The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (25 page)

When that instinct—that ego-centered notion of trying to achieve perfection, trying to achieve a perfect good thing—is removed, the whole process changes. One’s whole attitude changes once you remove that. Yet the condemnation in itself remains as an independent situation. And that particular independent situation, or condemning quality, contains light and space and questions and doubts and confusions. That such confusion and doubt and questions managed to be born brings the possibilities of the dawn breaking through. In the tantric analysis of this, it is said that the dawn of Vajrasattva is breaking through. That is to say, the dawn of indestructible continuity is just about to show through. Talking about aggression from this point of view becomes a creative thing. The whole pattern of aggression, of the hell realm, becomes very positive, something that we could work on.

Student:
Can you talk about the creative aspects of paranoia?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That is also exactly the same situation. If it is, so to speak, straight paranoia, then it is very positive. That kind of paranoia makes you see something, it makes you look into another territory, another area, whereas if it is diluted paranoia, which is to say manipulated paranoia, then you don’t want to take off your paranoia at all. You would like to retain your paranoia as a cover, as a mask. All sorts of pretenses begin to be involved with that.

S:
Can you explain that manipulated paranoia a little bit more?

TR:
That kind of paranoia becomes comforting in some way because you could hide behind it. It keeps you company. Otherwise you feel alone, that nobody is with you, working with you. Paranoia is your only way of exercising action. Because of that, paranoia transforms into acting. Because of paranoia, you are inspired to do certain things. Then you begin to act as though you were not there at all, as though somebody else were taking you over or some other situation were taking you over. There is always a confused situation around you, and you try to immediately get into it and blow that situation up and make it into a shield. We generally become extremely clever at doing that. There’s always something or other that we can catch at the last moment and make into a shield. That kind of paranoia is diluted paranoia as opposed to innocent paranoia. It could also be called “the basic twist of ego,” because that particular paranoia teaches us how to play ego’s game of deaf and dumb.

Student:
You said that self-condemnation or self-pity may be a positive action. Now, it is my experience from observing a lot of people that selfpity and self-condemnation decay into hate and withdrawal. I very rarely have seen people being able to get themselves out of this box. Yet you feel, from what I hear, that there seems to be a self-energizing element to it which forces people into self-examination, asking questions. I find this extremely rare, from what I have observed. I have wondered what was lacking in their lives, those who touched rock bottom more or less, flirted with suicide. I see very little evidence that something arises out of the ashes of self-destruction.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, the intelligence of self-condemnation has an extremely keen eye, keen sight. It sees every move and every mistake that you make. It is very precise and very clear. And this seems to come from the ego’s inspiration of wanting to protect oneself. But somehow, strangely enough, it doesn’t work like that: it works on a wider scale, beyond the ego level, as well. Even up to the extreme level of discriminating-awareness wisdom, there is this element. You see, the point is that intelligence is a neutral thing. A certain part of the intelligence is employed by ego, and a certain part of the intelligence is independent intelligence. Whenever you see a situation or see yourself beginning to play a game of any kind, then that intelligence becomes panoramic intelligence. It begins to see the situation as it is. So condemning could be said to be another way of shaking you up, or breaking you from the extreme belief of what you would like to be to what you are, in terms of ego. So it becomes a natural creative process as it is.

S:
I think if I went deeper into it, though, once you are aware of all the things that go on, then the gulf seems that much deeper and the possibilities seem that much poorer.

TR:
That is because you are looking from the point of view of the watcher. You are watching your condemnation, and you are manipulating it, you are commenting on it. That is why it becomes clumsy.

S:
Without some energizing act to transcend this watching, you get fascinated by the self-condemnation. You wallow in self-pity. As I said before, I find it very rare that somebody boosts himself out of it. It does not seem to be self-energizing but proof of decay in so many cases.

TR:
That is exactly the point that I’m trying to get at. Even if it is a self-congratulatory situation of pride, that pride and self-congratulation also do not have the inspiration of extending into limitlessness at all. From this point of view, self-congratulation and self-condemnation are exactly the same situation, because in both cases watcher is involved. Whenever there is no watcher involved, you are looking into the wide and wholly open ground of every situation, open space. You get an extreme aerial view of everything completely. That is why the analogy of the transformation of the negative into the positive, is very poor. In fact, it is a one-sided analogy.

S:
You said that transforming the positive into the negative, or the negative into the positive, is a one-sided analogy. What’s a better analogy?

TR:
Well, obviously, it is to remove the watcher. Remove the criteria, the limited criteria. Once you have removed limited criteria, discriminating wisdom is automatically there. I wouldn’t exactly call that a transformation in terms of changing one thing to another, bad into good. It is a kind of natural awakeness in which the negative
is
positive. The awakened state of negative is positive in its own raw and rugged quality.

S:
What about transforming itself? Transforming anger into accomplishment, for instance?

TR:
A whole range of transformations takes place all the time, of course. I would say the condemnation itself vanishes, but the intelligence and critical vision of the condemnation still remains. That is the ground on which positive things build.

Student:
You said that the reason why you have a kind of a revelation, instead of the luxurious self-condemnation you might have had, is that you see yourself suddenly from an entirely different angle, and it’s a big shock. You feel very terrible at the moment, but a very strange thing happens: afterward there is a great relief.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. That sounds right. You see, that whole idea is like the four noble truths. The first truth, the truth of suffering, is condemning samsara, how bad, how terrible it is, how painful it is. Out of that condemnation, the second truth is looking into the origin of pain, how it develops. From that the goal, the inspiration of the goal, develops, which is the third noble truth. And from there, the inspiration of the path develops as the fourth truth. So the whole thing works in that way.

Student:
Can the watcher have a positive function, at least in the beginning stages of meditation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
At the beginning of the beginning, maybe. If the watcher is being used purely as an observer, then it is positive in a sense. But if the watcher is being used as a guardian, then it begins to become a different thing, because once you have a guard, the guard must know whom to allow, whom not to allow. Those kinds of criteria begin to develop.

S:
So it would be in the sense of a fair witness that it could be positive.

TR:
Just a witness, yes, pure witness. But that is dangerous to talk about or to recommend. Generally we have a tendency to overindulge in the watcher, which has possibilities of becoming a guardian.

S:
So when you have a flash of anger, it might be good just to plunge right into it rather than observe it, I mean to really become that feeling.

TR:
Exactly. That doesn’t mean either that you should murder somebody or that you should suppress your anger. Just see the natural anger quality as it is, the abstract quality of anger, like the abstract quality of condemning yourself.

S:
Do you see that by observing the feeling or by becoming one with the feeling?

TR:
Becoming one with the feeling. It seems to be quite safe to say that every practice connected with the path is a practice associated with nonduality, becoming one with something or other.

Student:
If a person is not aware of himself, then is he at one with himself—a person who is unaware of his or her anger, unaware of the things that he or she is going to do?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think so. There is a tremendous difference between being unaware of what is happening and identifying with what is happening. Being identified with what is happening is awake and precise, there is tremendous clarity in it; whereas when you don’t know what is happening, there is tremendous confusion.

Student:
It seems as if suicide would be a kind of ultimate egohood.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That is what you are trying to do when you realize that you can’t release yourself—so you destroy yourself purely in order to save face.

S:
It seems that if ego actually can destroy you physically, it really must be something.

TR:
Well, you see, ego cannot really destroy you at all. Suicide is another way of expanding ego’s existence, proving ego’s existence, because destroying the body doesn’t mean destroying ego. So it’s saving face.

Student:
Are there negative emotions other than aggression in the realm of hell, such as fear or terror?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s all part of it. Fear and terror are part of the aggression, which is an absolutely highly developed state of mind of duality. Fear, for instance, is the absolute ultimate confusion of the relationship between you and your projections. That’s why you get frightened.

Student:
What’s the difference between the color red of violent anger and the red of Amitabha Buddha?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Amitabha is like fire. The red of Amitabha has the quality of radiance extending to the point where there’s no limit at all. That’s why
Amitabha
means “limitless light.” In terms of anger, red has an ovenlike quality. It’s not like flames in the ordinary sense. It doesn’t throw heat outward, but it throws heat inward, so we get baked in.

S:
Does the oppressive quality, that feeling of being squeezed until there’s no room, vanish if you stop watching?

TR:
It seems that the watcher has this mentality of internalizing everything. Do you mean that?

S:
It is like squeezing on yourself somehow, pushing against yourself or into yourself.

TR:
That is the watcher. Yes.

Student:
What did you mean by saying that you should become one with the impulse?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
This is not introverted oneness but extroverted oneness, in the sense of going along with the speed of radiation, the pattern of radiation.

Student:
Is there a clean, egoless anger?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That sounds like compassion.

Student:
Could you discuss the use of sexual energy for spiritual development?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There is often a certain moral judgment which comes up in regard to this particular subject. If you look at it from a very rational point of view, then anger is the ultimate rejection, repelling; and putting anger into practice is destroying, killing. Desire, or passion, is magnetizing, grasping; and the ultimate expression of that is sexual experience. So from a rational point of view, we could say that if you recommend sexual experience as part of the spiritual path, then murdering somebody is also part of the spiritual path. Both apply, it seems.

But this is not quite so from the point of view of the true nature of the emotions. From this perspective, aggression is destroying; it is ultimately rejection, which is an uncompassionate act. But desire, or passion, is a compassionate act. At least it is accepting something, although it may have all sorts of neuroses involved with it. So that is the fundamental principle: compassion, love, and passion are all associated. And of course, sexual experience could be seen from that point of view to be an act of communication beyond words. On the other hand, it could also be said to be an act of communication based on not knowing how to speak in terms of words—which is confusion. It very much depends on the individuals. But at least there’s hope in terms of sexual experience, as opposed to destroying other people.

Student:
Have you heard the American expression “love-hate relationship”?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Very much so.

S:
Well, apparently there are cases when somebody loves somebody very much and either he or she thinks it’s not good or it’s not socially acceptable or something—and this love can turn right away into hate, wanting to destroy. It might initially have been very truly a sincere sort of love, but then it turns into hatred and destruction.

TR:
That is exactly the neurotic quality of love or desire, which contains aggression within itself. One aspect of that is a kind of ultimate frustration, that you can’t express communication. And because you can’t communicate, you decide you would rather destroy it. That kind of ultimate frustration.

S:
Can you turn all of that into compassion, all those aggressive feelings, perhaps, or desires?

TR:
It is not a question of whether you can do it or not, but seeing that situations would happen that way—which needs the tremendous generosity of stepping out of centralized ego and its demands. It seems possible.