The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (86 page)

S:
But what I had in mind is the exercise of compassion when someone is trying to strike you.

V:
Well, it could be a ghastly experience for a few seconds—for a few days, for that matter. You see, compassion could be kind. But at the same time, [idiot] compassion could be fulfilling what you want or trying to help a person in whatever way that person wants to be helped. This could go too far. For instance, if you continuously give sedative tablets to a person, in the end that person could be hooked on them rather than just purely using them to cure the pain. A person could get hooked on it. So then there’s the decision of not continuing, not going on with that feeding of the person’s weakness anymore. You really have to be brave to create chaos, disturbances, or upset as far as the other person is concerned, to stop feeding them such sedatives. And if we are the object of this, it could be a ghastly experience; we could regard that person as really being cruel to us. But sooner or later we will discover it, of course. I mean, that’s a very logical thing. That’s very obvious, in a way.

S:
I don’t think I understood the last point.

V:
I mean sooner or later you realize that the person’s cruelty was a kind gesture. You’ll be grateful that you are not hooked on sedatives. [
Laughs.
] It’s very simple.

S:
Does what you say imply that the spiritual path is also a karmic process?

V:
This particular type of karma is deliberate karma rather than the chain reaction of karma, the cause and effect of karma. Do you mean that?

S:
Well, the way you described it, it seems as if there are four types of karma. And with each one of the types, it’s as if there are two paths. One type was the spiritual path—and one could choose that at each moment. So it sounds as if karma is involved in the spiritual path, as well.

V:
I think so, yes. It’s a creative process. And the word karma could come from the same root as creation. It means creating, producing, activating situations. Of course it depends on the subtlety of the activating qualities, but it could be spiritual as well as everyday style.

S:
But you’ve said that the whole thing is not to sow a new seed of karma.

V:
Well, this kind of karma is quite different from the karmic chain reaction. This particular karma is living karma, which does not have any entanglement. It is just the sharp blow of the occasion, of the moment, like the blow of a sword. You apply the karmic action appropriate to the situation. And having already applied it, then it fulfills its functions automatically, on the spot. The other kind of karma, the cause-and-effect principle of karma—sowing the seed of such karma is not really an act of intelligence; it could be started from neurotic tendencies of any kind, frivolousness of any kind. It is not perfect karmic action. But today we are discussing karma as close to the enlightened actions of karma, the karma of buddha, the buddha activity principle of karma.

So there are two types of karma, which could be called greater karma and lesser karma. Greater karma is these four types of karma, which are deliberate, which do not involve chain reactions any more, because the whole purpose of greater karma is to break the chain reaction. It is applied to action in the moment, on the spot. The other karma is the chain reaction process, or lesser karma.

S:
When you spoke of the four types of karma, there seemed to be two aspects in each of the four types. I think you called one of them mara. Was that the mechanical one?

V:
Yes. The mara could start creating the chain reaction karma, or lesser karma because we are touching on a very sensitive point of ego, really getting to the nerve of it. And there’s a tendency to interpret every greater karma into lesser karma. The tendency to do that always happens, you know. There’s a kind of secondary impression of the greater one which could fool you into thinking it could be the greater one as well. But in actual fact it isn’t.

This comes up in the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
as well. When you see the bright light of Vajrasattva—the sharp, awe-inspiring, beautiful, bright blue color—there will be an impression as though there’s a reflection of that blue which is less irritating and bright, more attractive. One is led to that by temptation. The same symbolism goes on with all kinds of processes. There’s the enlightenment experience—which is irritating, awe-inspiring, overwhelming, sharp, and precise. Then there’s a secondary type of enlightenment—which is not all that awe-inspiring and sharp, but attractive, seductive. That’s the spiritual adviser’s handiwork. [Ed.: Referring to the spiritual adviser aspect of ego’s bureaucracy.]

S:
You said that secondary actions interpret.

V:
I think it’s too literal, yes. It is too literally connected with the convenience of what you are; there’s too much feeling of comfort involved. That is why it is called devaputra, the seductive quality of the first mara, always trying to bring in this comfort quality, as well.

S:
So the pacification is to pacify yourself.

V:
Mm-hmm.

S:
Are you saying that for each positive step, there is inevitably a negative seductive aspect of mara?

V:
Always.

S:
Inevitably.

V:
Inevitably, yes.

S:
With the exception of final enlightenment.

V:
Quite. Yes. Always. Because ego is taking part in it, and ego is very clever in adapting himself to that situation.

S:
How then could there be any progress?

V:
Well, progress just happens.

S:
How could there be progress toward enlightenment, if for every step one takes torward enlightenment one is at the same time pulled back inevitably by this mara, or temptation?

V:
Well, this is why there’s the whole idea of taking away the watcher in the practice of meditation. You do not watch yourself doing this and that, but you just do it. That’s the whole idea of complete involvement, identification with the technique of practice. Just doing it. And that’s also the very reason it is important to have nondiscrimination, not regarding good as good or bad as bad, but transcending all these. The identification is very important in this case. Complete involvement is more important than anything else. It is nondualistic, which is an invincible thing.

S:
What does the identification do?

V:
Identification—in the study of the middle way, Nagarjuna calls it a vajra nail, diamond nail. It is a complete nail made out of diamond. Nothing can destroy it, or its application. So identification takes away completely the dualistic reporting back to the brokers of ego.

S:
So that you can’t interpret?

V:
You can’t interpret because you have been completely nailed with the diamond, with what is. If you want to go and report back to central headquarters, you can’t do it. That is why the definition of prajnaparamita has been said to be beyond words, beyond thoughts. You’ve been reduced to dumb and deaf. Even if you want to report back to central headquarters, you can’t speak a word of it. [
Laughs.
] There are no words to report back. [
Laughs some more.
]

S:
Does that do away with mahayana, with the idea of the bodhisattva ideal, when there’s no interpretation at all?

V:
Well no, that
is
the mahayana. We haven’t gotten to the vajrayana yet. There’s something more than that. [
Laughs.
]

S:
Whenever you talk about going completely with the situation, I begin to get afraid [
laughter
] about the worst. I mean, couldn’t I lose the path? Maybe if I go with the situation I’ll never see you again, or maybe I’ll go off the way. Couldn’t it happen that if one doesn’t watch where one’s going, one may lose all contact with the teaching and just become a drunk? [
Laughter
]

V:
You see, the whole point is that if you are identified completely with what is, then you are in keeping with the energy, force, speed. There’s
less
chance of losing the way. It’s like a very skillful driver. He might go 150 miles an hour, but he knows what he’s doing; he’s keeping with his energy. He or she never panics. For instance, he never brakes suddenly; when he has to slow down, he changes gears and he just gradually slows down. He never makes a sudden panic move.

S:
A highly skilled driver really is there all the time, watching everything.

V:
Yeah.

S:
And you’re saying to stop watching. It’s like saying to get into this racing car, turn on the engine, get up to a hundred miles an hour, and then shut your eyes! [
Laughter
]

V:
But there’s nothing to identify with if you shut your eyes. Identifying means going with the speed. Don’t think that you’re a driver and the car is a separate thing. Identify that you are actually the car. If you have to pass very narrow gaps, identify yourself with the car—then you feel how narrow the gap is. You know how to pass it. You know how to control yourself. [
Laughs.
] You do not just abandon altogether. You see, identification or letting-go doesn’t mean abandonment. It’s completely being what is there. I mean, this tends to happen if you have your own car and you know how wide your car is, how fast your car will go. Then you have no particular conflict of any kind of all, no fear, because you know your car well, how wide it is and whether you could pass that particular gap or not. The whole thing is that you become identified with the car. You know exactly what to do.

That doesn’t leave us sort of completely faithfully giving in. There seems to be a conflict between the different aspects of openness. Openness could mean being completely open and susceptible to any situations; or it could mean reducing yourself to an infant, handing yourself over to somebody. But that isn’t openness. Openness is just to be what you are. You don’t give your ground. You retain your ground as well as your intelligence. But you work, dance together, in partnership style rather than completely surrendering.

S:
So what you said is that the situations that life brings you are filled with karma; and if you conquer them you’re enlightened and if you fail, it adds to the lesser karma, the spiraling effect. And the way to conquer that is through identification and openness. I’m getting the sense that you can’t do that through thinking. Is it only through meditation that you can conquer karma, for if you’re not ready for it there’s nothing you can do but just add more karma?

V:
Are you talking about the chain reaction of karma?

S:
Yes.

V:
Well, in this case, meditation seems to be the only answer. Unless we are in the state of meditation, or meditative style of some kind, we tend to plant more seeds of further involvement. This includes dreams, fantasies, daydreaming of any kind. We are all the time creating more things, churning out a lot of stuff altogether. And when we churn out more stuff, this stuff must go somewhere, which goes along with the karmic chain reaction and adds to this particular energy. This happens all the way along.

The only way to stop this chain reaction is not to churn out any more stuff, not to churn out more complications to add to neurotic confusion. In fact, that seems to be the basic principle of the meditation that I have been talking about: keeping to simplicity rather than using any kind of exotic techniques which could be interpreted in terms of churning out more karmic patterns, or images and symbolism of any kind which will tend to sow karmic seeds.

So meditation is another way, a kind of nonviolent way of boycotting the karmic administration: not taking part anymore, just not doing anything. That creates tremendous chaos for the regular karmic chain reaction. It could be terrible. But that seems to be the only way to do it. We might talk about good karma and bad karma, but whether we are working on good karma or whether we are defending bad karma, whatever it may be, we are already on track, involved in the speed of the samsaric pattern. We are just revolving around in any case. So karma doesn’t seem to be worthwhile playing with in any case.

S:
What do you mean by neurotic?

V:
Insane, in the sense of not knowing what is yours and what is not yours. I mean the chain reaction of projections: we project outward, and a few moments later we begin to think they are not our projections but are threatening us [from outside]. We begin to be completely confused. It is kind of a hallucinatory thing. We create our own situations, but a little bit later those situations begin to threaten us as though they were completely external—which is losing the original point. It is sort of absent-mindedness in a very neurotic sense. Asleep. Dead drunk.

S:
Could you give some examples of these kinds of projections?

V:
Well, a lot of situations happen in life, and we impose particular adjectives on things. We put very fixed ideas on them: names and conceptualized things. Having already put these heavy trips on situations, then we begin to become afraid of them as though they already existed independently of us. But originally you made them, you created them. And your creation begins to attack yourself then. And as you try to run away more and more—the faster you go, the faster
they
come after you. [
Laughs.
] It’s a very big trip. I think the ultimate experience of samsara is highly illustrated by an acid trip. It seems that in many cases it happens that it enlarges the whole thing.

S:
If I’m on a drug trip and I imagine a great dragon coming at me in my mind, the thing to do is let him eat me. Do you agree with this? Is that true? [
Laughter
] I can’t believe that.