warrior doesn’t seem to go along with the attitude of passive acceptance necessary for seeing situations.

TR:
Acceptance doesn’t mean not committing yourself, just dwelling on the idea of such-and-such. It is accepting and then putting yourself into that situation of acceptance. That also allows space. You don’t rush into something completely because you had a flash—you take a portion and then you eat it and digest it and then you eat the next portion.

Student:
What should one’s attitude be toward possible mistakes?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s no good trying to look at it philosophically and trying to comfort yourself. But it is apparent that mistakes also have a point to them. As far as the warrior’s steps go, there is no defeat at all, there are no mistakes at all. Both positive and negative are the path, the general pattern. Any negative experience which occurs is an invitation or vanguard of positive experiences, as well. It just happens that way.

Student:
In any experience, how much of that experience would you say we have control over in terms of will? Give me, if you can, a percentage there.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s a rather dangerous point. When we talk about will, it is purely based on ego’s terms of benefit, or whether ego is willing to leap out and sacrifice itself. But there is some kind of faith, rather than will, which is seeing things as they are. Then you are not afraid of acting. It is an intuitive way of living and relating with situations. That kind of faith or determination, in fact, dominates the whole process. It’s the most important point of all. It is the fuel to drive yourself.

Student:
What does being brave mean?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Not looking back.

Student:
How can you tell when you’re just being greedy? You may be pushing and you don’t want to give up because you think you are attaining something. But you are being greedy and you’re going too fast. At the same time, you are afraid you may be going crazy—so you try to knock yourself down. You may drink some alcohol or something like that. So you alternate between being greedy and pushing on and being afraid and trying to turn off.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Turning off seems to be dangerous. If you are driving a hundred and six miles an hour on the highway and suddenly you realize you are going too fast—if you turn off your car, that’s a cop-out.

Student:
I like to think not in terms of decision but in terms of direction. Is there such a thing as recognizing a direction? For example, that you are here and that we are here is a direction—we happen to be converging at one point. Is there such a thing as recognizing your own direction?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Of course you have to have a close relationship with the direction. In this case, when we talk about direction it is just the direction itself, without being self-conscious about it. Once you are able to realize that particular direction, the path is the goal and the goal is the path—and travel is also the path, as well as the traveler. All things are one. Once you are able to see that, to have that kind of relationship, then it happens as a natural process.

Student:
The way you use the word
warrior
, the way Don Juan uses the word
warrior
, and the way we’ve been relating to warriors altogether, is in terms of fighting. For instance, saying that “a warrior is brave” means not to look back, and to step out toward those things which are coming to meet you, also has a sense of fighting—as opposed to the more passive way of being open to see. Don Juan seems to say that to be a warrior is a lesser way than the way of the seer, because the man who sees puts things in relationship to seeing.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, that seems to be absolutely fitting. The warrior is a practitioner like the bodhisattvas; the seer is a man of wisdom like the buddhas, who see the situation as it is but don’t have to enter into manipulative actions of any kind at all. In the case of the warrior, there’s still duality. Even though it may not be the duality of awareness of oneself as ego, there is still the duality of action and the object of action. That’s where bravery comes in—not to hesitate because you see action as it is; not to interpret in terms of concepts, but try to work with action itself and go along and along. But somehow that doesn’t mean struggle. Absolute warriors, ideal warriors, don’t struggle. They just proceed along because they know their work, they know their abilities. They don’t question it. Their actual inspiration comes from the situation as it is. If the situation becomes more and more overwhelming and powerful, that much more energy goes along with it. It’s like judo: you use the situation as your power rather than trying to fight with it.

Student:
A lot of times I think, “Well, why do it?” A situation comes up and I’m inspired to act, but then I get a flash that says, “Well, what if I leave it alone, don’t do it?”

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The point is that the situation is there anyway and you do something. That’s a natural process. You don’t do anything
for
something. That would be like questioning the nature of fire as burning and the nature of water as wet. But you do it because of the situation. You don’t have to do something
for
anything at all; you just happen to do it. It’s a natural process, an absolutely spontaneous process. That’s the difference between the ordinary puritanical practice of discipline as opposed to the bodhisattva’s practice of discipline. The bodhisattva is working along with situations as things happen. You don’t force things or work because you want to achieve something. It is like the natural growth of plants. If there’s enough rain and sunshine, the plants will grow; if there isn’t enough rain or sunshine, the plants won’t grow. It’s as natural a process as that.