The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (64 page)

If anyone gets too near the wall that ego has built, it feels insecure, thinks that it is being attacked, and then thinks that the only way to defend itself is to ward off the threat by showing an aggressive attitude. However, when one experiences a threat—whether it is illness, undesirable characteristics, or literal opponents, the only way to develop a balanced state of being is, not to try to get rid of those things, but to understand them and make use of them. Thus, the development of egolessness—the opposite of ego’s game—leads one to the concept of ahimsa, or nonviolence. Ahimsa is a nonviolent way of dealing with a situation.

To develop ahimsa, or the nonviolent approach, first of all you have to see that your problems are not really trying to destroy you. Usually, we immediately try to get rid of our problems. We think that there are forces operating against us and that we have to get rid of them. The important thing is to learn to be friendly toward our problems, by developing what is called metta in Pali, maitri in Sanskrit, or loving-kindness in English translation. All of these problems and difficulties are fundamentally generated from the concept of duality, or separateness. On the one hand, you are very aware of other and also very aware of yourself, and you want to do something to work with and make use of others. But you are unable to do this, because there is such a big gap between others and yourself. So a sense of threat and separation develops. That is the root of the problem.

At a certain point, you develop a genuine aspiration to get rid of the wall—the separation between you and others. However, you should not think in terms of having to fight with and defeat these problems. Furthermore, you should not develop the idea of being on a battlefield because this just solidifies the problems. In relationship to this situation, the martial arts are quite interesting, because of their way of dealing with problems and exercising the real art of war.

To work with this dichotomy of self and others, first it is necessary to consider the facts and patterns of life, that is, your behavior, your approach to communication, and your way of life overall. There are certain aspects of your life that are not balanced, but those very things can be developed into a balanced state of being, which is the main thing that we need to achieve. Three things make for imbalance: ignorance, hatred, and desire. Now the fact is, they are not bad. Good and bad have nothing to do with this. Rather, we are dealing only with imbalance and balance. We are not discussing only the spiritual aspect of our lives or only the mundane aspect, but the whole of life. In the unbalanced way of behaving, one does not deal properly with a situation. One’s action is not appropriate. One action overlaps another, and the action is not fully completed. This boils down to not being fully aware in the situation and not feeling present. The present moment of action is not properly accomplished, for when a person is halfway through dealing with the present action, he is already drifting on to the next action. This produces a kind of indigestion in the mind, for there is something always left incomplete, like leaving a fruit half-eaten.

If you are picking fruit from a tree, you may see a particular fruit that looks delicious, ready to eat. You really want to eat that piece of fruit. But as you are biting into it, you see another fruit on the tree, one that looks even better. So you immediately leap up and grab that piece of fruit as well. In that way, you keep stuffing yourself with one fruit after another. You end up eating fruit that is not properly ripened, which finally produces indigestion.

Therefore, the idea of balance is very down-to-earth and simple. There are certain patterns of behavior which are not balanced, and which are caused either by ignorance, hatred, passion, or a combination of these factors.

Ignorance in this case means that someone is not able to accomplish his or her present work thoroughly. Ignorance ignores what is, because your mind is either occupied by experiences from the past or expectations of the future. Therefore, you are never able to be now. Ignorance means ignoring the present.

Another problem is aggression. If you are aggressive, in terms of your emotions or your sentiments, you are not developing your strength at all but you are just trying to defend yourself in a rather feeble and clumsy way. In the state of aggression, you are constantly trying to fight with someone else. Your mind is so occupied with your opponent that you are continuously defensive, trying to defend yourself in the fear that something will happen to you. Therefore, you are not able to see a positive alternative, that one could actually deal effectively with problems. Instead, your mind is clouded, and you do not have the clarity of mind to deal with situations. So you see, the ability to respond and act appropriately in situations has nothing to do with cranking up aggression. On the other hand, it is not particularly based on the pacifist idea of not fighting at all. We have to try to find a middle ground, where one engages the energy fully but without any aggression.

The real way of the warrior is not to become aggressive and not to act against or be hostile to other people. Normally, when we hear that there is some challenge to overcome, we tend to think of an aggressive action or response, which is wrong. We have to learn that aggression and using or channeling our energy properly are quite different from one another.

According to some traditional Chinese Buddhist sources, monks in monasteries practiced judo, karate, and other martial arts—but not in order to challenge, kill, or destroy other people. Rather, these martial arts were used to learn to control their minds and to develop a balanced way of dealing with situations without involving oneself in hatred and the panic of ego. When one practices the martial arts, one appears to be engaged in aggressive activities. Nevertheless one is not fundamentally being aggressive, from the point of view of generating or acting out of hatred. The true practice of the martial arts is a question of developing a state in which one is being fully confident, fully knowing what one is and what one is trying to do.

What is necessary is to learn to understand the other side of any situation, to make friends with the opponent or the problem in order to see the opponent clearly, and to understand what move he is going to make next. This idea is put into practice in Tibet in the study of logic. When I was studying in Tibet, we learned a very elaborate system of logic, where you don’t just argue a point any way you want to, but you have to use particular logical rules and terms. When your opponent in a debate makes an argument, you are allowed to answer him or her with only one of four possible responses: “Why?” “Not quite so,” Wrong,” or “No.” These are the only four answers you can give. The other person can make their argument and attack you in many different ways, but you can only use these four phrases to refute them. In order to choose the right phrase, you must know exactly what your opponent is going to say in the next ten minutes. You don’t just know; you
feel
it, because you are so much one with the situation. Theoretically at least, you don’t have any combative feelings toward your opponent. Therefore, there is no aggression to produce a blinding effect on you or to make you ignorant of what is going on. You see the situation very clearly, and you’re able to deal with it more effectively.

In general, if you want to develop a really effective way of challenging something, you have to develop a lot of maitri, or loving-kindness toward your opponents. Here again, the term
loving-kindness
or even
compassion
is generally rather sentimental and rather weak in the English language. It has certain connotations connected with the popular concept of charity and being kind to your neighbors. The concept of maitri is different than that. In part, of course, it does involve a sentimental approach, since there is always room for emotions. However, maitri is not just being kind and nice. It is the understanding that one has to become one with the situation. That does not particularly mean that one becomes entirely without personality and has to just accept whatever the other person suggests. Rather, you have to overcome the barrier that you have formed between yourself and others. If you remove this barrier and open yourself, then automatically real understanding and clarity will develop in your mind. The whole point is that, in order to successfully challenge someone, first of all you must develop loving-kindness and a feeling of longing for openness, so that there is no desire to challenge anyone at all. If one has a desire to conquer or win a challenge against another, then in the process of challenging him or her, the mind is filled with this desire and one is not really able to challenge the other properly. Going beyond challenge is learning the art of war in the Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese traditions, where real warriors do not think in terms of challenge, nor are their minds occupied with the battlefield or with past or future consequences. The warrior is completely one with bravery, one with that particular moment. He or she is fully concentrated in the moment, because he knows the art of war. You are entirely skilled in your tactics: you do not refer to past events or develop your strength through thinking about future consequences and victory. You are fully aware at that moment, which automatically brings success in the challenge.

From this point of view, it is therefore very important that the warrior really be able to become one with the situation and develop maitri. Then, the whole force of opposition becomes one with you. The opposing force needs another strength coming, advancing, toward him. As the opponent is approaching you, the closer he gets, he expects more and more to encounter another strength coming toward him. When that strength is not there at all, he just collapses. He misses the target, collapses, and his whole force becomes self-defeating. It is like someone trying to fight his hallucinations: as he tries to strike them harder, he himself falls on the ground. That is the whole point: when you do not produce another force of hatred, the opposing force collapses. This is also connected with how to deal with one’s thoughts in the practice of meditation. If one does not try to repress one’s thoughts, but one just accepts them and doesn’t get involved with them, then the whole structure of thoughts becomes one with oneself and is no longer disturbing.

The practice of yoga, which has been taught through the Indian tradition, also has some connections with the art of war. In yoga everything is based on the concept of developing strength within oneself. Generally, when we talk about strength, we tend to think of developing the power to overcome or control someone else. We think of strength as a force that we are lacking, which can be developed in order to challenge and defeat someone.

In the martial arts, one’s strength or power comes from the development of a balanced state of mind altogether. That is to say, one is going back, or returning, to the origin of the strength that exists within oneself. If one had to develop new strength through gymnastics or physical practices alone, such strength created out of gymnastic practice, as it were, would have no mental strength to reinforce it, and it would tend to collapse. But the kind of strength we are talking about here is known as strength in its own right, the strength of fearlessness. Fearlessness in Tibetan is
jigme
. To be without fear is to have great strength. The realization of fearlessness is the genuine martial art.

Political Consciousness

P
OLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
has a profound and firm meaning. Furthermore it is wrong to think that “politics” means to be inspired by an attitude of self-deception and to think that one’s shortcomings are not seen by others. Not only that, it is also wrong to consider politics as just the cunning mind that is able to skillfully protect one’s own interests and defeat those of others.

However, if one asks what politics is, it would be correct to say that it is the ability of all reflections of political situations to arise in the mirror of discriminating awareness at once. It could be described as the ability to look joyfully in the mirror of mind with a relaxed mind free from fearful projections and doubt. Therefore, political consciousness is the great confidence that is not afraid to be inspired by unprejudiced views and it is the ability not to be swayed by bodily illness or the mind’s sorrows and joys.

Furthermore, it is not like the equanimity that results from the power of samadhi and meditation. As for the political attitude, it is the uncorrupted awareness that takes pride in the dignity of human beings. Such an uncorrupted awareness has no need for the support of signs and conventions. Because it exists relaxedly in human beings, a pure, stable, unchanging trust can arise.

Furthermore, it is not a mind of arrogance or pride. The view that is pushed by ambition arises from being tormented by poverty, hunger, and thirst. The actions of a competitive mind, that praises for the sake of personal gain and is envious of others, are far distant from the dignity of human beings. Such is the approach of wolves and crows.

A Buddhist Approach to Politics

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA

Shambhala Review:
To most people who are trying to follow some sort of spiritual path, politics poses a very difficult problem. Many just decide to give up, to bypass it. This doesn’t seem to be a very legitimate way of dealing with such an important part of our lives. Could you give some guidelines from a Buddhist point of view?

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche:
In this country we have the particular problem that we have inherited a lot of things, and even though we want to understand them properly and do the proper thing, still, there are so many extraneous things we have to work through. This makes it somewhat difficult. Generally it is a question of having a sense of responsibility to society. This seems to be the important thing. People involved with a spiritual discipline have a tendency to want nothing to do with their ordinary life; they regard politics as something secular and undesirable, dirty or something. So, to begin with, if a person came with a sense of responsibility to society, that would be a Buddhist approach to politics and also to the social side of life, which is the same, in a sense. There should be a sense of one’s own responsibility, not relying on other people’s help. One’s own economic situation should be self-sufficient; a sense of responsibility begins there. I think one of the problems is that the abstract notion of democracy is misleading. In some sense, a lot of the problem comes from the aggression inherent in our concept of democracy; people begin to feel they have been cheated or have not been allowed enough freedom to do what they want, to say what they want. It lacks a notion of discipline that should go along with it: just throw everything into the big garbage pail and, hopefully, somebody will do the sorting out in our favor. This is a big problem. I think the Buddhist idea of a politician is not so much one of a con man or of a businessman who wins favor with everybody, but someone who simply does what is necessary. Sometimes the situation is such that you have to go through undesirable experiences, even give up your sense of freedom. Sometimes you may even have to allow yourself to step back. I think in this country, politics are based on a kind of bad-mouthing and trying to speak out, which is all right, but which usually amounts to not knowing what to say; one is just copying someone else’s aggression. Then aggression starts to snowball. In some sense, the main point is responsibility, which is important in how the government is run, how the situation is organized (not just ignoring everything completely and regarding it as a bad job). I mean, from a Buddhist point of view, there is some sense of taking an interest, we could say, for the sake of all sentient beings. This means we should take part in it. This does not mean to say you have to take part in riots or blowing up banks or anything like that. But it means to undertake some kind of process whereby you try as much as possible to at least eliminate the byproducts that you inherit. When you begin to do this, then you begin to have a feeling that a fresh start is taking place.