The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (47 page)

Let us have cosmic No.

The cockroaches carry little No No’s,

As well as giant elephants in African jungles—

Copulating No No and waltzing No No,

Guinea pig No No,

We find all the information and instructions when a mosquito buzzes.

We find some kind of No No.

Let our No No be the greatest motto:

No No for the king;

No No for the prime minister;

No No for the worms of our subjects.

Let us celebrate No No so that Presbyterian preachers can have speech impediments in proclaiming No No.

Let our horses neigh No No.

Let the vajra sangha fart No No—

Giant No No that made a great imprint on the coffee table.

1
. The Vajra Regent, Ösel Tendzin, was the American student (born Thomas Rich) who was appointed by Chögyam Trungpa in 1976 as his dharma heir, or the heir to his Buddhist lineage of teachings. The Big No is exemplified by the powerful student-teacher encounter that the author describes here, which took place in 1979.

2
. Although I wasn’t present for the first part of the event, I was invited to the author’s house, the Kalapa Court, for the final proclamation of the Big No, which took place about twenty-four hours after the incident began. Chögyam Trungpa, the Dorje Dradül, used an enormous brush to execute a huge calligraphy on a paper banner spread out on the floor of the hallway. When he executed the calligraphy stroke, he crashed the brush down, screaming
NO
at an indescribably deafening volume. Black sumi ink went everywhere. Later, I remember taking my wool skirt to the cleaners, hoping to get the ink out of it—to no avail. The white walls of the hallway had to be repainted.

3
. The author’s original remark was considerably stronger.

4
. His Holiness Rangjung Rikpe Dorje, the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyü lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, passed away from complications of cancer in November 1981. He had visited the United States at the author’s invitation three times—in 1974, 1976-1977, and 1980. This talk was given in January 1982.

Fearless Relaxation

THIRTEEN

Aloneness and the Seven Virtues of the Higher Realms

Sadness and aloneness are painful, but at the same time, they are beautiful and real. Out of that comes longing to help others. Being willing to work with others arises spontaneously. Because you care for yourself therefore, equally you care for others.

F
ROM THE
S
HAMBHALA
POINT OF VIEW,
it is always dawn, and that dawn is the opposite of the setting sun. Our first topic is the dawning of trust, which comes from feeling trustworthy to begin with. When you feel
worthy
of trust, then you can trust. You trust yourself to begin with. Developing trust is also a question of having a sense of humor and not taking things
too
seriously, including yourself. So trust also develops from humbleness. You don’t just come to conclusions based on what
you
think. There is respect for the rest of the world, for how things work and how things have evolved. You begin to find that the world around you is quite vivid, real, and obvious. You begin to experience a sense of reality as well as a sense of being, and you develop an uplifted sense of head and shoulders.

Nonetheless, because there is still so much misery, chaos, and degradedness taking place in the world, a certain sadness begins to occur to you. That sadness could be called feeling your heart, actually experiencing your heart fully and thoroughly. Sadness is accompanied by a feeling of aloneness. You wish you could rush to somebody and babble out everything, empty out your heart and share it completely, so that you don’t have to feel sad. There’s that temptation, but it is not possible. It’s like unfulfilled love. When you try to tell somebody how much you love him or her, the other person can’t understand why you’re making such a dramatic scene. This is the same kind of thing. The feeling of aloneness is an organic development. It is a natural situation. One doesn’t actually have to
develop
aloneness. Rather, it is a question of actualizing and realizing aloneness. When that happens, communicating with others becomes very simple.

Sadness is also connected with the absence of cowardice. When you feel brave, free from fear, you also feel sad. That sadness is not the sadness of feeling low and depressed, but it is tear-jerking sadness that is always with you. Once you have experienced the bravery that arises from basic goodness, you will also experience sadness and aloneness. In spite of joining in festivities with your relatives, in spite of celebrating the holidays, attending Christmas parties or New Year’s parties—whatever you do to try to forget that sadness—sadness will always be there. The more you try to enjoy yourself and the more you
do
enjoy, nonetheless, there is still the constant sadness of being alone.

That sadness also brings tenderness toward oneself. It is quite distinct from depression or the feeling that you want to commit suicide. When people are depressed and lonely—rather than alone—they sometimes want to commit suicide to get rid of their bodies and the environment of depression. With the Shambhala type of sadness, you want to live and help others. Tremendous humor is also present. Nonetheless, there is the sadness of being oneself.

It is as if you were taking a walk in the forest by yourself in the twilight. You hear the birds. You see a glimpse of light coming from the sky: you might see a crescent moon or clusters of stars. The freshness of the greenery with occasional wildflowers is trying to cheer you up. In the distance, dogs are barking. In the distance, a child is crying. Shepherds are calling for their sheep. More likely, in America, in the distance, you hear the roar of the highway, where trucks and cars are making their journeys. Alone in this woodland, you can still hear them and feel them.

You feel a little bit of freshness as the wind begins to blow on your cheeks. You smell the freshness of the woods. You might be startled by an occasional rabbit jumping out of the brush or an occasional bird, startled as you walk by its nest. Pheasants cross your pathway. As twilight goes on, you feel tenderness and sadness for your husband, your wife, your children, your grandparents. You remember the classroom where you studied, learning to spell words when you first went to school. You remember learning to spell your name, learning how to write the letters
j
and
o, m
and
a
.

The sadness of being oneself is like taking a walk in the forest, the borderland where things are not completely out of the way. There’s still a feeling that this particular woodland is surrounded by other living beings, human beings as well as other beings. You listen to the sound of your footsteps, right, left, right, left. Occasionally you step on a dry twig, which cracks. Maybe there are occasional sounds of flies buzzing. Such sadness and aloneness are painful, but at the same time, they are beautiful and real. Out of that comes longing to help others. Being willing to work with others arises spontaneously. Because you care for yourself, therefore, equally you care for others. That seems to take a certain edge off the sadness. At the same time, sadness still hovers around you.

You begin to see yourself: you realize that you are unique, and you can see how you sometimes make a caricature of yourself. The sadness goes on, constantly. Yet you begin to realize there is something good and constructive about being you as yourself. This experience brings devotion, faith in the great warriors who have made the same journey. It could be devotion toward King Arthur’s knights, or any great warriors whose legend inspires you. When caring for others takes place, it brings devotion and dedication to this world in which you grew up. At the same time, caring for others brings renunciation. You are inspired to renounce anything that is without heart: any perversion, selfishness, egotism, and arrogance.

Then, a fundamental wholesomeness arises in oneself, which we call the Great Eastern Sun. It is
Great
because it is vast and inconceivable. One cannot measure how vast the universe is stitch by stitch. Because of that vastness, there is Great
East:
vast possibilities, vast vision, vast aloneness, vast loneliness, vast sadness. One is always in the East, the dawn of wakefulness. One never falls asleep, never gets tired of life or of breathing in and out, as long as we live. One never gets tired of opening one’s eyes. One never gets tired of this aloneness, the stirring of the woodland.

The Orient, or the East, is where vision arises. This has nothing to do with a global, geographic, or racial reference point of the East as India, China, Japan, or the rest of Asia. As long as we open our eyes, as long as we breathe out, wherever we are facing, that is East. Wherever you are, you are facing out. You are looking at the East. East is forward, direct, projecting out into this world: Great East.

Then comes the Great Eastern
Sun,
which is quite different from what is traditionally known in Japanese culture as the rising sun. The Great Eastern Sun is the ten o’clock sun, high in the sky, rather than the sun just coming up over the horizon at seven o’clock or eight o’clock. We are talking about a teenage sun. The Great Eastern Sun might be seventeen years old. The Sun is that which shows us the way of discipline, what to do, what not to do. As we cook in the kitchen, the Great Eastern Sun helps us to chop our vegetables, so that we don’t cut our fingers. It is quite simple logic: the Great Eastern Sun guides us so that we don’t chop off our fingers! The Great Eastern Sun allows us to read the newspaper and find out what’s happening in the world. The Great Eastern Sun allows us to greet each other, husband to wife, wife to husband, father to son, father to daughter, children to parents. It allows us to say, “Good morning. How are you this morning?” Even dogs can bark properly in the Great Eastern Sun.

The Great Eastern Sun is simple, straightforward directions about what to do and what not to do. It shows us how to cheer up. When we fly the banner of the Great Eastern Sun, it has a white background, which represents the Great East, and a yellow disk, which represents the Sun. The Great Eastern Sun is a sense of cheerfulness put together with inscrutability and openness, which shows us how to lead our lives.

Out of that rises what is known as the dot in space. Whether you are confused or in a neutral state of mind or your mind is full of subconscious gossip, in any case there is always space. The dot in space is what we call first thought, best thought. In the midst of preoccupations, in the middle of your shower, as you put your pants on, while you dry your hair, while you cook your food, in the midst of all sorts of neutral states of being, the dot is a sharp point that jerks you, shakes you. You are quite easily going through your life, quite naively, and suddenly there’s a jerk out of nowhere. First thought, best thought. That experience is the mark of being in the higher realms. Animals, we could say, don’t get to see the dot in space. Only human beings have a chance to see the dot in space.

The obstacle to seeing the dot in space is that we’re constantly looking for ways to entertain ourselves. When you look up at the sky, if you see a blue sky, you don’t quite accept it. You don’t want to just look at the blue sky. You want to see
clouds
. We’re always looking for something else. Still, the phenomenal world is filled with fantastic possibilities. You don’t need to find extra ways to entertain yourself. It is a question of accepting and acknowledging things as they are, learning to accept the ordinariness of extraordinariness. That requires a lot of discipline, particularly in the West. We don’t even eat the same meal twice in a week. We are always trying to change one thing into something else, so we resist a daily routine. We try to avoid the familiar. We find it boring.

The Shambhala approach is to befriend what is there, the everyday occurrence, which is real, obvious, and constant. Then first thought, best thought becomes a shocking experience, which shocks us into reality. It may be the same blue sky and the same Volkswagen car that we drive to work every day. But that ordinariness is extraordinary. That is the dichotomy: when you live life in a thoroughly ordinary way, it is extraordinary. I think you have to try it for yourself, and then you’ll understand. I can’t really explain word by word. I wouldn’t even attempt to explain. There is a particular saying in Buddhism that applies at this point: “Even the buddhas’ tongues are numb.” There are certain things that even the Buddha can’t explain. It’s a question of doing it. Look at yourself. If you have some sense of open mind at the same time that you are preoccupied, then there might be some kind of jerk that shakes you. That’s the closest I can come to explaining. You have to do it.

The next topic is the seven virtues of the higher realms, which distinguish us from the animal realm and which are the ethics of working with the dot in space. These seven virtues, or reminders, will be the cause of seeing the dot in space. Number one is
faith,
or a sense of genuineness. You are not faking anything, and you are not trying to impress anybody. Faith is also appreciation of the Shambhala wisdom. Number two is
discipline
. Your daily life is properly conducted, with no sloppiness. Number three is
daring
. Whenever there is a challenge, you step beyond it. Daring bridges the pond of fear. You’re afraid that you might fall in, but with daring, you step over your fear. Number four is
learning,
or studying the Shambhala principles so that you can understand wisdom. Number five is
decorum,
which is cultivating a sense of well-disciplined self-respect. Number six is
modesty
. You don’t develop arrogance, but you remain modest and humble. Number seven is
discriminating awareness,
learning to discriminate or distinguish what to do and what not to do.