The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (40 page)

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think that is part of the whole thing, being stubborn as a mule. The mule doesn’t want to go; therefore, that is his direction. He is still going forward in his way, whether you think it is a different way or not.

S:
But when I find myself in this kind of stubbornness, it’s not always that I have my own direction. When I get obstinate, I’m going to go in the opposite direction of whatever direction somebody else is trying to push me. So it’s not that I have my own direction and therefore I am going forward. I just feel myself in a reverse gear against whatever pull exists.

TR:
Well, that is saying the same thing, in a way. Whenever there is an obstacle that you are going through, you fight that obstacle in accordance with your wishes. Obstacles provide you with a new way of being stubborn constantly. That means you also develop an attitude of boycotting any situation presented to you; you have your own, so to speak, free will, or vision. That kind of vision is there all the time. So you cannot say that you are completely unprepared for new obstacles, but you have some definite logic going on there.

Student: Does the animal realm have a quality of paranoia?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think you could have extreme paranoia in the animal realm. You experience the paranoia of not being able to achieve what you want, in accord with the ideal situation you would like to see. Therefore, the only way of achieving your ideal goal is to try to push further, as much as you can. So paranoia creates stubbornness at this point.

S:
Rinpoche, how does this paranoia differ or compare with the paranoia in the asura state?

TR:
In the asura state there is a tendency to try to fill all the gaps constantly. It is not so much going forward in the asura state; instead there is a quality of spreading. You look for security by trying to spread all over the situation and control it by extending yourself in terms of the relative logic of jealousy, envy. The animal realm is not so much concerned with conquering, but it is very simple-minded and very monastic—if one could use such a word. You would like to achieve your aim and object, and you just go along with that. We could say it is austerity.

Student:
Rinpoche, what is the buddha family associated with this realm?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems that it belongs to the central family, the buddha family, the same as the realm of the gods. It is extreme earthiness, extreme nonparticipating in any frivolous situation trying to con you, but just going straight. It is very earthy, like a rock rolling down from a steep mountain; you are just willing to go straight through.

Student:
Rinpoche, there seems to be something unavoidable about the cycle of this realm. I mean, you do have to make some sort of decision about style: you’re not going to eat one way; you are going to eat another way. You have to make a choice. But it seems as if you are always in this realm; there doesn’t seem to be any escape. In that way it seems different than the other realms.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The choice of style is largely based on the particular obstacle. It is like the way animals handle their bodies as they are walking across the countryside. If somebody is chasing you, and if the person who is chasing you cannot climb up, you climb up. It is not necessarily intelligent, but it is following the physical setup of your existence. You do it. If you are a bird and if some other animal without wings chases you, you just fly. That is not particularly a cunning quality of birds at all. You haven’t thought that up; it is not that you haven’t come to that same conclusion before, but you always come to that same conclusion. So in that way, obstacles provide a way of how to be stubborn.

Student:
Rinpoche, what moves you out of the animal realm? What sets up the problem that moves you out of that realm?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, it seems that there has to be some kind of distrust in the present given style of how you try to achieve your stubbornness. So you try to transcend your stubbornness. Again, as in the other realms, it seems that if there is a slight doubt that your stubbornness may not work, you might try different ways of handling your body, your earthy situation. In the iconographical symbolism, the buddha of the animal realm carries a book of scriptures in his hands. If you are going to read a book or read scriptures, you cannot have a stubborn mind, because you cannot rewrite the book on the spot. You have to attune yourself to the book and to what has already been written by somebody. So you have to give up your stubbornness if you are going to read that particular book. The image of buddha holding a book means that you have to tune yourself into new situations and try to learn from the other experiences that are being expressed, other ways of thinking—which is a way of stepping out of the stubbornness.

One point is that if a particular teaching is powerful and true, you cannot interpret, because it is so overwhelmingly true. I mean, if it is sunshiny and daytime, you cannot possibly deny that and try to prove it is nighttime, because it is obvious. There is light and the sun is shining and all the other qualities of daytime are obviously there, so you can’t prove it to be nighttime or try to argue. That kind of teaching always seems to have relevance in dealing with your actual given situation, rather than viewing it as something that you can change. If the teaching is presented to you in its living quality, then you cannot deny that living quality.

Student:
When you speak about following the necessities of your physical possibilities, it sounds as if there is a strong element in this realm of the wisdom of accepting what is inevitable.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There seem to be two ways of acceptance. One way is accepting that the obstacle is there and trying to tune yourself in accordance with the obstacle and present your stubbornness. That is one kind of acceptance, a tremendously faithful way of relating with the current situation so that the current situation provides you with guidelines as to how to be stubborn. The other way seems to be the acceptance that fundamentally stubbornness doesn’t work, and you have to learn to open somehow or other.

Student:
Each time you expound on a realm automatically I think, “How the heck can we get out of this realm?” Can we be relaxed and notice that we’re in a certain realm, and then do something about it? We could develop some strategy to kick us out of that realm immediately, but if we are in the animal realm, our strategy would probably be an animal strategy. So how can we get around this?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, it depends on how advanced your plan is: if you are planning to pursue your same trip or if you could step out of this current problem of the inconvenience of being in the animal realm. In other words, you could be planning to try to step out of the animal realm so that you could become a super animal, so that you would have somewhere to pursue your previous occupation. Or else you could have a dead-end attitude, just wanting to get out of this particular realm and then letting things develop. That approach is usually referred to as very impractical by conventional society. According to conventional society you should not struggle; and if you are going to struggle, you must have an aim and object and goal. But on the other hand, it could be said to be the most practical way of looking at things at all, because you do not captivate yourself again and again by using the same ways.

Particularly in the animal realm, which is extremely involved with ignorance, the absurdity of yourself is not seen. Instead you take pride in it. You carry out your strategies as though nobody knows; as though nobody knows your tactics. At that point, particularly with the animal realm, there is a need for watching yourself being absurd or silly. It is the same analogy as we discussed earlier on: seeing your own photograph and hearing your own voice. Some kind of self-conscious, critical attitude to oneself is necessary, because the animal realm contains pride. That is why the animal realm and the realm of the gods have some common qualities. Both have survived on the pride of not watching yourself or what is happening at all, but just purely dwelling on succeeding constantly, on and on and on.

Student:
When I look at an animal, a cat, or even a pig, it has that quality of directness that you described. It always strikes me as almost a state of enlightenment, in the sense of being simply what it is. For instance, a cat always seems to respond precisely to the situation in its catlike way; I would even say the same thing about a pig. You say that an animal doesn’t look around, that it has this blinder quality; but looking around implies a watcher, or an ego, so it seems almost as if animals are in an egoless state. It begins to sound very much like a state of enlightenment.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a cat or pig, but this kind of animal style is also in ourselves as well.

S:
But it has this quality of simply being what we are.

TR:
It is being what you are, but that is precisely the point—there are two ways of being what you are.

S:
How does ego fit into the animal realm then?

TR:
The ego of the animal realm is just simply being quite self-contained, satisfied in some sense in what you are. Therefore, whatever you do is to try to benefit yourself constantly; one doesn’t even question it. In the case of enlightenment, you are being what you are, but you don’t try to collect anything for yourself or try to benefit yourself or try to strengthen self-centered notions of any kind. The difference between the animal realm and the enlightenment state is that in the enlightened state acceptance and self-satisfaction take place in a spacious way, within open space, in a cosmic way; whereas the animal realm is centralized, and acceptance of its oneness happens in a centralized way. In exactly the same way, you could be extremely learned so you don’t have to ask any more questions; but at the same time you could be extremely stupid so you can’t even think of questions.

Student:
To me, cats in particular have this enlightened quality. A cat sitting with his paws together and his tail curled around has a very similar quality to a buddha statue. And generally, cats in their activities have this really beautiful flowing quality.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, I don’t particularly want to set out an anticat philosophy, but this way of just being what you are is quite common to all creatures or beings, so to speak: tigers, horses, birds, even wolves have their uniqueness. The way they handle themselves is miraculous—even centipedes, spiders—because they are being what they are. They can’t help it; there is no alternative.

S:
Do you mean that there’s no space, in the sense that a human being has space and can fill it up in alternative ways; whereas animals don’t have such space?

TR:
Animals do not have alternatives of any kind, suggestions of any kind. They just have to be what they are. By possession of luck, certain animals are loved because of their natural quality of being what they are, and we tend to interpret that quality as that they are specially being for us. But they are just being what they are. In the same sense, in Buddhist iconography, there are very few walking buddhas. Usually Buddha is depicted sitting—quite possibly in feline fashion, if you would like to see it that way. But at the same time, he has choices of all kinds. He just decided to sit and associate with the earth, which is an intelligent choice. In the case of animals, they have no choice. They are just there.

Take, for instance, the example of vows. In taking vows of all kinds, such as the Buddhist precepts—traditionally not to kill, not to steal, not to tell lies, and so on—human beings can take those precepts or vows because human beings have very cunning minds, and they also have the choice to kill or not to kill; whereas animals or other beings do not. For instance, only particular types of human beings can take the vow of celibacy. If you are a eunuch or neutered, you cannot take the vow of celibacy because you cannot break the rule anyway; it is physically impossible. So it seems that if you have the choice of either committing yourself or not, allowing yourself into the temptation or not allowing yourself into the temptation and finding another way of relating with it—that provides the basic background.

S:
So, for example, the choice not to eat meat has that quality.

TR:
Yes, automatically.

S:
How about plants?

TR:
There seem to be lots of them.

Student:
You were talking about energy and space, and you said that animals have a self-centered image of space. Then you were talking about open space. In that regard, I was wondering why in Buddhist iconography the Buddha is always pictured in what seems to be a very centralized space. The imagery is always extremely centered. I mean, especially since you talk about animals having this very self-centered image of space instead of having a view of open space.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems that pictures or representations of symbolical images reflect tremendously the artist who created them. Strangely enough, they also reflect one culture to another culture. For instance, different types of buddha images were created in different Buddhist countries. Japanese buddhas always have this quality of being like warriors, like samurai, with little mustaches and sitting very tightly, with round shoulders, round backs. Also, looking at the ancient images created in different parts of India, you can tell in which part of India each image was made. Bengali buddhas, for instance, look kind of food-oriented; they have a certain facial expression, as though they just had a good meal. At the same time, buddhas created in Assam, in East India, are the most ancient images that you could find. Their facial expressions are very genteel, as though Buddha was a great scholar who knew everything, a very genteel professional look. So the imagery reflects the different styles from one country to another country.