The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (54 page)

Q:
Must the four foundations always be practiced in the order in which they are presented in
The Torch of Certainty
?

CTR:
The order should be kept the same. Each stage prepares for the next, and they become increasingly more subtle until you reach guru yoga, which is complete devotion to the guru. Having evolved to this level, you are prepared to receive abhishekas.

Q:
If an individual loses interest in the practice, should he stop and wait for the inspiration to return or keep practicing?

CTR:
Losing interest in the practice is a symptom of not having enough training in tranquillity and insight meditation. Training in tranquillity and insight makes you, first of all, very aware of your pain and your neuroses. It increases your mindfulness and enables you to begin to make friends with yourself. You learn how to be by yourself, with yourself. Without this training, you might easily become overwhelmed and put off by the physical exertion and mechanical aspect of these practices.

If a person finds himself put off and feels that he cannot continue the foundations, he should return to tranquillity and insight meditation and go back to the vajrayana discipline later on.

Q:
What are the indications of successful practice?

CTR:
Basically, you will be less arrogant and less opinionated.

Q:
How does an individual know when his practice of the four foundations has been unsuccessful?

CTR:
If you become more arrogant and opinionated, it means that you do not have enough compassion and sympathy and that something is wrong with your practice.

Q:
What should a person do if he feels that his practice has been unsuccessful?

CTR:
If an individual’s practice is not working, this is because he approaches it as some kind of gymnastics, due to a lack of genuine renunciation. He is still blinded by the confused world. In order to begin to see clearly, the practitioner should return to tranquillity and insight meditation. This advice is not in conflict with that of the other rinpoches. The “four thoughts” are a contemplative discipline by which you develop disgust with samsara. If you practice tranquillity and insight as the basis of the whole spiritual journey, then the “four thoughts” will arise as a natural process.

The Practicing Lineage

O
UR SUBJECT IS THE LINEAGE,
or the line, of the Trungpas. The particular person sitting in front of you belongs to, or
is,
one of them—in fact, the eleventh one of them. We are not talking about the dynasty of a kingdom, and we are not talking about a family history, hopefully not. But we are talking about
how
the situation has evolved through the various Trungpas over the ages, up to the present situation.

The question is, what particular tradition is the line of the Trungpas associated with? To begin with, Buddhism, of course, and Tibet. What kind of Buddhist discipline? And connected with what particular locality of Tibet? We are forced to go back to the background story, which is connected with what is known as the teachings of the practicing lineage.

All of you are also part of that lineage. At this point, a lot of you have inherited it, a lot of you are just about to inherit it, and a lot of you are just beginning to dip into this particular tradition. That tradition, again, is called the practicing lineage.

There are four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. There is the old, or older, school; the medium, or middle, schools; and the new one. The old school is known as the Nyingma tradition. It is continuing the tradition of Padmasambhava, the great Buddhist adept, saint, yogi who introduced, or instigated—formally, officially—the teachings of Buddha into Tibet.

Then there are the medium, or middle, schools, which are two: the Kagyü and the Sakya. They came into the picture much later, presenting further Buddhist teachings from India. Then, the latest one, the newest one, the youngest one of all, is called the Geluk tradition.

The Geluk tradition is, we could say, completely and fully a Tibetan product of Buddhism, because it did not have any direct historical relationship to Indian Buddhism. By that time, Indian Buddhism was already far gone and slowly dying out, due to the Mogul invasions of India. Most of the Buddhists in India were persecuted or had gone underground. A lot of the monasteries were attacked because the Mogul troops thought that people wearing uniforms must be soldiers. So monks were killed and monasteries were completely destroyed.

The Islamic tradition, particularly, doesn’t believe in deifying any idols. They believe that any kind of images representing the truth shouldn’t be anthropomorphic. Consequently, the Moguls destroyed a lot of statues, wiping out evidence of Buddhist culture, as much as they could. Still, these days, from excavations taking place in India, we are finding Buddhist temples and stupas and images. But they have received a token Mogul seal on them: either the statue is without a nose or without ears or fingers as a mark of disapproving of anthropomorphic images being deified.

The practicing lineage, to get back to the subject, is one of the middle schools, which came after the old, or ancient, school. It developed through various Tibetan masters, scholars who visited India and received teachings there and then established their particular situations. Namely, there was the famous translator-saint Marpa, who visited India three times and brought the teachings to Tibet. And his disciple Milarepa was the greatest yogic poet of Tibet, or shall we say, more likely, singer-poet, or the first Tibetan blues singer. And then there was Gampopa and so forth. The lineage of the Kagyü, the practicing lineage, at this point consists of something like thirty-six generations—up to the present Trungpa, whoever he might be!

The meaning of the practicing lineage is important for you to understand before we can understand the rest of the story, so to speak. The practicing lineage is a term that was developed particularly by Milarepa. Previously, the tradition was known as the Lineage of the Sacred Word, which is actually a phrase that we are using again these days. In the Kagyü tradition,
ka
means “logos,” or “sacred word,” “command,” “truth.”
Gyü
means “thread,” or “continuity,” which is close to the idea of lineage—continuity. In Milarepa’s time, the Kagyü tradition became known as
drubgyü, drub
meaning “practice,” and
gyü
meaning “lineage,” “line.”

The practicing lineage places a lot of importance on the need to practice, sit, meditate a lot. Without practicing, without understanding the meaning of practice, no
real
communication takes place in your understanding of Buddhism, buddhadharma.

It is also equally important to have a great deal of devotion to your teacher, who actually embodies the symbolism or the concept of practice. The guru himself or herself has already achieved a high degree of enlightenment through practice. Moreover, the guru is the only person who can actually push you and who can be a heavy-handed friend, who can actually make you sit a lot and go beyond your slothfulness and laziness. If you want to boycott anything, only the guru can push you and make you sit a lot, practice a lot.

Theoretically, a cosmic guru could send you blessings and encouragements through your particular psychic antenna, and he might tell you all kinds of stories and send you all kinds of messages. Such things are regarded as very fishy according to the practicing lineage. We can always reinterpret them according to our own desires. To begin with, our own interpretations, received through our antennae, are not so substantial. But on top of that, we can actually reinterpret things according to our liking.

So it is necessary to have an earthly person, born and raised on his planet Earth, to begin with. You need someone who regards himself or herself as a human being, who would like to share the love and hate, and sweet and sour, and hot and cold of this particular world. Someone who can speak to you on a man-to-man basis, who acts as a mirror reflection, in some sense, and also provides real, genuine communication, independent of politicking or overindulgence in charitable kindness or obsession with masochistic trips: free from all those. Someone who is somewhat sensible, reasonable, but at the same time unyielding. Traditionally, we call this a “wise person,” somebody who can’t be persuaded to buy your side or your trip. Somebody who can actually be clear about the whole thing. Somebody who buys your story with a pinch of salt, but at the same time, is kind and friendly—to a certain extent. Such a person is the teacher, who then teaches you to practice a lot, sit a lot.

The basic teachings of Buddha are based on understanding what we are, who we are, why we are. When we begin to realize who we are, what we are, why we are, then we begin to realize why we are
not,
who we are
not,
what we are
not.
We begin to realize that we don’t have basic, substantial, solid, fundamental ground that we can exert anymore. We begin to realize that our ideas of security and our concept of freedom have been purely phantom experiences.

We would like to use the spiritual discipline and traditional wisdom to fit into our own particular pigeonhole, our own desires. We usually want to glorify ourselves by collecting stories and wisdom from every worthy person. We would like to meet lots of people who are seemingly worthy people, according to our own judgment, and collect all of those stories and re-edit them according to what we want, constantly. When you begin to do that, you develop your own version of freedom, which is “I would like to become a greater version of myself, spiritually uplifted, and so forth. I might even have a place in social situations, be known as an important wise person, so that people will come to me and consult me.” We have those kinds of desires. We are not really interested in developing spiritually; we are more interested in evolving politically in the name of spirituality. Such a situation is known as “spiritual materialism.” There is a book about it. [
Laughter. Chögyam Trungpa was referring to his own book
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.]

The practicing lineage teaches us that we have to get rid of those egocentered conceptualized notions of the grandiosity of our own development. If we are truly involved with spirituality, we are willing to
let go
of trying to witness our own enlightenment, the celebration of our enlightenment. We have to learn to be willing to die, to subside. This particular “me” that wanted to attain enlightenment has to go away. When that happens, then you actually attain enlightenment. So one can’t watch one’s own burial, in other words.

In order to shed the ego, in order to understand that particular principle, we have to practice a lot, sit a lot. We have to
experience
a lot. We might have some intellectual, analytical understanding, but even that understanding has to be based on an intuitive experience of the practice situation. Without that, we can’t develop at all. We are simply creating further schemes, expanding further schemes of our own grand plans of a spiritual ego trip, spiritual materialism, and so forth.

Throughout the lineage of the practicing tradition, every one in the lineage has been extremely sarcastic and critical of the current scenes taking place around them. They were extremely critical of the name of the dharma. We could say that the practicing lineage is the guardian of the buddhadharma, not only in Tibet alone but in the rest of the world. Someone should at least have a critical view of how things should happen, how things shouldn’t happen. That particular sharp vision, traditionally known as prajna vision, is very important. And that is a very lively situation, a living situation, which still is up-to-date. In fact, that is why we are here.

The practicing lineage is the most pure and is unhampered by all kinds of spiritual materialism. Instead of just viewing this lineage from a purely historical point of view, we should realize that this can take place in ourselves. How we have come to be, to practice, our particular basic, general background is that we would like to become a richer and more conscious person, a highly evolved person. That is why we are interested in spiritual practice. But those trips are known as real
trips.
Those trips are questionable. And such trips require a very heavy critical dosage of the practicing lineage message, so that we could at least be woken up from our naiveté, our confused attitude about spirituality, and our attempts to pollute the spiritual world of the twentieth century.

The Mishap Lineage

W
E COULD GO FURTHER
in understanding the meaning of the contemplative tradition and why the tradition that I come from, the practicing lineage, or the Kagyü, does exist. It is not just an accident or a matter of chance. Rather, the whole thing is somewhat planned or programmed to the extent that there is an intelligent awareness or a vision at work, of how a practitioners’ lineage can exist and continue.

As far as that vision is concerned, it is a prolonged sense of commitment to humanity and to working with the neurosis of humanity. The practicing lineage is not based on practitioners locking themselves up in their meditation cells so that they become social nuisances. But practitioners in our lineage also work with their commitment to their teacher and with surrendering, openness, and devotion—as well as with commitment to the rest of the world, all sentient beings.

Usually, when we practice some kind of discipline and we begin to teach that discipline to others, we tend to present a great deal of qualifications and credentials, hoping that they will carry us a long way. After that, we just say what we have to say, which is quite short and maybe presented with the pretense of some kind of wit, which is based on not having enough confidence in oneself. So the whole thing short-circuits. That is the usual style of presentation for somebody without any background or lineage. Traditionally, that has been a problem. But in this case, borrowing the name of the lineage is not so important in order to reach people. It is not so much providing one’s credentials or using them as one’s own decorations. Rather, the point is to tell people that their lineage had good forefathers and that there is a good background, a good lineage, behind them. So it is a trustworthy situation.