The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (34 page)

The last, the sixth doctrine, is luminosity (
ösel
in Tibetan), all-pervading luminosity. There is nothing at all that is regarded as a dark corner, an area of mystery anymore. The whole thing is seen as open, brilliant, things as they really are. There are no mysterious corners left.

Very crudely, those are the six doctrines of Naropa. I look forward to a situation in which we have time to go into them in a more subtle and fundamental way. That would be extremely good. At this point, I hope we have at least started something in terms of arousing inquisitive mind. There may be something happening somewhere underneath human confusion, which is very tickling.

Let’s leave it at that for now and dedicate our actions here, our working together, to American karma. Something is trying to come out of American karma. It’s dying to burst, dying to blast. Let’s make a homemade bomb out of this seminar.

Part Two

LIFE OF NAROPA SEMINAR II

Karmê Chöling, 1973

ONE

Pain and Hopelessness

W
E ARE GOING
to discuss the life and teaching of Naropa, which is basically a tantric subject. It will be necessary to know something about tantra in order to understand Naropa. This might be hard, but we can certainly try.

Tantra, or vajrayana, is the most fundamental and final stage of the development of wisdom in Buddhism. It is the final development of the enlightenment experience. The enlightenment experience has three levels. There is the nirmanakaya level, the level of manifestation. On this level, enlightened mind can communicate with ordinary living beings. Then there is the sambhogakaya level, the level that communicates with the emotions and energy of ordinary beings. And then there is the
dharmakaya
level, the wisdom that communicates with the greater depths of ignorance in ordinary sentient beings.

Those three types of buddhas are fully dealt with in tantra. It could be said that they are dealt with in the mahayana too, but the final development of the mahayana state is the tantric state. In other words, there is really no such thing as a mahayana buddha. All the buddhas are fully realized, fully awakened in the tantric fashion. That is to say, advanced mahayana becomes tantra.

In the hinayana, enlightened beings are called arhats. An arhat is a relatively realized person, who can relate to himself but cannot fully relate with other beings. He understands himself, and consequently he is able to demonstrate the teachings and give the teachings to others. People manage to relate to his understanding of himself, and they in turn develop understanding. This is the learning situation relating with arhats.

However, at this point we are going to discuss the vajrayana, tantra, the ultimate experience of realization. We have to understand the basics of tantra. The way to approach tantra is by developing intellect and intuition, mind and body, so that they work together. Mind and body consciousness working together at the beginner’s level means the realization of pain and suffering—having hang-ups and realizing them, having pain and noticing it. This is a very basic level. Still, it requires a certain amount of intelligence.

You might say that it is very easy to understand or experience pain. Oh no. It takes a lot of understanding to realize pain. This level of understanding is what is necessary to prepare the ground for tantra. The tantric type of intelligence exists right at the beginning at the ordinary level, the level of pain. So we shouldn’t jump the gun and try to be too advanced, to bypass the ground floor and go right to the top floor. At this point, tantric intelligence is understanding, realizing, experiencing pain.

The term
tantra
means “continuity.” It refers to a continuity of intelligence that goes on constantly. This kind of intelligence cannot be inhibited or prevented, and it cannot be interrupted. From the Buddhist point of view, our basic being is fundamental intelligence and wakefulness that has been clouded over by all kinds of veils and obscurations. What prevents us from seeing pain is that we fail to see these veils. The method used in tantra to enable us to realize pain is called mantra.

In this case, mantra has nothing to do with some verbal gibberish that you repeat over and over. Mantra here is an upaya, a skillful means. The derivation of the word
mantra
is the Sanskrit
mantraya,
which is a combination of two words.
Manas
means “mind,” and
traya
means “protection.” So mantra protects the mind, the fundamental intelligence or wakefulness. It does not protect it by using guards or putting it under a glass dome. Protection here is clearing away obstacles, clearing away threats. All threats to that intelligence are cleared away. This is the style of protection here. Not allowing the intelligence to become obscured improves it. This is a different style of protection from the paranoid one of guarding against something, fending something off. The obscurations are removed, and that is the protection.

So mantra is the means or method. We have to have this skillful means in order to realize pain at the beginning. This is the hinayana approach to tantra, which is developing fundamental openness.

Pain is often very serious. Pain is often unspeakable. Not that it is difficult to describe, but we don’t want to describe it. From that point of view, pain is synonymous with ego. Ego
is
pain, and pain
is
ego. Pain is neurosis.

Pain, or ego, is unspeakable. It’s an enormous secret. It’s such a big secret, we don’t even have to name it. We can just barely make a reference to it and our colleague or friend will know what we’re talking about. You might say, “Today’s been a very heavy day.” Your friend will never ask, “A heavy day of what?” It’s understood. It’s mystical communication.

Whenever the possibility of that kind of communication presents itself, we shy away from it. We go just so far and then we turn around. We don’t go too far. Maybe we assume that if we went too far, it would be embarrassing for our colleague or friend. But actually it would be embarrassing to us (maybe to our friend or colleagues as well). Pain is the unnameable private parts we don’t want to mention. It’s a sacred name. It’s a samsaric version of God. Its style of protection is the hesitation of not going into it as far as you can because you are threatened by the sense of going into it too far.

There is actually no danger in going too far. The danger, from ego’s point of view, is that if we go too far, we may not know how to reassemble ourselves afterward. It’s like the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty: “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” There’s no hope. Whatever power we can call on, the greatest of the greatest powers we can put together cannot put our ego together again once it has been exposed. It is impossible, and we
know
that. We are so intelligent. There is a hint of tantra there already: we actually know how to protect ourselves from the protection of ego, that sense of an enormous scheme being there, even though it’s a very simple little thing that is taking place. All that is the pain.

It is not so much the actual agony of having something like rheumatism or having been hurt psychologically by somebody and feeling bad about it. That is not quite the pain that is going on here. It is the fundamental mystical experience of “thisness,” beingness, and unspeakableness—that thing we don’t talk about to ourselves, let alone to others. We never even
think
of it. That is the pain. And there is a kind of intelligence there.

In Naropa’s case, he wanted to overcome this pain, and he decided to leave his home and join a monastic establishment so he could expose himself to the mercies of the teachers and gurus—so he could give up, take refuge, give up arrogance, confusion, and so forth. But according to the example of Naropa’s life, only exposing “this” is not quite enough.

Obviously in the West, with encounter groups, confession, psychiatrists, and so on, people have developed the idea of exposing the secret as far as you can, speaking your mind on religious, social, and philosophical subjects of all kinds. The methods range from taking part in orgies to becoming Catholic and confessing oneself. There are so many ways of seemingly exposing oneself. We seem to have some understanding about self-exposure, and we do our best. But that doesn’t seem to be quite the same thing we are doing here.

Not that I am criticizing every method that has been developed so far in the West as a failure. Not at all. There is an element of truth in all of them. We seem to be hitting the right nail, but that doesn’t mean that we are hitting it on the head. We are hitting the general area of the nail anyway. Generally, things are following the right pattern. Particularly, spiritual, psychological, and philosophical developments that have taken place in this country recently have been remarkably intelligent. But the thing is: what happens then? Should we keep repeating the same ceremonies of exposure of our ego constantly, every day, every hour, every week? There is a limit to how many times we can go to an orgy. There’s a limit to how many times we can go to confession. Repeating the same thing over and over again at some point becomes a drug, which gives a sense of relief, of openness or far-outness.

The problem here has nothing to do with the technique being wrong. It is the attitude that seems to be wrong. Through methods of exposing ourselves, we want to get rid of the burden of this secret in us, because somebody might recognize it and use it against us. That is usually the logic. We want to get completely clear and clean so nobody can attack us anymore.

That’s a very smart scheme. But interestingly, sometimes during the process of scheming, we discover a new scheme. In the process of going through the techniques and methods of the first scheme, we find another method, another scheme. We end up bombarded by all kinds of alternatives, and we are never able to relate with any of them properly. We get completely lost.

Or else we are very earnest and honest and follow one method in a very methodical, businesslike fashion. We become professional orgygoers or professional encounter-groupies. In that way, we create another shell. The original trick doesn’t work anymore. The trick of repeating the ceremony of uncovering ourselves creates another mask, a very thick mask, and once more we are embedded in the rock. Again and again it happens, and we can’t get out of it. The methods themselves become obstacles. There is nothing we can do about it.

The problem seems to be the attitude that the pain should go, then we will be happy. That is our mistaken belief. The pain never goes, and we will never be happy. That is the truth of suffering, duhkha satya. Pain never goes; we will never be happy. There’s a mantra for you. It’s worth repeating. You’ve got the first initiation now: you’ve got a mantra.

It is not so much that pain is an obstacle. Rather, as we go on, pain becomes an obstacle because we want to get rid of it. Of course, at the beginning we may not regard the pain as an obstacle. The first thing is stupidity: not realizing the pain. Then we realize the pain and we become familiar with the hang-ups connected with the pain. Then we want to get rid of that. That’s the second veil, regarding the pain as an obstacle.

The idea is to learn to live with the pain in accordance with the Buddhist tradition of taking refuge. This is one of the very prominent, very important methods. Taking refuge here means surrendering hope rather than surrendering fear. When we give up promises, potentials, possibilities, then we begin to realize that there is no burden of further imprisonment. We have been completely freed, even from hope, which is a really refreshing experience. In other words, if we accept the burden as truly burdensome, completely burdensome, then its heaviness does not exist anymore. Because it is truly a burden, truly heavy. It is like identifying with a heavy rock that is pressing you into the ground. If you identify with the rock, you don’t exist. You become the rock.

But that, too, becomes very tricky. Once you start looking at it that way, you can turn that into another trick. You create trick after trick that imprisons you with hope, until you finally realize there is no hope.

We are going to go through Naropa’s life stage by stage and try to see how it applies to ourselves, rather than looking at it as the myth of Naropa, of a great teacher who got enlightened and lived happily ever after. There must be realities that connect his life with ours. This first step of hopelessness, for example, plays an extremely important part in realizing the foundations for tantra at the hinayana level of the Buddhist path. We can quite safely say that hope, or a sense of promise, is a hindrance on the spiritual path.

Creating this kind of hope is one of the most prominent features of spiritual materialism. There are all kinds of promises, all kinds of proofs. We find the same approach as that of a car salesman. Or it’s like someone demonstrating a vacuum cleaner and telling you how well you could clean your house if you would just buy it. If you would just buy that vacuum cleaner, how beautiful your room would be, completely free of dirt and dust, down to the last speck! Whether it is a vacuum-cleaner salesman or a guru, we find the same level of salesmanship. That is why both are included in the same bag of materialists. There are so many promises involved. So much hope is planted in your heart. This is playing on your weakness. It creates further confusion with regard to pain. You forget about the pain altogether and get involved in looking for something other than the pain. And that itself
is
pain. Trying to suppress disbelief, focusing on belief, trying to convince yourself this approach will work (thinking that convincing yourself is what will make it work)—all that
is
pain.

That is what we will go through unless we understand that the basic requirement for treading the spiritual path is hopelessness. Hopelessness is not quite the same as despairing. There is a difference. Despair is laziness, lack of intellect. One is not even willing to look for the reason for the despair. It is a total flop. But hopelessness is very intelligent. You keep looking. You flip page after page, saying, “That’s hopeless, that’s hopeless.” You are still very vigorous, hopelessly vigorous. You’re still looking for hope, but each time you have to say, “Oh, no. Yuck!” Hopelessness keeps going; it is very vigorous, very inspiring. It tickles your mind as though there were something you are about to discover. When you discover it, you say, “Ah, now I’ve found the thing! . . . Oh, no. It’s the same old thing again.”