The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (72 page)

That sense of reminder takes place on different levels of intensity in our life. Sometimes we crash into a wall as we drive our motorcar, and we are reminded that we should drive very carefully in the future. Sometimes we just burn our finger, or we just have a small scar on our hand or a little bruise on our body. We have gone slightly too far, but somewhat we are sensible enough to refrain from getting too much damage to our body. We get pushed back and we begin to think twice. That is usually the case that happens.

A lot of images could take place. Also, a lot of images are further food for losing one’s awareness, because once you have been reminded you regard that as a very solid and extraordinary message. You get tripped up on that particular message; in turn, you go beyond that level, more than you came. You get in more accidents and you become more hurt, thinking that you can play with phenomena because you got the message and you made the connections already. This is one of the problems that usually takes place in our life, overconfidence, which makes things very chaotic and lethal, in some sense. That is the problem with that kind of reminder, that kind of framework. It is literally a framework; but in this case, the frame happens to be a triangle instead of a square. It is to frame a picture of our life in it.

That is the nature like sky, discussed in the traditional framework. The nature like that of the sky is governed by unborn, unceasing, and openness. At the same time, we could also correlate it with three principles that exist: impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, known as the three gates of liberation according to vajrayana discipline, or the three marks of existence according to the hinayana discipline. We could also include that as part of its expression of the spaciousness.

That spaciousness contains a sense of openness. Openness, in this case, is the level where you are not taking too much advantage of your freedom. You expand as much as you could, you can, and then you do not advance beyond that level. You keep your space intact and workable, as a basic principle. This is like the analogy of the cervix, in which a baby could be born up to a certain level of size. You cannot give birth to a gigantic monster and you cannot give birth to a too little one—it has to be somewhat human size, as far as baby size goes. The function of the cervix is to act as some kind of censor. It acts as a customs official at entrances or exits. Anyone who is going to be born in this world is being censored and checked, and if they are too big, they cannot come out—unless you have a cesarean or something of that nature, which is an extraordinary thing to do. And if you are too insigificant, you are not worth bothering with.

It is like entering another country. When you come to another country, you have to show your passport and declare to the customs officials how big, how famous, what kind of wealth you are going to bring into the country, and whether the country can afford to accept such wealth. If you are bringing too many heavy-handed things, the country ends up having economic problems, if you bring too much stuff that is worth a lot of money. Or if you yourself are a heavy-handed person, that might put the citizens of that country out of jobs, because you occupy a great deal of time and space. So usually the governmental and economic approach is very careful as to how much such a country can accept your entrance into that new country, in terms of how much goods you bring and how much knowledge you bring, and if that knowledge is useful or destructive or whatever it may be in this country that you are trying to come into.

The same kind of process takes place at the level of the mother principle’s giving birth to reality. It is the same kind of process. The question there is that some kind of basic censorship takes place. Although when we talk about “its nature is like sky,” it seems to be carefree and happygo-lucky, kind of spacious, and everything is good; somehow, the more spaciousness there is, that much more there are restrictions to it. The space becomes very sensitive and very discriminating in some sense, but at the same time very open-minded equally. That seems to be the basic point of giving birth to reality from the notion of space.

I think we could discuss as far as that level today. We could discuss further details tomorrow, if space and time are available to us. You are welcome to ask any existing questions.

Student:
I take your first example very personally. Once about three years ago when I was studying your teachings in writing, I burned my hand, and that same day went on to destroy my car and drive it into a brick wall. Later on, in a seminar in New York, I asked you how this would resolve itself, as we are all supposed to remember the lion’s roar and have courage. I don’t. Since you say that it is inescapable that when we get the first warning we are so tripped out by it that we don’t—I mean, it seems like you are saying that we will inevitably have the second accident. What is the solution to that?

Vidyadhara:
The point is that you are not trying to gain victory from this particular warfare. You do not regard the whole thing as warfare, you regard it as just another way of settling down in that particular country. It seems that your attitude is that when you come to a new country that accepted you as a resident, you get a visa as a resident, and once you are accepted as a resident you have the freedom to do anything, go everywhere. But at the same time, you are not allowed to bargain at the supermarket. You collect as much as you can collect in your cart and you say to the cashier, “Come here. Look, I bought a lot of stuff here, how much reduction could you give me?” And you cannot bargain them down. Everything has to be counted, and it depends on the price tag.

From that point of view, coming to the supermarket is very interesting symbolism. That place you accepted, the country where you came to, is your country for the time being: therefore you go to the supermarket and make yourself at home. Having gone to the supermarket, you cannot bargain, you have to accept the values that are set up already. You have to go along with the law and order that exists in that country. You cannot get reductions, and you can’t bargain down at the supermarket. So you can’t do anything: you can’t get out of it, you have to go along with it.

S:
And you get your freedom from going along with it?

V:
Yes. You can buy anything you want, but you have to pay for it, as we know. But paying for it is also part of your expression of freedom.

S:
Very often the symbol of the overlapping triangles appears. What is the meaning of that?

V:
I think it is a question of the symbol of double vision, that you see reality and you also see the shadow of it. Therefore, reality and its shadow begin to form a pattern together, which is the experience of reality and also the experience of its spokesman, at the same time. Nothing particularly Jewish.

S:
In relation to what you just said, what is the significance of Buddha having been born out of his mother’s side?

V:
We do not know. Whether it was a cesarean or actually giving birth, we do not know. From a commonsense point of view, the side is a question of bypassing the ordinary exit. It wasn’t regarded as a cesarean, it was a simple accident: his mother took a walk in the garden and he suddenly appeared. He stepped out of her side and spoke and walked and behaved as a little prince. So the whole thing is very mythical. But at the same time, the question of being free from any kind of conditions seems to be a very interesting point. Maybe he was the son of prajnaparamita, who doesn’t have to go through the hassles and problems of conventionality. He did something very extraordinary and revolutionary—he stepped out of his mother’s side and he began to speak and to walk.

S:
You started out talking about the birth of reality from the mother principle, with the three qualities of the triangle being the cervix. And then you talked about awareness, being aware of the boundaries. I didn’t get the transition to awareness, in the sense of awareness as I know it. I mean, the birth of reality from the mother principle, seems very distant—but awareness of burning my fingers seems very close.

V:
I think we are saying the same thing. That is giving birth.

S:
Then it is not nearly as far away as I think.

V:
We are not talking about the meaning of once upon a time you were born as a little kid, in this case. But we are saying that you are being born each time, all the time, and talking about how that works with our reality.

S:
What does the word boundary mean in that?

V:
Well, the boundary before you had the crash and after you had the crash.

S:
Beyond the boundary lies reality, or within the boundary lies reality?

V:
Both. Reality is reality. If reality is framed with unreality around it, then it must be false. If falsity is framed with the truth, there is something very suspicious about that. It sounds like a Watergate plot.

S:
You talked about what seems to be a control factor, which you called a customs officer and a censor, that has some relationship to the nature of the birth of reality. I am wondering if you can say some more about what this quality is—who is the censor or what is it?

V:
I think if I said too much it would probably be unhelpful. We have to find out. Things are not very easy. We cannot just study the whole thing so we are geared up for everything and we can deal with it. There are guidebooks, of course, but they are not completely do-it-yourself books. The teachings are not do-it-yourself guidelines. One has to experience them. Instead of the book, one has to experience reality. I think the less I say the better at this point. My role seems to be to give successive warnings and successive suggestions, possibilities, and potentialities—and then you go along and you make the journey yourself.

S:
Is part of that journey dealing with, or having a relationship with, that censor in meditation?

V:
As well as anything that you can think of in life. Things that are uncertain to you and things that seem very certain to you—everything is included.

S:
The way you talk about the framework and the reminders to pay attention to the situation feels a little bit like the bodhisattva thing of paying attention to what sentient beings need. I am wondering if there is any relation there. It is something like the bodhisattva attending for the sake of other beings, keeping you on track through the opening or something like that?

V:
We have to be very careful about what we mean by bodhisattva; we don’t mean somebody who does good intentionally in order to achieve enlightenment. Remember that bodhisattvas have abandoned the notion of enlightenment already, so they are somewhat fundamentally wild people—they are also seemingly very reasonable, kind, and gentle people at the same time. But fundamentally, in the depth of their hearts, they are unpredictable people. They have abandoned the notion of enlightenment altogether. So from that point of view, we cannot regard the bodhisattva path as being very predictable, particularly. There is that element of craziness involved, even at the mahayana level.

From that point, we can say quite safely that from beginning to end, as far as Buddhism is concerned, it is an extraordinarily unconventional approach. The conventionalities, moralities, rules and regulations, sensibilities, logics, and everything concerned, are rooted in the unconventional approach. Unconventionality is not so much a question of a particular society or culture, that Buddhism may be unconventional to Westerners because it came from the East, or anything of that nature. Buddhism basically seems to be unconventional according to traditional Hinduism, which exists in the East, traditional Bön, Shinto, Taoism, any of the traditional Eastern cultures, and to Judaism and Christianity in the West. Buddhism is seen by all these established religions that exist in the East and West—and they all find Buddhism extremely irritating.

Actually, if you look at the history of Buddhism coming to various countries, people have rejected Buddhism not because they are unaccepting of the truth—they understand the logic of it—but because they found that something is very irritating about Buddhism: which is the unconventionality in accepting any common norm of traditional establishments of any kind. That seems to be part of it. But at the same time, it is quite different from just the revolutionary, or unconventionality from the point of view of carefree hippiedom. It seems to be slightly different than that. Mahayana goes along with that actually, in some sense.

Well, thank you. Ready for the next happening?

[Bodhisattva and Refuge vows]

TALK 4

Prajnaparamita

H
OPEFULLY WE COULD SUM UP
roughly, which is rather hard to do as we have already laid a great deal of groundwork. Maybe we will have to continue to discuss this further, at some other time.

The basic idea, in terms of the space that we discussed yesterday, is how that materialized in the living world, so to speak. One particular point I would like to make very clearly is that when we talk about experiencing the world, we are talking only in terms of the world of mind.

It is very hard to discuss the so-called real world. There doesn’t seem to be one. And even if there is, discussing it would bring all kinds of false notions of it and tend to give unnecessary security for people to hang on to. So the world we are going to discuss, that we are talking about, is the world of mind. It is our perception of the world, our version of the world, which is in some sense a true world, and on the other hand, is in some sense a relative world. We do not have to make up our mind which is which, particularly. If we try to do so, again, then at that point we begin to find ourselves with even further confusion or vague assumptions. We find ourselves more confused than actually experiencing.