The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (31 page)

TR:
Precisely, yes. That is where—what you call—transmission takes place.

S:
What you call. [
Laughter
]

Student:
You mentioned how we just float around, say in the hungry ghost world. When meditation enters in, what changes in that floating around?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
What does meditation change, did you mean? At the beginning meditation could be regarded as an intrusion, as an extremely painful thing to do, because it takes you away from your habitual dwelling. All kinds of painful situations churn out because for the first time, you create another relative situation, other than your dwelling. Gradually you gain a new perspective, new ideas from the meditation experience, which show you another living situation other than your own. It is a way to broaden your mind. It seems to introduce another land that exists beyond your own realm. That is why we find sitting meditating practice very painful. Any kind of practice is quite painful, irritating.

Student:
Some Tibetan book that I was reading, I forget which one, said, “Meditate until you hate it.”

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, you don’t have to wait.

S:
I don’t have to meditate that long not to like it.

TR:
In regard to meditation, if one begins to enjoy doing it, then there must be some kind of entertainment going on, which is quite fishy.

Student:
It seems to me if you become really aware of pleasure as pleasure and pain as pain, it doesn’t necessarily get you out of the search for pleasure. If you really experience both the pleasure and the pain, doesn’t that continually involve you in the search for pleasure, because it is preferable to pain?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think so. If you regard pleasure as an external entity which entertains you, you could perpetually swim in the pleasure because it is a foreign element, yet it is also intimate. Whereas if you begin to see pain as pain and pleasure as pleasure—as it is—then the whole game of intimacy, the relative situation or love affair, begins to wear out. Finally you begin to realize that it is your own creation. You automatically begin to see the transparent quality of the pain or the pleasure.

S:
When you begin to see pain and pleasure for what they are, what determines when you panic?

TR:
When you begin to lose the crew who entertain you. You begin to realize that the last of the entertainment crew is walking out of your sight—and you end up just by yourself.

Student:
Buddhism seems to put a great value on pain, and you said good meditation is painful. How come? What’s wrong with good meditation being investigating the nature of pleasure? There seems to be a great value in negativity, which seems to be true—but why not a great value in positivity?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think it is particularly that a value is placed on pain at all. The basic idea is letting things go as they are. It is just open space, an entirely new dimension in your meditative state, letting whatever is there come through. If it is a pleasurable situation, you also let that come through. In a description of Milarepa meditating in a cave, he had a tremendously pleasurable experience of the joy of inner heat coming through. For several days he found that particular experience extremely pleasurable. But that worked through and was gone thoroughly. It sort of wore out. Next, continually irritating situations came through as well. So it is a question of opening your whole being and letting whatever comes through come through. This particular discussion of pleasure and pain in meditation seems to be based on counteracting the current simple-minded attitude toward meditation, which is that it is supposed to give you bliss or pleasure. From this point of view, meditation is not geared to giving you pleasure alone at all. It is possible that it might give you pleasure, but on the other hand it is also highly possible that it might be an extremely painful thing to do. So it is just letting things be.

S:
What determines whether it is pleasurable?

TR:
I suppose it depends on your criteria, it depends on you.

Student:
What’s wrong on the path, despite the pleasurable or painful effect of meditation, with the kind of pleasure of feeling you are walking in the right direction?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
At the same time there is tremendous paranoia about that as well—if you are not walking on the path. Once you realize you are on the path, then you are also extremely aware of what is not on the path, which brings tremendous insecurity. So you cannot really rely on that.

Student:
It seems as though life is terribly irritating, and in seeking the path we’re seeking that which we hope will prove better. That isn’t necessarily borne out by subsequent experiences, and as the pressure builds up on either side, the oscillation, the path seems to be the only way out.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
If think so, yes. But because of that, therefore there are more terrifying nightmares that you might lose that ultimate hope as well. That is equally powerful. You see the path as
the
only cord that you can hang on to to save your life. Suppose this cord is fragile, breaks away—then you are doubtful. As long as there is any kind of maintenance going on, that always seems to be a hang-up, a problem—until the bodhisattva idea of giving up attaining enlightenment, which is the biggest step. Then your lifestyle
becomes
enlightenment. You don’t need any kind of reassurance any more at all. You just maintain what you are constantly.

S:
Maintain what you are?

TR:
Behave normally. Of course, this normality is quite special.

Student:
I got into a strange thing last week, while sitting—the realization that this striving for results had to give way. This recognition would appear, but somehow it didn’t change the situation at all. There would be a moment or two of peace from the striving, but then it would always come back. I’m sort of riding on the coattails of this idea of yours of renouncing enlightenment and trying to be free of striving.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
What about it?

S:
Is this an ever-present part of what goes on?

TR:
Automatically, if you disown the path, then the path is you. If you stop making money, then you’re rich enough not to make any more money. You are really ultimately rich, because you don’t have to try and make money anymore at all. That is the real mentality of richness; whereas if you are trying to maintain and make money, that is still the mentality of poverty. You are still maintaining your mentality of being poor.

S:
This striving has to give way.

TR:
That’s right, yes.

S:
But it doesn’t. So in what direction does freedom from this striving come?

TR:
You begin to realize that the whole area has been covered already. The only thing that bothers you is the striving, which is a hangup. It is the one true, irritating obstacle on the path. Striving is the obstacle on the path—nothing else.

S:
Is there any way you could use that striving?

TR:
At this point, there doesn’t seem to be. You could say that you could use striving as energy, patience, all kinds of ways. Of course you could say that. But at this point it seems to be too dangerous even to suggest the notion of striving transmuting into energy or patience. You really have to give up. You really have to cut the whole cord of ego out completely.

Student:
It has been said that meditation develops bold will and that the enlightened man acts directly; his whole being is involved in any act that he does. How does this differ from striving?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That is a sort of inborn delight, inborn delightfulness. For instance, if you want to meet your friend whom you haven’t seen for a long time, making a journey toward seeing this friend doesn’t seem to be an effort at all. You just drift along in the direction of your friend. It just happens, because you delight in the situation. It had nothing to do with punishing yourself or pushing yourself. Likewise, because you have such conviction in the idea of the awakened state of mind—in seeing that, in working with people, and helping them compassionately—you just enjoy that occupation, you just do it. That is the most powerful will of all, rather than purely trying to fight with yourself all the time. Our being here together also could be said to be the same example. People didn’t try to go out to a restaurant and eat or have a bath or relax in their bedrooms, but they decided to sit here on the floor and wait and listen. Nobody imposed that will on anybody. They just did it because they liked doing it. There may have been all kinds of obstacles in coming up to Vermont, for that matter, but they just decided to do it and they enjoy doing it. Therefore they are here, which could be said to be an example.

Student:
Isn’t there something fishy about
not
enjoying meditation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It is not a question of enjoying the actual practice, which could be extremely horrible, but a step toward it is necessary. You have to do it anyway. You know that you are not going to enjoy it, but you still do it. You like the idea of it. There’s something in it which is very hard to explain, very hard to describe intellectually, but something draws you toward it, a kind of instinct. It seems the whole basic idea is working on basic instinct, basic intelligence.

Student:
Would you mind giving a bit more on the striving trip, please? It is connected with the watcher, I can see that. The watcher is checking things out: “How about arriving where I would like to arrive?” I really can’t see anything beyond that point. Obviously, if the watcher gives way, then the striving isn’t there—and the watcher also isn’t there. What then?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Then you just happen.

S:
Just like that.

TR:
The situation just happens. It just happens.

S:
Then why doesn’t it just happen?

TR:
Because the graveyard of the watcher is a very attractive place to be. You lost track of yourself for the last time. That is a very interesting place to be. Finally you have lost your hang-ups.

S:
So there is an element of fascination?

TR:
There is some kind of fascination which is not the watcher. It is a magnetic situation because the watcher is ultimate irritation, and you lost that on that particular spot. You come back to that spot constantly on and on and on. And finally, the killer is regarded as a friend.

S:
I see that.

TR:
I’m glad you do.

TWO

The Realm of the Gods

E
ACH EXPERIENCE OF
psychological hang-ups or extremes has a pattern of its own, and that pattern could be seen in its distinctive character and qualities. In other words, in the human realm or the realm of gods, there are certain familiar desires and certain familiar longings, as well as in the realm of hell or the hungry ghost realm. There is a kind of fascination to maintain oneself constantly and not give up or give in to any possible spaciousness in which dualistic clingings no longer apply. So there is a great deal of grasping and holding and there is a great deal of effort to maintain.

We are willing to stick to confusion as our occupation and make it a habitual pattern of everyday life. In fact, that seems to be one of the main occupations of ego, because confusion provides a tremendously stable ground to sink into. Confusion also provides a tremendous way of occupying oneself. That seems to be one of the reasons there is a continual fear of giving up or surrendering. Stepping into the open space of the meditative state of mind seems to be very irritating. Because we are quite uncertain how to handle that wakeful state, therefore we would rather run back to our own prison than be released from our prison cell. So confusion and suffering have become an occupation, often quite a secure or delightful situation.

In the case of the realm of gods, that confusion has taken on a more genteel and sophisticated shape. The fundamental characteristic of the realm of the gods is dwelling on spiritual ideas of some kind. You experience a form of meditative absorption which is largely based on the ego or on a spiritually materialistic approach. Spiritual materialism provides the framework of the occupation in this realm. Such meditative practice has to maintain itself by dwelling on something, that is to say, finding a particular topic of meditation. However profound, however high—seemingly profound, seemingly high—it may be, at the same time it has a solid body, rather than being transparent.

Such meditation practice is based, to begin with, on tremendous preparation, or one could call it self-development. Self-development meditation is acknowledging that you are going to practice meditation as a way of dwelling along with the ego. In order to find a place to dwell, not only are you creating the solidness of the place, but at the same time you are creating the self-consciousness of the dweller as well. There is tremendous self-consciousness. It is as if you are walking on slippery ground, icy ground: the ice in itself is not slippery, it is just icy; but immediately when you see ice, you associate it with being slippery. That is the self-consciousness: “If
I
walk on this ice, therefore
I
will be slippery, I will be falling down.” So the ice has nothing to do with the slipperiness at all. Instead, it is that we are walking on this particular block of ice, and therefore it will be slippery to us. It is the same situation when we try to get hold of something in terms of meditative experience. It is not so much the experience itself, but it is that “I am going to experience this particular experience.” Therefore it is automatically self-conscious: one is less conscious of the meditation and more conscious of the meditator. That is ego dwelling on itself.