The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (80 page)

Mahayana is known for its big thinking, its larger scheme. Therefore, the scheme itself, the big thinking itself, and the commitment to that larger scheme, become real, realistic, powerful, and important. That actually tends to create a sense of feeling belittled. Sometimes you feel belittled—the vision is so big and you are so little. Your activities and your particular personal existence are so small. You might feel it is very little; you are very little. An interesting contrast takes place there. That conflict between the vast vision and the small person doing the vast vision sets off some kind of atomic bomb. Such a small person can think so big—that becomes gigantic and extremely beautiful. The little thing is the trigger, and vastness is the explosion, and that begins to work together. That’s the
E
principle, in the mahayana tradition, basically, generally speaking. Of course, other things, such as the notion of shunyata, become important, too. But there we are not talking in terms of action; we are purely talking in terms of a state of mind that exists when a person begins to realize no form, no boundary, yet completely form, completely full of boundaries. You begin to get confused again by the boundary, or the form, and the formlessness—form and boundarilessness altogether. So some kind of explosion also takes place there.

As far as the
VAM
principle in the mahayana is concerned, it seems to be the notion of practicality, which is also the notion of faith. Faith here means not willing to give up, and a sense of complete joy. We could use the word “romantic,” which seems to be quite kosher here—romantic meaning how fantastic it would be, how fantastic it is, that I am a child of Buddha, and I can actually fulfill buddha activities by conducting myself in the way of the Buddha: generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, prajna, and so forth. You might have vast vision and commitment of some kind, which is the
E
principle, but if you don’t have a personal filler, so to speak, a personal occupant of that particular vision, then that vision becomes just heroic hoo-hah that doesn’t mean anything very much. It’s just somebody thinking big who doesn’t have any practicality—so what?

There’s always a conflict with the domestic, so to speak, experience of the bodhisattva’s work, which also contains the notion of great compassion. Actually, we could say the compassion aspect of the bodhisattva relates with both the
E
and
VAM
principles, simultaneously and together. The spaciousness of the compassion, the largest notion of limitless compassion, is connected with the
E
principle. Nevertheless, simultaneously, the
VAM
principle also contains a sense of softness and compassion. Compassion could be divided into two sections, as it is traditionally done: the
E
principle is karuna, basic compassion; and the
VAM
principle, we could say, is maitri, the warmth and loving, the domestic aspect of it. So you have two types of things working together, but they are indivisible, nevertheless. The mahayana principle of
E
and
VAM
put together is very pragmatic, very domestic. The hinayana principle of
EVAM
is very much educational. The difference between those two is like the difference between going to school, college, and having your degree already and actually working.

Vastness and potency put together again bring the notion of hot and cold together. We discussed that last night. The same thing begins again. Hot is the domestic approach of the bodhisattva’s work: the paramitas, the dedication and awakening of bodhichitta in individuals. Cold is the vastness: how your world, how you, can actually radiate from this little fire to the rest of outer space with complete warmth—which is a symbol of coldness in some sense. What takes place is that when you want to radiate immense heat, you are challenged by the possibility of cold at the fringe, at the outer range of your territory, so to speak, which is an interesting point. The
VAM
principle becomes more and more dynamic as we go on to the vajrayana level, continuously. And the
E
principle becomes much more laid back, so to speak. Nevertheless, it is very important. It is of atmospheric importance to the situation, as we go through the three yanas.

Well, I don’t think I should confuse you further by presenting too much stuff. Maybe we could stop here and direct questions, if you have any.

Student:
The last few days you have given us a conducted tour of outer space, at least it seemed to me that way, galaxies, solar systems, beyond, and on and on. And somehow you crept into it such concepts as maitri, karuna, love, compassion. Well, they seem to have—in my scheme, let’s say—nothing to do with all that you have been talking about. Those are secondary or tertiary phenomena of the world or universe, many arising from socialization, et cetera. Now, where do karuna and outer space meet? Is that maybe some kind of a sop you throw at us and say, “Well, we like to be comfortable, that is compassion. Nice. And there’s love, nice.” But that’s not how things really are! [
Laughter
] There is none of that! There are only these energies you have been talking about. How do you bring this together?

Vidyadhara:
You see, the interesting point is that you don’t bring them together—it is together. We just have to click to the situation. We have been presented with all kinds of alternatives, seeming alternatives, and we have been presented with all kinds of variations of descriptions—nevertheless they all become one. You don’t try to bring them together as trying to mix two things, but they are already so. It is like the notion of the fluidity and wetness of water being one. So from that principle, you do not try to bring them together. Karuna is the largest sympathetic atmosphere that we have. Space accommodates crime and virtue, pain and pleasure. If there’s no outer space, we wouldn’t be here at all. Space is going along and just letting us to do all these things. They are letting us build skyscrapers, build farms and wood cabins, what have you. They even let us go through that by rocket ship.

S:
All manifestations of
EVAM?

V:
I wouldn’t exactly say manifestations, but I would say it is it. That’s it. That’s it. Anybody else?

S:
I wonder, when you talk about extending our imaginations to include compassion for beings other than those that we can see on this earth, if that’s an exercise in imagination or something that we should really expect to encounter?

V:
What do you mean? You mean that we might get somebody in our backyard from the flying-saucer world? [
Laughter
]

S:
No, I don’t really think that it’s going to enter our world. I just wonder if we’re supposed to be willing to enter other worlds in any real sense.

V:
Well, I have been thinking the whole thing is very basic and natural. We think that this world is gigantic, and if we buy a big property we say, “Wow, how many acres we bought!” You know, “We bought almost half the state!” Still, it is very little. The idea is that there are greater worlds that exist, and we shouldn’t be too provincial, too earthly, whatever.

S:
Well, when we do the chants and we talk about asuras and gandharvas and various other manifestations, are those real or are those psychological states?

V:
I would say, both. The question—Is it real?—is very tricky. Actually, you know, it is even difficult to say whether you are real or I am real, whether what we are doing here is real. So the question of reality is just a matter of speculation. [
Laughter
]

S:
Thank you.

S:
Hello. You talked before about the hot and the cold—being in it, experiencing it, being able to be both hot and cold. Is one of the characteristic aspects of the mahayana, as opposed to the hinayana, not just being in composure in the middle of the hot and cold, but also having compassion in your environment?

V:
I think so. You see, we should definitely try to make a real statement about shunyata, as well as compassion. When we talk about shunyata, we are talking about space, the basic atmosphere where things could be allowed to take place. And when we talk about karuna, compassion, it also goes into that particular area—karuna being a state of sympathetic atmosphere that you could generate, predominantly by attitude, but fundamentally by real chemistry. It is an atmosphere that exists there, that we have to sort of tune into. So the point of view of compassion in Buddhist terminology is not that we are feeling sorry for somebody because somebody is in bad shape and we feel, or try to feel, kindly to them, or that we are in the position to help them, particularly. That kind of one-upmanship or social worker’s attitude, Peace Corps attitude, what have you, is not the real compassion that we are talking about. Compassion in this case is an actual atmosphere of warmth and friendliness that can take place, which is not the state of mind of an ordinary person but the state of mind of everything—both the lowest of the low as well as the highest of the high at the same time.

S:
So this is what starts to bring the joy out of that, out of your feeling of being so enclosed, the compassion.

V:
You got it.

S:
Okay.

V:
The idea of joy here, not so much that you feel great that you managed to snatch somebody’s cookie [
laughter
], but joy in the sense of, we could say, cosmic appreciation of some kind that everything is delightfully so.

S:
I wondered how prajna fits into this, because I had seen shunyata as being like
E
and prajna as being like
VAM.

V:
Yes. That’s very clever, actually. It’s true. Prajna is very basic. It is the sensitivity that exists within the space. Again, prajna cannot survive without shunyata, or the space of anything. Prajna is the inquisitiveness. Fascination in the healthy sense takes place if there’s enough room left, in larger thinking.

S:
Rinpoche, would you say that the samsaric condition results from ignoring the
E
principle, the space; and in regard to the
VAM,
relating to it improperly?

V:
Well, I think samsaric conditions are completely the opposite of
EVAM.
Instead of relating with vast space, you put in your own territory to begin with; instead of working with your own energy properly, you try to fight with the space. Trying to fight with space becomes an insult. So you have the complete reverse effect there: the actual area where it should be bigger, you try to be small; the area where you should be smaller, you try to be big. You are completely twisting the whole thing, which is known as neurosis. Yeah, that’s a misunderstanding, of course. It is not necessarily permanent damage, or permanent punishment, or the fall of man, or anything like original sin. It is just a complete misunderstanding, completely missing the point. Where things should be looked at as gigantic and vast, you make territory out of that, make it smaller, put a fence around it. And the area where you should try to make things smaller and compact and energetic, you try to push out, so you end up with some kind of cosmic constipation.

S:
Thank you.

V:
Which is samsara. Yes. [
Laughter
]

Well, friends, I think maybe time is getting younger again, so we should stop at this point. See you tomorrow. Thank you.

TALK 6

Wash Your Dishes and Take Off Your Roof

Q
UITE SADLY, TONIGHT
—this afternoon, rather—is the last chance we have to go through the
EVAM
principle generally; and, quite timely, today’s topic is the vajrayana aspect of that. Throughout the Buddhist approach, the process is one of trying to develop basic sanity. Several of the hinayana schools would say that the sense of developing sanity is simply not to be attached to material things. It is to see everything as created out of atoms and fractions of time put together, so we have nothing to hang on to. The more advanced-level hinayana schools would say that it is just states of mind that we tend to cling to. The mahayana schools of Yogachara would say basic sanity is a state of mind, and that mind is continuously luminous: ever-glowing clarity and luminosity take place. The mahayana schools of Madhyamaka would say that state of mind is totally empty—but at the same time, conditioned mind is also buddha nature, nevertheless, so there is hope for you. That is the process that generally evolved, as sophistication developed through the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana levels. A lot of progress in states of further subtlety began to take place, of course.

At this point, as far as vajrayana discipline is concerned, that state of mind, basic sanity, has two constituents: mahasukha and jnana.
Mahasukha
is a Sanskrit word that literally means “great joy,” “great bliss.”
Maha
means “big,” “great,” “giant,” and
sukha
means “happiness,” “joy,” “pleasure,” “bliss,” whatever.
Jnana
, again, is a Sanskrit word that literally means “primordial insight.” That is to say, it is insight, understanding, clarity, oneness. Jnana is a state of discriminating wisdom that always occurs rather than being produced by temporary experience of any kind. It is an inherent state of being. So jnana is like outer space, which is inherently outer space. In spite of stars, moons, galaxies, and planets of all kinds; nevertheless, it is basic space. Outer space is inherently empty and inherently rich at the same time, like jnana, wisdom.

In the vajrayana tradition, as far as the
EVAM
principle is concerned, it is the notion of wisdom and great joy put together. Wisdom is regarded as the
E
principle, fundamentally. That is to say, being. Every situation we experience in our ordinary life has its basic subtleties, embryonic basic subtleties, which help allow us to express. That basic tendency, that basic format, is always there. In the tantric tradition, of course, that is often referred to as the principle of vagina—or cervix, actually—where birth is taking place, the birth of the phenomenal world. It is like giving birth to a child in that it is coming out of that particular cosmic mouth. It is not even a mouth, it is more; it is more than a gate, it is cosmic space. In vajrayana teachings, you often find it said that the Lord is dwelling in the cosmic cervix of wisdom. Because he is dwelling in that cervix, therefore, he is able to teach and to proclaim the vajrayana discipline.