The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (17 page)

This self-existing energy is called
windhorse
in the Shambhala teachings. The wind principle is that the energy of basic goodness is strong and exuberant and brilliant. It can actually radiate tremendous power in your life. But at the same time, basic goodness can be ridden, which is the principle of the horse. By following the disciplines of warriorship, particularly the discipline of letting go, you can harness the wind of goodness. In some sense the horse is never tamed—basic goodness never becomes your personal possession. But you can invoke and provoke the uplifted energy of basic goodness in your life. You begin to see how you can create basic goodness for yourself and others on the spot, fully and ideally, not only on a philosophical level, but on a concrete, physical level. When you contact the energy of windhorse, you can naturally let go of worrying about your own state of mind and you can begin to think of others. You feel a longing to share your discovery of goodness with your brothers and sisters, your mother and father, friends of all kinds who would also benefit from the message of basic goodness. So discovering windhorse is, first of all, acknowledging the strength of basic goodness in yourself and then fearlessly projecting that state of mind to others.

Experiencing the upliftedness of the world is a joyous situation, but it also brings sadness. It is like falling in love. When you are in love, being with your lover is both delightful and very painful. You feel both joy and sorrow. That is not a problem; in fact, it is wonderful. It is the ideal human emotion. The warrior who experiences windhorse feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once.

In that way, the warrior begins to understand the meaning of unconditional confidence. The Tibetan word for confidence is
ziji. Zi
means “shine” or “glitter,” and
ji
means “splendor,” or “dignity,” and sometimes also has the sense of “monolithic.” So
ziji
expresses shining out, rejoicing while remaining dignified.

Sometimes confidence means that, being in a choiceless state, you trust in yourself and use your savings, information, strength, good memory, and stiff upper lip, and you accelerate your aggression and tell yourself that you’re going to make it. That is the way of amateur warriors. In this case, confidence does not mean that you have confidence
in
something, but it is remaining in the state of confidence, free from competition or one-upmanship. This is an unconditional state in which you simply possess an unwavering state of mind that needs no reference point. There is no room for doubt; even the question of doubt does not occur. This kind of confidence contains gentleness, because the notion of fear does not arise; sturdiness, because in the state of confidence there is ever-present resourcefulness; and joy, because trusting in the heart brings a greater sense of humor. This confidence can manifest as majesty, elegance, and richness in a person’s life. How to realize those qualities in your life is the topic of Part Two of this book.

Part Two

SACREDNESS: THE WARRIOR’S WORLD

That mind of fearfulness

Should be put in the cradle of loving-kindness

And suckled with the profound and brilliant milk of eternal doubtlessness.

In the cool shade of fearlessness,

Fan it with the fan of joy and happiness.

When it grows older,

With various displays of phenomena,

Lead it to the self-existing playground.

When it grows older still,

In order to promote the primordial confidence,

Lead it to the archery range of the warriors.

When it grows older still,

To awaken primordial self-nature,

Let it see the society of men

Which possesses beauty and dignity.

Then the fearful mind

Can change into the warrior’s mind,

And that eternally youthful confidence

Can expand into space without beginning or end.

At that point it sees the Great Eastern Sun.

ELEVEN

Nowness

We need to find the link between our traditions and our present experience of life. Nowness, or the magic of the present moment, is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present.

F
ROM THE MOMENT
you are born, when you first cry and breathe free from your mother’s womb, you are a separate individual. Of course, there is still emotional attachment, or an emotional umbilical cord, that connects you to your parents, but as you grow older and pass from infancy into youth and maturity, as each year passes, your attachment decreases. You become an individual who can function separate from your mother and father.

In that journey through life, human beings must overcome the neurotic attachment of being the child-of-somebody. The principles of warriorship that we discussed in Part One are connected with how individuals can develop personal discipline so that they become mature and independent and therefore experience a sense of personal freedom. But then, once that development has taken place, it is equally important to share the comradeship of human society. This is an organic expression of the greater vision of warriorship. It is based on the appreciation of a larger world. In the process of becoming a warrior, you naturally begin to feel a deep fellowship with human beings. That is the real basis for helping others and, ultimately, for making a genuine contribution to society.

However, your connection to other human beings and your concern for their welfare have to be manifested personally, practically. Abstractly caring about others is not enough. The most practical and immediate way to begin sharing with others and working for their benefit is to work with your own domestic situation and to expand from there. So an important step in becoming a warrior is to become a family person, someone who respects his or her everyday domestic life and is committed to uplifting that situation.

You can’t help society purely on the basis of your vision for the nation or the world. There are many ideas of how to organize a society so that it will fulfill people’s needs. There is, of course, the popular idea of democratic rule, rule by the people. Another approach is that rule by an elite will produce a progressive society. A third idea is to take a scientific approach to ruling, in which natural resources are equally distributed and a completely balanced ecology is created. These and other ideas may have value, but they must be integrated with an individual human being’s experience of domestic life. Otherwise you have a huge gap between your grand vision for society and the reality of everyday existence. To use one model of family life: a man and a woman meet, they fall in love and marry, they set up a household, and then they may have children. Then they have to worry about whether the dishwasher is working or whether they have the money to buy a new stove. As the children grow up, they go to school to learn to read and write. Some children may have an ideal relationship with their parents, but the family has money problems. Or there may be lots of money but a very difficult family relationship. We go back and forth between those problems. We should respect life on that mundane level, because the only way to implement our vision for society is to bring it down to the situation of a single household.

Becoming a family person also means taking pride in the wisdom of your family heritage. From the Shambhala point of view, respecting your family and your upbringing has nothing to do with separating yourself from others or becoming arrogant about your ancestry. Rather, it is based on realizing that the structure and experience of family life actually reflect the deep-seated wisdom of a culture. That wisdom has been passed down to you, and it is actually present in your everyday, domestic life. So by appreciating your family tradition, you are opening yourself further to the richness of the world.

I remember very clearly the experience of discovering my own connection to family heritage. I was born in a cowshed in East Tibet, where people have never seen a tree. The people of that region live on pasture land that has no trees or even bushes. They subsist on meat and milk products throughout the whole year. I was born a son of this genuine earth, the son of a peasant. At a very early age I was recognized as a tulku, or incarnate lama, and I was taken to the Surmang monasteries to receive my training and become a monk. So, almost from birth, I was taken out of my family situation and placed in a monastic environment. I was always called by my religious name, Trungpa Rinpoche. Nevertheless, I never forgot my birth.

When I moved to the monastery, my mother accompanied me and stayed with me for several years, until I was old enough to begin my formal education. Once when I was about four or five I asked my mother, “Mother, what is our name?” She was very shy. She said, “What do you mean by
our
? You know that your name is Trungpa Rinpoche.” But I insisted. I asked, “What is our name? Our family name? Where do we come from?” And she said, “Well, you should forget that. It’s a very humble name, and you might be ashamed of it.” But I still insisted, saying, “What is our family name? What is it?”

At the time I was playing with some pickled radishes that are fed to horses. I was picking up these little pickled radishes off the floor outside the monastery kitchen. Tulkus are not supposed to eat them, but I was chewing on one, and I kept saying, “Mother, what is our name? What is our family name?” I was about to bite into another pickled radish, which was dirty, and she was very concerned, and she was so shy. But she was also intrigued that I had asked. We had an intense moment of relating with each other.

I remember that it was a sunny day, and the sun shone from a window in the roof onto her face. She looked old and young at the same time. I kept asking, “What is our family name?” And finally she said, “Mukpo, Mukpo of course. But don’t bite that pickle! It’s for the horses.” I’m afraid I did bite it, and I remember chewing it. It was very crunchy and tasted something like a tsukemono, a kind of Japanese pickle, and I liked it very much. I looked at my mother and asked, “Does that mean I’m Mukpo too?” She wasn’t quite sure. She said, “Well, you are Rinpoche!” Then I distinctly remember asking her whether I was her son who came out of her body, and at first she said, “Yes.” But then she said, “Well, maybe I’m an inhuman being, a subhuman being. I have a woman’s body; I had an inferior birth. Please go back to your quarters.” And she took me in her arms and carried me from the kitchen annex to my quarters. Nonetheless, I have kept the name Mukpo as my family name, my identity and pride.

My mother was a very gentle person. As far as I know, she never did anything aggressive, and she was always accommodating and kind to others. I learned a great deal about the principles of human society from the wisdom of my mother.

In modern times, the emphasis has shifted away from the family as the focus of society. Earlier, the focus on the family was partly a matter of survival. For example, before there were hospitals and doctors, a woman often relied on her mother to help her deliver her children and for help in raising the children. But now, medical research has incorporated the grandmothers’ wisdom, and children are delivered by doctors in a hospital maternity ward. In most areas, the grandparents’ wisdom is no longer needed, and they have no role to play. They end up in an old age home or a retirement community, and occasionally they come to visit their grandchildren and watch how nicely they play.

In some societies, people used to set up shrines to venerate their ancestors. Even today, in such a modern society as Japan, there is still a strong tradition of ancestor worship. You may think that such practices are purely a function of primitive thinking or superstition, but in fact, the veneration of your ancestral lineage can be a sign of respect for the accumulated wisdom of your culture. I am not suggesting that we reinstate ancestor worship, but it is necessary to appreciate that, for many thousands of years, human beings have been collecting wisdom. We should appreciate the accomplishments of our ancestors: that human beings learned to make tools, that they developed knives and bows and arrows, that they learned to cut down trees, to cook their food and to add spices to it. We should not ignore the contributions of the past.

How to construct a building has thousands of years of history behind it. First human beings lived in caves; then they learned how to build huts. Then they learned how to construct a building with pillars and columns. Finally they learned how to construct a building without columns in the center, with arches spanning the ceiling, which is a remarkable discovery. Such wisdom has to be respected. It is not regarded as a setting-sun approach at all. Many people must have been crushed when they tried to build a structure without central columns and it collapsed. People must have sacrificed their lives until a model was developed that worked. You might say such an accomplishment is insignificant, but on the other hand, the failure to appreciate the resourcefulness of human existence—which we call basic goodness—has become one of the world’s biggest problems.