The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (58 page)

The setting sun vision is trying to avoid death all the time. Therefore, it is artificializing everything, absolutely everything possible—up to the level of eating artificial ice cream—so you can forget about your death. Buying artificial plastic socks, shirts, pants. Eating artificial food. But, on the other hand, there is another approach possible, where we can actually eat real food. I’m not particularly saying that everybody should get into the so-called health food, eating brown rice and so forth. But there is some kind of approach that we can actually be real and proper and good and delightful.

Well, what I have said so far is just an introductory statement. Now I would like to tell you about the principles of the Shambhala Training that we are working on, the kind of situations we are actually trying to experience. That is very important. So, please, listen to this. Will you, please? It’s not particularly fantastic good news, necessarily, but it is somewhat reasonable. And actually it is delightful.

As human beings we have a basic nature in us known as goodness. Every one of you has that basic nature of goodness—general goodness, which is undiluted, unconfused. We all have our own styles of life, of course, our own ways of handling our business and our work. That’s fine. But at the same time we have this basic quality of general goodness, absolute goodness, which is spotless, fantastic. We do have that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here. There would be no Christ, no Buddha, no Muhammad—there would be nobody. Those religious figures proclaimed that goodness was discovered purely by religious means, spiritual means. Maybe that’s true, in some sense. But quite possibly there’s some other way by which we could actually discover ourselves directly—directly and very personally and perfectly. That’s what Shambhala Training is all about: to realize and understand that we all inherit and do have some fundamental goodness.

What is the nature of that goodness? That goodness possesses tremendous gentleness. Why is it gentle? Because, as human beings we can make love. We can stroke somebody with a gentle touch; we can kiss somebody with gentle understanding. We can appreciate somebody’s beauty. We can actually appreciate the best of everything. We can appreciate the yellowness of yellow, the redness of red, the greenness of green, the purpleness of purple—we appreciate everything, and we appreciate our world, in spite of all the sidetracks that we might resent—which is something else. But, in spite of that, we do appreciate what we have. We actually know that sweet is sweet and sour is sour. And we do appreciate that yellow is yellow and red is red. We actually do enjoy.

Nevertheless, some people don’t want to admit it, because of their depression. That is very tricky and very wicked, because we actually do experience that there is some kind of beauty and glamour and fantastic celebration taking place. Everything is real. When yellow is yellow, can we say it’s red, if we don’t like the yellowness of it? We can’t, because we actually would be contradicting reality.

The reality of our goodness allows us to experience beauty and richness. That doesn’t mean one has to become a millionaire or become an artist. We actually do experience that sunshine is sunshine. The other day we had good weather in Boulder—can you actually reject that? I doubt anybody can say that. We had brilliant sunshine and wonderful snowfall, and we appreciate it. We appreciate the good weather we had. There is always that kind of actual basicness of the whole thing. When we appreciate reality in its fullest level, we do really appreciate so thoroughly. It is so good, so great. And actually it works on us; it cheers us up. You might have a hangover in the morning from drinking too much the previous evening, but when you look out the window, it cures your hangover. Actually we can cure ourselves of any and all of our depressive situations and all the tricks and problems that have been laid on us by our missing the point all along.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let us think clearly and properly that the world we have is good. It is not just a fact that the world we have is good, just because it happens to be so. But it is good because we experience that it is good. We experience our world as healthy and straightforward, direct and real, because our basic nature is to go along with that kind of situation. Our human possibility of intelligence and dignity is actually in tune with that kind of situation where we experience that the bright blue sky is wonderful, and the green field is good, and the trees and mountains and so forth. So we have some sense of actual connection that makes us feel basically, fundamentally good. Shambhala Training is precisely going along with this way to wake ourselves up and actually experience ourselves and experience that goodness does really happen to us. It’s happening already.

Seemingly, the next situation is how we are going to relate with that kind of continuity. You might have had an actual flash, made an actual connection: a glimpse of sunshine or seeing bright colors, hearing good music, eating good food, whatever. But how are we going to sustain ourselves? How can we actually relate with that as part of our practice? That seems to be extremely important for us. That’s why Shambhala Training exists.

There are two kinds of logic from that point of view. One thing could be grasping, saying: “I want to get that goodness that is in me and in the phenomenal world.” So we might grasp, rush, trying to find, trying to possess. And if we are talking on an even lower level, we would probably say, “How much does it cost to get that? That purple cloth I saw, it was so beautiful. I want to buy it.”

Well, it seems there are some problems with that logic. We can’t get what we want, although we might see it as the basic potentiality of human dignity. The reason why we are unable to get hold of those things is because we want them so badly, absolutely so badly. If you take a walk on Madison Avenue, you find that out. Everybody is so desperate. You might say the people on Madison Avenue have good taste: Maybe those people in New York City have some possibilities of realizing human dignity. They know their taste, they know their dignity: They know something is cooking, something is actually happening. But, on the other hand, they become sort of like cactus trees, covered with lots of thorns. And they want to grasp, get it, get hold of it. They are discussing with each other what would be the best way to get hold of the goodness.

Then, of course, we have the spiritual shoppers as well. Somebody had a great shaktipat, or somebody was zapped by Muktananda or whomever. And he or she had a great time for a moment. “I want to get that back!” Maybe we have to shave our hair or wear robes or crawl on the floor to get it back. Eat with our hands, anything we could think of.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we have two different situations here: the secular vision of New York City and the vision of spiritual realms that has been presented to the world. Both of those situations are attempts to grasp hold of something, something good, something real. If you are rich, you are willing to spend thousands of dollars on it; if you are poor, you are willing to commit your services and life to it. There is something wrong with those approaches, actually. There is something not quite right with having such eagerness. You are willing to trade in your dignity and goodness and become a slave. One thing is lacking right at the beginning. When we begin to realize our dignity and the goodness in ourselves—that we are capable of making love, capable of actually upgrading the whole universe, the whole globe, the whole world—one thing lacking is a sense of humor.

That’s absolutely real: a sense of humor, some kind of sense of humor. If one questions where that particular kind of sense of humor comes from, obviously laughing at our jokes is not necessarily the best sense of humor. On the other hand, creating a hysterical statement to the others, criticizing everybody and laughing at them, leads to a very aggressive sense of humor. However, there could be genuine and real and perfect sense of humor, which can be discovered in the Shambhala Training process. In that process you look at yourself, you look at your mind, you look at your activities, and also you begin to repossess the humor that you’ve lost in the course of your life.

At the same time, you begin to understand that you actually have to relate with household articles. Household articles means your knives, your forks, your plates, your telephone, your dishwasher, and your towels—regular things. There’s nothing mystical about that. You might ask why I say such a thing. It’s because, if there isn’t any connection with our ordinary everyday situations and if we don’t have any way we can take care of our life, then we have no humor, no dignity, no reality. Charity begins at home, as Christians would say. So we could say in the Shambhala tradition that dignity begins at home. It’s very simple, absolutely simple.

The way we combed our hair tonight to come here, the way we dressed ourselves, the way we cleaned our spectacles tonight—all of those activities are an extension of our sanity, our way of connecting with our reality. Very simple, absolutely simple. And there is some truth in it. A fork is a fork, of course. Ordinarily you bought it; somebody sold it to you, and you have it in your house—just hanging around. But, on the other hand, a fork is not all that much just a fork. It’s an implement of eating: It reminds you of your domestic situation and your life. Your sense of extension of your sanity, your sense of your dignity, might depend on whether it is a good fork or a bad fork. However, that doesn’t really matter, particularly. A fork is a fork—as much as a fan is a fan.

And, very simply, Shambhala training is trying to provoke you to understand how you live, your relationship with your domesticity, your towels, your soap, your bathroom, your toilet. You can actually experience how you are actually relating with those things, fully and properly. The basis for that is that, as we are human beings, we have some sense of openness, some sense of reality. As human beings we have woken up and actually understood reality in some sense, and we begin to feel free and good.

Free is not necessarily in the style of George Washington. Free, in this case, is simply that we have our shoulders, our neck, our head, and we could hold ourselves up in order to work with reality in a quite dignified and quite possibly humorous way. If we begin to perk up, we begin to find the whole universe, including the seasons, snowfalls and the mud and flat tires and everything, is working powerfully with us—a humorous situation, which is not necessarily mocking us. Something actually takes place. There is something real, something possible. After all, we can handle our world; we can actually handle our universe properly and fully in a quite dignified way. Then we can talk about our dignity in relating with our knives and forks, and our dirty underpants, which are included, by the way. There is some sense of genuineness; we are not kidding ourselves. This is not religious, particularly. We can actually experience some sense of reality, the real world that we are in.

We don’t have to become politicians, trying to tell the truth to somebody else by beating around the bush—truth by innuendo. But we can be direct, which is again the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. We have some sense of precision, some sense of reality, whereby we can actually tell the truth straightforwardly. There’s no problem—we can be open, absolutely open, and steadfast at the same time.

So the conclusion of our particular discussion is that—because we do possess basic human dignity, basic human intelligence, whereby we are able to see black as black, white as white, green as green—we are actually in the situation to experience those things and to experience goodness and obvious genuineness taking place that way. So, beyond that, there shouldn’t be any particular problem in experiencing reality fully and thoroughly in communication, in relationships, and everything.

Question:
Rinpoche, is this goodness you speak of, which you say is our basic human nature, simply because we are able to perceive the reality of the world? Or is this goodness something even more innate than this, what in the Western world is called the soul?

Rinpoche:
Well, I wouldn’t say particularly a soul, which sounds very much like something you paste on your shoes. But in the Shambhala language, so to speak, that goodness is actually something much greater than purely reasonability and the basic good-boy and good-girl situation. It is something as expansive as the rays of the sun. Everybody has that fantastic possibility of goodness. That’s it.

Q:
Thank you.

R:
We should celebrate.

Fully Human

INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF SHAMBHALA VISION

I
WOULD LIKE TO WELCOME
all of you who are here to study this particular wisdom. The vision of Naropa Institute, which we have founded, has been that of Shambhala vision—right from the beginning. I am so pleased that at this point we can actually present that particular inspiration as well as the integrity of the Institute to you.

What we are about to present is based on a general attitude to life, an attitude which might go beyond the notion of buddhadharma alone. Since the programs that are being presented at Naropa Institute have the flavor of Shambhala possibilities, we should discuss what Shambhala vision is. To begin with, I would like to present you with a general outline of what we might discuss throughout our course.

Shambhala culture, Shambhala tradition, is very closely connected with the principles and the vision of Buddhism. At the same time, it provides us with a secular notion of how we can actually commit ourselves to a particular type of world that is true and genuine and good for us.

Shambhala tradition is a warrior’s tradition. “Warrior” is an interesting word; it is a translation of the Tibetan word
pawo. Pa
means “brave” and
wo
makes it “a person who is brave.” So the warrior tradition is a tradition of bravery. You might have problems with that particular word: warrior. You might be thinking of something like the warlords of China and Japan, or the idea of a warrior as someone who wages war. But in this case we are not talking in terms of those who create warfare, who are therefore warriors; we are talking about warriorship altogether, which means bravery. Everything is simplified into the basic notion of fearlessness.