The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (45 page)

T
RADITION

Virya, the paramita of the fourth bhumi, is taking delight in and working hard with whatever working base or material we are presented with—our state or mind, our traditions, our society. It is not taking sides for or against our traditions or our state of mind, but it is taking delight in them and then working with them. It is not enough to reject superficially the different aspects of the world around us. It is too simple-minded just to abandon traditional morality as being old-fashioned, like an old clothing style, and then substitute a swinging morality, an up-to-date, “mod” morality. Many of the young reject tradition altogether, even the smell of it. They see no truth in it at all. “I’m unhappy, neurotic because of them—my parents, my teachers, the media, the politicians, the psychiatrists, the capitalists, the clergymen, the computers, the scientists.” We denounce the government, the schools, the churches, the synagogues, the hospitals. But there is some uncertainty in this stance. Perhaps there could be some truth in what the establishment says, in the way it does things? “Well, if there is, I’ll pick only what is meaningful to me and reject the rest. I’ll interpret tradition my way.” We want to justify our existence as a good person, a little Christ or Buddha. This self-conscious attempt to define our identity or style is another form of spiritual materialism. We get a kick out of a certain style and self-justification from certain ideas that clothe our rebellion in glamorous imagery.

The bodhisattva, on the other hand, firmly roots himself in the traditions of his society but does not feel obligated to follow them. He is not afraid to take a new step, but the reason he is stepping out of the tradition is because he knows it so well. His inspiration to step out comes from that tradition. First we must step into the tradition, must understand it fully, its wise and its foolish aspects, why people are hypnotized by its dogmas; we must understand what wisdom, if any, lies behind the dogma. Then we can step out of it sanely.

The traditional approach to being a good person is to eliminate all color, all spectacle. You camouflage yourself and blend into the social landscape; you become white. White is associated with purity, cleanliness, gentleness, presentableness. But to be an extraordinarily good citizen you need to add color to the basic white. To improve society you need some color to contrast with the white.

So the bodhisattva is not bound by white, by law, by convention, or by traditional morality, but neither does he kill someone on the spot because he feels some faint aggression toward him, nor does he make love to a woman on the street because he feels passion toward her. The conventional approach is to hesitate out of fear of embarrassment or a sense of impropriety or vice. “I shouldn’t do it, it’s wrong.” There is a faint suggestion and the rejection of the suggestion, which is depressing. “I wish I could, but society or my conscience does not permit me.” But perhaps there is something more to our hesitation, perhaps it is our basic sanity that keeps us from acting impulsively.

Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy. The bodhisattva delights in the play between hesitation and extreme impulsiveness—it is beautiful to look at—so delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes to the totality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view. The bodhisattva does not side with rejecting convention, mocking everything out of sheer frustration, trying to get the world to acknowledge him. Nor does he side with blind dogma, holding back out of fear, trying to mold the world to conform to rigid ideas and rules. The bodhisattva takes delight in polarities but does not side with any extreme. He accepts what is there as the message and explores it further and further, and the conflict between polarities becomes his inspiration. In order to be a communist you must have a model of what not to be, which means you must understand capitalism, so capitalism is your inspiration.

The bodhisattva’s inspiration is the war between the awakened mentality and the samsaric mentality: the samsaric mentality is the inspiration for the awakened mentality. We need not change ourselves, need not negate what we are. We can use what we are as inspiration. So virya, the fourth bhumi, is taking delight in and working hard with whatever working base we have—our neurosis, our sanity, our culture, our society. We do not make sectarian distinctions or assert our superiority, but we take delight in what is and then work with it.

Z
EN AND
P
RAJNA

The paramita of the fifth bhumi is panoramic awareness. This meditative state has been called dhyana in the Indian tradition, ch’an in the Chinese tradition, and zen in the Japanese tradition. They all mean a state of total involvement, without center or fringe. If there is a center and a fringe, then our state of mind ceases to be one of total involvement because we have to keep track of both ends; a sense of polarity is always present.

So dhyana or zen is awareness without a watcher. In the superficial sense, when we speak of awareness, we mean egocentric watching, knowing what we are doing, knowing where we are supposed to be and how we handle the situation, which is quite a complicated process. We have to keep track of ourselves and our situation, keep track of how we are handling it and how the situation is affected by our action. There are so many things to manage at one time that we fear losing control, so we have to be extraordinarily alert and careful. Trying to be totally aware in this way is very difficult and complicated.

Awareness in the sense of zen is much simpler. The Tibetan word for it is
samten (bsam gtan): sam
means “awareness,”
ten
means “making stable.” So samten means “stable awareness,” sane awareness rather than neurotic awareness, awareness in the sense that there are very few things to keep track of because everything has been simplified into one situation. If there is simplicity and spaciousness, then the bodhisattva actions, the paramitas, generosity, patience, energy, discipline, and so on, are seen to be distinct processes. And if these processes take place in a very open situation, then there is no conflict between generosity and patience and the rest; they can be combined together to complement each other.

The spaciousness of dhyana or “panoramic awareness” inspires the further development of prajna, which is the sharp, precise, biting aspect of space, like crisp, cold winter air: clear, cool, and precise. Until the sixth bhumi, the maturation of prajna, the bodhisattva’s actions reflect subtle attitudes. The bodhisattva does not have enough clarity and “awakeness” to see through them. Prajna cuts through the pieties of the bodhisattva’s approach—being extraordinarily compassionate, being smooth and skillful, able to handle any situation, the syrupy, honeylike quality of the bodhisattva, being sweet and kind and gentle and at the same time slippery. Prajna cuts through any subtle attitude, any sense of virtue or manipulation, any sense of fixed concepts.

As the cutting through process of prajna develops, the next stage, the seventh bhumi, also begins to unfold—upaya or “skillful means,” the perfect application of method. In the earlier bhumis the bodhisattva’s actions—generosity, patience, and so forth—were skillful, but there was an element of piety, some sense of gratification, of acknowledging that one’s practice has fulfilled its function. So there is a very faint but fundamental expectation in the first six bhumis. Of course, the sense of “this and that” is not as heavy and clumsy as with those who are not bodhisattvas, but at the same time, the bodhisattva’s neuroses are also spiritually materialistic. They are very gentle, very slippery and difficult to catch because they contain nonduality as well as falsehood. It tends to get very complicated at this level; the more perfect you become, the subtler your imperfection. So the development of “skillful means” signifies fully stepping out of spiritual materialism. Skillful means involves using the cutting through method of prajna as well as developing a sense of the absence of “me” and “that.” In other words, there is less sense of journey, less sense of a reference or checking point. You are completely tuned into what is happening on a larger scale.

Developing upaya is not so much a matter of overcoming something as it is a matter of gaining extra confidence, total confidence without a reference point. Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live. We must accept ourselves as being warriors. If we acknowledge ourselves as warriors, then there is a way in, because a warrior dares to
be,
like a tiger in the jungle.

T
HE
A
PPROACH TO
E
NLIGHTENMENT

The paramita of the eighth bhumi is
monlam (smon lam)
in Tibetan or
pranidhana
in Sanskrit, which literally means “wishful thinking” or “best wishes.”
Monlam
means inspiration, a vision of how future developments might occur. It does not refer to wishful thinking in the ordinary sense of speculation as to what might plausibly happen in the future. This inspiration or greater vision refers to future in the sense of the pregnant aspect of the present, the present possibilities for the future. It is a very realistic approach, relating to the present as a stepping-stone that contains the potential of the future.

The inspiration of the eighth bhumi is derived from relating to what is, what we are. We are inspired to walk on the broad, complete mahayana path, to deal with the world on a larger scale, a cosmic scale. The present state of being contains past and future as well.

The bodhisattva at this stage is extraordinarily confident but not in a self-centered way. His point of reference is not himself but the totality of sentient beings, so he loses track of “this” and “that.” Perhaps he and all sentient beings are one and the same, so he gives up keeping track of who is who, what is what, not with blind faith or through confusion, but realistically, because there is no point in carving out territories. The future situation is there, the present situation is here, because it is so.

The paramita of the ninth bhumi is
bala
in Sanskrit or
top (stobs)
in Tibetan, which means “power.” Power in this sense is a further expression of the confidence of skillful means. Skillful means is the confidence to step up to the edge of a cliff and power is the confidence to leap. It seems to be a very daring decision, but since there is no reference point, it is an extraordinarily ordinary situation; you simply do it. In a sense, it is much easier than self-consciously making a cup of tea.

At the beginning of the bodhisattva path there is the tremendous joy of realizing that we have all kinds of richness and skill, that we are a total human being. Beyond that level the journey is not self-conscious, but still the unself-consciousness becomes another kind of self-consciousness. We are still using reference points, in a transcendental way of course, but we are nevertheless confirming our experience. And then, beyond the seventh bhumi, we begin to break through this barrier by experiencing complete skillful means. Finally we do not have to make a reference, we do not have to make a journey at all. Our path becomes an evolutionary process in which further power begins to develop, complete power, enlightened power. Which leads into the tenth bhumi, dharmamegha or dharma cloud, the development of the paramita of yeshe (Tibetan
ye shes
), or wisdom (Sanskrit
jnana
).

Wisdom is nonidentification with the teaching, nonidentification with the path, nonidentification with the technique. The bodhisattva doesn’t identify with the path any longer because he has
become
the path. He
is
the path. He has worked on himself, trod on himself, until he has become the path and the chariot as well as the occupant of the chariot, all at the same time. He is vision, energy, skillful means, generosity, knowledge, panoramic awareness. It is unspeakably powerful, and yet at the same time the bodhisattva is powerless when he is in the tenth bhumi, because he is completely programmed by the Buddha’s way. This might sound paradoxical, but it is so.

There is a story of a king in India whose court soothsayers told him that within seven days there would be a rain whose water would produce madness. The king collected and stored enormous amounts of fresh water, so that when the rain of madness fell, all of his subjects went mad except himself. But after a while he realized that he could not communicate with his subjects because they took the mad world to be real and could smoothly function in the world created by their mutual madness. So finally the king decided to abandon his supply of fresh water and drink the water of madness. It is a rather disappointing way of expressing the realization of enlightenment, but it is a very powerful statement. When we decide to drink the water of madness, then we have no reference point. So from that point of view, total enlightenment is total madness. But there is still a king and his subjects and they must run the world together. Running the world becomes an expression of sanity because there is no reference point against which to fight. There is something logical about the whole bodhisattva process but something extraordinarily illogical about it as well.

1
. A chart of the ten bhumis and their corresponding paramitas in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and English is given in the Appendix.

SEVEN

Devotion

S
URRENDERING

A
T FIRST, DEVOTION
is inspired by a sense of inadequacy. We begin to realize that we are not up to coping with life or that we are confused about it. Even the little lighthouses we might have in the midst of our darkness seem quite vulnerable. So devotion in the hinayana stage comes from a sense of poverty. We take refuge in the buddha, dharma, and sangha because we feel trapped in the problems of life. We have failed to make a comfortable nest. We want to change our claustrophobic and painful world.