The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (24 page)

In other words, intellect here means absence of a watcher. If we watch ourselves learning—watch ourselves growing, developing, becoming more and more scholastic people—then we are comparing ourselves with “other.” We are constantly gaining weight in our egos, because we are comparing ourselves with “other.” Whereas if there is experience of intellectual study going on without a watcher, it becomes very simple and direct. This kind of intellect without a watcher has qualities similar to what we were describing earlier in connection with the experience of the young prince. It is open, willing to explore. It is without a particular attitude. It is without a sense that you want what is happening to be replaced by information. It is a constant discovery of new situations in life and what the teachings and scriptures have to say about them. It means discovering the subtleties and feelings related with different aspects of Buddhism. It means understanding the whole geography of the teachings, so that you are not bewildered by some new approach, some new wisdom. You are not bewildered, because you know what area of human psychology a particular approach is connected with. In this way, whatever comes up in relation to the teaching becomes very simple, very easy and workable. This was the practice exemplified by Padmasambhava as Padmasambhava. He became a great pandit because he worked with his intellect without a watcher. On the basis of his example, we can also work with intellect without a watcher.

You might ask, “If there is no watcher, how do we know that we have understood what we have learned?” But it is possible to approach learning and understanding other than by collecting information for the sake of gaining a new personality or developing a new ego. That is not the only way. There are other ways for one to be highly scholastic, highly intellectual. It is possible to do that without a watcher.

Another aspect of Padmasambhava is known as Loden Choksi, who was a rajguru, as they called the spiritual teacher of a royal family in India. The way Loden Choksi came to be a rajguru is an interesting story. He was wandering from place to place when he came to a nunnery. He began instructing the head nun there, who was the princess of the kingdom of Sahor. Sahor was somewhere in the area of Himachal Pradesh in present-day northern India. The princess was very precious for this kingdom, because she had been invited to become the queen of a number of neighboring kingdoms, as well as of important kingdoms like China, Persia, and (according to the story) the Roman Empire. Despite these invitations, the princess refused to have anything to do with worldly power and pleasures. She wanted to become a Buddhist nun, and she did. The king of Sahor was extremely fearful that if the princess was not successful in maintaining her nunhood [this would be regarded as a deception and a political affront by those kingdoms whose invitations she had rejected and] that they might attack his kingdom. [Therefore, the king surrounded her with five hundred nuns to guard her in her discipline.]

So Padmasambhava was there giving teachings to the princess and the five hundred nuns when a local cowherd passed by and heard a man’s voice coming out of the nunnery. Word of this spread throughout the kingdom and created a huge scandal. At some point, the king and queen and their ministers heard the story. They hoped to be able to expose the scandal as based on a false rumor, but were unable to track down the cowherd who was the original witness. They had a collection of lots of gifts placed at the entrance to the royal courtyard and let it be known that if the original witness would come forward and tell his story, he would receive all these gifts. There was gold, silver, jewelry, silks, and so on. Finally, the herdsman appeared and told his story, which actually seemed to be true. He had no ulterior motive for spreading a scandal in the kingdom.

The king sent one of his ministers to find out what was happening at the nunnery. The minister found the doors completely locked, and the nuns would not let anyone inside, even if it was a messenger from the king who just wanted to inspect. The king suspected that something funny was going on at the nunnery and sent his soldiers to break in. They did so and found Padmasambhava sitting on the throne in the assembly hall, instructing the nuns.

The soldiers tried to seize Padmasambhava but found it very difficult, bewilderingly difficult, to get hold of him. They couldn’t catch him at all. At this point, the king became extremely upset and angry and sent a huge number of troops to the nunnery. The troops finally captured Padmasambhava and all the nuns.

The traditional means of execution of this country was burning the prisoner alive in a sandalwood fire. So they put Padmasambhava in a sandalwood fire, and the princess was put into a dungeon filled with thorns. The sandalwood fire, which usually died after twenty-four hours, continued to burn for a long time. With other criminals, there was usually no difficulty, but in this case, the fire continued to burn and smoke for about three weeks. The king and the people began to wonder what the problem was. Could it be possible that there was something unusual about this wanderer they had burned? The king decided he wanted to collect some pieces of this wanderer’s bones in case they might have interesting magical properties. He sent a messenger to the place where the fire was, an the messenger found that a huge lake had appeared on the spot, with logs still aflame around the edges of it. In the middle of this lake was a lotus flower with Padmasambhava sitting on it.

The king realized he had made a big mistake and began speaking to Padmasambhava. Padmasambhava sang a song, saying, “Welcome to the great sinner, welcome to the king trapped in confusion,” and so forth. The king invited Padmasambhava to come to his palace. Padmasambhava finally accepted his invitation. At this point, according to the story, Padmasambhava conducted sadhana practices of the vajradhatu mandala at the king’s palace. The result, according to the story, is that the kingdom was completely emptied out in seven years’ time. The whole civilization dissolved as people became great yogis and found there was no point in sticking to ordinary domestic work. They all became crazy.

In this story, Loden Choksi, the rajguru aspect of Padmasambhava, performed a miracle. His miracle was not merely converting the king; the miracle was his manner of dealing with whatever threats or accusations arose. Loden Choksi manifested the invincibility of Padmasambhava. Any challenge to him, rather than being viewed as a threat, turned into a further adornment of his action. Using obstacles as a way of working with life situations plays a very important part in crazy wisdom.

This may be a familiar idea for people already exposed to the teachings of crazy wisdom, but for most people, who think of spirituality as based purely on goodness, any kind of opposition or obstacle is considered a manifestation of evil. Regarding obstacles as adornments is quite an unusual idea. If there is a threat to the teacher or the teaching, it tends to be categorized immediately as the “work of the devil.” In this view, the idea is to try not to relate to the obstacles or threats, but to cast them out as something bad, something antagonistic to the teaching. You should just purify yourself of this work of the devil. You should abandon it, rather than exploring it as part of the organic and integral development of the situation you are working with. You regard it purely as a problem.

I suppose if those of us already familiar with these teachings would look into ourselves on a very subtle level, we might still find some element of this approach. Although we know the philosophy and the ideas—we know we are supposed to work with negativity and use it as an adornment—nevertheless, there is still some sense of trying to find alternatives, of trying to find some kind of underlying promise.

Actually, this happens quite a lot with our students. People talk about relating to negativity as part of the development of the situation, but then they regard this approach in itself as an alternative way of solving the problem of negativity. Even older students are constantly asking questions, publicly and in private, based on this alternative-solution approach. They still believe that there is a “best way”; they still believe there is a way to some kind of happiness. Although we know we are supposed to relate to pain and misery as part of the path, we still try to regard
that
as a way to happiness, as a way of solving the problem, as a better alternative. If we had been Padmasambhava as the rajguru, we would have tried to talk to the guards who arrested us before they put us in the fire. We would have said, “This is a great mistake; you mustn’t do this. You don’t understand what you’re doing.” We would try this, rather than letting the event happen, rather than letting action speak louder than words.

There still seems to be some kind of timidity in our general approach. We are timid in the sense that, no matter how subtle or obvious the teachings may be, we are still not reconciled to the notion that “pain and pleasure alike are ornaments which it is pleasant to wear.”
⁶
We might read it, we might say it, but still we find it magnificent to twist the twist and feel that misery or negativity is good: “We have to work with it. Okay, I’ve been doing that. Lately I’ve been finding all kinds of rough and rugged things going on in my mind and in my life. It’s not particularly pleasant, but all in all it’s
interesting
for me.” There is some tinge of hope. The idea of finding the negativity “interesting” is that somehow as we go along we will be saved. The unspoken implication is that finally the whole thing is going to be good and pleasurable. It’s very subtle. It is almost as though there’s an unspoken agreement that in the end all roads are going to lead to Rome.

We are still struggling along with the hinayana mentality, even though we are talking about the most profound teachings of crazy wisdom. We are still thinking this crazy wisdom might lead us to happiness, that the crutches of the vajrayana might help us to walk on a good hinayana path. This shows that we have not related to the whole thing as hopeless—absolutely hopeless—at all. Even hopelessness has been regarded as a solution. That cop-out is still happening. We are still going on as though there were this silent agreement that, no matter what we say, we are working toward some kind of happiness. But Padmasambhava, in his aspect of rajguru, was not concerned about that at all. His approach was, “Let happiness present
itself
if it happens, but in the meantime, let me be executed if necessary.”

Acknowledge yourself as the criminal—go ahead and do it! He did it. He was executed as a criminal. But then something changed.

Acknowledging other people’s mistakes as yours seems to be very difficult to do; however, pain is the path. We don’t want to get blamed for somebody else’s action. We will immediately say that we didn’t do it. “It wasn’t my fault.” We can’t bear to be blamed unjustly. Well, that is quite sensible, I suppose—people don’t like to be blamed. But suppose we decide to take the whole thing on ourselves and let ourselves be blamed, then what would happen? It would be very interesting to find out—purely by following the example of Padmasambhava (if that makes you feel any better).

That is a very interesting kind of approach. It is not particularly subtle; it is obvious. It becomes subtle only with the twist of the twist of the twist of deception, which is a twist toward a goal.

Student:
I’d like to know a little bit more about this twist of deception.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, we could speak about it a lot, but the main point seems to be to cut the self-justification of “It’s going to be okay, there’s some kind of promise of a reward
anyway.
” Even believing in no promise is a promise of some kind. That kind of twist is always there. And unless we are willing to get blamed unjustly, we can’t cut our deception at all. Which is very difficult to do. We are willing to lie for ourselves, but we are not willing to lie for the sake of others. We are not at all willing to take somebody else’s pain. Unless maybe we talk to the people whose pain we are taking and say, “Look, I’m doing a good job for you; this is all for you.” You feel you would like to have a word with that person before you give in.

Student:
Padmasambhava is the lion of the dharma. Somebody wants to blame him for his own bad action. Padmasambhava says, “Sure, go ahead, blacken my name.” I don’t understand that exactly. Maybe if that was the only thing he could do, it would make sense, but it seems there are other modes of action available. He could pacify, enrich, magnetize, and so on. But just going along with the misplaced blame seems almost like avoiding the situation. I don’t see the intelligent quality of his behaving as he did in that situation.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In this case, because he didn’t try to magnetize, the whole thing became more powerful. Instead, he gave in, but he gave in in such a powerful way that the others automatically got rebounds from the situation. The result was that in fact Padmasambhava didn’t have to talk himself out of his situation, but the others had to do it for him.

The message to us as followers of his is that, since we don’t use such techniques too often (to say the least), it is worth trying to practice this approach. We don’t have to conceptualize and say that giving in to the situation is the
only
way. That is not the point. We have all the riches and wealth of all kinds of techniques, and this one is also one of the interesting ones. It is worth looking at. I mean, you have eight styles for dealing with your life—Padmasambhava’s eight aspects each have different messages—and this is one of them.

Student:
Was giving in in this way what Christ did? Just permitting his situation to happen?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That seems to be very obvious, yes. He just took the blame.

Student:
I don’t understand the idea of not avoiding pain. If we are not trying to avoid pain, then what is the meaning of the noble truth about the cessation of pain?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Here the cessation of pain is the sense of seeing the pain from a reverse angle—from behind—rather than eliminating it.