The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (21 page)

S:
But why do it? A plant can’t turn away from the sun, but it seems as if some part of me can turn away from an action.

TR:
It would be like telling a plant to go from one area to another area and reestablish itself because it’s a better situation. This wouldn’t happen to a plant.

S:
We really have no choice in this—the situation takes over.

TR:
I wouldn’t say the situation takes you over, but you are working with the situation. And in this case, if you are completely open and completely one with it, then having a choice or not having a choice is irrelevant. It doesn’t apply anymore.

S:
You don’t make a choice?

TR:
I would say you don’t don’t make a choice, or you do make a choice.

S:
Why not just make random choices in that case, and then live with whatever random choice you make?

TR:
Why choice at all, if it happens to be random? I mean, why choice anyway?

S:
Well, we always think we have a choice, but we very often don’t realize that we don’t.

TR:
That’s what we
think
, but we haven’t actually experienced it. We haven’t seen the other side of the coin at all.

Student:
If you’re meditating and it’s becoming very painful and very hard to continue, would being a warrior mean keeping on with a course of action that’s very difficult and painful?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, you see, you don’t evaluate the situation. You don’t regard a situation as good or bad, but you just go along with the situation. So endurance doesn’t come into the picture. When we talk about endurance, it is related with our physical sensibilities, our individual feedback—“If I hit somebody, would my fist hurt?”—that kind of relationship. But in this case, it doesn’t happen in that way.

Student:
If you are experiencing extreme tension, frustration, and difficulty, would that be a clue that you’re on the wrong path? Would you consequently change it, or should you persist in what you are doing?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You could continue what you are doing and you wouldn’t ask questions. But that doesn’t mean you have to be completely instinctive, like an animal. That’s another idea, which could be misleading.

S:
That brings will back in again. There is a force in us that we define as will.

TR:
There is, there is. You’re
willing
to let yourself be in that situation intelligently. You expose yourself to that situation and that situation then plays back. It happens, so it is both wisdom and compassion, wisdom and action, all together.

S:
So
will
becomes
willingness
?

TR:
The generosity of openness, yes.

Student:
When you’re a warrior, don’t you tend to forget that other people are warriors too? Isn’t there a danger of getting lost in your own actions and feeling superior?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think these complications would occur if you were a complete warrior. A warrior doesn’t just mean being blunt, but being wise or intelligent as well. You would appreciate others. Because you’ve opened yourself completely and you have the intelligence and precision of seeing the situation as it is, if another warrior comes along the path, you would acknowledge them—as well as enemies who come along the path, possibly very devious enemies.

S:
Then isn’t there the trap of always looking for justification for what you are doing?

TR:
You don’t look for justification. If you look for justification, that means you are not communicating properly, because you have to refer back. For a moment you have to close yourself inwardly, and then you expose again. Such an alternation of that and this doesn’t happen in the case of the warrior. Instead, it’s an ongoing process; you do not have to refer back and work out a strategy anymore. The strategy happens through the situation as it is. The situation speaks for you.

Student:
When you have some obstacle or weakness in your nature that you recognize, should you take that as part of the situation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, exactly. That is the situation.

S:
And whatever judgment you have about a situation is the situation also?

TR:
I wouldn’t say judgment. Whatever situation happens presents itself to you—beyond judgment.

S:
Are thoughts included?

TR:
Perceptions of situations are. Yes, definitely. But this has nothing to do with judgment.

Student:
I’m not understanding the power aspect. What’s the relationship between the blind quality of forging ahead and the power of the warrior? They seem to be related, but I can’t put them together.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Do you mean, what is the relationship between the blind quality and the warrior quality? Naturally, whenever there is a tendency to refer back to oneself, that is the power aspect of building something up because you would like to overpower others. In order to overpower others, you have to develop strong qualities in yourself, and that completely undermines the actual situation happening there. Power knows no logic; power just operates. If anything gets in its way or challenges it, the natural instinct is just to smash it rather than to try to develop a relationship with it. It has a sort of blind quality and is a pure ongoing process based on some central theme or characteristic. So it is very much referred back to
me
: “If that happens, then what happens to
me
? And therefore, how should I act for
my
benefit alone?”

It’s like the two ideas of compassion we discussed earlier. One is that
you
would like to see somebody happy; the other is that you help somebody because
they
need you, which is a different idea altogether. The first type of compassion is based on overpowering, undermining the colorful and beautiful aspect of situations, and trying to mold them into your shape, your pattern; whereas the other is just purely relating with the situation as it is and working along with it, which is the warrior quality. The warrior has to make every move of his or her practice of fighting in accordance with that without failing. If he reflects back on himself for one moment, one flash of a second; if he reflects back on his territory, his ego, his survival, then he’s going to get killed, because he wasn’t quick enough to relate purely with things as they are.

S:
If we act only in response to people’s needs—if we wait to be asked—will we still have plenty to do?

TR:
You wouldn’t wait to be asked. You don’t have to put yourself in such a formal situation.

S:
No, but sometimes we act because the situation obviously requires help, and sometimes we act because we project a need onto the situation.

TR:
Yes, I see what you mean.

S:
So if we eliminate that one side of our behavior based on projection, will we still have enough to do?

TR:
You begin to realize what you have been missing. Situations are there always.

Student:
It seems to me it is very difficult to help. I would very much like to help people and I have plenty of opportunities, but it is not an easy thing. One has to be pretty advanced. It seems to me that in order to have compassion one has to be passionate as well, otherwise you are always working through your ego and you are half dead and half alive.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, getting tired of helping, feeling that it’s too monotonous, happens because you want to get feedback in terms of ego.

S:
No, I want to help people, but my helping people is blocked.

TR:
Well, one should continuously do it, continuously put oneself in the situation of helping. And generally, that doesn’t mean that once you try to help somebody that’s going to be the whole experience at all. It takes practice. And practice means making mistakes as well as learning something out of those mistakes. So it needs continual persistent action going on all the time. It doesn’t mean that one or two times is going to be the perfect situation at all, by any means. The whole thing is very manual. You learn by mistakes; you learn also by the skillful means you’ve been practicing. There will be occasional shocking experiences of yourself, and there will be occasional surprising experiences of yourself, that you’ve undermined yourself so much. So helping another person is also knowing oneself in this case, trusting oneself.

Student:
Could you discuss our relationship to our body? Is it important to be concerned with diet or yogic practices or breathing exercises?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In connection with what?

S:
In connection with learning to see what is.

TR:
Well, body doesn’t have to be a special thing. The whole world is your body. There’s a tendency to view the body as your private possession. And because of that you tend to forget the rest of the world and the greater orbit of experience involved with that. If a person is able to relate with the world, he is also able to relate with the body. And if a person is able to relate with the body thoroughly, then that person also would learn how to open to the world. It’s sort of an arbitrary thing: fundamentally, relationship to body is relationship to
things
, objects, that aspect of solidity which continues everywhere in the world, constantly.

S:
So trying to purify your body doesn’t affect consciousness?

TR:
There again, it depends on your attitude. If you are working on the body, purifying the body in order to purify the mind, then it could become self-deception, because you are working purely from one direction. In order to purify mind, you could work directly with mind rather than working with the body. And if that is the case, needless to say, why don’t we just work directly rather than using a middle man, if that is the object?

S:
If you’re purifying the mind, does the body just kind of follow along with it?

TR:
Well, that’s the next question.

S:
Is it only
your
mind that you have to purify?

TR:
One mind, did you say? Well, it’s difficult to say one mind or many minds; it’s like talking about one space and many spaces. But you see, [
Trungpa Rinpoche lights a cigarette
] the point in looking at the relationship of body and mind is to discover how much of the body is the true body and how much of the body is an imaginary body. And if we involve ourselves with such complications, we have to involve ourselves with a whole theology, which may take thirteen or fourteen years to try to work out.

Student:
Rinpoche, what is resistance and what is its relationship to wisdom? It seems that when I’m just being passive, resistance dissipates into no resistance.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Usually any kind of resistance is a reminder either that you’re going too far or you are not going far enough. It is a sort of natural force which works in that way. And when you realize that, you no longer have to view resistance as a problem or an obstacle or as something that you have to destroy or overcome before you discover the truth.

S:
Is that an act of wisdom?

TR:
That is an act of wisdom, yes.

Student:
Rinpoche, could you talk about active and passive? It seems that there’s a need to be passive, simply to attend, and at the same time it seems like there’s also a need for action.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
They don’t occur as contradictions as such. It’s a natural situation. In actual fact, there’s no such thing really as absolute passivity or absolute activity. Active is, I suppose you could say, penetrating involvement; and passive is the space or atmosphere around where you are involving yourself. So they go together. You have to have both of them or neither of them. It seems that the speed of action cannot survive without something to relate to the action. In other words, you can’t play music without silence; silence is part of the music as well.

SEVEN

The Bardo of Existence

H
UNGER AND THIRST
and trying to find an alternative to them is the realm where we are today, the hungry ghost realm. (It is interesting that the subject we are working on and studying together always has relevance to each day’s change of temperament and mood. That seems to be quite a curious coincidence.) Hunger and thirst also could be said to be waiting, or expectation. There is a constant demand for something, constantly being busy at something, constantly wanting to learn, constantly wanting to know, wanting to “get it.” So one subject connected with the hungry ghost realm is the disease of the learners, or the hang-up of learners. There is so much ambition and hunger to learn something, to know something, which is connected with expectations as well. And that in itself, that ambition to learn, is the obstacle to learning.

You might ask, “Shouldn’t we have ambition? Shouldn’t we be conscientious and drive ourselves to knowledge? Shouldn’t we work hard on our homework? Shouldn’t we read hundreds of books? Shouldn’t we become successful? Shouldn’t we not only be good students, but become famous teachers?” There is that kind of chain reaction of building up status, building up your collection of knowledge, which may be necessary if you only want to
learn
, and if you know that learning is purely a technical thing with no reference to
knowing
at all. You can learn without knowing, and you could become a teacher by being learned—but it is not possible to become wise by becoming a good student. Through this ambition that we put out, in this hunger for knowledge, every word is questioned, sucked in by our pure desire, by our magnetizing state of mind, in order to gain something.