The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (39 page)

Student:
When the old woman told him he understood the words but not the sense, it seems to me that would be a criticism of analytical mind rather than prajna. Doesn’t prajna understand the sense?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Surprisingly not. That’s the difference between prajna and jnana. Prajna understands the words completely, to the utmost extent that words can be understood. But to understand the sense, you have to develop jnana, wisdom. That’s the whole point. That’s why prajna corresponds to the sixth bhumi, or level, of the bodhisattva path, and you have to reach three levels beyond that before you develop jnana, wisdom. Prajna is not quite enough.

Student:
What happens to the aggression that characterizes or accompanies prajna when it reaches the level of shunyata?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Aggression is still there in the form of intelligent energy. That still goes on: throughout the journey there will be a sense of energy, the excitement of new discovery. I suppose we could say that aggression becomes energy.

S:
Does it level out and become less unbearable?

TR:
There’s no aggression as such. There’s no question of a threshold of pain there. Aggression continues to be present somehow or other in the form of energy. After all, you still have your head. Even when you reach the ati level, you still carry your head with you. You know, you feel you have this thing with you. That kind of awareness is still there. It’s very hard to clean up completely.

Student:
Where does buddha nature come into this?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That is the essence, the fundamental essence of the wakeful quality, the thing that makes you struggle and proceed along the path. That appears right at the beginning and goes on all the way through. The other day I was talking about tantra as continuity and about the understanding of pain being the starting point of that continuity. That’s the expression of buddha nature, which goes on constantly. There’s actually a sense of threat connected with it, because you constantly have the potential of sanity.

S:
And when you get to shunyata, that energy that is the driving force for the whole thing becomes just as it is, clear of all the other stuff around it?

TR:
You don’t have to be concerned about clearing away the other things. They just evaporate, so to speak, because you have such conviction, such real experience.

Student:
You said that prajna without shunyata was like a man without arms trying to climb a rock. Is the experience of shunyata like acquiring a pair of arms?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Definitely, yes, because shunyata redefines compassion. Often compassion is spoken of in terms of the hook of compassion, like the sucker at the end of the tentacles of an octopus. The more arms you develop, the more powerful is the suction you develop at the same time. Shunyata is very much connected with building up compassion, warmth. So not only do you develop arms, but your arms become very functional.

Student:
You said in your first talk that we can never be happy and pain never ends. Is it true that in the shunyata experience, there is still pain, but there is no one to experience it, so it doesn’t hurt?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think we could say that, yes. There will be pain if you are intelligent, but the hurting part or the seeking-for-pleasure part is a neurotic thing. With intelligence comes pain, but without neurosis there is no sorrow.

Student:
If the pain is no longer painful, what is there to distinguish between pain and pleasure?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Very simple logic. In ordinary experience you can distinguish between coffee and tea. It’s like that.

Student:
Shunyata, for me, always seems to have a huge connotation of desolation, but when you talk about it, it also seems to have fullness to it. What is that, or why is that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I suppose when you feel completely desolate, you begin to help yourself, you make yourself at home. You begin to realize all kinds of beauties around you. It’s a question of identifying with the shunyata principle. That’s why I said, “Make yourself at home.”

Student:
Is it possible to confuse the shunyata experience with other levels of experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think so. Unless you are completely faking the shunyata experience to yourself, convincing yourself, hypnotizing yourself shunyata-style. Then obviously the whole thing becomes superficial. But at the level of the shunyata experience, you need your teacher much more, so that has a very grounding effect.

Student:
Is there a danger in pursuing the shunyata experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, very much so. The shunyata experience with ego is Rudrahood.

Student:
Is there an equivalent of the shunyata experience on the hinayana level?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The only thing I can think of is the experience of impermanence, which is a glimpse of shunyata in a very literal sense—the all-pervasive feeling of nonexistence and impermanence—and of egolessness, for that matter, as well.

Student:
When you talked about expanding “this,” it raised the question of Rudrahood for me. Then you said you could have a shunyata experience with ego. This makes me think I don’t understand what “this” is.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
“This” is this [
puts his hand on his chest
], unmistakably. And “that” is ego, Rudra. “That” has a name, but “this” doesn’t have a name.

Student:
Does the arhat experience shunyata?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The experience of the arhat is not exactly shunyata as it is described in connection with the bodhisattva path. The arhat experiences a sense of egolessness, transitoriness within him- or herself. It doesn’t even extend to objects like tables and chairs. It’s just connected with the body and bodily sensations and the breath and emotions and thought patterns. It stops there and it doesn’t expand, because there is very little warmth toward oneself at that point. There is very little emphasis on compassion. Since there is very little warmth, the arhat dwells only on his own problem and trying to solve that problem.

Student:
Rinpoche, what is the relationship of formal sitting practice to the shunyata experience? Is there any particular technique that would produce that experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Vipashyana meditation automatically leads to shunyata. Also, sitting without any technique—just sitting—is shunyata practice. At that level, sitting practice becomes very ordinary and workable. There is quite possibly less struggle involved. Maybe there is just a hint of familiarity that makes it comfortable and easy to sit or to prolong one’s sitting practice. But really there is no technique for shunyata. Such a thing would be a contradiction. Shunyata is just a way of being.

S:
But would you say that having that experience is dependent upon practicing sitting meditation?

TR:
Yes, I think so. There’s no way out.

FOUR

Beyond Shunyata

W
E ARE GOING
to discuss the basic meaning of going beyond shunyata. The walls of confusion and chaos are eliminated by prajna, and the ground of confusion and chaos is eliminated by the shunyata experience. Now we are suspended in midair. We have to learn how to walk, how to breathe, how to behave. That seems to be the next problem in the situation.

In the case of Naropa, he had decided to leave the monastery and search for Tilopa, but he still didn’t know how to behave. Should he still behave like a pandit, a monk, a scholar? Or should he behave like an ordinary person searching for the truth? The answer to these questions is uncertain. Basic confusion is still there, and once again, self-consciousness. He did get the message of the shunyata lady, so to speak, but he did not know how to handle that. She did give him some hint about what to do, but beyond that everything was uncertain. How to go about working with that message was completely and totally uncertain for him.

The reason for this is that shunyata alone does not provide any guidance, even with skillful means. You still need a certain trust toward and respect for magic, the magical aspect of the phenomenal world. Things are very tricky. They are very tricky, and they play tricks on you spontaneously. There’s nobody who is the game maker, who conceives of the game. Nobody’s playing the tricks on you. But things as they are, are full of trickery.

I suppose in the theistic tradition this might be called something like the mischievousness of God. But in the nontheistic tradition, the whole thing is not based on there being a maker of these tricks. The tricks that happen are tricks in themselves. That magical or miraculous quality of phenomenal display is always there. Particularly, it is always there when we feel we don’t want to get into it, when we feel we haven’t got time for it. When we are in a hurry to do something, something else happens. A trick is played on us that slows us down. And equally, when we are moved to relax and take our time, a trick is played on us that speeds us up. Such tricks happen constantly in our lives.

This is not hypothetical. This is something very real, extremely real, very definite.

Naropa resigns as abbot of Nalanda and goes to look for Tilopa. The voice of a trick says: “Tilopa is in the east. Go east, toward where the sun rises.” Naropa does that, and he finds a leper woman blocking his path. Before encountering the leper woman, he thought he was finally going to meet Tilopa properly, meet the great master, the great guru, the enlightened Tilopa who could tell him the sense beyond the words. And before the leper woman disappears, we have this verse:

Listen, Abhayakirti

The Ultimate in which all become the same

Is free of habit-forming thought and limitations.

How, if still fettered by them,

Can you hope to find the Guru?

[p. 30]

There is a pattern in this odyssey, in this journey, which I thought I might relate to you. The eleven experiences [that follow his meeting with the ugly woman] seem to be divided into three sections. The first includes the leper woman, the bitch, the man playing tricks on his parents, and the man opening the body of the corpse. Those four are related to aggression. The next group is opening the stomach of the live man and washing it with hot water, marrying the king’s daughter, and the huntsman. Those are connected with passion. The last group is connected with ignorance, a different type of temptation, a different kind of attempt to relate with reality that failed.

So since Naropa is a scholar and a prajna type of person, obviously the first method he would use is that of aggression. The first experience in this category is an interesting one, a real demonstration of aggression. Seeing through the eyes [of prajna], Naropa has had a real vision, a real look at the experience of shunyata. This has made his mind much more vulnerable, so his aggression is coming out fast. He sees the leper woman with the sense of speed with which he is looking for his teacher. This is quite interesting and noteworthy.

The next thing is that he sees a bitch whose body is infested with worms. He thought he was just about to discover his guru, Tilopa. Instead he sees this further expression of aggression—a bitch with the inside of her body crawling with worms. As the bitch is about to disappear, we have the verse:

All living beings by nature are one’s parents.

How will you find the Guru, if

Without developing compassion

On the Mahayana path

You seek in the wrong direction?

How will you find the Guru to accept you

When you look down on others?

[pp. 30-31]

As we go along, these verses become progressively more tantric. The first section is very ordinary, very basic Buddhism. As we go on, things become deeper in many ways.

The next thing is the man playing tricks on his parents. Again Naropa fails to relate with himself. He still has the notion of being an articulate scholar from Nalanda, an accomplished leader, which makes him approach his search with a very genteel way of doing things. He has not yet gotten into the basic level of life. He hasn’t actually related with father, mother, lover, enemy at all. A father and mother are related with the lover and enemy. The mother is the lover and the father is the enemy, the object of aggression. Since Naropa fails to relate with that, he has to journey further. As this particular vision is about to disappear, Tilopa says:

How will you find the Guru, if

In this doctrine of Great Compassion

You do not crack the skull of egotism

With the mallet of non-Pure-Egoness and nothingness?

[p. 31]

The next one is the man opening the stomach of a corpse. This is a very powerful image, which has the sense that one should abandon the corpse that one is hanging on to. Nalanda University is a corpse for Naropa. He is trying to open that stomach again—trying to reevaluate himself by going through the library, so to speak, again and again. He still carries Nalanda with him as a tortoise carries his shell. He has to reeducate himself to the path of the yogi. As he is seeing this vision, Tilopa says: