The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (33 page)

In fact, what hangs around and gets in the way is ego rather than the body. But still, relatively speaking, that was an intelligent move on the part of confused Naropa. He was beginning to get some sense of the symbolism of ego. But he related to that symbolism by seeing the body as ego. That was the only thing available at the time, which is understandable. For example, if people begin feeling claustrophobic sitting in their offices, they might try to open the window or remove a picture from the wall or something else of that nature. At least that’s an intelligent gesture symbolically. But it doesn’t really help.

Student:
You were talking about the emotion, the intention of the emotion, and then a third thing that I didn’t understand.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Those are the stages of the development of the emotion. There’s the emotion, the intention, and then the possibility of discovering something, which is inquisitive mind. You start with inquisitive mind and then set things in motion, and then that motion becomes more adventurous. Then finally you not only care about discovering, but you care more about the next thing. Getting something is no longer the answer, but getting something more is the answer, which is based again on the inquisitive mind that was there at the beginning. The Tibetan word for the development of inquisitive mind is
gyuwa,
which means a sort of a flicker. It’s like a very bright flashlight. While looking with the flashlight, you don’t know what is happening. You close your eyes because of this glaring light, but then you move all the faster with your delayed reaction after the light is off. The occurrence is gyuwa, the impulsive moment of fascination, which is much faster than your reaction. It sees the flashlight beam on this brilliant moment and then tries to catch the next one, the next moment.

Student:
Don’t you outpace yourself that way?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Somehow you don’t, actually. You make up for the loss of time. A very efficient administrator is running the whole show there.

All the emotions have that kind of starting point of a sudden manipulative, impulsive move. In other words, you can’t have emotions at all without an object for putting your greed or hate or other emotion onto. Then, when you put that emotion out, automatically you get something back. Then you use what you get back as source material for putting out something further. It acts as a kind of fuel. You go on and on like that. When you put out something, you get your fuel back, then you use that fuel for the next one. You build up this whole context.

Student:
Could you explain the meaning of Tilopa’s repeated formula about how “this body believing in an I” deserves to be gotten rid of, and how Naropa should “look into the mirror of his mind”?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In other words, the ego is the ideal fuel, the fuel that is exciting to burn. Consuming the ego as fuel, that would make a nice fire. If you want to make a good fire, one that is dry and puts out a lot of heat and doesn’t leave a lot of cinders, from the point of view of non-ego, ego is
the
best fuel that could be found in the whole universe. Discovering this delightful fuel, this highly efficient fuel, is based on looking into the mirror of your mind. That is what watches the ego burning. The mirror of your mind, you could say, is one’s innate nature or buddha mind, or whatever you would like to call it. It has a very intelligent and extremely practical and scientific quality behind it. So if you look into the mirror of the mind, which sees a panoramic vision of everything, you know how to choose your next fuel of ego.

That is the whole idea of using samsaric situations as stepping-stones to enlightenment. And it’s also the same idea that if there is no samsara, there is no enlightenment. The two are interdependent.

Student:
You’re saying that the operation is only a success if the patient dies.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, yes.

Student:
In that case, what good does the operation do?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s a feast, a celebration.

Student:
You talked about how the process of projection tends to escalate. It seems there could be two approaches to doing something about it. Either you could de-escalate slowly or attempt to stop cold. Which is the better approach, the one that will work?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
To begin with, you don’t have to regard the projections as something wrong, something bad you should get rid of. This is precisely the point about ego being the only fuel for wisdom. So projections are welcomed; one is delighted to find projections to work on. One doesn’t have to try to shut them off or shut them out, but should take advantage of their presence.

S:
How?

TR:
By understanding or realizing or appreciating their presence. That appreciation is necessary, of course. If there’s appreciation, then obviously the projections won’t become demonic or irritating or destructive at all.

Student:
How do we arrange to appreciate them?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That probably needs more practice. You don’t deliberately try to appreciate them. That doesn’t seem to be a particularly accurate way of enjoying oneself. If you feel you have to enjoy something—suppose you felt you had to enjoy a party given by your rich uncle—that doesn’t mean you will actually enjoy it. Instead you must just see the factual situations of projections as they are. You don’t have to do anything with them. If you don’t try to do anything with them, the discoveries come naturally; you have a natural situation there.

Student:
Is not trying correlated with a bodily state of relaxation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Not necessarily. It’s actually not trying to do anything at all [even relax]. That’s the whole point.

Student:
Rinpoche, concerning these twelve tortures, I guess you could call them, that Naropa was put through, I can see that the first one took an incredible amount of courage—or trust or faith. But then he was healed. And each time after that, he was healed. Wouldn’t that give the whole thing more of a game quality? Like jumping off a cliff isn’t really jumping off a cliff if you know your guru’s going to put you back together afterward. So that seems to be cheating a bit.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You have to take into account the extreme and constant sincerity of Naropa. He was a very sincere person. Each time he saw one of those visions, for instance; I mean, by the end of the visions one would expect he would begin to presume there was some message involved. But he was too sincere with himself. He took everything seriously.

S:
But he was killed at one time and then revived. I mean, a person has got to notice that!

TR:
But still his mind doesn’t work that way. The reality is too real for him.

Student:
You talked about our dreams and fantasies and said that when those are gone, there is still the shadow of the dreams. What are the shadows?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The shadows are the reality. The shadows of dreams are reality. Dreams are such an insubstantial thing. But that insubstantial thing presents such solid things as its shadow—like a shell. An experience of the shadow of the outer dream experience is meeting Tilopa, the shadow of the dream. Dreams produce reality; reality produces dreams.

S:
But when we dream, that’s fantasy, not reality.

TR:
But the impact of the dream is reality. Our thought process could be called a dream; what happens in our daily life situations is a fantasy as well.

S:
So fantasies are useful?

TR:
They could be a hang-up at the same time.

S:
How do you distinguish whether they’re useful or destructive?

TR:
You don’t have to particularly. That’s the whole problem. When we begin to do that, the whole thing becomes very methodical, too definite, too predictable to be true.

S:
So what do you do?

TR:
You just float along.

Student:
From that point of view, how do you regard the difference between reality and unreality? Or is there any difference?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, there seems to be something. I suppose reality is that which is connected with body when you are awake. And unreality is that which is purely connected with your fantasies when you are asleep or when you are in a discursive thought process.

S:
Can your fantasies make some impact on your realities? Can some fantasy make you do something real?

TR:
That’s exactly what I’m saying. The fantasy produces a shell, which is reality. The shadow of the fantasy is reality.

Student:
What’s the difference between appreciation and fascination?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Fascination works purely in terms of highlights. In other words, appreciation deals with qualities, and fascination deals with the colors of the qualities. One is fascinated by the deep gold quality of gold rather than appreciating gold as something rich and valuable. Fascination is purely involved with the color of gold; appreciation appreciates its value.

S:
Fascination is more on the surface.

TR:
More on the surface, yes. It’s an impulsive thing.

S:
You’re kind of caught . . .

TR:
Caught by the highlights, yes.

Student:
You seemed to say that it wasn’t necessary to discriminate between useful and destructive fantasies. Is it not necessary to be cautious about the kind of experiences we want to enter into? Don’t I have to be concerned about the price I’m paying for an experience? Is there karma?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There’s karma always, whatever you do.

S:
Then if certain things make more karma, should we avoid entering into those things?

TR:
That just creates another karma. Boycotting something also creates karma, as much as taking part in it does.

S:
Not less or more?

TR:
It’s more or less the same, you see, unless the whole process is regarded in terms of the fundamental principle of the creator of the karmic situation. It seems that the practice of meditation is the only way one can step out of planting further karma. Meditation practice has this particular quality of providing a pure gap and not feeding on concepts of any kind. You just deal with the technique. Meditation practice is the only way of providing a gap, of not sowing a further seed. If you’re trying to be careful, that also sows a seed. It’s almost the same. We could speak in terms of black karma or white karma, but both are a color.

S:
Don’t certain experiences make it more difficult for us to meditate?

TR:
That depends on the context you provide for them, on the way you treat that situation. Some people find complicated or rich surroundings more conducive to meditation. Some people find simple surroundings more conducive.

S:
Don’t the activities I engage in during the day color my experience when I sit down to meditate?

TR:
That depends on how you view them.

S:
In a very screwed-up way.

TR:
If you view them as something . . .

S:
Bad.

TR:
. . . bad, that begins to haunt you. If you view something as being extremely good, that also begins to haunt you. The conceptual mind is extremely powerful. It runs the whole show of samsara.

Student:
Meditation, then, is the only thing that in and of itself has no color, and therefore . . .

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s at least a primordial gesture. Meditation is a primordial gesture.

FOUR

Something Very Tickling

W
HEN
N
AROPA FINALLY
discovered Tilopa, there was no particular gracious occasion. There was no ceremonial initiation of any kind. The initiation consisted in Tilopa’s taking off his slipper and slapping Naropa on the cheek, which sent Naropa into a coma, weakened as he was. Then Tilopa sang a song to the effect of “Whatever I have experienced in the mahamudra, Naropa has also experienced, so in the future, whoever is open to the teaching of mahamudra should get it from Naropa.”

That was quite interesting and shocking. Naropa achieved realization in a sudden glimpse. But we shouldn’t be too optimistic, thinking that we too will experience a sudden transmission like that. Probably we won’t. The whole thing is very haphazard, very much a matter of taking a chance.

The teachings of Naropa are known as the six dharmas or six doctrines. The first doctrine connected with his sudden discovery of the mahamudra experience is called illusory body. He discovered that every situation or experience is illusory, is to be regarded as body and nonbody, substance and nonsubstance. He experienced life as like a mirage.

The second doctrine has to do with dream. Our fantasies are involved with trying to pin down experience as something fixed, which actually doesn’t exist at all.

Then there is the doctrine related with the bardo experience, which is the intermediate situation between death and birth.

Then we have inner heat, or
tumo
(which in Sanskrit is
chandali
), an inner burning that arouses the universal flame that burns away all conceptualized notions of whatever kind, totally consuming them.

Then there is transference of consciousness. Since you do not believe in physical existence as a solid thing that you can take refuge in, you can switch out of such a belief into nonbelief, transfer your consciousness into open space, a space which has nothing to do with the fixed notion of “me and mine” and “that and this” at all.