The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (19 page)

When we see things as they are, they make sense to us: the way leaves move when they are blown by the wind, the way rocks get wet when there are snowflakes sitting on them. We see how things display their harmony and their chaos at the same time. So we are never limited by beauty alone, but we appreciate all sides of reality properly.

Many stories and poems written for children describe the experience of invoking the magic of a simple perception. One example is “Waiting at the Window” from
Now We Are Six,
by A. A. Milne. It is a poem about spending several hours on a rainy day looking out the window, watching drops of water come down and make patterns on the glass. Reading this poem, you see the window, the rainy day, and the child with his face pressed to the glass watching the raindrops, and you feel the child’s sense of delight and wonder. The poems of Robert Louis Stevenson in
A Child’s Garden of Verses
have a similar quality of using very ordinary experiences to communicate the depth of perception. The poems “My Shadow,” “My Kingdom,” and “Armies in the Fire” exemplify this. The fundamental vastness of the world cannot be expressed directly in words, but in children’s literature, very often it is possible to express that vastness in simplicity.

The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is another wonderful example of literature that evokes the sense of ordinary, or elemental, magic. At one point in this story, the little prince meets a fox. The prince is very lonely and wants the fox to play with him, but the fox says that he cannot play unless he is tamed. The little prince asks the meaning of the word “tame.” The fox explains that it means “to establish ties” in such a way that the fox will become unique to the little prince, and the prince unique to the fox. Later, after the fox has been tamed and the little prince must leave him, the fox also tells the prince what he calls “my secret, a very simple secret,” which is, “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Saint-Exupéry has a different vocabulary here for describing the discovery of magic, or drala, but the experience is basically the same. Discovering drala is indeed to establish ties to your world, so that each perception becomes unique. It is to see with the heart, so that what is invisible to the eye becomes visible as the living magic of reality. There may be thousands or billions of perceptions, but they are still one. If you see one candle, you know exactly what all the candles in the whole world look like. They are all made out of fire, flame. Seeing one drop of water can be seeing all water.

Drala could almost be called an entity. It is not quite on the level of a god or gods, but it is an individual strength that does exist. Therefore, we not only speak of drala principle, but we speak of meeting the “dralas.” The dralas are the elements of reality—water of water, fire of fire, earth of earth—anything that connects you with the elemental quality of reality, anything that reminds you of the depth of perception. There are dralas in the rocks or the trees or the mountains or a snowflake or a clod of dirt. Whatever is there, whatever you come across in your life, those are the dralas of reality. When you make that connection with the elemental quality of the world, you are meeting dralas on the spot; at that point, you are meeting them. That is the basic existence of which all human beings are capable. We always have possibilities of discovering magic. Whether it is medieval times or the twentieth century, the possibility of magic is always there.

A particular example of meeting drala, in my personal experience, is flower arranging. Whatever branches you find, none of them is rejected as ugly. They can always be included. You have to learn to see their place in the situation; that is the key point. So you never reject anything. That is how to make a connection with the dralas of reality.

Drala energy is like the sun. If you look in the sky, the sun is there. By looking at it, you don’t produce a new sun. You may feel that you created or made today’s sun by looking at it, but the sun is eternally there. When you discover the sun in the sky, you begin to communicate with it. Your eyes begin to relate with the light of the sun. In the same way, drala principle is always there. Whether you care to communicate with it or not, the magical strength and wisdom of reality are always there. That wisdom abides in the cosmic mirror. By relaxing the mind, you can reconnect with that primordial, original ground, which is completely pure and simple. Out of that, through the medium of your perceptions, you can discover magic, or drala. You actually can connect your own intrinsic wisdom with a sense of greater wisdom or vision beyond you.

You might think that something extraordinary will happen to you when you discover magic. Something extra-ordinary does happen. You simply find yourself in the realm of utter reality, complete and thorough reality.

THIRTEEN

How to Invoke Magic

When you express gentleness and precision in your environment, then real brilliance and power can descend onto that situation. If you try to manufacture that presence out of your own ego, it will never happen. You cannot own the power and the magic of this world. It is always available, but it does not belong to anyone.

T
HE PHENOMENAL WORLD
that all human beings experience is fickle and flexible and also merciless. You often wonder whether you can ride on that fickle and merciless situation or whether it is going to ride on you. To use an analogy, either you are riding on a donkey or the donkey is riding on you. Ordinarily, in your experience of the world it is questionable who is riding on whom. The more you struggle to gain the upper hand, the more speed and aggression you manufacture to overcome your obstacles, the more you become subject to the phenomenal world. The real challenge is to transcend that duality altogether. It is possible to contact energy that is beyond dualism, beyond aggression—energy that is neither for you nor against you. That is the energy of drala.

Drala is not a god or spirit, but fundamentally it is connecting the wisdom of your own being with the power of things as they are. If you are able to connect those two things, out of that, you can discover magic in everything. But there is still a question as to what it is that allows you to make that connection. In the last chapter, the drala principle was likened to the sun. Although the sun is always in the sky, what is it that causes you to look up and see that it is there? Although magic is always available, what allows you to discover it? The basic definition of drala is “energy beyond aggression.” The only way to contact that energy is to experience a gentle state of being in yourself. So the discovery of drala is not coincidental. To connect with the fundamental magic of reality, there has to be gentleness and openness in you already. Otherwise, there is no way to recognize the energy of nonaggression, the energy of drala, in the world. So the individual training and discipline of the Shambhala warrior are the necessary foundation for experiencing drala.

The setting-sun world, based on fear of oneself and fear of death, has no connection to drala principle. The cowardice and aggression of the setting-sun outlook actually dispel any magical possibilities, any possibilities of experiencing the genuine and brilliant qualities of reality. The opposite of setting-sun outlook and the way to invoke drala is to manifest the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Great Eastern Sun vision, which we discussed in earlier chapters, is the expression of true human goodness, based not on arrogance or aggression, but on gentleness and openness. It is the way of the warrior.

The essence of this way or path is transcending cowardice and manifesting bravery. That is the best and only way to invoke drala: by creating an atmosphere of bravery. We have already talked in earlier chapters about the qualities of bravery. The fundamental aspect of bravery is
being without deception
. Deception in this case is self-deception, doubting yourself so that you are cut off from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. The dralas can only descend onto your existence when you have properly prepared the ground. If there is the slightest deception, you will dispel drala. From that point of view, deception is the magic of the setting sun.

Usually if we say someone is brave, we mean that he is not afraid of any enemy or he is willing to die for a cause or he is never intimidated. The Shambhala understanding of bravery is quite different. Here bravery is the courage to be—to live in the world without any deception and with tremendous kindness and caring for others. You might wonder how this can bring magic into your life. The ordinary idea of magic is that you can conquer the elements, so that you can turn earth into fire or fire into water or ignore the law of gravity and fly. But true magic is the magic of
reality,
as it is: the earth of earth, the water of water—communicating with the elements so that, in some sense, they become one with you. When you develop bravery, you make a connection with the elemental quality of existence. Bravery begins to heighten your existence, that is, to bring out the brilliant and genuine qualities of your environment and of your own being. So you begin to contact the magic of reality—which is already there in some sense. You actually can attract the power and strength and the primordial wisdom that arise from the cosmic mirror.

At that point, you begin to see how you can influence your environment so that the drala principle is reflected in every activity of your life. You see that you can actually organize your life in such a way that you magnetize magic, or drala, to manifest brilliance and elegance in your world. The way to do this is divided into three parts, which are called the three ways to invoke drala.

The first is invoking
external drala,
which is invoking magic in your physical environment. This may be as small and limited as a one-room apartment or as large as a mansion or a hotel. How you organize and care for that space is very important. If it is chaotic and messy, then no drala will enter into that environment. On the other hand, we are not talking about taking a course in interior decoration and spending a great deal of money on furniture and rugs to create a “model environment.” For the warrior, invoking external drala is creating harmony in your environment in order to encourage awareness and attention to detail. In that way, your physical environment promotes your discipline of warriorship. Beyond that, how you organize your physical space should be based on concern for others, sharing your world by creating an accommodating environment. The point is not to make a self-conscious statement about yourself, but to make your world available to others. When that begins to happen, then it is possible that something else will come along as well. That is, when you express gentleness and precision in your environment, then real brilliance and power can descend onto that situation. If you try to manufacture that presence out of your own ego, it will never happen. You cannot own the power and the magic of this world. It is always available, but it does not belong to anyone.

There are many other examples of invoking external drala. I have read, for instance, that some American Indians in the Southwest grow vegetables in the desert sands. The soil, from an objective standpoint, is completely infertile. If you just threw a handful of seeds into that earth, nothing would grow. But the Indians have been cultivating that soil for generations; they have a deep connection to that earth and they care for it. To them it is sacred ground, and because of that their plants grow. That is real magic. The attitude of sacredness toward your environment will bring drala. You may live in a dirt hut with no floor and only one window, but if you regard that space as sacred, if you care for it with your heart and mind, then it will be a palace.

The idea of sacred space is also what gives grandeur to a great cathedral, like Chartres, or to a house of government, like the English Houses of Parliament. Churches are consciously built as sacred places, whereas a house of government may never have been conceived of as “sacred” by its architects. Nevertheless, those places have a presence that is more than the structure of the building or the beauty of the materials used to construct them. They radiate a particular atmosphere that you cannot help but feel.

The Greeks and the Romans laid out their cities with some understanding of external drala. You might say that putting a fountain in the center of a square or at a crossroads is a random choice. But when you come upon that fountain, it does not feel random at all. It is in its own proper place and it seems to enhance the space around it. In modern times, we don’t think very highly of the Romans, with all of their debauchery and corrupt rulers. We tend to downplay the wisdom of their culture. Certainly, corruption dispels drala. But there was some power and wisdom in the Roman civilization, which we should not overlook.

In summary, invoking the external drala principle is connected with organizing your environment so that it becomes a sacred space. This begins with the organization of your personal, household environment, and beyond that, it can include much larger environments, such as a city or even an entire country.

Then, there is invoking
internal drala,
which is how to invoke drala in your body. Basically, the experience of internal drala is that you feel oneness in your body—oneness in the sense that your head, your shoulders, your torso, your arms, your genitals, your knees, your legs, and your toes all hang together as one basically good human body. You feel no quarrel between your head and shoulders, between your toes and legs, and so forth. It doesn’t really matter whether your hair is growing gray or you are developing wrinkles on your face or your hands are shaky. There is still a feeling that your body has its own fitness, its own unity. When you look, you hear; when you hear, you smell; when you smell, you taste; when you taste, you feel. All of your sense perceptions work as one unit, as one basic goodness, one expression of basic health.