The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (57 page)

S:
Sometimes a fantasy will turn into a whole emotional plot which seems to get more and more complex.

TR:
That is beating a dead horse. You just let it come, let it play out its impetus or energy, then just let it go. You have to taste it, then let it go. Having tasted it, it is not recommended to manipulate it any further.

S:
When you speak of touch-and-go, evidently meditating, sitting practice, is the “touch.” Do you mean that there are also times when it’s inappropriate to be mindful in this manner? That in everyday life we should just let mindfulness go?

TR:
I think there is some misunderstanding there. “Touch” and “go” always come together. It is like whenever there is a one, there is a zero. The number series, starting with one, implies zero. Numbers do not make sense if there is no such thing as zero. “Touch” has no meaning without “go.” They are simultaneous. That simultaneity is mindfulness, which happens during both formal sitting practice and the postmeditation experience of everyday life.

Student:
Previously you mentioned the retreatant who had the feeling of sitting on a razor blade when things became very clear, very distinct. Could you relate that experience to the sense of delight in the mindfulness of life?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It is the same experience, actually. Whenever there is a threat of death, that also brings a sense of life. It is like taking a pill because you fear that otherwise you might die. The pill is associated with the threat of death, but you take it with the attitude that it will enable you to live. Facing the moment clearly is like taking that pill: there is a fear of death and a love of life simultaneously.

Student:
How does mindfulness of life inform ethical behavior, ethical action?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Things are done without mindfulness in the samsaric world; we thrive on that. Consequently, almost everything we do is somewhat disjointed: somehow things don’t click, they don’t fit; there is something illogical about our whole approach. We might be very reasonable, good people; still, behind the facade we are somewhat off. There is fundamental neurosis taking place all the time on our part, which in turn creates pain for other people as well as ourselves. People get hurt by that, and their reactions create more of the same. That is what we call the neurotic world, or samsara. Nobody is actually having a good time. Even ostensibly good times are somewhat pushed. And the undercurrent of frustration from sensing that creates further indulgence.

Mindfulness of life is an entirely different approach, in which life is treated as precious, which is to say, mindfully. Things are seen in their own right rather than as aspects of the vicious cycle of neurosis. Everything is jointed rather than disjointed. One’s state of mind becomes coherent, so there is a basic workability concerning how to conduct one’s life, in a general sense. One begins to become literate in reading the style of the world, the pattern of the world. That is just the starting point; it is by no means the final stage. It is just the beginning of seeing how to read the world.

Student:
I really cannot imagine what experience would be like without all kinds of imagination and projections. I can’t get a sense of what it would be like to participate in the world just as it is, just as things are occurring and coming up.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Are you interested in finding out?

S:
I guess so.

TR:
Well, it is very hard to do. The reason it is hard is that you are doing it. It is like looking for a lost horse. In order to look for it, you need to ride your lost horse. On the other hand, maybe you are riding on your lost horse, but still you are looking for it. It is something like that. It’s one of those.

You see, there is really no such thing as ultimate reality. If there was such a thing, for that reason alone that could not be it. That is the problem. So you are back to square one. And the only thing, it seems, that you can do is to practice. That is good enough.

Student:
In connection with the flash of waking up, in mindfulness of effort, I still don’t clearly understand where you are supposed to come back from and what you are supposed to come back to.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Once that flash happens, you do not have to find out and appreciate where you came from. That is what I mean by, “Don’t entertain the messenger.” You also do not need an idea of where you are going. After the flash, your awareness is like a snowflake released from the clouds. It is going to settle down to the ground anyway. You have no choice.

Student:
Sometimes being mindful of the exhalation seems to become too deliberate. It seems too much that the watcher is doing it from above, rather than the breathing and the mindfulness being simultaneous.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The touch-and-go approach is applicable here. You touch the exhalation and then disown the awareness even of that. If you are trying to have bare attention constantly, then you have a problem of being very rigid and dragging yourself along. So you touch with the breath and go with the breath. That way there is a sense of freshness, a change of air. It is like a pulsation, or like listening to a musical beat. If you are trying to keep with one beat you miss another. But if you touch and go you begin to hear the rhythm; and then you hear the entirety of the music, too. Another example is eating food: when you eat food you don’t taste it constantly, just now and then. It is the same way with any experience. We hover around our interest. Always we just touch the highlights of our interest. So the touch-and-go style of mindfulness practice is borrowed from the basic style of mind. If you go along with that, then there is no problem at all.

Student:
I somewhat understand how mindfulness of mind is a one-shot movement. But then if effort comes in, that no longer seems simultaneous or spontaneous.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Effort comes in off and on—at the beginning, during, and at the end. For instance, you are holding that microphone because you had an interest in asking a question. Now while you are listening to the answer, you have forgotten that you are holding the microphone, but that original effort is still hanging over. You are still holding it, not dropping it. So a lot of journeys back and forth take place with one’s effort, rather than its being maintained constantly. Therefore you do not have to strain and push constantly. If you do, there is no practice, no meditation; the whole thing just becomes a big deal of effort. Shifting, alternating constantly, creates the space of meditation. If you are one hundred percent effortful, you blow the whole thing. There is nothing left but a tense lump of muscle sitting in the middle of a field. This happens all the time in life situations. It is like trying to knead dough. If you knead too hard you won’t have any dough left in your hand—you will just be pushing your hand against the board. But if you have the feeling that the purpose of kneading hard is to work with the dough, then you have some compromises taking place, some intelligence coming into play. Without that, effort alone just kills.

Student:
Without exercising some kind of incredible deliberateness, my entire meditation practice seems to be fantasy. There seems to be hardly any time that I am relating with my breath. I am basically just sitting there daydreaming or else very deliberately, heavy-handedly trying to relate with my breath.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, go and sit.

S:
What should I do when I sit?

TR:
Sit.

S:
That’s all? What about working with my breath?

TR:
Sit. Go ahead and sit. Just go ahead and do it.

Remarks on meditation practice, 1973 Vajradhatu Seminary.

FOUR

Devotion

“The devotional relationship between student and master becomes a living analogy for the student’s relationship to life in general. Over a period of time this relationship works through many layers of inauthentic communication, based on ever more subtle deceptions of ego. The result for the student can be a totally clear and unencumbered relationship to his or her world.”

D
EVOTION, IN THE
conventional sense, is a feeling of trust. The object of devotion, whether a person or an idea, is felt to be trustworthy and definite, more solid and real than oneself. In comparison, the devotee feels himself to be somewhat uncertain, not solid or full enough. He feels he lacks something, and this is the reason for his devotion toward somebody or something else. He feels inadequate standing on his own two feet, so he turns elsewhere for advice, security, or warmth. This type of devotion can be directed toward any number of ideas, or it can be directed toward our parents, our school teachers, our spiritual teacher, our bank manager, our wife or husband—toward whomever seems to have achieved life’s goal in the conventional sense, which perhaps means anyone who has accumulated a lot of experience or information.

In general, the character of devotion seems to depend on the manner in which we relate the quality of trust or sanity within ourselves to something outside us. In the tradition of Buddhism, devotion to a teacher or master plays an extremely important role. Although, like conventional devotion, it may in the beginning be based on a sense of inadequacy and a wish to flee that inadequacy rather than to face and work with it, it goes far beyond that point. The devotional relationship between student and master becomes a living analogy for the student’s relationship to life in general. Over a period of time this relationship works through many layers of inauthentic communication, based on ever more subtle deceptions of ego. The result for the student can be a totally clear and unencumbered relationship to his or her world. What makes the student persist in this long, difficult, and often extremely painful voyage of discovery is his or her devotion to the teacher—the conviction that the teacher indeed embodies the truth of his teaching. Throughout its various levels of development, devotion can be seen as having two aspects: admiration and absence of arrogance.

Admiration may be construed as hero worship. We look up to people who have a great deal of talent and dignity. We may idolize such people, hoping to make them part of us, to incorporate them into our territory. We hope in this way to participate in their greatness.

On the other hand, seeing talented people and their fine creations may make us jealous and depressed. We could feel we are too stupid and incompetent to compete with such tremendous discipline and talent. We might find ourselves actually resentful toward someone who is beautiful or polished. We may even experience their existence and their accomplishments as a hurt. Fine accomplishments or works of beauty may be such a threat that something in us would almost like to destroy them, to burn down all the art museums. At the very least we would like to insult those people who are more talented than we are. This is hero hatred, which is another version of hero worship.

A third possibility is that we may feel a really immense distance between the great and talented people and ourselves. We may feel that their accomplishments are splendid, but that they have nothing to do with us because they are so far above us. This attitude permits us to avoid being pained by a comparison with such accomplished people. With this attitude, we seal ourselves off completely.

The hidden assumption of this approach, whether in the form of adoration, hatred, or aloofness, is that there are heroes and there are incompetents, and we are among the incompetents. A separation is maintained.

In relating to a spiritual teacher, admiration is usually expressed in one of those three neurotic styles. In the case of seductive admiration, we want to consume the teacher completely so that he or she becomes part of us; in that case, we obliterate the actual features of the relationship under a thick layer of honey. In the repelling style of admiration, we are so overcome by awe and fear that, although we cannot help still being involved with the teacher, we keep the teacher in such a lofty niche that the possibility of direct appreciation is completely closed off. No matter what our style, it is usual to try to strategize our devotion so that the guru is not a threat.

A combination of these styles was visible in the fad that developed in the early part of this decade, when gurus were related to as popular idols or good luck charms. Young people completely covered their walls with pictures of spiritual superstars: gurus from India and Japan, American Indians, Eskimos, Tibetans—pinups of all kinds. In this way they could consider themselves on the good side of all sorts of great beings or great concepts. By relating to teachers as icons, they could express their admiration safely, without any danger of uncomfortable feedback.

Real admiration is much more direct than these contrived attitudes, and therefore it is more dangerous. Real admiration is based on a sense of courage and tremendous dignity. When we admire someone in a real way, we are not competing with that person or trying to win him over, but we are sharing his immense vision. The relationship can be a great celebration, because we do not approach it with a personal investment in any strategy or cause. In such admiration, our role is simply to devote ourselves completely, just to travel along without expecting anything in return for our admiration.

True admiration has clarity and bite. It is like breathing mountain air in winter, which is so cold and clear that we are afraid that it may freeze our lungs. Between breaths we may want to run into the cabin and throw a blanket over our heads lest we catch cold—but in true admiration we do not do that. Although the mountain air is threateningly clear as well as fantastically invigorating, we just breathe, without trying either to protect ourselves or to trap the air and take it with us. Like the mountains we are simply a part of that briskness: that is proper admiration or sharing.