The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (30 page)

The same principle applies to your experience of your own life, in terms of visual perception and your understanding of iconography. There is a basic iconographic pattern in the universe, like the existence of the seasons and the elements, but how we react to that is individual. The path of buddhadharma does not try to unify everything and reduce everyone to good little tantric robots. The intent is to heighten individuality, but within the framework of some common world. Such a framework is actually very questionable at this point, although it performs in that way. In the end, all barriers are broken through and bondages annihilated. At that point, there is room for
that
and
this
to be one. But that takes a lot of steps, a lot of time, effort, and discipline.

The phenomenal world is your own world. Therefore, we cannot say that this phenomenal world is always predictable, that when I see blue you must also see blue. Maybe your sense of blue is more like my sense of red. It could seem that we are agreeing: “Oh, yes, that’s a blue light. This one is a red light.” But who knows? Nobody knows. So let us not make the psychological assumption that everything is secure. Perceptions are entirely different from this point of view, much beyond the level of seeing blue or not. I know this idea is very frightening and threatening—but let it be threatening. Even your version of being threatened may be entirely different from my version of being threatened. We might be using the same word but in the final realization come up with completely different ideas. There is no point in comparing our worlds. No reference point is necessary. That seems to be simply wasting our energy.

I am afraid what we are discussing is rather dull. It is not quite the same as taking a journey to Peru and seeing the Indians in the Andes or visiting the Tibetans in the Himalayas. Such things have an extra kick, like opium. But we have got to get back to basics sooner or later—the sooner the better. The more entangled we get, the more problems we find. It is like an ingrown toenail: as the nail grows into the toe more and more, finally the whole leg has to be amputated. We don’t want to get to that point, so an early warning is best—years ahead, rather than five minutes. Such an early warning system is the duty of somebody who speaks for the teachings.

Getting back to this world of ours, it is not particularly attractive, exciting, and fantastic. It’s okay, or maybe it is terrible; I can’t speak for everyone. But on the whole, this world is a very anxious one. Whether you are happy or sad, whether you are exuberantly joyful or miserable, it’s still an anxious world we’re living in. According to Buddhist tradition, anxieties can be transformed into mindfulness and awareness. Anxiety itself can be a reminder, a nudge that keeps waking us up again and again. It’s up to us whether we try to get rid of that reminder and make everything smooth, beautiful, and fantastic, or whether we try to make the world into a training ground to learn more, which I suggest is preferable.

We are working with iconography as a journey, rather than as entertainment or excitement or cultural fascination. In attempting to understand iconography, one possibility is to view the whole thing as very sacred. If we manage to see all the little details, we might be saved some day, because the merit of what we see could be a source of deliverance. Another possibility is that by understanding iconography, we might be able to figure out the psychological geography of the Buddhist tradition of how to develop freedom. But both of those approaches seem to be a waste of time. We are not talking about merit or freedom, but about personal experience—how we can actually see this world, how we can live better, if you like. It is not so goal oriented, but it is about how we can live properly right now. How can we live our lives with all the garbage and rubbish that exist around us, amid all kinds of hustle and bustle and threats on our life, hassled by our kids and our parents, threatened by rent problems and money problems? How can we make all that into visual dharma? That seems to be the point. So visual dharma does not mean making everything fantastic, but making something actually happen. It is not a greater Disneyland. By the way, I think Disneyland is one of the best things America has produced. It shows the mirage quality of life and the many different ways one can be amused and entertained. People go to Disneyland and take it very casually, as a day off. “We are doing something for the kids.” That’s not true; you do it for yourself. It’s just like Sesame Street—the parents watch it more than the kids do.

Magic in this case is power. Not power over others, but power beyond “over others.” It is the power within oneself. You have enough strength and exertion and energy to view things as they are, personally, properly, and directly. You have the chance to experience the brightness of life and the haziness of life, which is also a source of power. The fantastically sharp-edged quality of life can be experienced personally and directly. There is a powerful sense of perception available to you. And it is realistic, as far as your notion of reality goes. You begin to find some footholds or stirrups, so you can ride and climb much better, so that when you climb a mountain you are not committing suicide. And you don’t distort the teachings through little twists of logic. It applies to you personally and it actually works. In contrast, the magical power of a magic show is purely a children’s game, in which we only want to prove that some kind of supernormal power exists. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but that approach seems to be for the birds.

The visual setup is always unique, shifty. It’s not that visual objects themselves shift, but the individual perceiver’s mind shifts constantly. So the whole thing has to be clipped together. Some of those visual shifts become deadly ones—black magic, if you’d like to call it that. If you take the attitude of self-destruction and ego, then visual or auditory perception becomes destructive because your relationship to it is based on your aggression. But that aggression bounces back on you, and you yourself become the victim. On the other hand, visual perception can be creative and open, the most powerful perception of all. It can be realistic and powerful and clear. And when extreme clarity takes place, that also brings a sense of humor.

When you click in to the iconography of the cosmos, you are able to experience a sense of reality that does not depend on reinforcement. You don’t have to ask your neighbor, “Am I seeing reality?” The experience is unconditional. Nobody has to confirm your experience—you can confirm it yourself. If you confirmed yourself constantly, heavy-handedly, that would be like incest, but in this case, the self-confirmation is just right. It’s like sipping, tasting, swallowing, and digesting properly. This is the visual and auditory perceptual world of magic we experience.

It is not true that there is no magic these days, that we are in the dark ages. A lot of people say that we are too late, we have lost our chance, so we need to wait for some savior to turn up. The only thing we can do is hope for something in the future or emulate people from the past, since presently nobody is getting into anything at all and the whole world has become flat. A lot of people are frustrated; therefore, they have to say such things. It is quite true for them; they are speaking on their own behalf. Such people say that enlightenment has not existed since the time of the Buddha. These days nobody attains enlightenment. And some people say that the next enlightenment plague might take place in another five hundred years, but not now. So the only thing we can do now is pray to be reborn at the right time. We’d better be good boys and girls in order to be candidates for that.

A similar approach, of either a past orientation or a future orientation, takes place in Christianity. But somehow, that whole approach is becoming old hat. Gimmicks are invented right and left to convince us, but we are not quite convinced. We are ready for a firsthand account of what’s going on, rather than just listening to stories. Whether we are going to be in Jerusalem next year, the next seder, tomorrow, or the next hour doesn’t really matter—the only thing that matters is whether Jerusalem exists now, at this very moment! This is not an emergency, but having a sense of precision. It is a direct understanding that this world of ours is not a future-oriented world or a past-oriented world. It is neither that once we’ve been saved this world is going to be ours, nor that if we become like past good people, we will have the privilege of using their leftovers. This world of ours is personal, real, and direct. Iconography exists in that real world, which seems to be the most magical one of all.

The only magic that exists is this life, this world, the particular phenomena we are all experiencing right this moment. Right now, right here, you are in this magic. For instance, in giving this talk, I am a captive speaker and you are a captive audience. We can’t just walk out in the middle of a sentence—if we were to try to do that, the implications would linger with us for a long time. So we cannot wipe out our past, present, or future. Magic is direct and personal and lingers in our state of being. It is choiceless magic.

One Stroke

Flower arranging and making a brush stroke are unique and absolutely real. You could actually sum up the history of your life in one stroke—that’s possible
.

I
NDIVIDUAL EXPRESSIONS
are cultural expressions at the same time. But to begin with, you really have to understand culture. Otherwise it would be like showing a grandmother how to suck an egg or, as we say in Tibet, trying to teach Karmapa the alphabet. A big problem in this country is that people think culture is outside of them. You have American culture, you have a man on the moon, and all kinds of things that are not you but are cultural. Eating hamburgers and hot dogs is cultural, but you personally may not like them. We have been distorting the distinction between ourselves and culture in this country. But truly speaking, culture is a personal experience; culture is made out of a lot of people, all behaving the same way. Everybody wears shirts and pants, and everybody has a zipper in his fly. That is a cultural thing—but at the same time it’s personal: you need that zipper to zip up! So we really can’t separate cultural and individual from that point of view, particularly in a work of art. You might paint something Americanized; somebody else might paint something Oriental, but the Oriental and Occidental distinction doesn’t apply at this point. Culture is how you behave, how you’ve been told to behave: the transmission from your parents and your friends and how you carry that out. So a work of art cannot be said to be purely cultural or purely individual.

There are two distinct types of Buddhist art, we could say quite safely: that which is purely cultural and that which is basically noncultural. The purely cultural includes ancient sculptures and paintings and architectural designs based on traditional themes. Traditional Buddhist art originated in India at the time of Emperor Ashoka. It includes Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art, Southeast Asian art, and Tibetan art, which is basically an amalgamation of Indian classical art with some Chinese elements. But no matter which country it is from, or whether it is modern or ancient, traditional Buddhist art is much the same in its approach, although the cultural expressions vary. Basically it depicts the Buddha or various types of buddhas, the various lifestyles of the Buddha and other great teachers and their social setups, honoring teachers by means of different thrones, different foregrounds, and different backgrounds. The teachers are surrounded by various disciples, who are equally highly thought-of people, by flying goddesses, and by animals roaming quietly in the background. The sun and moon are shining, and so forth.

The second type of Buddhist art, which developed out of those traditional forms, is basically noncultural. It is a direct aesthetic expression of meditation and devotion. Some sense of faith and trust can be presented in such works of art. For instance, at the Ajanta and Ellora caves in India, built during the reign of Emperor Ashoka, a freestanding temple was built from a huge rocky mountain: the mountain was carved out into rooms and doorways and pillars. It was not particularly meant to be monumental, but it was built functionally. Seeing a gigantic rocky mountain as material to carve temples and statues out of is something like seeing a sheet of paper or canvas in front of you as material to make pictures out of. But the inspiration seems to be at a different level. Nowadays people’s inspiration is smaller. If somebody wanted to carve a whole mountain into a temple, people would obviously regard that person as being on a trip, not only because of the costs, but also because of the unreasonability of such an idea. However, I don’t think that is a sign of degeneration, particularly. We mustn’t think of ourselves as less enlightened and the people of those days as more enlightened. I think it is a cultural change. The human world is becoming more refined, in the sense that we pay more attention to comfort and luxury. We are becoming less hard, and the things around us are easier to handle. Nevertheless, that monumental aspect of art is always present in the noncultural approach. And that noncultural approach to art comes from the sitting practice of meditation.

Once the practice of meditation is developed and you begin to see yourself clearly, then you also begin to see your environment clearly. You don’t have to be labeled an artistic person, necessarily; anyone can work on that kind of perception. The only obstacles are hesitation and lack of interest. The sitting practice of meditation allows a sense of solidness and a sense of slowness and the possibility of watching one’s mind operating all the time. Out of that, a sense of expansion slowly begins to develop and, at the same time, the awareness that you have been missing a lot of things in your life. You have been too busy to look for them or see them or appreciate them. So as you begin to meditate, you become more perceptive. Your mind becomes clearer and clearer, like an immaculate microscope lens.

Out of that clarity, various styles of perception begin to develop, which are the styles of the five buddha families. So artistic expression develops from meditation. To be an artist, one needs mental training through the practice of meditation. That mental training automatically brings with it physical training. That is, when the mind begins to function in a more relaxed way, that is reflected in one’s body. Then one begins to develop a sense of humor and appreciation as well. With such clarity, nothing can be distorted.