The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (53 page)

Sportsmanship

Skiing in the snow

A red pullover

Drinking cool beer

Be a sportsman in a unisex outfit

Sky-blue with red passion-stripes

Go-go person with wings on your sneakers

Intercontinental cosmopolitan sportsman getting into the love—

More poetry

More literature

Tokyo Cairo New Delhi Taj Mahal Paris

Blond hair of Oslo blond mule blond Pekingese—

Arabs brew good coffee,

But stabbing each other with a jewel-inlaid hack knife is another matter.

Love by telephone

Writing a love letter is creating a mistress

Bachelor creates mistress by making a date

Mind’s duplicity

Run

Kick

Philosopher

Technocrats

Autocrats

Are bound by a unilateral declaration—

Money is no object.

What the wind sweeps,

What the fires burn,

I fall in love

Because love falls into me at home.

Rock is not lovable

But its not-lovableness is lovable.

Take a thistle to bed

And make love to it.

June 5, 1972

Our Seduction

Unavailability is the way,

The path that you have shown to me.

You taught me expectations are false;

You are the embodiment of the truth.

Your glamorous qualities are your teaching;

I surrender to you, oh dakini.

Form is not an image that I can hang on to;

Your formlessness in seduction is your form.

I bow down to your magnificent form.

You are, perhaps, wrapped up in dualistic “this” and “that,”

But my faith in your
is
ness reveals your nature is all-encompassing space.

I love you, my dear.

Because my loving you does not express love and hate,

Your totality expresses the universality of you.

You are glamorous—your dark hair blown by the wind.

Your embryonic bosom contains an openness.

I salute you who are the creator of glamorous qualities which deceive you,

The glamorous quality of earth, of water, of fire, and so forth.

Your universality is thought provoking.

I love you.

June 5, 1972

A Letter to Marpa

Solid Marpa

Our father,

The message of the lineage:

You are the breadwinner.

Without your farm we would starve to death.

Fertilizing

Plowing

Sowing

Irrigating

Weeding

Harvesting;

Without your farm we are poverty stricken.

Your stout body,

Sunburnt face;

Ordering Damema to serve beer for a break;

Evidence of the three journeys you made to India in you—

We sympathize with you for your son’s death:

It was not the fault of the horse,

It was the seduction of the stirrup in which his foot was caught

As his head smashed into the boulders of conceptualization.

Yet you produced more sons:

Eagle-like Milarepa who dwells in the rocks,

Snow lion-like Gampopa whose lair is in the Gampo hills,

Elephant-like Karmapas who majestically care for their young.

Tiger-like Chögyam roaming in foreign jungles.

As your lineage says, “The grandchildren are more accomplished than the parents.”

Your garuda egg hatches

As the contagious energy of mahamudra conquers the world.

We are the descendants of lions and garudas.

June 6, 1972

Aphorisms

You bought it from your father, you sold it to your mother,

You shared the profit with friends;

Thieves can’t steal this wealth—

Your family heirloom is arrogance.

When the scholar’s head rots

His nose becomes deaf.

It’s the fault of the blind students

Who fail to see his head.

The lecture of the newly appointed teacher

Sounds like a general’s orders.

It’s the fault of the senior students

For asking profound questions.

Mistaking a charlatan for a savior

And offering him one’s life with blind faith

Is like falling asleep on a borrowed horse:

The horse will return to its owner.

The restless poet who composes

A verse in praise of mountain solitude

Is like a criminal turned judge

Writing a textbook on law.

The insight which transcends mind

And the mind which activates awareness

Are like a healthy youth

Who has good eyes and legs.

November 7, 1972

The Nameless Child

T
HERE IS A MOUNTAIN
of gold. When the sun’s rays strike it, it is irritating to look at. It is surrounded by red, green, yellow, orange, pink, and liver-colored clouds, wafted gently by the wind. Around the mountain fly thousands of copper-winged birds with silver heads and iron beaks. A ruby sun rises in the east and a crystal moon sets in the west. The whole earth is covered with pearl-dust snow. Upon it a luminous child without a name instantaneously comes into being.

The golden mountain is dignified, the sunlight is blazing red.

Dreamlike clouds of many colors float across the sky.

In the place where iron birds croak,

The instantaneously born child can find no name.

Because he has no father, the child has no family line. Because he has no mother, he has never tasted milk. Because he has neither brother nor sister, he has no one to play with. Having no house to live in, he cannot find a crib. Since he has no nanny, he has never cried. There is no civilization, so he cannot find toys. Since there is no point of reference, he doesn’t know a self. He has never heard spoken language, so he has never experienced fear.

The child walks in every direction, but does not come across anything. He sits down slowly on the ground. Nothing happens. The colorful world seems sometimes to exist and sometimes not. He gathers a handful of pearl dust and lets it trickle through his fingers. He gathers another handful and slowly takes it into his mouth. Hearing the pearl dust crunch between his teeth, he gazes at the ruby sun setting and the crystal moon rising. Suddenly, a whole galaxy of stars wondrously appears and he lies on his back to admire their patterns. The nameless child falls into a deep sleep, but has no dreams.

The child’s world has no beginning or end.

To him, colors are neither beautiful nor ugly.

The child’s nature has no preconceived notion of birth and death.

The golden mountain is solid and unchanging,

The ruby sun is all-pervading,

The crystal moon watches over millions of stars.

The child exists without preconceptions.

November 3, 1972

The Myth of Freedom

A
N INTELLIGENT AND
highly emotional young man, disliking the hustle and bustle of the city and the impositions of friends and relatives, decided to leave. He set out on foot and soon found himself crossing pleasant valleys and woods. He found a solitary and peaceful spot and decided to settle there. He enjoyed the sight of wild animals roaming freely, and flocks of birds.

As the moonlight of peace and solitude spreads,

Wild animals roam free and harmless.

The wild flowers and trees are glamorous,

The scent of herbs is pervasive.

Who wouldn’t take delight in this solitude, worthy to be praised by Brahma?

At times the young man dwelling in solitude is full of joy, at times he is afraid. Sometimes he has thoughts of the city and the years spent with his relatives and friends. Sometimes he feels uncomfortable at being in the mountain emptiness and becomes afraid that wild animals will attack him. He has ample supplies of food, but still he has the constant fear of running out. He has looked at the delightful landscape too long, and now it appears irritatingly monotonous. The tuneful song of the birds becomes mocking. He can’t get to sleep at night, so he feels very tired during the day, and the boundary between waking experience and dream becomes fuzzy. Altogether, he suffers continually from paranoia and daydreams, and doesn’t know what to do. He is imprisoned in his own projections.

The external projection is empty of good and bad,

The internal fixation of hope and fear imprisons.

Truth and falsehood are at war.

The simple-minded child is wounded by the arrow of confusion.

Sometimes he thinks of returning to the city and sometimes he thinks of hiding in the nearest village. He just wants to leave the desolate countryside. Finally, he ties his things into a bundle and goes back to the city. He meets his friends and relatives, but the fear he felt in his desolate retreat continues to haunt him. Sometimes he sees his friends and relatives as illusory maidens dancing, and sometimes as a threatening army. In the midst of such uncertainty, he wishes he could find a friend with whom to discuss the whole thing. But he doesn’t know how to find a friend who is not an illusion. So the young man tries to find the boundary between illusion and reality.

When the endless illusory plot is all-pervading,

The folly of mind’s limitless duplicity is uncovered.

By running away from friends you discover illusory friends.

Friends manifesting as enemies is the nature of illusion;

By projecting your duplicity on others you lose your own ground.

The friend who is not an illusory projection is found in yourself.

November 5, 1972

Haiku

The beginner in meditation

Resembles a hunting dog

Having a bad dream.

His parents are having tea

With his new girlfriend—

Like a general inspecting the troops.

Skiing in a red and blue outfit,

Drinking cold beer with a lovely smile—

I wonder if I’m one of them?

Coming home from work,

Still he hears the phone

Ringing in the office.

Gentle day’s flower—

The hummingbird competes

With the stillness of the air.

November 7, 1972

The Red Flag Flies

The red flag flies above the Potala,

The people of Tibet are drowned in an ocean of blood;

A vampire army fills the mountains and plains,

But self-existing dignity never wanes.

November 10, 1972

The Sword of Hatred

The sword of hatred is ornamented with the handle of invasion,

A red star has imprisoned the sun and moon,

The high snow-peaked mountains are cloaked in the darkness of a poisonous wind;

The peaceful valleys have been shattered by the sound of artillery.

But the dignity of the Tibetan people competes with the glory of the sky.

November 10, 1972