The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (55 page)

Similarly, the Kagyü tradition has developed more pride in an individual’s practice and less quotation from the lineage as a reference point. People relate with practice much more closely, but not in the Ram Dass fashion, which is a mutual confession. “I’m messed up; you’re messed up; so let’s meet together and have a nice time and talk it over.” But in this case, let us meet each other in the spirit of the practitioners’ lineage.

Let us encourage each other to sit, let us practice together. Let us encourage each other properly, fully, thoroughly, so that we can inspire ourselves in the spirit of
awake
rather than in the spirit of confusion.

When that begins to happen, there is lots of room to expand. Traditionally, it is said that the Kagyüs and the goats like to preside over rocky mountains. And Gelukpas and horses like to roam around in the fields. That is an interesting saying. The reason why we would like to preside over rocky mountains is partially that we are mountain freaks, traditionally, geographically. Partially we would like to approach things from the hard-core practitioner’s angle—in a very personal style.

You may ask, “If your particular tradition is so interested in locking yourselves up in caves and practicing by yourselves, how is it possible to expand your administration? How can administration and expansiveness take place all together?” That’s a very interesting point, which you should understand. It’s a very important point here. Although the Kagyüpas like to live in the rocks in the mountains, they don’t particularly make a nest in the mountains, the rocks, and the caves. They conquer the mountains and the rocks. They don’t regard their caves as hippie pads where they could indulge themselves or as apartments. You have no idea what goes on in the rest of the apartment building, but you have a nice little cave on the fifth or sixth floor, whatever. In this case, it is conquering the whole mountain.

Likewise, the Kagyüpas are known for conquering foreign territory. The rings of Kagyüpa expansion took place not only within the heart of Tibet alone, but the Kagyü also liked to live in the surrounding territories. The Kagyü established rings of expansion into Bhutan, Sikkum (which is a border of Tibet), and India. They also expanded into the Sing Jong province of China, into Mongolia and all the rest of the countries bordering Tibet. The Kagyü are not afraid of the cliffs or of the sheer drops of cultural misunderstanding that exist. If you jump from one culture to another, you may find that the next culture does not have any connections with you anymore. You find that jumping into another country is like jumping over another cliff. But the Kagyüpas never had fear about that. And likewise we are here. We are not afraid of foreign space. Foreign space is domestic space at the same time.

The expansion of the practicing tradition is interesting. It sheds light on Buddhism altogether, in some sense. The southern tradition of Buddhism had reservations about conquering the mountains. So the hinayana tradition went to the south, into Southeast Asia. The vajrayana tradition went to North India, crossing the barbarian lands. The Indians used to call Tibet the monkey land or the vampire land, the land of redfaced people who eat raw meat and drink raw milk, which was regarded by the Indians as a terrible thing to do. To have never known vegetables is absolutely terrible, from their point of view.

The Kagyü tradition also developed fearlessness in relating with their own bodies and minds, which we often find is a foreign situation as well. We are confronted constantly, again and again, with foreign territories, all the time. We are always faced with the unknown. Our death, our birth, our parents, our emotionality: everything is always a foreign country. And
that
mountain,
that
foreign territory is also conquered, as much as the physical geographical territory beyond Tibet has been conquered.

You might say this is such Kagyü chauvinism. I think that is true. But behind such chauvinism there is an immense sense of devotion. With that hard-core conquering of the mountains and conquering of foreign territory, there is, at the same time, also an immense sense of softness, of surrendering and sentimentality. The Kagyü tradition is based on sentimentality—of a higher level, of course. [
Laughter
] It is not so much the sentimentality of dreaming about one’s mother’s chicken soup when you’re hungry or thinking about a well-made kreplach or Christmas pudding, for that matter.

An interesting thing develops by being emotional and hard core at the same time. We don’t usually connect those things together. We don’t usually smoke menthol cigarettes and Marlboros at once. [
Laughter
] But they could be blended together. That is what the Kagyü tradition is actually doing. The hard core of relating with the foreignness of foreignness of foreignness exists all the time in our life. You pay your landlord the rent, and you think that at least you can relax for a month. Suddenly, the landlord knocks on your door and says,
“
I want to kick you out, because you did such and such a thing. Otherwise, I’m going to call the police.” Or you think that your love affair is going well. Suddenly, something comes up. Your lover has apparently not spoken out enough, and suddenly the pimple begins to burst. A big explosion takes place.

All kinds of things like that take place all the time in our life. We think we have settled or solved our most outrageous or outstanding problem. Whew. We try to relax. Then something else comes up and scares us. We might think that we know New York City completely, inside out—which street not to go on, which areas to avoid. But we get mugged on Fifth Avenue or in the United Nations building. That is always possible. Such things happen to us all the time. So we find that we can’t actually relax to the extent we thought, and we can’t be caught up, up in arms, completely all the time either. There’s room for romanticism and there’s room for working with foreign territory all the time as well.

The Kagyü tradition begins to teach us that. We experience, simultaneously, both situations together at once.
One
situation is
both
situations. Both situations means both romanticism and the threat from foreign territory. In romantic situations, usually you’re settling down, helping yourself to something, lying back and enjoying the pleasure. That’s romanticism. And foreign territory means being up in arms, watchful.

The Trungpas had the same experience as the Kagyüpa pioneers. In some sense, it was on a much lesser scale than Milarepa and Marpa and Naropa, but the Trungpas had a similar kind of experience constantly taking place. One of the Kagyü mystics once said, “Being in the Kagyü tradition, the Kagyü lineage, is like inheriting constant mishaps.” [
Laughter
] Constant mishaps. That’s true. If you are actually in contact with reality, and particularly if you are in control of reality, then you are in contact with completely constant mishaps. Because you are in contact and in control, therefore the mishaps begin to come to you rather than you bumping into them. They begin to come to you constantly. All the time these little things are taking place. Fantastic. [
Laughter
] Delightful. And it is that which makes everything very cheerful.

Take the story of Milarepa. He was told by Marpa to leave and go back to his home. He had finally been accepted by Marpa, who had made him his chief disciple and an important person, the only son of the lineage. Milarepa was completely fine, feeling extremely good. Then he went back home and everything was ruined, completely destroyed. That kind of mishap is always apropos of the practicing lineage, once you begin to have any association with the lineage. Milarepa found his house ruined, his mother enskeletoned inside. Nobody had even conducted a funeral service for her. His father was long dead and his aunt and uncle and everybody were up in arms and there were no friends—none at all. It was like returning to a completely haunted house, like the haunted house in Disneyland. Everything is shrieking and haunting, seemingly. Of course, for Milarepa this was not regarded as a ride, like in Disneyland. In Milarepa’s case, it was real. One shrieking situation after another shrieking situation, one haunted situation after another haunted situation take place because you are on top of situations.

We would like to come face to face with a ghost. We hear stories about ghosts, and we would like to find out whether ghosts actually exist or not. If you are in a playful mood, ghosts don’t appear, because they are not interested in haunting you at that point. Ghosts are only interested in haunting you when you are in a transitional period or else when you are on top of the situation. On the other hand, we are not talking about the reality of ghosts here. We don’t want to get back into that psychic phenomenal world. That’s another waste of time, on the other hand, of course. But ghosts will come to you. They come to you. [
Laughter
]

The practicing lineage is very much in contact with what’s going on, virtually what is going on, actually what is going on, on the spot, on the dot, constantly. Interestingly, students in the Kagyü tradition have had less guidance from substantial phenomena, or the realistic world. In other words, they had less tutorship of people telling them how to do things or how not to do them. They had to take a chance all the time, constantly. But they have more commitment to their guru, their teacher. So they have more devotion at the same time, which is an interesting point. When you have completely signed on with a church or an existing club, the company pays for the damage. Or else you are completely abandoned. Between those situations, there is some sense of actual reality taking place. How much you are connected with reality somewhat depends on your degree of sanity. At the same time, your disconnection with reality also comes through. A message will come through very clearly, strongly, properly.

Before we get into too many details of the line of the Trungpa, I would like to lay the ground for you. I would like you to understand the difference between the practicing lineage and any other old lineage. So I will be interested in further feedback, such as your nightmares, your dreams, your thoughts about the whole thing. If you have any questions, you are welcome.

Allen Ginsberg:
Coming to you interested in Buddhism, what we wind up with is
you,
in a sense, or with your particular specialty, rather than some larger maybe vaguer Buddhism. But really, then, it comes right down to yourself and your lineage—which is kind of a, often, a kind of nightmare. [
Laughter
] Is that the way it’s supposed to be?

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s good. That’s great. That’s good. I’m sure that, if you exchanged notes with Milarepa, he would say the same thing about his father, too. Maybe much more so.

Teachings on the Tulku Principle

T
HERE ARE SEVERAL TYPES
of tulkus. The buddha on earth is one type of tulku. The images of Buddha are also known as tulkus, “tulkus of art.” Another tulku is the tulku who continues to be reborn constantly in order to help beings on various levels. But the Tibetan tradition of discovering tulkus who are incarnate lamas, that somebody is the tulku of so-and-so, is a different kind of setup, in a sense. There are actually various types of incarnate lamas and various types of rebirth taking place. There is the tulku who incarnates before the previous incarnation has died, several months or even years earlier. And then there is what’s called a “blessed tulku,” in which the previous person chooses the person who is closest to him or blesses some passing bodhisattva who hasn’t quite attained the highest of the bhumis. And he takes certain types of energy, or spiritual energy, which transcends ego anyway, and transfers it to the chosen person. That person then comes back as the incarnation of the previous person. Actually it is a different kind of ego; but at the same time, there is a spiritual continuity which takes place. Those are the various levels of incarnation.

Generally in Tibet, the blessed tulkus seem to be most prominent Such tulkus have to be raised and educated; they have to go through training and practice and everything. They have the element of realization; they have more potential of realization than just an ordinary person who has no push or encouragement and nothing injected into them. So these people have a great deal of potential. But they haven’t quite realized it, so therefore they have to go through training, education, and everything. Then they begin to come up to the level of their previous incarnation because such spiritual energy has been put into them.

The reason why this is possible but that we ordinary people can’t do it is because we believe ourselves to be one entity, in spite of philosophical indoctrination. So we find it very difficult to split our personality unless we become schizophrenic, which is the neurotic level, not a very pleasant or enlightened way of splitting oneself. So there may be a higher level of splitting personality, not into just one person, but many. Usually the body, speech, mind, quality, and action aspects of a particular being are transferred. So you have five types of tulkus, who particularly specialize in scholarship or contemplation, or are very active in propagating the dharma, and so forth. So the Dalai Lama, Karmapa, or any other tulkus we can think of seem to be generally the blessed-tulku type of personality. They are recognized by their predecessor and that person actually blesses that new ego of somebody who is already making some progress in some way. They encourage them or enforce them in a certain way so that the person can reincarnate as the next Karmapa or the next Dalai Lama. Therefore, such a person also has to study and go through various trainings. Otherwise, if everybody is already enlightened or if everybody has to begin all over again, it seems to give the wrong impression. If in each life you have to struggle all the time, it seems to contradict the perpetuating development of enlightenment.

Another question is what happens to those people who have already injected their essence and their wisdom into somebody else? What happens to the original people? Where do they go? It seems that those original people also come back to this world, not as the reincarnation of themselves particularly, but anonymously, incognito, so to speak. They come back as farmers or fishermen or businessmen or politicians or whatever. They don’t necessarily have to come back into a Buddhist environment, particularly, because the teachings of enlightenment could be taught at any level. People can be helped at all kinds of levels. That seems to be the basic point. There are possibilities of meeting such people who never heard or thought about any form of the teachings of Buddha but who somehow are realized in themselves. And in such cases, some memories exist within them; they have some idea of their basic being. But there’s no point in advertising that eccentricity, particularly if they’re going to communicate with the ordinary world. So that seems to be the general setup.