The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (29 page)

Your unconquerable power

Is like a tiger springing.

Surrounded by troops,

You are a wild yak.

Becoming your enemy

Is being caught by a crocodile:

O Warrior, protect me,

The ancestral heir.

List of Poems

1111 Pearl Street: Off Beat

Good Morning within the Good Morning

Sacredness (Four Untitled Poems)

How to Know No

The Meek: Powerfully Nonchalant and Dangerously Self-Satisfying

Seasoning Life

Sanity Is Joyful

Battle Cry

Auspicious Coincidence: Wealth and Vision

Haiku (Excerpt)

Anthem

Foreword

O
N BEHALF OF MY LATE HUSBAND,
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and on behalf of the Mukpo family, I am very pleased to contribute a foreword to
Great Eastern Sun
. Trungpa Rinpoche, whose Shambhala title was Dorje Dradül of Mukpo, was a true example of a Shambhala person. Although he was raised in the strict monastic tradition of Tibet, he was very broad-minded. He was able to appreciate the fundamental sacredness of life and the lives of people from many different traditions. He not only followed the Buddhist path but also explored many different aspects of life, which included an interest in the visual arts, poetry, and so forth. He was able to see beyond his own tradition and to appreciate how the Shambhala principles might affect the lives of human beings with other religious affiliations or no particular religious affiliation at all. This is an example of what a compassionate person he was.

It would have been very important to my husband to know that these teachings, which he gave to his students during his lifetime, are now being presented in a book that can be available to many, many people. I hope that these principles can be brought onto whatever path people are traveling in their lives. It can help to enrich their lives and give them perspective. Some people may already naturally embody many of these principles. This book will help to give them a format and structure within which to live their lives.

In the Shambhala teachings, we often talk about the Great Eastern Sun. The sun is always rising, which means that there is always the potential for human beings to discover their own goodness and the sacredness of the world. Therefore, we have entitled this book
Great Eastern Sun
. I hope that this book will help many people, including those who are already on the path of warriorship, to experience further Great Eastern Sun vision in their lives.

Trungpa Rinpoche himself lived his life by these principles and was therefore able to enrich the lives of others. I hope that people can take these principles to heart so that they, in turn, may be able to enrich the lives of those with whom they come in contact. You might say this is a bodhisattva approach to the Shambhala tradition. It was certainly my husband’s approach to his entire life.

D
IANA
J
UDITH
M
UKPO

Providence, Rhode Island

October 17, 1998

Preface

T
HIS VOLUME IS A SEQUEL
and a complement to
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
. The first volume was like a guidebook to Shambhala or a road map of the warrior’s path.
Great Eastern Sun
is about transmission and about embodying and manifesting. In that sense, it is not about
then;
it is about
now
. There is a way in which this book attempts to directly convey or transmit wisdom. Although that is a rather difficult thing to do, it is couched within simplicity.

Great Eastern Sun
is divided into a prologue and five parts—“Profound,” “Brilliant,” “Just,” “Powerful,” and “All-Victorious.” The five divisions correspond to the five qualities of something called
absolute Ashe
. The word
Ashe
(pronounced ah-shay) is not mentioned in the manuscript, but it will be found in the author’s notes for the talks on which this book is based. (See Author’s Notes.) In the Shambhala teachings, the Ashe principle represents the life force, or the basic energy that underlies and infuses all human life and activity. Readers can pursue further study of the Ashe principle through the Shambhala Training program.
¹

Although this book is structured in a deliberate order, it does not have to be read front to back. The material in the early chapters is more demanding logically; the later material is more atmospheric and sometimes more playful. In some sense, the structure of the book is like a flower with petals unfolding. If you read it from beginning to end, you start at the outer petals and spiral in to an empty center. But you can also start in the middle or anywhere in between.

The material in the last two parts of the book, “Powerful” and “All-Victorious,” is presented as a series of lectures that you, the reader, can attend. These chapters might be regarded as meditations. You may want to read them that way and see whether that approach works for you.

In presenting the Shambhala teachings to the Western world, Chögyam Trungpa not only charted new territory, but he also adopted a new name: Dorje Dradül of Mukpo. He signed the foreword to
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
with this name.
Mukpo
is his family name;
Dorje Dradül
means “The Adamantine, or Indestructible, Warrior” In this book, he is often referred to as the Dorje Dradül.
²

New meditators and those who have never practiced meditation will, I think, find this book accessible. I hope that it will also be of interest to more seasoned practitioners. Many readers will be satisfied purely with what they gain from reading the book. Others may find the sitting practice of meditation to be a discipline they would like to pursue. There are many qualified meditation instructors and a number of organizations that offer an introduction to Buddhist and mindfulness meditation practice.
³
In the first book,
Shambhala,
detailed meditation instruction is provided in the chapter entitled “Discovering Basic Goodness.” In the present volume, a multilayered approach is taken to presenting the details of the sitting practice of meditation. Practice infuses the discussion in many chapters, but no separate instruction is provided.

Rather than defining a term thoroughly the first time it was used, I decided to let the definition and understanding of terms and concepts evolve throughout the book. The editor’s afterword includes information on the sources used in the book and how the material was edited that may help to put this in context. I let terms be reintroduced many times. I felt this approach was in keeping with how the author originally presented this material. Like the mysterious primordial dot that pops up over and over again in this book, wisdom is always fresh. It is never redundant.

I hope that readers will, in this spirit, enjoy and explore the repetition of concepts and definitions in this book. Think of it, if you will, as though you were trying a dozen different varieties of apples over the course of the autumn. Whenever you bite into an apple, you experience the sameness, or the appleness, of the fruit as well as the particular flavor of the variety—Winesap, McIntosh, or Golden Delicious. Or you might approach this book like sipping fine single-malt whiskey or excellent green tea or enjoying a spicy curry. Each sip or each bite is the same, yet different. There is a deepening and blending of the flavors.

Music has a similar quality. The repetition, with variations, is obvious in many musical forms, from traditional music—such as the Indonesian gamelan, the Japanese gagaku, or the fiddle music of Scotland and Cape Breton—to the complexities of modern jazz. A fugue by Bach and a symphony by Beethoven also repeat their themes myriad times; songs have their choruses, which echo over and over.

Indeed, it may be helpful to think of the chapters in this book as a series of love songs. There is rarely any new information in a love song. What makes it interesting is
how
it expresses this most basic of human emotions. The life of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was one long love song dedicated to sentient beings. It is a privilege to have been able to edit a few of the verses.

I hope you will enjoy these songs of basic goodness.

D
ORJE
Y
UTRI,
C
AROLYN
R
OSE
G
IMIAN

June 27, 1998

Halifax, Nova Scotia

1
. For information about the history and structure of the Shambhala Training program and its relationship to the material in this book, please see the editor’s afterword.

2
. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is not uncommon for both teachers and students to receive new names or titles in connection with religious vows they have taken or practices they are given. In keeping with the use of the author’s Shambhala name in this book, I also have signed the editor’s preface and afterword with both my Western and Shambhala names.

3
. The practice of meditation and the teachings of Shambhala warriorship are offered by Shambhala Training in many locations in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, and parts of Asia. For information about Shambhala Training, see the Resources section at the back of this volume.

Prologue

THE KINGDOM, THE COCOON, THE GREAT EASTERN SUN

The Shambhala training is based on developing gentleness and genuineness so that we can help ourselves and develop tenderness in our hearts. We no longer wrap ourselves in the sleeping bag of our cocoon. We feel responsible for ourselves, and we feel good taking responsibility. We also feel grateful that, as human beings, we can actually work for others. It is about time that we did something to help the world. It is the right time, the right moment, for this training to be introduced.

D
RIVEN BY SURVIVAL,
hassled by the demands of life, we live in a world completely thronged by holding on to our state of existence, our livelihood, our jobs. People throughout this century and for at least the last few thousand years have been trying to solve our problems right and left. Throughout history, in fact, great prophets, teachers, masters, gurus, yogins, and saints of all kinds have appeared and tried to solve the problems of life. Their message has been quite definite: “Try to be good. Be gentle to yourselves, to your neighbors, your parents, your relatives, your spouse—to the whole world. If you are good to others, you will relieve their anxiety. Then you will have excellent neighbors, excellent relatives, an excellent wife, an excellent husband, an excellent world.” That message has been presented a thousand times. Our lives are enriched by many sacred writings, including the ancient traditions of Taoism, Vedic texts, sutras, tantras, and shastras
¹
—sacred texts of all kinds. Modern libraries and bookstores are filled with these attempts to reach us. People try so hard to help, even placing the Gideon Bible in hotel rooms.

Many of those teachers and saints belong to a theistic tradition. That is to say, they worship the one God, and they are monotheists, or they are presenting sacred messages from the multitheism of other traditions. On the other hand, Buddhism is a nontheistic spiritual discipline, which does not talk in terms of worship and does not regard the world as somebody’s creation. According to the Buddhist teachings, there was no great artificer who fashioned the world. This world is created or produced and happens to be purely through our own existence. We exist; therefore, we have fashioned this particular world. Then there are entirely different schools of thought, supported by scientific discoveries, that say that everything is an evolutionary process. We have Darwinian theories of how, from a monkey or a fish, human beings came to exist.

There are many conflicting notions about the origins of existence. But whether it is according to theism, nontheism, or a scientific approach, there
is
this particular world—which is created and which we have. To theologians or scientists, it may be terribly important to figure out why we are here or how we came to be here. But from the point of view of Shambhala vision, the main concern is not
why
I am here or
why
you are here.
Why
you happen to have a white shirt, a red shirt, long hair, or short hair is not the question. The real question is, Since we’re here, how are we going to live from now onward? We may or may not have a long time to live. Impermanence is always there. Right now, you may cease to live. As you walk out of the room you’re in right now, something may happen to you. You may face death. There are many eventualities of life or death. You may face physical problems, sicknesses of all kinds. You may be subject to cancer. Nonetheless, you have to live from now onward.

The basic point of the Shambhala teachings is to realize that there is no outside help to save you from the terror and the horror of life. The best doctor of the doctors and the best medicine of the medicines and the best technology of the technologies cannot save you from your life. The best consultants, the best bank loans, and the best insurance policies cannot save you. Eventually, you must realize that
you
have to do something rather than depending on technology, financial help, your smartness, or good thinking of any kind—none of which will save you. That may seem like the black truth, but it is the real truth. Often, in the Buddhist tradition, it is called the vajra truth, the diamond truth, the truth you cannot avoid or destroy. We cannot avoid our lives at all. We have to face our lives, young or old, rich or poor. Whatever happens, we cannot save ourselves from our lives at all. We have to face the eventual truth—not even the eventual truth but the
real
truth of our lives. We are here; therefore, we have to learn how to go forward with our lives.