The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (23 page)

S:
When you are in a blissful state, you are also perching?

TR:
Yes. You are perching. Perching is the self-consciousness of not knowing how to relate with situations and so trying to work out some strategy. That moment of contemplating strategy is perching, so to speak.

S:
Are you a hungry ghost?

TR:
Yes, a hungry ghost as well. That is quite so, because you want to get more and more feedback continuously, all the time.

S:
So there is not a situation when you are just in the world of the devas, the world of the gods, because when you are in the world of the gods you are also a hungry ghost?

TR:
That’s right, yes. But it’s less dramatic, because when you are in the world of the gods, the whole situation is more relaxed and selfsatisfactory.

S:
Yes, but you somehow unconsciously want to remain in it, or if you fall down to the world of the asuras, you want to go back to it. So you are a hungry ghost.

TR:
Yes. You see, you could say that all six realms have a hungry ghost quality of one kind or another, because all six worlds consist of grasping and hanging on. That quality is always there. But when we talk about the hungry ghost realm as in independent thing, it’s more obvious, more vivid.

Student:
In Buddha’s temptation, could you explain his saying, “Go away!”—in a sense rejecting the beautiful girls and the food offered him and the monsters? Is there a place in our meditation for saying, “Go away”?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
No, I don’t think so, because you are not at that stage.

Student:
Are all the bardo states ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The bardo states
are
ego. Definitely, yes.

S:
All of them.

TR:
All of them. They are the heightened qualities of the different types of ego and the possibility of getting off ego. That’s where bardo starts—the peak experience in which there is the possibility of losing the grip of ego and the possibility of being swallowed up in it. There is that kind of confusion between freedom and escape, freedom and imprisonment.

S:
So in each bardo state, there’s a possibility of escape?

TR:
I think so, yes. The Buddha described that in the scriptures by an analogy. The bodhisattva’s actions are as if you are about to step out of a room. At the point when one leg is outside the door and one leg is inside the door, the bodhisattva wonders whether he or she should step back or proceed. That’s an analogy for bardo.

Student:
Could you get hung up on the bardo state? Instead of passing through the bardo experience, could you get hung up and just stay there, like in the realm of the hungry ghosts?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, you can. You can. That’s a very interesting point. In that case it is the level of madness, you are hung up on it. Exactly.

S:
So what do you do then?

TR:
There’s nothing that you can do, in terms of changing the situation of the moment. The only way to relate is by trying to relate with the actual experience of pain and pleasure as an earthy, earthy situation. That’s the only way of getting out of madness. Madness is extreme spacing; it is without solidness in relationship to earth.

Student:
Did I understand you to say that when you are in the world of the gods, you have your ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

S:
Oh, that’s very disappointing.

TR:
I know.

S:
Then one should not attempt to meditate more. If one is more and more in the state of meditation, then one should try not to be, because then one is a hungry ghost.

TR:
Exactly. That’s it exactly, precisely.

Student:
Is that so? One should try
not
to be in a state of meditation?

TR:
Exactly. You see, that’s the point of meditation in action—that at a certain level the meditative state becomes too static, and then the important point is the bodhisattva’s action.

S:
But the meditative state is an action; it’s quite literally an action. Should you try to act without being in a meditative state because even in action you want to be in a meditative state, and so it is still hungry ghost?

TR:
Yes. The point of action in this case does not mean you have to try to maintain a meditative state and act simultaneously, as though you were trying to manage two at the same time. But action is that you truly act, you act properly. The idea of saying, “When I eat, I eat; when I sleep, I sleep,” is acting properly, thoroughly, and completely. That is stepping out of dwelling on something. You see, meditation in the pejorative sense is dwelling on something. Action demands attention. You go along with that particular paying attention to situations and working skillfully with situations without reference back to yourself—how you should act, how you shouldn’t act. You just act.

Student:
How does patience come into all this?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Patience is not expecting an immediate answer if you experience pain—not trying to change pain into pleasure. It is the willingness to submit yourself to the situation, to wait. In other words, you are willing to see properly and clearly. When we are completely wrapped up in situations without patience, we become blind.

Student:
You said in the beginning that consciousness is the last development of the ego. If eventually we wish to give up our ego, does that mean that we will lose our consciousness?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Consciousness in this case means something quite different from the ordinary sense of consciousness as being aware of what’s going on. In terms of the development of ego, consciousness is centralized consciousness—always relating backward and forward. It’s not consciousness of what’s going on, but consciousness as to whether you are maintaining your ego or not. This kind of consciousness is quite different from simply being aware. In fact, you can’t gain complete consciousness until you step out of ego. Then consciousness begins to become the play or the dance,
lalita
, where you actually dance with the rhythm of situations. That sort of transcendental consciousness is quite different from the one-track-mind consciousness of ego.

Student:
Why is your ego involved in the world of the gods?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Because the world of the gods is a sophisticated state of ego, where you experience pleasure all the time. And once you experience pleasure, then you want to retain your pleasure. You always want to refer back to yourself. That is ego.

Student:
Could “resting” have anything to do with true meditation, as opposed to the pejorative kind? Being at rest?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It depends on whether you are just resting, being in a state of rest, or whether you are resting
for
something.

S:
No, no. Being in a state of rest as opposed to doing something. In other words, you said that the pejorative kind of meditation was dwelling on something. I’m saying, could the opposite kind—true meditation—be just being at rest?

TR:
It could be, yes. I mean, there again, rest without any relativities—just being is rest.

Student:
Is sitting meditation action, in terms of breathing and the heart beating and sitting—or is it mental? You said the other day to forget the body and deal directly with mind, but then you said that it had to be meditation in action. So I wonder, what is the principal expression of action in sitting meditation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It is a general comprehension of the relationship with earth, rather than regarding the earth as separate from you, as though it were your opponent—which involves the body. The earth is not regarded as an opponent or an extra thing, but is part of the earthy quality of mind, which is quite different.

S:
Is the doorway to that through mind, or is it through the body? Or is it through some other way, like paying attention to one’s thoughts?

TR:
I would say both—body and thoughts.

Student:
How do you step out of ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I suppose, you could say, by developing a friendly relationship with ego.

S:
Then it becomes more inflated, like a balloon.

TR:
You mean ego itself, if you are trying to like it, trying to love it? No, ego wouldn’t like that. Ego would like to be the boss all the time.

Student:
In the realm of the gods, if there is wisdom and the joy of being, I take it that you say that this relates back to pleasure and to ego taking its pleasure. But isn’t there a joy of being that transcends the pleasure-pain principle?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There may be, but at the same time, as you experience it, there is a watcher happening. That’s the problem.

S:
In other words, the gods experience the experience and the experiencer.

TR:
The experience and the experiencer, yes. You may be experiencing some transcendental experience of going beyond something; but at the same time, there is an experiencer who takes note of that.

S:
And this is the great temptation with the realm of the gods?

TR:
Yes, exactly, because then you are getting something. You are getting more and more feedback, more food to sustain yourself—until you realize that there’s nothing to transcend at all.

S:
But isn’t there a joy that’s a simple expression of the earth’s own energy? Just simple energy, a kind of lightness?

TR:
Definitely, yes. But that’s a simple one, isn’t it? Therefore it is more difficult.

Student:
How is it possible not to ask a hungry ghost question?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You can’t. Once you begin to try to do that, then that in itself is a hungry ghost act. There’s no end to it.

Student:
I read somewhere that when Mara came to Buddha, Buddha recognized her as being a part of himself, and he was compassionate because he already had loving-kindness. And I was very impressed with this, because this might be a very good way of dealing with one’s ego, or oneself. He recognized that she was only a part of him.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. In fact, Milarepa’s song about his experience of the temptation of the maras is like that. When he tried to use mantras as spells to exorcise them, nothing worked. But the moment he realized they were his own projections, they vanished.

Student:
When you get to the point where you feel that you can’t laugh, even though you know intellectually the absurdity of where you’re at and you see that you’re perching—is there anything you can do to go a step further, so you could break through that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems that that moment is a very sensitive moment, in which you don’t have to try to do anything at all. You just have to be patient and go a little bit further—but not watch yourself experiencing that. Just go a step further. Then you begin to develop a sense of humor about it, that the whole thing is a game, however serious. You see, the whole thing that we have been talking about—
how
to conduct ourselves,
how
to do things,
how
to get out, all this—once you begin to regard any method or practice as a sedative, or a way of getting out, then it doesn’t work anymore, it’s another way of self-deception. In other words, if you regard the skillful means or methods as ways of escaping, as medicine, then nothing works. It’s as simple as that.

Student:
Is the bodhisattva path an expression of a hungry ghost?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Definitely not.

S:
From what you were saying, it seems to have some of that character. Is taking the bodhisattva vow the expression of a hungry ghost?

TR:
I don’t think so, but again, there are different types of bodhisattvas. You could be an evangelical bodhisattva or you could be just a bodhisattva bodhisattva. Taking the bodhisattva vow is just a commitment—going further. In fact, you are deliberately taking a vow not to refer to yourself at all—that
I
am going to be taking a vow, that
I
am going to become a bodhisattva. I am just a simple, insignificant person; what is more important are all sentient beings, they are more important than I am.

S:
Is there some way in meditation to avoid watching the processes that go on in your mind?

TR:
That’s exactly why techniques are important in meditation. You have been given certain techniques, and you can go along with them without watching—because whenever there’s a watcher involved, that means you are intellectualizing your meditation, you’re not actually feeling it. Techniques make you feel it. For instance, the technique of following the breath makes you feel the breath completely. So you go along completely with the technique, whether the technique is for sitting meditation or for walking meditation, or whatever it may be. That is automatically a way of stepping out of the watcher; whereas, if you’re trying to suppress the watcher, then that in itself becomes another watcher, and it goes on and on and on. So instead of approaching the watcher from the front door, we are approaching it from the back door: that’s the technique of meditation.

Student:
Rinpoche, if one were looking at what we are doing, going through life, as a jigsaw puzzle, a strange puzzle, how would you relate the pieces in the puzzle to, say, freedom or so-called mystical experiences?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, there again it’s a question of approaching it from the back door or approaching it from the front door. All the pieces of the puzzle are not the answer; it’s the ground where your jigsaw puzzle is situated.