The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (82 page)

R:
Yes, indeed. [
Laughter
] Well, how should I begin? You see, the whole approach is not so much that since you have had one extreme experience already, therefore you should seek the other extreme. That will create a heart attack. You become a flea, jumping back and forth. One of the problems is that you want to solve your problem. You want to solve it very badly and you try to find the best remedy, which creates more problems. But as a matter of fact, the problem isn’t there at all, even at the beginning. You have created the problem yourself. You are so panicked by the problem that you begin to be unable to look at it. You see in the dust a snake-shaped rope and suddenly panic, saying, “Oh, there’s a snake, let’s get away! Tell everybody there’s a snake over there.” But you never explored whether there was a rope or a snake at the beginning. This is a very old Buddhist analogy. When we panic, we see things in an exaggerated form, usually for the worse; and out of panic, if we look for somebody love-and-lighty, we might find one. That person could be extremely aggressive at heart but still, seemingly at least, it’s a chance to talk to someone who appears to be good, kindly. I think a lot of people got sucked into that kind of situation by jumping to their first conclusion and being unable to relate to their own panic. Panic is a very interesting experience. It makes you completely petrified. You actually can’t even think. There is a kind of shunyata nonthinking experience occurring in panic. But that’s very hard to detect if you want to recapture it. [
Laughter
] Don’t leave tomorrow. [
Laughter
]

Q:
The four dharmas of Gampopa is a series, a path that every person has to walk on by oneself and can only do by oneself. But the formulation by which we know it starts with a supplication. What is the relationship between those two and to whom is it addressed?

R:
The idea of blessing is a very interesting point. When we talk about a blessing, it’s not so much goodness descending on you; it’s a form of inspiration in which you inspire yourself. At the same time as that inspiration takes place, the blessing is also present. You create your own situation. Most of the supplications that exist in the Buddhist tradition are based on an awakening process rather than confirmation. It is awakening—how to awake, how to transcend. We are not addressing anybody in particular, but we are addressing the lineage (the Practicing Lineage, the Kagyü lineage). The reason we are doing that is because the lineage represents practice and discipline and we follow certain formats with that lineage. We are practitioners of that lineage, which means that we have to go along with that discipline in the same way as others have done in the past—Gampopa, Milarepa, and so forth. So, we’re inspiring ourselves, saying, “I’m going to be one too.” It is a personal commitment. It is the same as reading the
Heart Sutra
and other Buddhist sutras, which are purely dialogues between Buddha and his disciples. At the same time, it has its quality of up-to-dateness.

Q:
Rinpoche, you said we should try to understand the nature of aggression and pain, not in the sense of trying to cure ourselves, but to understand what’s imprisoning us and that to relate to that in an arrogant or aggressive way might somehow disallow understanding. And, at least at this point, I don’t see how I can relate to anything other than aggressively or arrogantly, no matter what style I might adopt. And I also have a little problem seeing the difference between curing oneself, meaning getting rid of sickness, and seeing what’s imprisoning us.

R:
Well, I think basically the point is a sense of understanding the aggression, to begin with. It’s like the analogy of drowning. You have to use the water to come up to the surface. It’s the same water, and whether you drown or not is up to you. You are drowning because you have mismanaged the water and therefore you have to use a different approach. At the beginning, your approach may be an aggressive one, but you are willing to shed your arrogance and you are willing to be ripped off, so to speak, willing to become naked. Once there is willingness to be exposed without any hesitation, then there is no problem, no difficulty.

Q:
So that willingness doesn’t rid you of aggression, but somehow changes the character of it.

R:
Well, it might be the same style, you might be doing the same thing, but your aggression sort of uses itself up. The later pursuit through the path is very irritating, but it doesn’t rely on any aggressive means or any aggressive approach. It’s a question of just acknowledging boredom. Boredom seems to be a way of transmuting aggression into practice.

Q:
I was just thinking about the analogy of a mirror, that everybody could be a mirror or that situations could be a mirror. But upon looking at the mirror, would it be true that before you could see yourself, you would see your aggression? In other words, if I saw somebody—could they really reveal myself to me if I would allow myself to look at that mirror?

R:
I think so, yeah.

Q:
But before I could see myself, would I see my resistance to that?

R:
Yeah, that’s possible. According to the psychological steps that take place, you don’t actually see aggression first. Aggression is the flash, and one’s ego is the light which is permeating the flash. But you don’t have time to go through that process. It’s so fast that you have been preprogrammed already. So, seemingly, the only things you see or care for are your reactions.

Q:
Then before I could recapture that flash or see the flash again, I would have to work through all that aggression.

R:
Slow motion of some kind. But that seems to be a bit tedious and analyzing it doesn’t actually help very much.

Q:
Well, what would be the . . .

R:
At this point, nothing except understanding what’s going on rather than analyzing.

Q:
Mm-hmm.

R:
At the beginning one has to develop a sense of intense imprisonment. That seems to be the first inspiration. Then, once you begin to feel the sense of intense imprisonment, you begin to feel more of a sense of the possibilities of not being there.

Is Meditation Therapy?

W
ELCOME, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
. Tonight we are going to discuss the relationship between therapy and meditation. Is meditation therapy?

As we advance on the physical-technological level, spiritual advancement also should take place at the same time. But that has become purely an idea—what has actually happened is that we have become technologically highly advanced, but at the same time we have a problem with spiritual advancement. That seems to be the problem that has developed. The notion of meditation and the notion of therapy and the notion of sanity become big issues at this point.

Can the practice of meditation play as important a part in our society as therapy or as technological advancement? The question here is not so much the value of practicing meditation versus the value of technology and therapy, as such. Maybe the title of this talk is deceptive. As soon as you use a question mark and some phrase like “Is meditation therapy?” that automatically involves evaluating which of those is better, as if they were going to compete with each other. So the question we are discussing is not which is more worthwhile, which is more expansive or gives the most direct result, but we are talking about the general situation in our society, the national psychology.

Due to enormous scientific advancement in this country and in the West in general, we have involved ourselves in looking for further advancement and looking for a sort of mechanical spiritual process which has caused spiritual materialism. Maybe we have learned certain yogic tricks and have managed to slow down our heartbeat or stand on our heads without using our hands for forty-five hours a day. [
Laughter
] Maybe we have learned to barely levitate by holding our breath—like a helicopter. [
Laughter
] When tricks like that are involved, then we are still concerned with collecting gadgets rather than experiencing reality, I’m afraid. So, in terms of gadgets, meditation practice is not regarded as another gadget, but it is regarded as a practice—a real practice.

We need to discuss the meaning of the word
practice
—what do we mean by practice? What does practice mean? Practice or discipline is a particular involvement or interest that allows us to let go. I do not mean letting go in the sense of becoming solemn, but letting go in the sense that there is something that we can work with. That working situation is largely based on the notion of cutting through all kinds of expectations and preconceptions about what things might be or which things might answer our question. So letting go is largely based on cutting through preconceptions. When we talk about cutting through preconception, it sounds good, it sounds quite nice. The idea that we would like to cut through our preconceptions sounds
great
. But at the same time, cutting through preconceptions involves cutting through our expectations and our pains and pleasures. Cutting through preconceptions quite possibly could bring us to an enormous state of boredom rather than entertainment. The whole thing doesn’t sound very attractive or entertaining or particularly encouraging.

The practice of meditation is largely based on some kind of sacrifice, some kind of openness. Such sacrifice is necessary and has to be personally experienced. Ordinarily we might sacrifice something on behalf of or for the sake of developing goodness, or because we are willing to suffer on behalf of humanity. But those sacrifices are—pardon the expression—bullshit. [
Laughter
] The sacrifice which has been recommended, prescribed in the Buddhist tradition, is to sacrifice something without any purpose. Now that’s outrageous, that’s terrible. Does that mean you are going to be a slave? No, not unless you’re going to turn yourself into a slave. Sacrificing something without any purpose is outrageous and precisely heroic and fantastic; it is outrageous and very beautiful.

Such a sacrifice without purpose can take place by not regarding any form of therapy as a way of saving yourself from pain, feeling that you will be finally saved or that you have managed to get away with using some method to save yourself from seeing reality. The practice of meditation is sacrifice without techniques, without means, without gloves or pliers or hammers. You have to use your bare hands, bare feet, bare head, to relate with the whole thing.

The notion of reality and reward can become a problem. Basically, fundamentally, there is no reality and there is no reward, and we are not trying to get anything out of this life at all. That is why the notion of freedom is important. Freedom—unexpected, undemanded freedom. Freedom cannot be bought or bartered for. Freedom doesn’t come cheap or expensive. It just happens. It is only without any reference point that freedom can evolve. That is why it is known as freedom—because it is unconditional.

From that point of view, we could say that meditation is not therapy. If there is any notion of therapy involved in the spiritual journey, or in any kind of spiritual discipline, then it becomes conditional. You might ask then how we could use our talent, our patience, our discipline, and everything as part of our journey. Well, that particular journey, those particular talents, that evolutionary organic process, also have to be an expression of unconditional freedom. If there is no freedom, complete freedom, then there’s no answer to that question, there’s no hope at all.

So, it is our duty—in fact, we might even go as far as to say it is the purpose of our life—it is our heroic duty to encourage the notion of freedom as it is, without contamination by any further pollution of this and that and that and this. No bargaining. Truth and honesty are discussed in the, so to speak, military schools or the highly conservative, disciplined training grounds. If there were no concern for truth and honesty, then there could be flexibility in relating with freedom. Suppose we found our death. Then what would happen? Would we be saved? No. We would still keep our allegiance to unconditional freedom. We have to maintain ourselves in an erect posture in order to work with freedom. The practice of meditation in the Buddhist tradition is extremely simple, extremely erect, and direct. There is a sense of pride in the fact that basically you are going to sit and practice meditation. When you sit and practice meditation, you don’t do anything at all. You just sit and work with your breathing, your walking; you just sit and let all these thoughts come alive. You let your hidden neurosis come through. Let the discipline evolve itself. That is far from therapy, absolutely far from therapy.

Therapy involves the notion of testimony and support, enormous support: “When I was involved with this particular meditation practice three years ago, three months ago, I was saved. Now I can meditate. I can do a beautiful job with myself; I’m a good general, I am a good busboy, a good postman. I find that my intelligence has been sharpened when I work on Madison Avenue lately,” or whatever. [
Laughs; laughter
] The reason why the practice of meditation is not therapy is because it does not particularly provide or even ask for support or testimony about anything at all. When you begin to ask for testimony, that is a sign of weakness; you feel that you need support.
You
need support, the personal support that somebody else is doing it and that person is doing okay, so therefore you can do it. That is the approach to therapy. But meditation experience is personal experience, extremely personal experience, real experience. You begin to feel alone because you are what you are. You don’t feel alone in the sense that you feel that you need somebody else’s support. Rather, you can do it yourself. Being alone and being lonely is not a big problem anymore. You begin to feel delight in being alone, as a matter of fact. Aloneness is part of not needing support or testimony. You do not need therapy; you just need your life. There is a new dimension to practicing meditation from that point of view. There is a sense of openness and a sense of not needing further support—you can do it yourself, you’re working with yourself, fundamentally, basically. It is up to you, but it is also your own creation at the same time. When we begin to relate with that principle of aloneness, the notion of independence, of freedom, becomes extraordinarily powerful, extraordinarily interesting, and highly creative. We do not ask questions about the nature of reality, about what is going to be good and bad for us, but we begin to pick and choose in accordance with our own dimensions, our own experience of freedom, of loneliness. You know that you are lonely already, alone already. You know that you are with nobody but yourself. Even the phenomenal world does not help. And because of that loneliness and aloneness you are able to help other people, of course. Because you feel so lonely, so alone, the rest of the world, humanity, your friends, your lovers, your relatives and parents are part of your life, because they are the expression of loneliness at the same time.