The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (45 page)

Student:
You described various views of sacredness. It seemed on the whole that one had to do with God and the other one was the vajrayana approach. I was wondering whether one of these applied to the mahayana idea of sacredness, or if that was still another outlook. It seems to me that traditionally there’s such a strong element of devotion and sacred richness in it that mahayana almost sounds like Catholicism.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think the mahayana is much closer to the theistic approach, definitely, because it has a sense of greatness and it emphasizes performing transcending actions—which is still related with size. The vajrayana no longer relates to size; it relates to qualities. The mahayana is the “big vehicle.” The vajrayana is the “diamond vehicle”; it could be big or small.

S:
There’s something confusing about the emphasis on grandioseness in the mahayana, since it’s essential teaching is shunyata. I would have thought shunyata would cut through the grandioseness as pretentious.

TR:
Well, it should cut, but somehow it doesn’t entirely. Therefore, mahayana can lead into vajrayana. It’s not so much that the grandioseness is cut down, but the grandioseness doesn’t exist, so the whole setup begins to fall apart. That’s the trick. This particularly happens in the later stages of the mahayana, like the eighth, ninth, and tenth bhumis. Definitely by the tenth bhumi there is no viewer anymore.

S:
And the grandioseness—

TR:
Just dissolves into dharmakaya. Like a car without a driver goes to the dump.

Student:
Do you have to be a trickster to get enlightened? It seems there are a lot of tricks involved.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I should say so, yes.

Student:
At this vajrayana level, where do reference points come in, if they come in at all?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The energies. In vajrayana, the reference point is not regarded as bad, but it is the way of accentuating the play of phenomena.

Student:
But is there a reference point?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There is a vajra reference point rather than an ordinary reference point, which is wisdom.

Student:
Why would you accentuate the play of the ordinary?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You are not doing it. Phenomena as they are accentuate themselves.

S:
I see.

TR:
That’s it!

Student:
How does the idea of a person having an aim fit in, or is that gone by this time?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
An ordinary student might still have a sense of struggle, but in moments when flashes take place, when realizations take place in his state of mind, there’s no aim. You remember the idea of ordinary mind we were talking about? The ordinariness? That’s it.

Student:
It’s almost as if you and energy or you and the universe, or whatever you want to call it, are the same.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s very simple. It’s so simple. And there’s a sense of well-being, so no ambition is involved, except entertaining oneself constantly—which the entertainments do for you, rather than your having to order them.

Student:
And compassion kind of comes in naturally.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. When you’re lighting incense in your room, which clears the air, that’s the compassion. It makes things workable, pleasant to be.

Student:
Why is the illusory body called illusory body?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s the same idea as the dream. This is a dream.

S:
Oh, maybe I didn’t understand right. I thought if one realized the illusory body, that was being more real.

TR:
That’s what I mean. It’s the same as the dream. This is a dream, which is real. More real than the ordinary sleeping dream, than the dream dream.

S:
This is a real dream.

TR:
Yes, this is a real dream.

S:
That means there is reality.

TR:
There is reality, sure. And there is unreality at the same time.

S:
The unreality is the dream.

TR:
Is
not
the dream. The real dream is reality. And the real illusion is the real thing. In other words, the mirage is the real water. You know, when you see a mirage in the desert—a lake with palm trees? That’s real. You may not find it when you get there, when you want to have a drink of water, but still it’s real.

S:
If you’re in the desert, though, you have to distinguish between the real oasis and the fake one.

TR:
That’s what I mean. That’s what I mean, yes.

Student:
How does the realization of the illusory body connect with that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You are able to see real things, things that shimmer, change energy, shift patterns.

S:
Like a mirage?

TR:
Like a mirage; like you and I looking at each other now. That’s the real illusory body. I change and you change, this way and that way. But it’s a real change.

S:
Then an unreal change would be if you were hallucinating.

TR:
Yes.

Student:
Could you say that real doesn’t apply to anything particular, but we’re just talking about clearing perception?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Clearing perception, yes. It’s catching yourself, fragments of yourself, assembling this particular perception. That’s the illusory body.

S:
Learning how to spot that.

TR:
Learning how to spot that, yes.

S:
How to spot that detail and even make use of it?

TR:
Yes.

S:
And still keep track of it as an illusion.

TR:
Yes. And very sanely.

S:
So actually it’s a very real energy.

TR:
You’ve got it . . . I think.

Student:
Are you saying there’s a message involved in your perception at that point?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Not really messages. That’s secondary. Third-hand. But this is
first-hand.
Even zero-hand.

Student:
I still don’t understand the relationship between the mirage and the reality.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The mirage
is
reality. It’s a real mirage.

S:
There’s no fake mirage, then.

TR:
No. It’s very real.

S:
That doesn’t quite accord with my understanding of mirage, or at least what I was taught at school.

TR:
What did they say?

S:
A mirage is something you think is there and it’s not.

TR:
Well, that’s it!

S:
That’s reality?

TR:
That’s reality.

S:
So if I see a mirage, say of an oasis, the mirage is real, but the water, the palm trees, and the coconuts are not real.

TR:
That’s right, yes. I think you’ve got it.

S:
Is a memory a mirage in that sense?

TR:
Yes, precisely. That’s a good question.

Student:
Are you saying that to see the mirage as a mirage is to see reality?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s the first thing. There is a song about that in the book, actually. It’s in the section about Marpa meeting Naropa. Could somebody read that?

Student
[reads poem from p. 101]:

The sky-flower, the Daka riding on the foal

Of a barren mare, the Oral Transmission,

Has scattered the hairs of a tortoise, the ineffable,

And with the poke of a hare’s horn, the unoriginated,

Roused Tilopa in the depth of ultimate reality.

Through the mute Tilopa, the ineffable resisting all attempts at communication,

The blind Naropa became free in seeing Truth which is no seeing.

On the mountain of the Dharmakaya which is the ultimate, the deaf Naropa,

The lame Mati (Mar-pa) ran in a radiant light, which neither comes nor goes.

The sun and moon and dGyes-pa-rdor-rje—

Their dancing is one-valueness in many.

The conch-shell has proclaimed its fame in all directions,

It has called out to the strenuous, who are worthy vessels for instruction.

The focal points, Chakrasamvara—the world

Is the wheel of the Oral Transmission:

Turn it, dear child, without attachment.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
We should end our seminar here. I think you should read this song again and again if you can. It makes enormous sense. The translation is the best we have so far, and Dr. Guenther’s very genuine effort has become a very valuable medium. He doesn’t try to put in his own ideas. He tries to present the translation directly, as it is, which lays very important groundwork for us. Obviously, we have to discuss more about mahamudra and this mirage and so forth.

Notes

P
ART
O
NE

Chapter 1. Naropa and Us

1
. Abhayakirti (Tib. ’Jig-med grags-pa), according to Guenther, “was the name which Naropa had when he renounced his post of abbot at Nalanda and set out in search of his Guru.” Literally, the name means “renowned as fearless.”

Chapter 2. Genuine Madness and Pop Art

1
.
Ku-su-li-pa
is a Tibetan term, often also appearing as
kusulu,
describing a yogi who has reached such a level of simplicity that he only has thoughts concerning three things: eating, sleeping, and eliminating.

2
. “
Lohivagaja
seems to be the Tibetan transcription of a Prakrit sentence which in Sanskrit might have been
rohita avagaccha,
‘fish go away!’” (Guenther’s note,
The Life and Teaching of Naropa,
p. 35).

3
. G. I. Gurdjieff was a well-known teacher of Greek-Armenian origin who taught his own system of spirituality in eastern and western Europe and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The Vidyadhara adopted Gurdjieff’s notion of “idiot compassion,” a “feel-good” approach of seeming kindness that actually contributes further to delusion and weakness.

P
ART
T
WO

Chapter 2. Giving Birth to Intellect

1
. Don Juan is the sorcerer and spiritual teacher of the Yaqui Indian tribe of northern Mexico described in the many books of Carlos Castaneda.

Chapter 4. Beyond Shunyata

1
. “Emptiness being form”: This is a reference to the
Heart Sutra,
or
Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge
(Skt.
Mahaprajnaparamitabridaya-sutra
). A key line in this sutra is “Form is no other than emptiness; emptiness is no other than form.” This line is sometimes interpreted, as by the questioner here, as indicating two stages in the understanding of shunyata, or emptiness. In the first, the practitioner realizes that forms have no essence that makes them ultimately real and thus are “empty.” This understanding may be associated with a tendency to reject or withdraw from the world. In a further stage, the practitioner realizes that it is the nature of emptiness to appear as form. This may prompt the fully realized person’s return to the world. This analysis of shunyata is particularly stressed in Zen.

Chapter 6. The Levels of Mahamudra

1
. “The last one has to do with sleep”: The six dharmas of Naropa are usually listed as: (1) inner heat (Tib.
tumo
), (2) illusory body (
gyulü
), (3) dream (
milam
), (4) luminosity (
ösel
), (5) transference (
phowa
), (6) bardo, or inbetween state. Though these may be given in a different order, the editor has no explanation for why the Vidyadhara chose to expound the last one as he does here.

2
. “Green energy”: Playing on the color of American banknotes, the Vidyadhara sometimes half-jocularly referred to money as green energy.

From

T
HE
L
IFE OF
M
ARPA THE
T
RANSLATOR

Seeing Accomplishes All

T
SANG
N
YÖN
H
ERUKA

Translated from the Tibetan by the Nālandā Translation Committee under the direction of Chögyam Trungpa

N
ĀLANDĀ
T
RANSLATION
C
OMMITTEE

Chögyam Trungpa, Director

Lama Ugyen Shenpen

Loppön Lodrö Dorje Holm

Larry Mermelstein, Executive Director