The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (78 page)

V:
Take time with the renunciation; and also take time with discipline. What else? What do you mean by time, anyway?

S:
Well, that’s why I was—I found that there was a very conspicuous absence of you talking about how—

V:
Are you talking about time as initials or time as a word?

S:
Time as what?

V:
Initials.

S:
Initials?

V:
Yes, which stand for something else, or else time as a word, vocabulary. [
Spells out
] T-I-M-E.

S:
[
Groans: Oy-oy-yoy; laughter
] I meant, I meant time . . .

V:
As a word.

S:
I guess as a word.

V:
Rather than initials.

S:
I was hoping that it would stand for something. You know, you talked about space. [
Laughter
]

V:
Yeah.

S:
You talked about space, and to me, space and time are very, very closely interrelated.

V:
Space and time, sure. What’s the problem? [
Laughter
] Is there any problem?

S:
No. There isn’t really a problem. I was just wondering why you avoided talking about time until today. You said that time was related to learning the dharma, but it didn’t seem to relate at all to the previous principles you were talking about.

V:
Well, time comes along if you have space. That’s one of the interesting points about theism and nontheism. In the theistic approach to space and time, time comes first and space comes later. But in a nontheistic approach, space comes first and time comes later, because we don’t have to try to prove who did the labor or created this world anymore. The world is made by itself, naturally, very simply. That’s it. That seems to be one of the basic differences, you know. Do you understand?

S:
I think so. Thank you.

V:
That’s it.

S:
Rinpoche.

V:
Yip! [
Laughter
]

S:
[
Laughs.
] Would you say that—

V:
I wouldn’t. [
Laughter
]

S:
[
Laughs.
] How do you know? You haven’t heard what I was going to say.

V:
[
Laughs.
] That’s why! [
Laughter
]

S:
[
Laughs.
] Well, now I’ll say it and we’ll see. Would you say that some experience of the phenomenal world, or your experiences as your companion, is an experience of the bleakness?

V:
What you mean by companion?

S:
Well, that’s a direct experience. You just simply have a flash of your experiences as your companion. I mean you have some kind of flash of that experience. Is that related, somehow or another, to that sense of bleakness?

V:
I don’t think so. You’re creating and collecting more buddies if you do that. [
Laughter
] I’m afraid so, George. [
Laughter
] It will never work.

S:
God, I thought I had it! [
Laughter
]

V:
Never work. [
Laughs.
]

S:
Well, I can’t thank you for that. [
Laughs.
]

V:
Condolences. [
Laughs
]

S:
I didn’t hear you, I’m sorry.

V:
Whatever. Good luck, George. Very sad. [
Laughter
] Yes?

S:
In another way of talking about renunciation, you seemed to say that it was something that you do. And in the way that you’re talking about it tonight, it’s something that you discover. At least that’s the way I understood it. That sort of means that it’s always there, but you discover it at some point. Is that what you meant?

V:
You do it and you discover it at the same time. It’s like being pushed into a corner. Do you understand? You are pushed into a corner. So you are being pushed into a corner and you do it that way. And you are pushed into the corner at the same time by life.

S:
By life, yeah.

V:
It’s very, very hard, but it’s very spacious and very freaky at the same time. When people begin to realize possibilities of renunciation, it’s very freaky, extraordinarily freaky. People begin to feel they lost their whole being, which is good. That’s what it is all about, really. And they begin to feel they can’t play the same games anymore; they can’t create their same opulence or dictatorial conmanship of all kinds anymore, at all. You begin to face your real, good old life, whatever that may be. It is bad news; at the same time it is fantastic good news in the long run. That’s how the whole thing goes. [
Laughs.
] It’s somewhat depressing, but it’s very exciting, nevertheless. Depressive-exciting. So at some point, depression becomes excitement, when you begin to wake.

I think we could have one more last questioner. Gentleman by the wall over there. Just wait.

S:
Is there something that retards that process, or that has to do with the process of finding yourself in the corner?

V:
I think I should leave it up to you. I can’t tell you how to go about it. Everybody’s experiences are different. Each time, it’s absolutely different. Good luck, sir.

Thank you. Tonight you should get a good sleep. Thank you for being very patient, waiting. We were just trying to get away from this very magnificent banquet we had for Khyentse Rinpoche. We just came out of that and I’m full. And, hopefully, I will share with you—I did share with you this particular talk, however. Well, goodnight.

Tomorrow is to be a sitting practice time, right? I would like to push further the fullness that we have been talking about. If you personally want to understand and realize what we are doing, you will have no understanding at all if you don’t sit! That’s the flat truth, the real truth. You should be able to understand what we are doing and what you are doing with our relationship, particularly in terms of the teachings and the examples of the teachings that are transmitted through generations and generations. People have understood themselves, realized themselves, by the sitting practice of meditation.

So tomorrow we have a somewhat modified nyinthün taking place. If you would like to understand what we are discussing, it would be very useful to sit. And also, we would like to reduce the density of spiritual pollution, which is known as spiritual materialism. If there’s no sitting practice involved, there’s no real cleaning up process taking place. So I would like to invite all of you, if I may say so, to take part in sitting practice—tomorrow’s organized nyinthün practice especially. Please pay heed to this. I would be more than grateful if you would go along and do that. And we may have more things to discuss after that, in the three further talks that we have. So by sitting, you might have more understanding of what’s been happening, and that will make our personal communication much more open. Thank you. Good sleep! Good nightmare! [
Laughter
]

TALK 4

The Chicken and the Egg

T
HE OTHER DAY
we were talking about the
E
principle from the hinayana point of view, the first noble truth level of bleakness and so forth. Tonight we might discuss the
VAM
principle connected with the hinayana tradition, which is that out of the bleakness, some manifestation of reality begins to take place. That is equally bleak, confusing, and painful—in the same way as the
E
principle of hinayana. Confusion and pain begin from the point of view of the possibility of losing territory: usually unhappiness occurs because we begin to feel that we might lose our territory, we might lose our world, so to speak. Consequently, we are continuously trying to reestablish ourselves. We are trying to have a sense of the possession of ego constantly taking place. But when that is happening, then there will be further problems, of course—the potential death of ego, and so forth. The possibility of the death of ego, which causes a lot of pain and problems, is the
E
principle.
E
is the space that is created, potential death, so to speak. Beyond that level, what to do about that, is the
VAM
principle, what we are going to do about those things.

According to the tradition, and in the discipline and techniques that developed throughout the buddhadharma, there is a sense of utilizing that desolateness in terms of some concrete practice. Practice is trying to match that bleakness we experience at the potential loss of ego. Meditation practice seems to be the way, or the particular point, where energy and spaciousness could be put together. The sitting practice of meditation actually brings the
E
and the
VAM
principles together. So the
EVAM
principle goes on throughout all three yanas, each time the teaching is presented. It is not so much a complete
E
and a complete
VAM;
but
EVAM
becomes indivisible each time. That is why the techniques are bringing them together in the basic point.

In the sitting practice of meditation, we feel that there is a sense of simplicity. It is almost at the level of simpletons. The simple sitting practice of meditation, the very basic and very ordinary discipline of sitting on a meditation seat and doing nothing seems completely absurd—as if that’s going to cure anything, as if that’s going to do anything for you. It’s very absurd. It’s utterly absurd, as a matter of fact. Because of the absurdity, it has some wisdom—not even some, but lots of it. Immense wisdom goes along with that. It goes along with our general rhythm and style, how we operate, how we actually ego-center ourselves throughout the process. So that anti-ego [activity] is somewhat prescribed, that going against the ego.

In the sitting practice of meditation there is basic space, basic openness. Somehow, strangely, there is also basic uncertainty. If your discipline is completely certain and you know what you are doing, then there is no journey. The uncertainty that takes place in the sitting practice of meditation is the
VAM
principle. The
E
principle is the general attitude, the general atmosphere that is always there. Putting them together makes a complete work of art, so to speak. The desolate situation of life is brought together [with that uncertainty]. Together they present our work, our life, our existence, as being somewhat pushed into the teaching.

In the Buddhist tradition, the notion of renunciation means realizing the truth about suffering and understanding how much we have fooled ourselves. How we have been captivated by our own garbage, so to speak. Our own cobweb, our own thread, has imprisoned us constantly. And when we feel more imprisoned, helpless, chaotic, and terrible—that is the space, actually. Whether you like to believe that or not, it’s a fact. The more we feel claustrophobia, the more we feel that we are completely cluttered with stuff, that we are caught in the middle of a traffic jam completely. Those kinds of little, or even big, things around us. We are being surrounded by that situation and we cannot get out of it at all. When we try to get out of such a situation, we have to produce or manufacture more stuff in order to get out of it. And that stuff in itself starts to get in the way all the time. All that is actually space, the
E
principle.

Because of that, we begin to look for something else, another space-type situation, other refreshing possibilities—and unable to find anything better at all, we begin to sit and practice, meditate. The practice of meditation begins to give us some perspective: that the claustrophobia is the space, or
E;
and the inspiration to work with the claustrophobia is the dynamic possibilities, or
VAM;
so
E
and
VAM
put together. The sitting practice of meditation is like that. It’s seemingly quite simple, actually. It’s very, very basic, extremely basic. The general principle is that there is always a container and what is contained. That is always taking place in practice of any kind, according to the buddhadharma.

Let us discuss the narrowness of the hinayana. The narrow and militant, so to speak, discipline of hinayana becomes very powerful and important. The more narrow and more disciplined you try to make things, the more you begin to have some sense of fresh air taking place simultaneously, all the time. One of the interesting points here is that contradictions make sense. Contradictions make sense unless you are telling a lie, then it doesn’t make sense: you are telling a lie rather than contradictions. There’s a difference between contradictions and lies. Contradictions could be facts and figures, realistic views of things as they are. Telling a lie is trying to cheat somebody, which has nothing to do with contradictions at all, actually. You are trying to go beyond contradictions, so that becomes a lie, untruth. The important point is that where there is a lot of space, that means there is a lot of claustrophobia. And a lot of energy means a lot of low energy. You can get high on the low energy, of course—in many cases, we have done that ourselves—nevertheless, it is energy, which we call depression, as a euphemism. When you are high on low energy, that is depression.

The Tibetan term for renunciation is
shenlok
, which literally means “nausea.” You are completely nauseated with the claustrophobia that takes place in your life, in your ordinary basic life. Piles of dirty dishes in your kitchen sink, unmade beds, unpaid bills, unfriendly telephone calls, and friendly telephone calls. You begin to descend into dust and cobwebs completely—as if, or literally in some cases. You get phone calls or mail from people who say that they are going to kick you out of your apartment, and they are going to cut the telephone connection, and somebody is going to sue you. And if you had higher connections previously, when you felt frivolous in the early days, then one of those Mafiosi will come along and try to kill you on the spot; there’s a price on your head. It’s interesting, that point of view. There’s a lot of claustrophobia, and there is immense space, and lots of energy taking place in ordinary situations, at the kitchen-sink level. It is very powerful, and makes us think twice, thrice.