The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (5 page)

Finally, Volume Three includes the foreword that Chögyam Trungpa wrote to
Buddha in the Palm of Your Hand,
by his Vajra Regent, Ösel Tendzin. Trungpa Rinpoche was delighted that Ösel Tendzin produced a book edited from his own lectures, talks he gave between 1976 and 1980, the first four years after he was confirmed as Trungpa Rinpoche’s dharma heir. Rinpoche tells us that these are not “self-proclaimed wisdom” but that Ösel Tendzin “reflects here only the study and training he has gone through with my personal guidance.” I had the opportunity to work with the Vajra Regent and his editor, Donna Holm, on the preliminary selection of material and some of the editing of this book. I remember how diligently the Regent worked on these talks and how carefully he and Donna Holm scrutinized each word that went into the manuscript.

Trungpa Rinpoche also used his foreword to reflect on the importance of his decision to appoint an American student as his dharma heir: “Many Oriental advisors have said to me, ‘Do not make an Occidental your successor; they are not trustworthy.’ With the blessings of His Holiness the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, and through working with Ösel Tendzin as my Regent, I have come to the conclusion that anybody who possesses tathagatagarbha [buddha nature] is worthy of experiencing enlightenment. . . . I have worked arduously in training him [the Regent] as my best student and foremost leader.”It is now fifteen years since Chögyam Trungpa’s death and more than ten years since the death of the Vajra Regent in 1990. Yet Trungpa Rinpoche’s belief that buddhadharma can fully take root in America remains alive, untarnished by all doubts and difficulties. There is no doubt that he bequeathed the stainless, pure tradition of awakened mind to the West, and it seems doubtless that it will be carried forward. There will be twists and turns, but the ultimate truth is fearless. This was the motto that Chögyam Trungpa gave to Vajradhatu, the main Buddhist organization that he founded. Readers who never met him can still be touched and transformed by what he taught. In that lies great promise.

C
AROLYN
R
OSE
G
IMIAN

April 18, 2002

Trident Mountain House

Tatamagouche Mountain, Nova Scotia

1
. Communication from Diana J. Mukpo to Carolyn Rose Gimian in discussions of “Mukpo,” an unpublished memoir.

2
. Shambhala Publications had already published
Meditation in Action
for the American market, but Rinpoche and Samuel Bercholz had never met. For additional information on both the meeting with Suzuki Roshi and how Shambhala came to be Trungpa Rinpoche’s publisher, see the introduction to Volume One of
The Collected Works.

3
. Diana Mukpo in conversation with Carolyn Rose Gimian, for “Mukpo,” an unpublished memoir.

4
. Scott Wellenbach, one of the senior members of the Nālandā Translation Committee, provided some other comments on Trungpa Rinpoche’s preference for Sanskrit. He wrote: “There were a number of other reasons for Rinpoche’s choice: (1) Sanskrit is the lingua franca of Buddhism; by using Sanskrit, you show that Tibetan Buddhism is indeed Buddhism and not some esoteric ‘lamaism.’ (2) Many Tibetan teachers love things Indian, especially since India was Buddha’s homeland, and Chögyam Trungpa shared that feeling to some extent. Using Sanskrit for him seemed to have a sense of bringing Buddhism back home, and he liked the fact that now, in the diaspora, Sanskrit could be used correctly. (3) Also linked to this, Sanskrit was considered to be a sacred language, as is reflected in its use in Buddhist mantras. Though these days we don’t think that Buddha himself exactly spoke Sanskrit, I think that Trungpa Rinpoche felt that, to some small extent, using Sanskrit could only enhance the power of what we were doing.”

5
. From a letter by John Baker to Carolyn Rose Gimian, February 17, 2002.

6
. He had started some students on the practice of ngöndro in England, but he later asked most of them to repeat those practices after a thorough grounding in sitting meditation.

7
. John Baker, ibid.

8
. In the original article, Trungpa Rinpoche refers to Gendün Gyamtsol as the Tibetan monk who translated Pali texts back into Tibetan. Rinpoche’s description makes it likely that he was referring to the well-known, brilliant, and unconventional Gelukpa scholar Gendün Chöphel. Gyamtsol may have been another name by which he was known, or it may have been improperly rendered by Rinpoche’s students at that time. After consultation with members of the Nālandā Translation Committee, the monk’s name has been changed in the article “Cutting Through” and here in the introduction as well.

9
. This festival was sponsored under the umbrella of Nalanda, the nonprofit educational organization that was the corporate parent of Naropa, as well as of other educational and cultural activities initiated by Trungpa Rinpoche, including Shambhala Training and Dharma Art. A few years later, Naropa became a nonprofit corporation in its own right.

10
. Philip Barry, the owner of Shambhala Booksellers in Berkeley, California, says that “Karl [Ray] told me some years later that they stopped [publishing the
Shambhala Review]
because it had become too labor-intensive and was not cost-efficient” (e-mail communication from Philip Barry to Carolyn Rose Gimian, February 16, 2002). Back issues of this journal are now a rare commodity. I had to search far and wide for them in compiling
The Collected Works.
Philip has a complete set of the
Codex/Reviews
and supplied most of the historical information about these publications.

11
. Chögyam Trungpa and Herbert Guenther collaborated on a book entitled
The Dawn of Tantra,
which grew out of a seminar they taught jointly in 1972. This appears in Volume Four of
The Collected Works.

C
UTTING
T
HROUGH
S
PIRITUAL
M
ATERIALISM

Edited by
J
OHN
B
AKER
and
M
ARVIN
C
ASPER

To Chokyi-lodrö the Marpa Father of the Kagyü lineage

Foreword

T
HE INSPIRATION
to find the truth, to see what is real, and to lead a genuine life—the culmination of which can be enlightenment—is what underlies every spiritual journey. However, embarking on this journey is rarely as straightforward as we may wish. The journey toward enlightenment ultimately may be both profound and simple, yet the process of understanding that simplicity tends to be multidimensional, if not downright complicated. For in order to understand a spiritual path, we must acknowledge and understand our own mind, now, as it pertains to the journey. What misunderstandings and concepts we may have about a spiritual practice, we must overcome so that we’re not merely practicing according to our own conceptualized idea. Ego, and the myriad games it plays to unravel our inspiration for enlightenment, must always be monitored.

To understand the essential qualities of the spiritual path, especially what obstacles or conundrums might lie ahead, we need a clear sense of direction. We need teachings, instructions, and guidance from someone who has traveled the path and therefore can give valid and confident advice about how others could travel this same path. This is what is offered by my father, Chögyam Trungpa, in
Cutting through Spiritual Materialism.

These lectures and teachings were given in the early 1970s, at a crossroads of heightened awareness and spiritual awakening in the United States. East was beginning to meet West. Having turned away from their parents’ values, a whole generation was investigating newly available spiritual paths—many of them quite traditional. People wanted a path that would help them rise above life’s mundane trappings to see a more expansive view, a view that would dissolve their feeling of alienation and penetrate life’s very meaning. At the same time, many of these seekers were still trying to figure out what a genuine path to liberation was. There was a quality of freshness, exuberance, excitement, and youth, as well as naiveté.

People were naive about the many pitfalls possible on any path. Spiritual awakening is not a happy-go-lucky endeavor. The path of truth is profound—and so are the obstacles and possibilities for self-deception. No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain. Chögyam Trungpa—who had just arrived in the States from Scotland—tried to clarify these issues. He wanted to raise people’s awareness to a level where they could distinguish between what is genuine spiritual progress and what is ego hijacking spirituality for its own purposes. He wanted to help them learn to recognize the grip of the three lords of materialism—strategies that ego can use any time, any place, in order to seduce us from a bigger view back into its self-limiting perspective.

From an early age, Chögyam Trungpa had undergone an arduous education in the monasteries of Kham, on the high plateau of Tibet’s eastern region. Even the medieval culture of Tibet was not immune to the perils of spiritual materialism. His teachers had trained him in recognizing the wiliness of ego and in avoiding seduction into seemingly beneficial activities that are really just mundane material pursuits in sacred garments. Here was a teacher who clearly understood the materialistic dilemma of the spiritual path, one who had been steeped and trained in the ancient wisdom of the past—and who could also understand the nuances of modern-day Western-style spiritual blockage. The teachings in this book represent a milestone in the introduction of buddhadharma into American culture.

In part because of the playfulness with which my father taught his young American students,
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
has become a classic. For those in the audience who were experimenting with rejecting society in order to pursue an idealistic, transcendental path, his teachings shed new light on working with themselves in the context of their own country, family, and culture. As an enthusiastic newcomer to the West and a spiritual elder as well, he was able to introduce to them the basic workability of their own situation as part of the spiritual path. Rejecting everything was not the solution. Training one’s mind, body, and speech in accordance with the truth would bring about the understanding and wisdom that produces peace. Many of those students followed his advice, continuing on their spiritual journeys and at the same time becoming parents, teachers, business people, and even dharma teachers. These people have now become the elders for a new generation of inquisitive minds.

Even though the message of this book was addressed to a particular group at a particular time in history, it is not only for that generation. These teachings will never be dated or pigeonholed. In the last thirty years, in our continuing pursuit of whatever will distract us from the truth of pain and suffering, we have become even more materialistic. In the spiritual realm, there are now even more paths and possibilities to explore than when this book was first published—not just the classic spiritual disciplines, but also many hybrids. This book continues to have the power to sharpen our awareness of spiritual materialism. It deserves our careful attention, as its message is more applicable now than ever.