The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (28 page)

As we go on, little pimples begin to burst in our lives, little uptightnesses begin to resolve, little bubbles of emotionalism begin to burst themselves into nowhere out of the openness, and things begin to cook. At a given point, we may experience that we are cooking too much or not cooking enough. But those problems are always arbitrary: when we are in a good mood, we think we are doing well, that we are well cooked; but when we are not doing so well, we feel we are undercooked, and things are getting sterile and stagnant. It goes on and on. Pros and cons and pros and cons, one after another, take place all the time, but they are not particularly a big deal. The important point is to wake ourselves up each time we are cooked, so to speak.

Humor and inquisitive mind are happening constantly. Sometimes the world becomes very bright, extraordinarily bright. The brightness and the articulation of the world seem to become a hang-up, and we are almost tempted to close our eyes and ears. But having failed in that, we still go on. And sometimes it’s more a nuisance: the world becomes more of a nuisance, and the path becomes more of a nuisance as well. The whole journey is just driving us crazy—such a nuisance, such a problem. That’s where the need for bravery comes in. If we begin to be brave, we will be able to see how phenomena work. That is to say, we will really
see
how phenomena work, rather than having an intellectual or case-history kind of understanding of phenomena. We will see how phenomena work, how the world works, how things operate in our lives. At that point, experience becomes very penetrating. Some kinds of understanding or realization are hard to take, but we need to push further, to take an immense leap all the time. We need very much to take that kind of leap. Sometimes, looking back, we wonder why we are doing all this, and sometimes we think, why not? Sometimes there is no choice, and sometimes there is a choice, but we would like to find some contrast to that choice. So we have all kinds of relationships to the path, almost love affairs.

This particular journey is not a very easy one, absolutely not easy at all. It demands a lot from us. There’s so much demand, but at the same time, some element of gentleness begins to arise in us. We might say we become carefree, but that does not necessarily mean being devoid of responsibility. We begin to realize that life is quite rich, apart from the complaints—and even the complaints seem to be quite colorful. We begin to pick up percolating bubbles here and there, which begin to crack up, and we begin to find that after all, maybe life is worth celebrating. Something is taking place; no complaints need to be made at this point. Everything is churning up and processing through all along. Something is definitely beginning to take place, which is pleasant—not particularly pleasurable, but pleasant. And why not? It makes sense, although that’s not the point.

We actually feel it, we actually experience it. There’s something very humorous and delightful about the whole thing. But once more, the clarity begins to become an irritating problem. More and more bright visions come to our heads, which doesn’t mean we begin to see bunny rabbits or Jehovah riding on a cat. The bright vision I am talking about is the experience of redness, the experience of blueness, the experience of greenness, the experience of yellowness. It includes all the perceptual levels of phenomenal experience, rather than vision alone. Our life becomes worthwhile. We begin to appreciate something or other, although we still do not know exactly what. And somehow, even trying to find out whether we know anything about it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

However, in the back of our minds, there may be some kind of problem: we may come along and actually want to find something out. And we may not find what we want, absolutely not. Our questions may not be answered one by one. But something else is taking place. Maybe the question mark itself is beginning to rot, become disheveled, and turn into a period, full stop. Maybe that is happening. It’s a possibility. And that seems to be the process of the whole journey: dissolving the question mark into a full stop. The question mark becomes a statement or an exclamation, rather than a hollow line longing to be filled by answers.

Five Styles of Creative Expression

You could work with the five buddha family principles by picking up a piece of stone or a twig and approaching it from each of its five different aspects. With each family, a whole different perspective will begin to develop
.

I
N DISCUSSING GENERAL
aesthetic appreciation and creative work, I would like to discuss five styles, traditionally known as the five buddha families. By working with the five buddha families, we are trying to develop some basic understanding of how to see things in their absolute essence, their own innate nature. We can use this knowledge with regard to painting or poetry or arranging flowers or making films or composing music. It is also connected with relationships between people. The five buddha family principles seem to cover a whole new dimension of perception. They are very important at all levels of perception and in all creative situations.

In tantric iconography, the five buddha families are arrayed in the center and the four cardinal points of a mandala. The
buddha
family is in the center. It is the basic coordinate, basic wisdom, and is symbolized by a wheel and the color blue.
Vajra
is in the east and is connected with the dawn. It is symbolized by the color white and by the vajra scepter.
¹
It is the sharpness of experience, as in the morning when we wake up.
Ratna
is in the south. It is associated with richness and is symbolized by a jewel and the color yellow. Ratna is connected with midday, when we begin to need refreshment and nourishment.
Padma
is in the west and is symbolized by the lotus and the color red. As our day grows older, we relate with recruiting a lover. It is time to socialize. Or, if we have fallen in love with an antique or with some clothing, it is time to go out and buy it. The last family is
karma
, in the north. It is symbolized by a sword and the color green. Finally we have captured the whole situation: we have everything we need, and there is nothing more to get. So the mandala of the five buddha families represents the progress of a whole day or a whole course of action. We won’t go through the philosophy; we’ll start with the functions of these five principles and their association with composition. There are so many things to say about them, but basically vajra is white and water; ratna is yellow and earth; padma is red and fire; buddha is blue and space or sky; karma is green and wind.

Buddha is in the middle and, being in the middle, is the foundation or the basic ground. This basic ground is usually rather dull because it is too solid. We might have to dig it up and put concrete there, since it is rather uninteresting as it is. It will be interesting only if we know we are going to construct something on it.

Buddha is in the middle because it is the foundation rather than because it is the most important. Buddha could also be the environment, or the oxygen that makes it possible for the other principles to function. It has that sedate, solid quality. In terms of visuals, it is the uninteresting part, the waiting for something to happen. Often the buddha quality is necessary to create contrast between the other colorful types: vajra, ratna, padma, and karma. We need buddha as the moderator, so to speak.

Buddha is somewhat desolate, too spacious. It is like visiting a campsite where only the stones from old campfires are left. There’s a sense of its having been inhabited for a long time, but for the time being, no one is there. The inhabitants were not killed; it wasn’t a violent move—they just had to leave the place. It’s like the caves where Indians used to live, or like the caves in France with the prehistoric paintings. There is a sense of the past, but at the same time it has no particular characteristics. It is very dull, quite possibly in the plains, very flat. Buddha is connected with the color blue. Buddha family art is simple and unobtrusive. It is very direct, but very simple. The buddha family artist tends to use a medium that is heavy and the color black or blue.

Vajra is the sense of sharpness, precision. The color of vajra is white. It is cold and desolate, because everything has to be analyzed in its own terms. Vajra expression deals with objects on their own merits. It never leaves any space, never neglects anything. Vajra is winter, white, austere. Black and white. For example, the ground has its own way of freezing, and trees and plants have their way of freezing. The ground carries the snowfall in a distinctive way. Trees, on the other hand, have an entirely different way of carrying snow, depending on whether their leaves have fallen off or they are evergreens. Vajra is very cold and desolate, but it is also sharp and precise. It requires a lot of focusing.

Vajra is the cold and desolate winter landscape, but less hostile than the karma family. Ingmar Bergman’s movies are very vajra. He gets the all-pervasive winter quality, the sharp quality like a winter morning, crystal clear, icicles sharp and precise. But it’s not completely desolate; there are lots of things to be intrigued by. It’s not empty, but full of all sorts of thought-provoking sharpness. Vajra is connected with the east, the dawn, the morning. It has a sharp silver quality, the morning-star quality.

Vajra art is white, with maybe a suggestion of gold or blue. Sculpturally, it would be metallic, possibly aluminum. It could be destructive art, like a machine built in such a way that it destroys itself—the machine goes beep, beep, beep and then just does its number. If it is painting, it is waterlike and not necessarily representational.

Ratna is related with autumn, fertility, richness. It is richness in the sense of pure restlessness. Trees must bear fruit to be an orchard, for instance. When the fruit is ripe and completely rich, it automatically falls to the ground asking to be eaten up. Ratna has a kind of giving-away quality. It is luscious and extraordinarily rich and open.

Ratna has the quality of midmorning. It is very colorful, but predominantly yellow, connected with the sun’s rays and with gold. Whereas vajra is connected with crystal, ratna is connected with the richness of gold, amber, saffron. It has a sense of depth, real earthiness rather than texture. In comparison, vajra is purely texture and has a crispy quality rather than fundamental depth. Ratna is very solid and earthy, but it is not as earthy as buddha, which is dull earthy, uninteresting earthy. Ratna is earthy because it is rich. It is ripe and earthy, like a gigantic tree that falls to the ground and begins to rot and grow mushrooms all over it and is enriched by all kinds of weeds growing around it. There is a sense that animals could nest in that big log. Its color begins to turn yellow, and its bark begins to peel off to show the inside of the tree, which is very rich and very solid and definite. If you decided to take it away and use it as part of a garden arrangement, it would be impossible because it would crumble, fall apart. It would be too heavy to carry, anyway.

Ratna is very rich, yellow, gold. Ratna painting tends to be the least successful, because people overdo it, like a portrait on gold or an overdone flower. Ratna art should be rich, crisp, and powerful; dignified, opulent, and regal.

Padma is connected with the color red and with the spring season. The harshness of winter is just about to become softened by the expectation of summer. Even the harshness of ice is softened when snowflakes begin to become soggy snowflakes. It is the meeting of the two seasons, so it has a halfway-through quality. From that point of view, spring is quite unlike autumn, which has definite qualities of ripening and developing things.

Padma is very much connected with facade. It has no feeling of solidity or texture but is purely concerned with colors, the glamorous qualities. Padma is concerned with output rather than input. In regard to its health or fundamental survival, padma is not concerned with a survival mentality at all. Thus it is connected with sunset. The visual quality of a reflection is more important than its being, so padma is involved with art rather than science or practicality.

Padma is a reasonable location, a place where wildflowers can grow, a perfect place to have animals roaming about. It is like a highland plateau in Tibet at lambing season, with lambs prancing about and eating wildflowers. There are herbs; it is filled with thyme. Padma is a place of meadows. There are gentle rocks, not intrusive, suitable for young animals to play among.

Padma is often misinterpreted as sweet or beautiful, like pop art or Indian posters, kind of overdecorated with beauty and seductive. But that seems to be misleading. True padma art is very luscious and colorful, absolutely brilliant color. It also has curves and shapes. One stroke of color doesn’t make your mind interested in it, but padma art has curves, like a lotus.

Karma, strangely enough, is connected with summer. It is the efficiency of karma that connects it with summer. In summer everything is active, everything is growing. There are all kinds of insects, all kinds of discomforting things, all kinds of activities going on, all kinds of growth. During the summer, there are thunderstorms and hailstorms. There is a sense that you are never left to enjoy the summer; something is always moving in order to maintain itself. It’s a bit like late spring, but it is more fertile, because it sees that things are fulfilled at the right moment. The color of karma is green. The feeling of karma is like after sunset: late in the day, dusk, and early night. Whereas ratna has tremendous confidence, the karma of the summer is still competing, trying to give birth.

Karma art is the worst, demonic and black. A black panther is an example of karma art. It is not destruction alone, but more like trying to understand the meaning of a thundercloud. The cloud that comes before a thunderstorm has a quality of potential destruction or threat.

The five buddha families are associated with colors, elements, landscapes, directions, seasons—with any aspect of the phenomenal world, as well as describing people’s individual styles. In describing people’s styles, each family is associated with both a neurotic and an enlightened style. The neurotic expression of any buddha family can be transmuted into its wisdom or enlightened aspect. Buddha neurosis is the quality of being spaced out rather than spacious. It is often associated with an unwillingness to express oneself. Another quality of buddha neurosis is that we couldn’t be bothered, we just sit there. The neurotic expression of vajra is anger and intellectual fixation. If we become fixated on a particular logic, the sharpness of vajra can become rigidity. In the neurotic sense, the richness of ratna manifests as being completely fat, extraordinarily ostentatious. We expand constantly and indulge ourselves to the level of insanity. Padma neurosis is connected with passion, a grasping quality, a desire to possess. We are completely wrapped up in desire and want only to seduce the world, without concern for real communication. The neurotic quality of karma is connected with jealousy, comparison, and envy. There are also five wisdoms that go with the five families. Buddha wisdom is all-encompassing spaciousness. Vajra wisdom is clear and precise, like reflections in a mirror or reflecting pool. Ratna wisdom is equanimity; it is expansive, extending. Padma wisdom is discriminating, seeing the details of things. Karma wisdom is the automatic fulfillment of all actions.