The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (40 page)

How will you find the Guru, if

You cut not Samsara’s ties

With the unoriginatedness of the Ultimate

In its realm of non-reference?

[p. 32]

So that is the first section in which we have a glimpse of the fact that aggression comes from memory of the past. A person might be very proud of his past: “I was brought up in Brooklyn, so nobody can cheat me.” Or in this case: “Nalanda is a very powerful place, the center of intelligence of the Indian empire, so no one can touch me.” This same applies to the shunyata experience. You have been woken up by the ugly woman, and you still have that memory going on all the time in your state of being.

The next section, the section of passion, begins with the live man, who is a passionate live man who clings to life, which is a symbol of passion. Moreover, his stomach has been opened, which is more of a symbol of passion; there is a sense of the hot-blooded, the fleshy, live, warm. And his stomach is being washed in hot water, a further statement of passion, real passion. The basic message at this point is that Naropa is lacking enormously in compassion. He is treating the world like a shopping center rather than relating with himself. That has been his problem. All this mockery of Naropa comes because he is still shopping. He should look
into
himself and things more rather than looking for Tilopa as an external person. The verse at this point goes:

How will you find the Guru, if

With the water of profound instruction

You cleanse not Samsara, which by nature [is] free

Yet represents the dirt of habit-forming thoughts?

[p. 32]

The basic theme of passion here has to do with the fact that Naropa still has to communicate with the world outside himself. On the other hand, he has been relating too much to this outsidedness as a shopping center in which Tilopa is the most valuable thing you can buy. He hasn’t actually related with
himself
in order to communicate with the world. He hasn’t spent a penny at this point. He’s just been gazing at the whole universe. He has been fascinated by the world, but nothing has happened with his relationship with it. He is still roaming in the vacuums of shunyata.

This is much more than what we talk about as being “completely spaced out.” We feel spaced out because we are spaced out [absentminded]. Naropa feels completely spaced out because he has no reference point. In that condition, he can’t even talk to anyone. He has no one to tell stories to. He has no reference point at all. The whole thing is desolate and deathly in many ways.

In the next vision, he sees the king, who asks him to marry his daughter. That’s a very powerful thing. Considering that he is a fully ordained monk, this means he would have to break his vow. Breaking his vow at this point just means relating with the phenomenal world. Up till this point, he has built up an artificial virginity. And now he is breaking that virginity. Before he meets Tilopa, he should become Tilopa properly. He should be reduced to a garbage pile full of worms and flies, then burnt and reduced to dust. Having been reduced to dust, then he might receive instruction. That seems to be the point here. Marrying the king’s daughter has nothing at all to do with the tantric teachings concerning the karmamudra or anything like that. It simply has to do with the fact that he is too clean, too slick, and he has to collect more dirt in order to become a really good and seasoned and antique student. In order to antique something, you put wax and dirt on it to make it look antique. So marrying the king’s daughter is a process of seasoning. And Tilopa’s verse here is:

Are you not deceived by a magic show?

How then will you find the Guru

If through desire and dislike you fall

Into the three forms of evil life?

[p. 32]

The next one is that Naropa meets a dark-skinned huntsman. The point here is exaggerated passion. Passion is usually interpreted in terms of pleasure. Fulfilling passion is usually related with attaining pleasure. But in this case, it is also connected with love and hate happening at the same time. His journey has to stop at some point. He has to think twice about himself. The verse here is:

A hunter, I have drawn the arrow

Of the phantom body which from desires is free

In the bow, of radiant light the essence:

I shall kill the fleeing deer of this and that,

On the mountain of the body believing in an I.

Tomorrow I go fishing in the lake.

[p. 33]

The next one is the old people plowing the field and eating worms. This is the beginning of the ignorance section. This section is related with the earth quality, earthiness. So it begins with plowing the ground and eating worms, which are also the product of earth. These are very earthy activities, but equally freaky ones as far as Naropa is concerned. He probably regarded ignorance as completely stupid and thought that such ignorant people couldn’t even plow or eat worms. But in the case of this kind of intelligent ignorance, people
can
do such things. The woman also cooks fish and frogs alive for Naropa to eat. It is a kind of horrific idea that ignorance is so alive and has managed to improvise all kinds of fantastic things. And discovering this different version of ignorance is like rediscovering himself. The verse here is:

Fettered by habit-forming thought,’tis hard to find the Guru.

How will you find the Guru if you eat not

This fish of habit-forming thoughts, but hanker

After pleasures (which enhance the sense of ego)?

Tomorrow I will kill my parents.

[pp. 33-34]

Killing parents is one of the images of tantra. Now we are getting closer to tantric images. Father is aggression, and mother is passion. In many tantric vows, there are verses that say, “Kill your father; make love to your mother.” That’s one of the verses defining samaya discipline. It means to relate with your father, aggression, completely, and your mother, passion, completely. Get into them and relate with them. The father is impaled and the mother is put in the dungeon. These are expressions of aggression and passion, but at this point, they are activities of ignorance. You might think that ignorance is just purely lying in the dungeon and being part of the worms and so forth, but you begin to realize that this is not so. There are very powerful things happening,
live
situations. Ignorance has a living quality that is very prominent. Getting into this is part of searching for the guru, actually being like Tilopa. The verse here goes:

You will find it hard to find the Guru

If you kill not the three poisons that derive

From your parents, the dichotomy of this and that.

Tomorrow I will go and beg . . .

[p. 34]

These hints that begin with the huntsman saying, “Tomorrow I will do this or that,” are interesting. Up to the point where those begin, there is no need to sow a further seed of confusion. Naropa is already confused. But after that point, it is necessary to sow a seed of confusion. You don’t want to quite leave Naropa to himself so he can work things out completely. So the message about tomorrow sows a seed of expectation, and further confusion comes out of that. The method of teaching at this point is not designed to free Naropa or instruct him at all, but rather to confuse him more and more. That is the essence of the teaching style at this level, which is mahamudra.

The next one on the ignorance level is the beggar frying live fish and bringing dead fish back to life. He also asks Naropa to eat some live lice, which he hands him. Again, this conveys a sense of uncertainty. We could say that eating food is predominantly a mark of uncertainty. It’s trying to make sure that we do have our body. We have food and drink when we are uncertain, when the boundaries become fuzzy. When that happens as we drive along on a highway, we decide to pull into a restaurant and eat. It’s a way of reassuring ourselves. But eating live food is much more powerful than just stopping at a restaurant. You have to struggle to eat, because your food is struggling to get away from you. It is a very direct message, and at the same time quite horrific. The verses here are:

If you would kill the misery of habit-forming thoughts

And ingrained tendencies on the endless path

To the ultimate nature of all beings,

First you must kill (these lice).

[p. 35]

But when Naropa was unable to do so, the man disappeared with the words:

You will find it hard to find the Guru

If you kill not the louse of habit-forming thoughts,

Self-originated and self-destructive.

Tomorrow I will visit a freak show.

We shall do that tomorrow.

Student:
Did you say the “tomorrow” messages were designed to confuse Naropa?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

S:
I don’t understand.

TR:
They don’t give any hint. At the beginning, he was still carrying Nalanda University with him and was pretty much together. At that point, he had to be given some means for forgetting that memory. He had to be confused, given another kind of promise about his search for his guru. He had to be lured into it more and at the same time made to forget his past hang-ups about Nalanda. So the way to confuse him was to lure him further in, as with the carrot and the donkey.

Student:
It seems that Naropa still has a big ego problem, even after the shunyata experience. You can still have ego, or these “habit-forming thoughts,” even while you are experiencing shunyata?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so. Much more so, in many ways. They become much more highlighted, I’m afraid. Or rather, I’m pleased to announce.

Student:
The effect of Naropa’s marrying the king’s daughter is to bring out more of his shit. Why doesn’t the text say something to the effect “You’ve got to relate more to your shit,” rather than warning him about falling into the traps of samsara?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s the very clever thing about the whole business.

S:
Is it sucking him further in that way?

TR:
Of course. It’s fantastic that way. The subject matter of all the songs, all the messages, is designed to confuse him. The messages are presented in accordance with certain moral patterns all the way. Even up to the highest mystical level, the messages still have a connection with that moral pattern. That’s part of the masterpiece quality of this whole story.

Student:
When you say that the whole idea is to confuse him more, do you mean that strictly from ego’s point of view? It’s confusing ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
At this point, it’s all one. We can’t really distinguish points of view. It’s the point of view of the thing, the thingness.

S:
It’s not one person confusing another person?

TR:
No, it’s just the thing.

S:
You mean like the tricks you were talking about?

TR:
Yes. It’s very tricky.

Student:
So the whole thing is just sucking him in all the way down the line. In that case, where does intelligence come in?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
At this point, his intelligence is being insulted rather than acknowledged in any way. Naropa has all kinds of intelligence, you know, and has been through all kinds of disciplines, but each time when he tries to pull any one of them out and use it, it is insulted.

Student:
By intelligence there, do you mean the—

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The prajna type.

Student:
No matter what Naropa did, would he be wrong? For example, if the king offered him his daughter and he said, “No, I’m a monk, I can’t take her,” would the daughter disappear and say, “How can you find Tilopa if you don’t accept the king’s daughter?”

Trungpa Rinpoche:
No. It would be much longer than that. She would probably come out and seduce him. Then at the end she would say the same thing as the present verse does. The whole thing is a fantastic display of the greatest genius that one could ever think of. It’s so apt.