The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (39 page)

Wisdom is what joins heaven and earth. You bring your zafu and
zabuton,
your meditation cushion and your meditation mat, together for the sitting practice of meditation. When the gong rings, you and your cushion are joined together. That is joining heaven and earth. I’m putting it on a very elementary level. Joining heaven and earth is not like making a decision. It is the principle of a mirror. You have electricity or daylight, which is heaven. You have your body, your face, your uncombed hair, your beard—which are all earth. Then you have the mirror, which joins together that heaven and earth. When you look in the mirror in the daylight, you can comb your hair nicely; you can shave your beard properly. So wisdom is the principle of a mirror.

I had an interesting conversation with someone about the movie
Star Wars
. There is a famous phrase in the movie, which is “May the Force be with you.” It’s rather like saying, “May energy be with you.” That is not a scientific approach. You just take a certain attitude, and by assuming that attitude, you accomplish the whole thing. When I heard that phrase in the movie, I was very excited, because it reminded me of the presentation of the Shambhala principles. Dot: force. You don’t have to be scientific about it. At this point, if you need a reminder, the dot will be your password. When you have a dot, you are not even in the junction, but you are on top of the situation. Think of a dot in space. Dot.

Whoever makes the final and primordial connection with the dot will be the king or queen of Shambhala, who joins heaven and earth. But there is not even a king. There is just the dot. The dot king. Just a tiny black dot who is the king of Shambhala. It is possible that people can achieve that, in the same way that we talk about enlightenment. How many buddhas will there be? How many kings and queens of Shambhala will there be? It is saying the same thing.

I don’t think any of those kings and queens will go dotting off on their own, because their dot is actually a calligraphy. You need paper and ink to make a dot. The ink and the paper are the subjects of Shambhala, who are the ground of physical discipline, psychological discipline, and speech discipline, accomplished all together. Because the ground of discipline exists, therefore, the king or ruler can exist. Dot exists, but it is not a human creation.

Try to practice and think about what has been discussed here. I have tried to be as straightforward, honest, and genuine as one human being can be in talking to another human being. I think you know that. My heart has softened toward all of you so much. I love all of you. Thank you.

G
OOD
M
ORNING WITHIN THE
G
OOD
M
ORNING

Because of my forefathers,

Because of my discipline,

Because my court, the tutors and the disciplinarians, have been so tough with me—

You taught me the Shambhala vision.

I feel enormous gratitude.

Instead of sucking my thumb,

You taught me to raise head and shoulders.

With sudden unexpected eruption,

I have been blown into the cold land of a foreign country.

With your vision, I still perpetuate the discipline you taught me.

On this second occasion of the Shambhala Training of Five,

I would like to raise a further toast to the students and their practice:

May we not suck our habitual thumbs,

May we raise the greatest banner of the Great Eastern Sun.

Whether tradition or tales of the tiger,

We will never give up our basic genuine concern for the world.

Let there be light of the Great Eastern Sun

To wake up the setting-sun indulgence.

Let there be Great Eastern Sun in order to realize

Eternally there is always good morning.

Written on the same day that the talk “Mirrorlike Wisdom” was given.

Part Two

BRILLIANT

Sacred Existence: Joining Heaven and Earth

SEVEN

Sacredness

NATURAL LAW AND ORDER

When you experience that there is such a thing as basic goodness and that things are in a natural order, you realize that there is no natural evil. There’s no fundamental evil trying to destroy the world. On the contrary, you begin to feel that you are being protected and nourished, even cherished, by the norms of natural order. Then you can respond to situations quite naturally. You respond to the four seasons. You respond to color. You can always relate with the natural goodness that does exist.

I
T IS MY INTENTION,
basically speaking, to make the Shambhala training available to the world independent of any demand for a spiritual or religious commitment. The commitment that is needed is individuals’ desire to elegantize their lives. In order to survive and maintain our elegance and, positively speaking, to maintain our arrogance, one of our main concerns should be how to lead our lives fully and properly, as we deserve to. We can choose to lead our lives on the basis of confidence, fearlessness, and elegance. Tomorrow is Halloween. If we can be genuine tonight, we could surpass the possibilities of dressing up as somebody else for Halloween.

I would like to revisit the principle of basic goodness. Basic goodness: Why is it basic? Why is it good? We are not talking here about choosing good over bad or having allegiance to a good idea as opposed to a bad idea. We are talking about
very basic
goodness, which is unconditional.
Unconditional
means that goodness is fundamental. You don’t reject your atmosphere; you don’t reject the sun and moon and the clouds in the sky. You accept them. The sky is blue. You have your landscape; you have your cities; you have your livelihood altogether. Clouds are not regarded as for or against you. Sunshine is not regarded as for or against you. Fundamentally, there is nothing threatening you, and nothing is promoting you either. That is fundamental goodness, natural law and order.

The four seasons occur free from anybody’s demand or vote. Nobody can change that universal system. There is day; there is night. There is darkness at nighttime. There is daylight during the day, and nobody has to turn the light switch on and off. The survival of human beings is based on this natural law and order, which is basically good—good in the sense that it’s sound, it’s efficient, and it works, always. If we didn’t have the four seasons, we wouldn’t have crops, we wouldn’t have vegetation, and we couldn’t relax in the sunshine. We couldn’t enjoy home cooking either, because there wouldn’t be any food. We often take this basic law and order in the universe for granted, maybe too much so. We should think twice; we should appreciate what we have. Without it, we would be in a completely problematic situation. We couldn’t survive.

Basic goodness is
good
in the sense that it’s so basic and
therefore
it is good, not in the sense of good as opposed to bad. It is good because it works. It is a natural situation. The same thing could be said of our own state of being, as well. We have passion, aggression, and delusion. We cultivate our friends, we ward off our enemies, and we are occasionally indifferent. That setup is not regarded as a shortcoming of human beings, but it is part of the elegance and the natural equipment of human beings. We have every faculty we need, so that we don’t have to fight with our world. And because the world is not particularly a source of aggression or complaint, therefore, it is good, and we are good. We can’t complain that we have our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. We can’t redesign our physiological systems. For that matter, we can’t redesign our state of mind, which comes along with the physiological systems anyway.

We have been equipped with nails and teeth to defend ourselves against attack. We’ve been equipped with our mouth and genitals to relate with others. Fortunately, we are also equipped with our intestines and our colons, so that food can recirculate: What we take in can be flushed out. Those natural situations are wonderful—ideal, in fact. Some might say it is the work of a divine principle. Maybe. But those who couldn’t care less about divine principles still have to work with this natural situation.

We should feel that it is wonderful to be in this world. How wonderful it is to see red and yellow, blue and green, purple and black. All of these colors are provided to us. We feel hot and cold. We deserve these things; we
have
them. Basic goodness is what we have, what we are provided with, the natural situation that
everybody
has earned from their childhood up to now. Fundamentally speaking, it is not good in the ordinary sense of good, good, goody, good. Neither is it particularly bad. It is unconditional.

The setting-sun world tries to manipulate basic goodness and make it into basic badness, saying that everything in the world is evil, including the four seasons, and everybody is trying to destroy each other. The setting-sun tradition even tries to revoke the creation of the world. According to the Christian tradition, God created everything at its best, as much as he could, for human beings. The setting-sun world is a democratic world that is always complaining and trying to redo God’s design of the world and the rest of the universe (except on weekends and the Sabbath, when it can be very convenient for setting-sun people to take a rest). But when you experience that there
is
such a thing as basic goodness and that things are in a natural order, you realize that there
is
no natural evil. There’s no fundamental evil trying to destroy the world. On the contrary, you begin to feel that you are being protected and nourished, even cherished, by the norms of natural order. Then you can respond to situations quite naturally. You respond to the four seasons. You respond to color. You can always relate with the natural goodness that does exist.

Basic goodness is basically
it;
therefore, it is good—rather than it is good as opposed to bad. So the first part of relating to basic goodness is appreciating that we have it and learning to apply our intelligence to manage or maintain that goodness. In a sense, we are learning how to take possession of basic goodness. It is not our possession, but nonetheless we have it, and we deserve it. And therefore, we can trust in basic goodness, which is the next topic.

Trust is the absence of neurosis, and trust is the epitome of well-being. Trust is also the essence of ideal comfort. Once again, we are talking about something very basic—in this case,
basic
trust. When you trust in goodness, you are making a connection with reality: with the rocks and the trees, the greenery, the sky and the earth, the rivers and the fires, with everything that exists around you. You can always trust that blue will be blue, red will be red, hot will be hot, and cold will be cold. Trust also exists on a larger scale: You trust in the law and order of human society, which is that way because of
natural
law and order.

As your trust in natural order and law evolves, you find that you don’t need extra entertainment to make yourself comfortable. You don’t have to seek simple, trivial, and ordinary ways to keep yourself occupied. You can simply relax. So in that way, trust brings relaxation. When we take reality for granted, we are always seeking new entertainments, new ideas, and new ways to kill boredom. You get bored with an old trust, so you have to find a new trust. That is the essence of the setting-sun approach. You’ve had enough of whatever you possess, so you look for something new. You abandon old friends, give away your old equipment, throw away old clothes, and come up with new clothes, new gadgets, new friends. There is no loyalty and no exertion involved with that approach. You might even get tired of the rocks and the trees, the rivers and the mountains, the sun and the moon. You might have to move to another planet. Even then, you might get tired of your new planet. What are you going to do then?

Someone may eventually figure out how to completely change the four seasons. Maybe they’ll do that at Disneyland some day. You would pay to see
that,
no doubt. They might build a big dome over that fantasy world. In the middle of summer, they would create an ideal winter for you. In the middle of winter, they would create an ideal summer for you. Human beings can be very tricky.

The opposite of that approach is to develop patience. In the English language,
patience
ordinarily means “to wait and see,” “to endure the wait.” In the Shambhala context, patience means
to be there
. It is simply being there, always being there. There is no connotation of being
so painfully there
. Patience is simple continuity and predictability. When you trust the natural sense of predictability, then you are patient, willing to be there. It’s very straightforward and natural. Just be there. Just be there.

Out of patience comes joy. Realizing that you don’t need any fresh, new, extraordinary things to entertain you, you can be there on the spot and celebrate what you have. You don’t need new objects of appreciation. To witness and experience what you have is good enough. In fact, it’s wonderful. It’s already a handful, so you don’t need anything extra. Actually, in that sense, it feels more like a sense of relief than joy. You also feel healthy. When you are not searching for a substitute or a better alternative to what you have, you feel quite satisfied. That brings natural health and wholesomeness. Unhealthiness comes from searching for alternatives. The satisfaction of basic health is appreciating ourselves and what we have already, naturally speaking. We accept the world of heaven, earth, and human beings.

The Shambhala wisdom respects the sacredness and the beauty of the world. We don’t try to change the color of the sky. There are all sorts of little tricks to make our world different. Instead of blue, you might like a red sky, or you might like to paint your beige bedroom bright red. But you don’t have to do that, and you don’t have to change yourself for the sake of boredom. You never get tired of having two eyes. If you get bored with having one nose and two eyes, you might want to exchange an eye for a nose. Or you might want to have lips on your eyes. You don’t have to do that. You can actually accept what you have, which is wonderful already. Therefore, joyful satisfaction comes with patience.