The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (70 page)

S:
It sounded very much like the description of the immaculate conception when you were saying, “This is the mother that gives birth to buddha, but in this case there’s no father.” What’s the difference between saying that and saying there was an immaculate conception?

V:
I think the question of purity doesn’t enter here particularly at all. This does not concern conception. In fact, nobody got pregnant—you just produced buddha on the spot. So we are not talking about the womb, particularly, and we are not talking about an embryo in this case. We are saying that this has produced buddha on the spot, at the drop of a hat.

S:
I wanted to ask one more thing. When you said that it could be called feminine or masculine, that it was almost accidental that it was called feminine—were you saying that it was sort of cultural that it was called feminine principle?

V:
Well, I think it was a practical thing. If anybody has born a child, you wouldn’t call them a masculine person who can bear a child; obviously it is a feminine one. And if you have born a child, even if you are a masculine person, you are called mother.

S:
The feeling I get of this expression of space is that it could be something like a rock, that a rock could be an expression of space.

V:
Why did you say that?

S:
Because it seems like your idea of space is something more than our conventional view, in the sense that there is nothing there. It seems that space can have attributes and qualities that could be an expression of it, and even a rock could be an expression of space. Is that wrong?

V:
Well, the only problem is that a rock is different from space—unless you are inside the rock.

S:
What is rockness, as opposed to space?

V:
A rock is a rock, you know. [
Laughter
]

S:
As
opposed
to space? So it is something
outside
of space, then?

V:
Well, a rock is sitting there, and rain falls on it and snow falls on it. You build a house with it and you walk over it, but you can’t do that with space.

S:
So then there is a duality, with dharmadhatu as all-encompassing space, and then things or rocks or various materials that are hanging out in that?

V:
Well, everything seems to be, anything you can think of—or you can’t think of.

S:
Anything you can or cannot think of?

V:
Yes.

S:
What I’m trying to get to is that your idea of space is more than the conventional idea, such as air or something like that.

V:
We are not talking about outer space. We are talking about that which is—that which
isn’t
, at the same time.

S:
Well, what are the attributes of dharmadhatu that you said it expressed? It put on makeup, it took on attributes.

V:
Yes, which is a part of itself. Space is usually adorned or embellished with its outlines, which is part of the expression of space.

S:
Could those outlines be a rock or something like that?

V:
Yes. They could be anything.

S:
Isn’t there something unaccommodating about a specific attribute?

V:
Anything other, anything conventionally not known as space, is part of space’s attributes.

S:
Okay. But that seems to have some lack of accommodation in it, doesn’t it.

V:
It is very accommodating.

S:
What did you mean by basic norm? I did not understand that word at all.

V:
Well, it’s some sort of law that is not particularly created by a lawmaker. It is just characteristics of whatever it may be.

S:
Just what is.

V:
Yeah.

S:
What are dakinis?

V:
One never knows. [
Scattered laughter
] One never knows!

S:
Rinpoche, could you please explain what attribute would accommodate the manifestation of prajna, the mother aspect?

V:
I think it’s like when you throw a stone in a very still pond—there are ripples that express that you have thrown a stone into the pond. You have thrown a stone in this water, which is called a pond, and the ripples begin to expand and dissolve at the edges of the pond. It’s something like that. It is expressing its own existence through demonstrating, exhibiting, some form of glamour—in the form of passion, aggression, being seductive, whatever it may be.

S:
It think one other time you said it was something like pollution, that would manifest into a form. Is that right?

V:
That’s an interesting metaphor. I suppose it could be pollution if somebody got an experience out of it. It’s anything you can think of: lighting a match in the dark, somebody tripping over dog shit, anything.

S:
You said that it just happened accidentally. Did you mean that the Buddha was an accident?

V:
Mm-hmm. A big accident. A catastrophe!

S:
Is prajnaparamita the intelligence that knows dharmadhatu?

V:
Yes. It knows its mother.

S:
But is prajnaparamita called mother, too?

V:
Yes.

S:
So there’s a mother that knows the mother?

V:
Yes. The makeup knows what it belongs to. The makeup knows its source, its background.

S:
Could it be said that prajna is the self-consciousness of dharmadhatu?

V:
Not very much self there, but you could call it that way if you like. That would be some kind of Jewish logic.

S:
Before, you said that whatever wasn’t space was the attributes of space. What would be the substance of an attribute?

V:
Well, that’s a question: there doesn’t seem to be anything—it seems to be everything. We do not know. We only know the gossip.

S:
We seem to be able to know something is unknowable though, as dharmadhatu?

V:
Because it’s unknowable, therefore we know it.

S:
Why? The same thing doesn’t apply with the attributes, though—because
that’s
unknowable we
don’t
know it.

V:
Attributes are easy to know. They are prajnaparamita and everything.

S:
Oh, I see. You mean we can know what we don’t know, but we can’t know what we know?

V:
Sure. [
Laughter
]

S:
Perfectly clear. I should have known!

V:
Well, maybe we should stop here tonight so we have a chance to sleep and rest. Although this is a short seminar, still I would like to encourage people to try as much as they could to take part in the practice of meditation. We feel it is important that you do not become too heady through the seminar, and that we are not transplanting further samsara in your head and in our scene. In order to keep everything unpolluted, the best way to do something about that, or at least attempt to do something about it, is the practice of meditation. That is very important, needless to say. Basically it is part of the seminar intention that you should get enough chance to sit, as well as to think and listen. Unless everything is on an equal basis, you become too much of something or other, so that you are lopsided. In order to make this particular experience experiential, it is necesssary to relate to the whole seminar. That is a very important point.

Once again, thank you for being patient. And welcome to Karmê Chöling.

TALK 2

Unborn, Unceasing

C
ONTINUING WHAT WE DISCUSSED YESTERDAY,
the manifestation from the unknown and its process to reality, so to speak, is quite an involved one. I suppose you want to get into this.

U
NBORN

That principle is identified as a principle, or substance, with particular qualifications. It is threefold, as we discussed yesterday: unborn, unceasing, and its nature is like that of space, or sky. So the question of unborn, in this case, is that the basic ground has manifested itself. It is taking a direction toward reality, through a sense of love, compassion, and warmth. The three qualities of love, compassion, and warmth are synonymous with the desire to manifest at all. The desire to manifest is that the basic space has been qualified, or become a personality. When that space has a tinge of something or other, then that is called manifestation—or love, compassion, and warmth.

At that point the process is still very undefined, in some sense; but at the same time it has the qualities of unborn. For one thing, there is no one to give birth. Another part is the rejection of a particular birth, a particular channel for birth, a channel to be born as reality, which is known as dharmata, in Buddhist terminology.
Dharma
is “basic norm”;
ta.
is “ness”; so
dharmata
is a sense of “isness,” or “nowness.” In other words, it’s a question of living reality rather than preconceived, or uncertainty, or yielding towards a certain particular direction of giving birth to reality.

Unborn is also qualified as “unborn and not having the desire to be born.” It is not willing to play with sophistries or garbage of all kinds. So the only basic area or basic feeling that we can come across is a sense of self-existing, transcendental arrogance. There is an unyielding quality, and there is a sense of complete certainty, at this point, which makes birth possible, unborn birth possible. Such confidence comes from having no characteristics, no background. Therefore we could say quite plainly that you have nothing to lose. So you can afford to be arrogant and proud and chauvinistic, in some sense, at that point. But some basic depth and basic texture that is fertility oriented takes place. Such fertility orientation is only manifested at the level of its fickleness, in the form of exchange back and forth: you are willing to play with phenomena, willing to give birth to phenomena at all. Therefore there is a sense of journeying, which is made out of energy. And the basic characteristic of energy there is its fickleness, its vibrating quality—the fickle quality of being willing to
associate
itself with something or other.

This approach may be quite similar to that of Nagarjuna’s, when he talks about the Madhyamaka philosophy and his points of view to it. He said, “Since I do not stand for any opposite arguments; therefore, I cannot be challenged.” It is that kind of fertility of really raving on some kind of egoless trip: you have nothing to lose; therefore you begin to gain the whole cosmos or universe. In that kind of chauvinistic approach, you are dying to give birth at the same time, because you have nothing to lose. The conventional idea of giving birth is that you are stuck with your kid or whatever. You have to feed the kid and change the kid’s diapers, you have to give some energy—you can’t have free time to go to theaters and go to the cinema and have dinner dates with friends. You are stuck with this particular kid, and you are imprisoned in some sense. But in this case, it’s not so much details but the general creativity that takes place within the base of the unborn level. At the unborn level giving birth is not particularly accented as a reproduction of your image to someone else’s, but it is a process of embellishment that takes place. That is regarded as giving birth—rather than producing a child who is separate from you, and you have to cut the umbilical cord, so you are producing another little monster outside of you.

I’m afraid the whole thing seems to be quite abstract at this level. I appreciate this very much as I haven’t had a chance to speak this way for a long time. The question of unborn could be said to be an unoriginated one, I suppose. It is not production of some kind—but the question of unbornness is putting further embellishment on unborn.

[
Long pause
] What were we talking about? [
Laughter
]

Unbornness becomes
more
unborn if you begin to embellish it with its attributes. Obviously you accept that logic, that’s the usual situation—that you could become more of you if you adorn yourself with all kinds of things; that adorning yourself makes more of you. Embellishment, in this case, is nothing, not very much. It is simply a sense of arrogance and a sense of fearlessness that whatever it is, it is presentable and powerful. It is more a taking pride in nonexistent achievement—which is in
itself
an achievement. Very abstract.

Saraha and other siddhas talk about this as being the imprint of a bird in the sky, which is the basic metaphor, the closest to it that one can use. In this case it is an embellishment of the sky and the bird at the same time. We are uncertain as to which one we are trying to embellish, the bird or the sky. But something is embellished by both; they are complementing each other. The sky is embellished by the bird, and the bird is embellished by the sky because a bird cannot leave any trace behind it. Naropa talks in terms of a snake uncoiling itself in midair: if you throw a coiled snake into midair, it uncoils itself and lands on the ground gracefully.

All of those metaphors and reference points begin to speak in terms of self-existing, self-doing, self-accomplishment of some kind. So we can say that reality can be realized only by realizing its unrealness. This is tantric jargon. [
Laughter
] It is not one of Rinzai’s koans, particularly. It is not as subtle as Rinzai’s approach. This is more bold and absurd, as you can see. But at the same time, we take pride in that. Maybe that has something to do with what we were talking about as arrogance—in this case, the basic principle of becoming, of femininity. That’s what we are talking about at this point.