The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (36 page)

You might ask if this is good or bad. We can’t say that it’s good or that it’s bad. But it
is.
It certainly does exist.

All that anger and resentment and pain, depression, sexual frustration, financial frustration—the things of all kinds that go on in one’s head—have one good thing about them. There is one good message here, a really good one, a gem that we are about to discover in ourselves. It is not good in the sense of relieving pain and bringing happiness. It’s another subtle form of pain, but it contains an enormous jewel, enormous richness, enormous beauty. It is called intellect. This pain that is happening in you and around you, that is trying to give birth and is not able to, is a message that intellect is just about to be born.

In Naropa’s case, he was locked up in a monastic cell. Traditionally, you have an eight-by-eight room. You have to rise at four in the morning and go to sleep about midnight. In the courtyard of the monastery at night, a monk who keeps discipline with his big stick keeps walking around checking to make sure that everybody is up and studying, memorizing scriptures. You read by the dim light of an oil lamp. You read the scriptures, memorize them, and meditate on them.

In the monastery, the only relief comes when you change subjects of study or switch meditative techniques. You meditate and the gong goes; the only break you have is going to study. Then you study and the gong goes, and your only relief is to go back to meditation. Eating in the assembly hall is not particularly festive either. It’s as though you are on trial. The monk in charge of discipline might come and reprimand you for your lack of mindfulness at any time. You’re not allowed to jump or run. You walk mindfully and you speak softly. You’re not allowed to shout. You’re not even allowed to draw doodles.

Life at Nalanda University was very dignified, fundamentally very sane, but at the same time very severe. According to historical records, the architecture there was good, wonderful, but it was designed to suit monks. It was not at all lavish or luxurious. The basic minimum was provided. The monks had the encouragement of simplicity and awareness. The walls were designed to bounce back one’s own neurotic thoughts. Every inch of one’s life was planned, and particular behavior was prescribed for all situations.

The resentment that one can develop in such situations brings prajna. Great teachers like Naropa and Atisha Dipankara and Saraha—a lot of great teachers of that age—came out of such establishments. The resentment turns into prajna.
Prajna
is a Sanskrit word.
Jna
means “knowledge,” and
pra
means “supreme.” So prajna is supreme knowledge or greater knowledge.

We mustn’t confuse that with wisdom. In the nontheistic tradition of Buddhism, knowledge comes first and wisdom comes later. Wisdom is connected with looking, and knowledge is connected with seeing. Knowledge is seeing, being aware. We have to learn how to see first. Having learned how to see, then we begin to look, which is on the wisdom level, the ultimate level.

Prajna is seeing things as they are. At the beginning, if you look without the training of seeing, you don’t look at things as they are, because you don’t see them. Seeing here is a matter of both awareness and discipline. You’re aware of this room. You’re aware of the temperature in this room, and you’re aware of sitting on chairs. You have a general kind of awareness of how and where you are. The way intellect goes with that is within a state of being, such as being here and sitting on chairs, you can function. You can sit there, and at the same time, you can think and write and look. This manifestation of one’s state of being is intellect.

So the intellect we are talking about is not the bookworm type. It doesn’t necessarily mean being a scholar or doing research work or anything like that. Intellect in the sense of prajna is a state of being logical and open, open to any information and willing to collect it, chew it, swallow it, digest it, work with it. This is not the ordinary idea of intellect connected with intellectuals in intellectual circles. There, you are given a certain reference point. You are already programmed before you know who and what you are. You are given certain raw material, and you have to fit that raw material into certain pigeonholes that are already prepared for you.

In the case of prajna, you have the raw material with you, but you don’t have the pigeonholes. If you like, you can build a pigeonhole for yourself. In that sense, with prajna, everything is homemade; that is why it is greater intellect. The only system you have is that of sharpening your intellect working within the relative frame of reference of logic. Let’s take the example of saying, “I feel sick.” The reason why I feel sick is that I have the memory “I used to be well; I used to feel fine.” I know that I am sick because, compared with that memory, I don’t feel good. It’s very simple, ordinary logic like that.

Prajna is also the seed of discriminating awareness. In discriminating awareness, you take things in openly, accept everything, but at the same time, everything is examined critically. Being critical in this sense is not rejecting and accepting things in a petty way. It is seeing the values of each thing in its own place, rather than seeing its values from the point of view of whether it is threatening to your ego or helpful to it. You see things as they are with dispassionate judgment. This is again the quality of prajna, greater knowledge or transcendent knowledge—seeing dispassionately but still discriminating.

This is very painful in a way. When you begin to see things without any value judgment in the ordinary sense, without any bias regarding yourself and others, your vision and your logic and your sharpness become very painful. You don’t have any filters between you and “that”; you are touching a cold stone. Reality becomes a pain in the ass. An analogy that has been used for that kind of seeing is, on a winter morning, licking a rock with frost on it; your tongue sticks to the rock because your tongue is very naked and warm and the stone is so cold. You think you are licking it, but actually your tongue is stuck. That is reality as seen with prajna. It is so immediate, and it sticks there. That’s the kind of pain we are talking about.

The prajna level of pain is so immediate and so, so powerful. The level of pain we were discussing before is relatively mild—in fact, in many ways luxurious. Pain on the prajna level is much more painful than that earlier pain, because before we didn’t have a chance to apply our intellect to it. We just felt painful, were imprisoned in the pain. Of course, there was some kind of intellect functioning, but not 100 percent, the way it is on the prajna level. Now we are relating with naked reality without any dualistic padding.

The notion of duality here is not that there are separate things existing and therefore we can speak of duality. The notion of duality here is that things are one, and a big barrier has been put in the middle, which divides it. The oneness on the other side is called “that,” and the oneness on this side is called “this.” Because of the Suez Canal we built, because of the wall we built, the one is slashed in two. And nonduality is not a matter of the two things melting back into each other, but of taking that barrier completely out. When that happens and the two aspects of the one meet, we find it is quite painful, because we are so used to having separate entities there. Now when we realize that nonduality is being imposed on us, we find it very claustrophobic, very sharp. It is much too sharp and much too powerful to meet this oneness. The “that” does not adjust to the “this,” and the “this” does not adjust to the “that.” Once the barrier is removed, they become one, with no chance for adjustment at all. That’s why the prajna experience is so sharp and immediate and powerful—highly powerful, extraordinarily powerful.

At this prajna level, pain is seen as a hundred times bigger than we saw it at the beginning. You have acquired a brand-new, very powerful microscope, and your little pain is put under that microscope, and you look at it. You see a gigantic monster. And that’s not even at the level of tantra yet. We are just barely beginning. But you cannot say that seeing the pain in this magnified way is an exaggeration at all. It is seeing things as they are in their own right perspective, seeing clearly by putting a small object under the microscope.

Naropa began to enjoy being in his monastic cell, being watched and being worked hard, because he was learning how to use language, how to communicate, how to think logically, how to work logically. He engaged in debates; he practiced and he studied, memorized texts. And he felt very comfortable. But at the same time, he felt tortured by his rediscovery of reality from the mahayana point of view. As far as we are concerned, we have a lot to learn from the example of his life. We could learn to trust in our intellect.

I suppose we should make a distinction between analytical mind and intellectual mind. In the case of analytical mind, you already have formulas that have been given to you, and you try to use those formulas to analyze things you come across. You interpret in accordance with certain given methods. With intellectual mind free from analytical mind, the only formula you have is basic logic—you are without set ideas and patterns; you are not bound by any social, philosophical, or religious standards. You are free from that indoctrination; therefore, you are able to see your pain more magnified, as though under a microscope. That is the main difference between analytical mind and intellectual mind, intellectual mind being synonymous with prajna.

Another thing about analytical mind is that there is a certain amount of aggression involved in it. You are defending your faith. You are analyzing in such a way as to fit something into an already worked-out reference point, and there is a spare part missing. Therefore, you are studying matters concerning that spare part. Then, having discovered the spare part, you have to make it fit into the original body—which is very aggressive and very demanding, and it makes you totally blind. You fail to see the rest of the whole. Whereas intellect in the sense of prajna is very open and has never been given a particular project. The only project there is for prajna is to see totality and clarity. In order to understand the parts, you have to relate with the whole body rather than concentrating on the parts. That seems to be prajna’s style.

Student:
Where does the emotional element come in with prajna? If pain is magnified a hundred times, a lot of emotions must come along with that. Does prajna have the ability to handle those emotions?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
We don’t have that ability at this point. We don’t have the equipment to deal with emotions yet—that is, Naropa doesn’t yet have it. That was why he was led on to tantra. He realized that, instead of everything being so clear-cut, he had another problem. The level of prajna we’ve talked about so far has nothing to do with emotions as such. It’s just intellect. It’s like the level of a teenager in the puberty stage who is still fascinated by gadgets, who is never concerned with affects and emotions—anger or aggression or anything like that. He is just rediscovering the universe constantly.

S:
With logic leading.

TR:
Yes, that’s precisely how Naropa was.

Student:
I thought it was one of the failings of analytical mind that it doesn’t take into account the rawer aspects of experiences but rather deals in abstractions. I don’t see how prajna or what you call intellectual mind can operate without relating to the emotions.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Analytical mind can analyze the emotions, but there are still certain dogmas and philosophical ideas involved. Prajna, or the intellect, sees emotions as loose ends; it sees them very technically—as part of the five skandhas, for example. From the point of view of prajna, you don’t have to get into them particularly. You see them clearly and in fact could describe them to other people and help them. But still this doesn’t really work when compared to the tantric level. It doesn’t become as fully emotional as it should be, could be. In prajna, you can relate to the raw material by having confidence. You don’t really have to get into it exactly. You have to relate to it personally, but not on the emotional level as such.

Student:
Is the intellectual approach what the arhats overstressed?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The arhats didn’t seem to do that very much. It seems to have been the young ambitious pandits like Naropa, people newly converted to prajna with its dispassionate kind of clarity. Those are the bodhisattvas up to the seventh bhumi.

Student:
How is it possible to work through the confusions of the lower bhumis and still maintain that kind of distance?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You can, because your mind is so sharp. Your mind is extraordinarily sharp, and there are no obstacles to it at all. It can see through anything right away. But that is not the same as involving yourself in the confusion or emotion fully, being completely in it, which could happen.

I think the problem on the prajna level is that relationships are taken as a basic reference point with regard to each other, and emotions are taken as a basic reference point with regard to each other. The only thing lacking here is the highest form of fundamental rawness and ruggedness found on the tantric level. Although there is only a superficial understanding of the raw material, there is a certain amount of fearlessness at the same time. You do not hesitate to deal with things as they are, but you are still at the level of seeing. That fearlessness is possible if your mind is really tuned in to prajna, the sword of Manjushri. The sword of Manjushri cuts constantly; it never stays in its sheath.

Student:
Is it prajna the way we see and hear everything happening without having any power to stop it or pick and choose? Then subsequently we sort it all out; a split second later we pick and choose. Is prajna the primary receptivity before we say things like, “I like tall more than short?”

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, I think so.