The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (65 page)

S:
Is this an experience that we are all familiar with?

TR:
I hope so. I think it is an experience that is very frequent. Maybe we overlook it or regard it as just not important, but we tend to do that with everything.

Student:
Is the gap between our intake of information and our analysis or understanding of it the gap in which we manifest our particular style in the mandala?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In the gap?

S:
Yes.

TR:
Not in the gap, but at the borderline where you begin building a bridge over the gap. It is that particular meeting point where you are approaching the gap, the neighborhood of the boundary itself rather than the gap. There is that, and after that there is the manifestation of the mandala.

S:
Is meditation essential to becoming aware of how we build that bridge?

TR:
Yes. I think meditation is actually the bridge itself. Definitely, yes.

Student:
Is what you meant by distrust at the level of the watcher that the watcher clouds our perception of reality?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. It also gets the wrong information. Either it misses the point or exaggerates something.

S:
And the watcher is also the beginning of the path, that which begins to allow us to see the confusion.

TR:
Yes.

S:
And then the trust that we develop is being willing to sit in the gap when the watcher isn’t . . .

TR:
Not necessarily. It is to see the futility of the watcher rather than to appreciate the gap. It is to see the activities of the watcher and how it works, how it functions.

Student:
I remember your saying somewhere that emotions are not really different from thoughts, that they’re a special kind of thought that we give a lot of prestige to, but now you seem to be implying that they are something distinct.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Emotions are sort of colors that exist in the thoughts, rather than being a special species, so to speak. They are the highlights of thoughts, which according to tradition have five colors—white, blue, yellow, red, and green. Traditionally, there are these five types of emotions which are five types of exaggerated thoughts. But they have a particular energy.

Student:
Rinpoche, you mentioned a feeling of a loss of ground and of regression. Times like those are times when you least have trust in your own intelligence to deal with the situation. Is regular meditation practice enough to deal with that, or is some other effort necessary?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
We are speaking very generally. I think we need meditation as well as meditation-in-action in our everyday lives. Meditation-in-action provides a sense of solidity and sanity as well as willingness to enter into the encounter with life. And that in turn brings up the question of the gap and the neighborhood of energy where the mandala perspective is happening. So we need both. We can’t say that sitting practice by itself is the only way. The two have to complement each other.

FOUR

Three Aspects of Perception

W
E MIGHT ELABORATE FURTHER
at this point on the idea of relating with the world. To begin with, there are some very tough questions regarding this, such as what is the world and whose world is it, and what does relating with it actually mean.

Basically, it seems to be nobody’s world, since there is nobody, as such. The energy that is constantly taking place does not belong to anybody; it is a natural organic process. But on this basis, we function as though the world belongs to us. I function as if I have myself, as if I do exist.

Here the nonexistence of ego is not a philosophical matter, but simply a matter of perception. Perception is unable to trace back its existence [to an origin], so it becomes just sheer energy, without a beginner of the perception and without any substance. It is just simple perception.

Perception on that level has three aspects. The first is perception as experience. In this case, experience does not refer to the experience of self-confirmation, but to experience in the sense of things as they are. White is white, black is black, and so forth.

Then there is [the second aspect], the perception of emptiness, which is the absence of things as they are. Things have their room; things always come along with a certain sense of room, of space. Even though they may appear within the complexities of the overcrowdedness of experience, they provide their own space within the overcrowdedness. Actually, overcrowdedness and room are the same thing; overcrowdedness
is
room in some sense. This is because there is movement involved, because there is dance and play involved. At the same time, there is a shifty and intangible quality, and because of that the whole thing is very lucid.

There is experience, then space or emptiness, and then the final aspect, which is called luminosity. Luminosity has nothing to do with bright visual light. It is a sense of sharp boundary and clarity. There is no theoretical or intellectual reference point for this, but in terms of ordinary experience, it is a sense of clarity, a sense of things being seen as they are, unmistakably.

So there are these three aspects of perception: the sense of experience, the sense of emptiness, and the sense of luminosity. The point is that with that level of perception [that contains the three aspects], one is able to see all the patterns of one’s life. Whether the patterns of one’s life are regarded as neurotic or enlightened, one is able to see them all clearly. That seems to be the beginning of some glimpse of the mandala perspective, the beginning of a glimpse of the five buddha energies.

In other words, the five types of energies are not confined to the level of the enlightened state alone. They are also contained in the confused level. The point is to see them as they are—thoroughly confused, thoroughly neurotic, and thoroughly painful; or extraordinarily pleasurable, extraordinarily expansive, joyous, and humorous—whatever. So we are not trying to remove what we perceive; we are not trying to reshape the world according to how we would like to see it. We are seeing the world as it is without reshaping. Whatever comes along in us is part of the buddha principles and part of the mandala setup.

I would like to remind you once again that the approach we are taking here is purely an experiential approach. We are not talking about things from a philosophical point of view, discussing whether such-and-such a thing exists or not; we are not trying to see how this fits into a conceptual framework of phenomenological experience. We are not talking about those things.

Actually, in many cases the philosophers have gone wrong by trying to find out the truth of the matter concerning the way things are, rather than relating with things in terms of perception. As a result, they find themselves completely theorizing the whole thing without knowing what actual experience we might have of things as they are. If we theorize about the existence of the world, its solidity, its eternality, and so on, we block a very large chunk of our own experience, because we are trying too much to prove or establish the foundations [of our philosophical view]. So much so, that we end up concerned with the foundations [of our view] rather than its relationship to the earth. That even seems to be the wrong approach to metaphysics. We are speaking on the experiential level about what we experience in our everyday life situation, which does not have to be confirmed by theory or proved. It does not depend on anything of that nature. It is simply a matter of everyday experience from minute to minute. It does not involve any long-term projects.

The question of perception becomes very important here, because perception cannot be packed down to form a solid foundation. Perceptions shift and float very much with the experience of life. You might say, “I saw a beautiful formation of clouds over the Himalayas.” That does not mean to say that those clouds will always be there. Even though such cloud formations may be among the attributes of looking at the Himalayas, you would not expect necessarily always to see a beautiful cloud formation when you get to the Himalayas. You might arrive in the middle of the night or when the sky is completely clear.

When you describe your experience to somebody else, whatever you perceived at a particular moment may sound extremely full and vivid and fantastic, because somehow you have managed to convey the experience of that moment. But if you try to recapture that experience and mimic the whole thing all over again, that is quite impossible. Quite possibly, you might end up philosophizing about it and getting further and further away from reality, so to speak, whatever that is.

There is a sharp precision that exists in our life, which generally arises from some form of training and discipline, particularly the sitting practice of meditation. Not that the sitting practice of meditation sharpens our perception, but sitting practice makes it possible for us to perceive sharply. It is a question of removing the clouds rather than of recreating the sun. That seems to be the whole point.

There is some faint experience of reality—it seems to be very faint and uncertain. But however faint it may be, it is still very sharp and precise and tends to bring a lot of clarity also. On the whole, this kind of perception we are talking about depends on a certain kind of watchfulness. This watchfulness is not particularly being careful or tiptoeing. This watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse—of whatever—without any qualifications: just the sudden glimpse itself.

This point has led to problems and is regarded as enigmatic. If we say, “You should see a sudden glimpse,” people usually ask, “of what?” And if we do not have anything to say about what it is, then the whole thing is regarded as absurd. But if we could change our thinking style entirely, if we could open our mind to something slightly more than what we have already been told, then we could step beyond the level where everything is purely based on the idea of a business transaction and a profit-making process. There are possibilities of awareness without any conditions, conditions in this case being the sense that you might be able to get something out of it, the sense that you are going to be able to see certain particular things with this awareness. It is just simple straightforward awareness of itself—awareness being aware without anything being put in it. That kind of perception seems to be the only key point. It is the key perspective, the microscope that makes it possible to perceive the three types of perception we discussed.

On that level, [perceiving] the spectrum of the mandala of the five buddha principles is no big deal. Those principles are not an extraordinary thing to perceive. Perceiving them is quite matter-of-fact. The basic mandala principle becomes very simple. It is just simply that everything is related with everything else. It is quite simple and straightforward.

Student:
Could you say something more about perception as experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Maybe you could try to say something about it. Just try guesswork.

S:
Is it perception of your subjective experience as it’s going on, even though you admit that it’s subjective?

TR:
Getting close, yes. But there is something else that is needed for that.

S:
To be experiencing things.

TR:
Yes, but when you’re experiencing something, what comes with it?

S:
Reactions? Your own reactions?

TR:
Yes, but what is that reaction called?

S:
Experience?

TR:
No, there’s something else.

S:
Emotions?

TR:
You’re getting close.

S:
Thoughts? Perceptions?

TR:
Not necessarily.

S:
Responses?

TR:
The driving force of responses, yes.

S:
So it’s . . .

TR:
It’s energy. You see, there is a kind of exuberant energy that goes with perception and experience. When you experience something, you actually recapture what you experience. For example, when you say, “I have seen a piece of shit,” it is very vivid and real, and you catch that energy. Or, “I have seen the naked sun.” There is a lot of energy behind that. You actually experience it as though you are it. You almost become indivisible from something at the moment when you experience it. It is that kind of direct communication without anything in between.

S:
So it’s really throwing yourself in totally.

TR:
It doesn’t require throwing, particularly. It is realized on the spot.

Student:
The clarity that you speak of, is that always related to a sense of spaciousness?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so, yes. Otherwise there’s no sharpness. If there were no space, it would be unfocused.

S:
Do we all start as luminous beings and then forget our luminosity?

TR:
Luminous beings? Sounds like Don Juan.

S:
Do we start as luminous and forget our luminosity?

TR:
It is not a question of starting as luminous—we are. Even while uncertainties are taking place, we
are
still. What we are talking about is just a way of looking again and focusing on it. It is not a matter of a case history, particularly; it’s an ongoing thing. Right at this moment, we are luminous and we are empty and we are perceptive at the same time.

Student:
I believe you said earlier that when you perceive something, something is either lost or exaggerated. Is it through the interpretation of the perception that this happens?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

S:
It’s not the perception itself that creates the exaggeration?