The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (35 page)

There is enormous challenge and excitement in hopelessness. When you give up, when you enter into complete despair with hopelessness after hopelessness, just before despair and laziness take you over, you begin to develop a sense of humor. You develop a sense of humor, and you don’t become completely lazy and stupid.

Student:
In order for me to begin to attain hopelessness, I have to have some hope. It seems that I have to go back and forth between those two. It seems there has to be that pull from both sides.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The first thing is not hope or a sense of promise as such; it’s more like inquisitiveness, inquisitive mind, which explores constantly, including exploring yourself, your embarrassment about yourself, your insanity, your own confusion. That kind of inquisitiveness is not quite on the level of hope. But it is a definite step. Then, once you have found your hang-ups, your hesitation, then you begin to develop the project of getting rid of that pain and confusion. That’s what we always do anyway. There’s no need for a program for that; that’s just what we always do.

The minute you discover your hesitations, confusions, insanity, and so on, you want to get rid of them. You look for all kinds of remedies. You shop around and you find that fundamentally none of them work. They may work great temporarily, but fundamentally, they don’t work. Then you start questioning. You question the products you bought at the supermarket. You look into each brand, the instructions on the label, and so on. The salespeople are very kind, making suggestions about the products. You go through all that, and you’re still struggling. Then, at a certain point, it becomes necessary to let you have it: to tell you that the only and best remedy is hopelessness—which is your own product. It doesn’t cost any money or energy. You don’t have to go to the supermarket, and it’s cheap and good. It’s organic.

Many of you have already gone through this process. You have looked in the supermarket and seen the ads. You’ve seen it all. Now it’s time to give up hope, even give up hope of attaining enlightenment.

Student:
Does despair come out of a relationship between energy and pain? If you were to fixate on pain, I think that would dissipate energy and bring despair.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, energy is pain in some sense. But it is not one hundred percent. Maybe fifty-fifty. Energy and intelligence create pain. Intelligence in this case means ambition. You feel you have something to achieve that you’re unable to achieve. You feel you might be unable to achieve your goal.

Student:
Sometimes I think I go looking for pain, that I cultivate it, and this seems masochistic. Also, I think I see other people doing the same thing. What do you think of that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think that sounds like a fascination or an occupation—trying to kill boredom. You don’t want to look at the greater pain we’re discussing—the unnameable. In order to avoid seeing that, you do anything to create a petty pain in order to avoid seeing the greater pain of “thisness,” this “thing.”

Student:
You said that the word
tantra
means “continuity,” and that confuses me because my understanding is that one of the basic qualities of an enlightened person is the fact that he is not continuous, he is not solid at all. I thought that solidness was ego, and when he discovers that that’s not real, then he’s free to be not continuous.

Trungpa Rinpoche: Tantra
does mean “continuity.” This kind of continuity cannot be challenged, because this kind of continuity never depends on superficial continuity or discontinuity. It is unconditional continuity. Obviously, the enlightenment experience involves the discontinuity of ego with its fixation, but there is also the element of all-pervasiveness—enlightenment is right now but later as well; we are enlightened now, but we will be more enlightened later. There is a thread of enlightenment that goes on all the time. The sense of the nonexistence of ego is the greatest continuity. So continuity here does not mean continuously relating to a single reference point. There is a state without reference point that is basic the way completely outer space, without stars and galaxies and planets, is basic. The stars, galaxies, and planets may be there or not, but still the space will be there.

S:
And it contains everything.

TR:
It contains nothing in this case, but still it contains itself. It does not need any feedback or maintenance—it does not need anything at all. That is the great umbrella above the little umbrellas.

Student:
Does the discovery of hopelessness take care of itself as you go through your life day by day, or is it something you have to work on? Do you have to go out of your way somehow?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s not easy. It wouldn’t just dawn on you. You have to make a definite jump, which is a very painful one. Quite possibly, you need another person to tell you you are hopeless. That is the role of a guru. You need a spiritual friend who says, “Now you’re hopeless, and you will never be able to do anything. The outlook is full of nothingness.” It seems to be the role of the guru to tell you that you are hopeless or that you will never solve your problem. It has to be a shock of some kind, otherwise it doesn’t work. You would just continue on with your mild complaining of all kinds.

Student:
Rinpoche, would that shock of hopelessness create a sense of depression at that particular moment?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, I hope so.

Student:
I’m having a lot of trouble with your concept of pain. Pain to me is like feeling that I’m bleeding. And when I don’t have that sense of pain, when I’m relieved of it, I say, “Well, I’m not in pain.” My concept of pain is very visceral, and I feel it quite sharply. You’re talking about a kind of pain that is still there when I’m relieved from my visceral pain and feeling good.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think you have a good understanding of what I mean. That’s it. It’s the larger notion, the whole thing: you’re relieved of pain, and then what? There are a lot of loose ends. You try to look at everything officially as extending from one particular point to another particular point. You have certain boundaries that you don’t go beyond. You can’t be bothered. And beyond those boundaries are still greater loose ends. And those loose ends begin to lead back to you. Then you try to tidy them up again. This is the greater thing that we don’t talk about that everybody knows about.

Student:
So these little pains are little things like having to find a job that can be tidied up temporarily.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
And that relates with the greater thing. But, you know, if you have an actual practical task to perform, you perform it.

S:
But isn’t being involved in performing that task some kind of hope? Do you have to give up performing the task?

TR:
No, it’s not as simple as that. You can go ahead and perform your task. But that doesn’t solve your greater problem. Your problem is still there.

S:
But you wouldn’t even have to go through that to realize the larger situation.

TR:
It depends on your intelligence. Some people dream too much, so they have to go through that. And some people already have a realistic vision of the prospects of their life, so they may not have to go through it.

Student:
You talked about the fact that we set up tricks for ourselves, getting involved with encounter groups and so on. We’re tricking ourselves in some way in thinking that we’re being more open and unmasking pain. What happens in hopelessness to those tricks? Does someone who’s hopeless realize the tricks will never stop? That they will never end?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so. That’s good, yes.

Student:
Rinpoche, at the same time, I can’t help but feel that there’s a certain amount of joy attached to realizing the hopelessness of the situation. It seems that there’s a sense of opposites coming together there.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, so what?

S:
Well, it seems kind of incredible, this coming together of joy and pain.

TR:
Well, that’s the point. Hopelessness doesn’t mean that you are miserable particularly. There’s lots of room for energy, more energy and more joy. But
joy
is probably the wrong word—a sense of wholesomeness, healthiness, a sense of well-being because of hopelessness.

S:
But somehow without ego.

TR:
The sense of well-being does not have to have ego particularly.

S:
Are we, evolutionarily speaking, on the verge of hopelessness? If you read the story of Naropa, it seems like Naropa went through so much.

TR:
The level of hopelessness we are talking about came at the beginning of Naropa’s life, before he became a pandit. We haven’t had the level of his hopelessness in dealing with Tilopa yet. That’s a tantric one. This is just the beginning level, which Naropa experienced when he took monk’s vows and joined the monastery.

S:
That sense of hopelessness that made him enter the monastery doesn’t seem particularly hopeless. It sounds more like disillusionment. I mean, if you were talking to your parents about joining a dharma group and so on, you’d talk more about disillusionment with the mundane. . . .

TR:
Yes, but once he entered the monastery, he began to feel that he was inadequate, and he started pushing too hard, speeding, and so forth. Hopelessness begins there.

S:
Then he just wound up going out and looking for a guru.

TR:
No. Then he found his intellect. He put himself together. He became a great pandit. Which probably we will talk about tomorrow.

S:
So the hopelessness you’re talking about is analogous to his hopelessness in the monastic situation.

TR:
Yes. You see, things worked alternatingly. First intuition, then intellect, then intuition, and then the final level of intellect. So this was the first intuition—the desire to enter a monastery. Then he entered the monastery and found hopelessness. Then he found some way that clicked in which he could work with his intellect, some way in which his hopelessness became workable. This involved a big chunk of intellect—studying the Tripitaka to the point of knowing it inside out, and so on. Then he came back to the level of intuition again when he began to look for Tilopa. And finally, when he was completely absorbed in Tilopa’s teaching and had become enlightened, then he went back to intellect again. At that point, instead of being
prajna,
intellect became
jnana,
wisdom.

Student:
Between intellect and intuition, is one more valid than the other?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Both of them are valid, just like your head and arms.

S:
What’s the difference between them?

TR:
Intellect has nothing to do with book learning, becoming a scholar, particularly. It is analytical mind, which is able to see things clearly and precisely. And intuition feels things on the level of pain and pleasure.

TWO

Giving Birth to Intellect

W
E HAVE DISCUSSED
Naropa’s first discovery of pain, or our own discovery of the meaning of Naropa’s example, our own discovery of pain. This is a kind of adolescent level, involved with the discovery of the world and its meanings. Naropa joins a monastery—or you join a meditation center. He becomes part of a vihara, which is parallel with becoming part of our meditation center here.

Then, very interestingly, in the midst of practice, suddenly aggression arises—enormous anger and resentment. One does not recognize where this aggression comes from. One does not even want to trace it back. But this aggression arises. There is the aggression of having been tricked into becoming part of an established, disciplined setup, the aggression that says things should happen properly but they are not functioning the way you expected. The sense of aggression becomes everything. In fact, there is enormous awareness; an almost meditative level of absorption in aggression and resentment takes place. You are resentful that your instructor has been unreasonable to you, has disciplined you unreasonably, blamed something on you that you didn’t do. There is a certain sense of disgust. In the middle of practice, there are occasional thoughts of quitting and leaving the place, and you daydream about how to work out the project of leaving in detail. But there is also some hesitation; or the project becomes so big that you are afraid to embark on it.

All this kind of aggression takes place after you begin to realize pain, the truth of pain, as a definite thing that you cannot ignore, that you cannot forget. This pain is real pain. You experience this not because you trust and believe doctrines you have been told. Rather your real pain has become obvious. It is not somebody’s doctrine. You have discovered your own truth of pain.

This creates a sense of imprisonment, because what you’ve discovered coincides with what is taught in the books. Being imprisoned in this way by your own realization of pain is by no means pleasant. At the same time, it is exciting that in fact you are in immediate and direct communication with the truth. There is some sense of promise, but not a sense of a happy ending.

The more you look into this situation, the more horrific it becomes. That is the course that the aggression takes. You are resentful about something—about the world, the books, the people, the environment, the lifestyle—and at the same time, you resent your own existence, because you are the creator of the pain and you can’t escape from yourself. The more you think about it, the more the whole thing becomes grimmer and grimmer and grimmer. Trying to reach out and kick the nearest piece of furniture doesn’t help. Being rude to your colleagues doesn’t help. Somehow, complaining about the food doesn’t help either. An inevitable depression, a mystical depression, a very powerful one, comes with anger and resentment.