The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (35 page)

S
PEECH

The second category is speech and telling the truth. People often use speech as a method of asserting themselves in society. If you want to talk to somebody who doesn’t speak English, for example, you often shout at him or her. Or if you want to express confidence during a job interview, you do your “speech trip”—which is not necessarily based on the truth. Sometimes you have to bend the truth to make yourself look better than you are, so that you will get a job. I sympathize with that, but the basic point of speech is communication.

In the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, your friends are regarded as brothers and sisters, so it is very important to feel connected and to communicate with them. You waste a lot of time by not saying what you feel. Then your friend is confused, and you are as well. To avoid that problem, your personal feelings should be expressed freely to your friends. Speech is also connected with gentleness. In the Shambhala world, you speak gently; you don’t bark. That is as much a part of dignity as having good head and shoulders. It would be very strange if somebody had good head and shoulders and began to bark. It would look very incongruous.

M
IND

I spent a longer time talking about the first wisdom of the physical situation. If you work with your body situation, speech and mind will come along with that. The final category of letting go is mind, which is connected with being without deception. Sometimes we waste a lot of time asking other people’s opinion as to whether we should make certain decisions. “Should I ask somebody to marry me?” “Should I complain to that woman who was so rude to me?” “Should I ask my boss for a raise?” Of course, if you really need advice, it’s fine to ask for it. But in many situations, we don’t actually want someone’s opinion; we’re just expressing our lack of confidence. If you trust in your existence, you will be free from such indecision, which is a form of ignorance. Ignorance is indecisive; it is uncertainty as to how to conduct yourself. The only genuine reference point, as far as mind is concerned, is the pure understanding that basic goodness does exist. You can actually project out that sense of meditative state without second thought. Flash out that first thought free from fear and doubt.

Sometimes, when you are studying something, your mind goes blank. You can‘t even think. That is the fear of intelligence and the fear of not being able to connect properly. You’re not a hopeless case, but you fear that you are. There is so much fear of wisdom that wisdom becomes monumental. To break that down, relate with your daily life situation, starting from the disciplines of body, speech, and mind. Then you will begin to realize that there is actually a spark of goodness in you that is known as the first dot. That dot is the source of fearlessness. When you have a dot, you may not necessarily be free from fear, particularly, but at least you are
awake
. Fundamental goodness is already there. Therefore, you begin to appreciate yourself. Then, because of that, you begin to feel that you’re capable of working with others. So you develop individuality without individuality, which is an interesting twist.

From the appreciation for this wisdom, this particular dot of basic goodness, you begin to develop respect for hierarchy. The wisdom is genuine and it works, so one develops loyalty to the source of wisdom, the teacher. Realizing that you can actually permeate that wisdom to others, you begin to feel a longing to work with your brothers, sisters, mother, father, in-laws of all kinds—who need that basic goodness message. We can’t be completely selfish, just getting the Shambhala wisdom and keeping it for ourselves. That would be almost criminal. We have to work with others, absolutely. That will be your burden, if you like, and it’s a good burden. I’ve done so myself. I will continue to do so myself until my death and even beyond my death. We have to help others.

In Asia, the ideal of enlightened society came from a mythical kingdom called Shambhala. We could also say that enlightened society existed when the Buddha taught. When he proclaimed the four noble truths,
⁵
enlightened society took place. There was also an enlightened society in Tibet during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century. Songtsen Gampo was regarded as one of the best and most benevolent Tibetan monarchs, and the enlightened world that he organized lasted about two hundred years.
⁶
In India, the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the third century
BCE
was another example of enlightened society.
⁷
His goal was to spread peace throughout the world, and he was the first person in history to start hospitals, both for sick people and for animals. Before that, there were no hospitals anywhere in the world. His concept of a hospital was based on the bodhisattva ideal of sympathy for others and working for others’ welfare. In the medieval world, religion and politics were not all that separate. Also society was not all that organized in those days, but still these enlightened societies did take place.

The idea of decency in the medieval world was very fuzzy, but in the modern world, the border is very distinct between enlightened society and unenlightened society. So in modern society, the creation of an enlightened society, such as that of Emperor Ashoka or King Songtsen Gampo, is highly possible. In the medieval world, hardly anybody could write or read. These days, most people are literate, so they have access to all kinds of written messages, making it possible to share things with people on a much broader level. In medieval times, people suffered less from physical materialism, but the line between comfort and discomfort was marginal. There was not very much comfort and not very much discomfort. People were hardened and vague from that experience of the world. Today, in most parts of the world, comfort and discomfort are much more distinct and sharp. At least suffering is much more pronounced, although pleasure may still be vague. There is much more room to teach people the truth of suffering. If you understand that truth, there is more room to bring about enlightened society. So the current century brings vivid possibilities.

The basic point of this training is to work with the rest of the world, to liberate their aggression, and to provide a gentle world that will work. A lot depends on your individual participation, so that you can graduate from the setting-sun world to the world of the Great Eastern Sun and become a full-fledged Great Eastern Sun person. The definition of the Great Eastern Sun is threefold:

• Radiating confidence, peaceful:
  The Great Eastern Sun radiates the peaceful confidence of nonaggression. Second is:
  
• Illuminating the way of discipline:
  We’ve talked about that already: learning what to accept, what to reject, and how to develop discipline and wisdom altogether. Then, the third part of the definition is:
  
• Eternal ruler of the three worlds:
  That is connected with the idea that you cannot get away from the light. If you are part of the greenery—a flower, say—and you want to grow, then you always need the sun as your king. Ruling your world here is also connected with developing the wisdom of body, speech, and mind. Those are the three worlds. Ruling is also the idea of joining heaven and earth together, so that the world is one world.
  

When the truth is taught, a lot of people find it threatening. In many cases, truth is told with apology. But in presenting the Shambhala teachings, we are telling the truth without apology—truth without apology, with dignity and honesty, top to bottom. I am so proud and happy that people can respond to
real
truth, without philosophy, without a pep talk. It’s unheard-of! I’m so honored. I suppose we might be thankful to the setting-sun world. Because it has been so powerful in our lives, by contrast, we have come to the discovery of these Great Eastern Sun possibilities.

Personally, I am trying to live up to what I’ve been brought up as: a Tibetan gentleman who has no particular concern other than helping others. When I came to this country in 1970, I met very intelligent people. At the same time, they were so gullible. They were willing to buy any spiritual trip. So my first message to them was, “Please, be critical. Don’t buy anything that somebody says. Question them. Try to develop critical intelligence.” That is the notion of cutting through spiritual materialism. I wrote a book by that name,
⁸
which was geared to help people realize that you don’t just follow any spiritual teaching. That had become a problem, and it had created tremendous pollution in the American spiritual world.

Beyond that, of course, we have physical materialism, which was not particularly mentioned in that book. But it
is
mentioned here. We have to overcome physical materialism, which is thinking that wealth or possessions will relieve our suffering and make us happy. Fundamentally, that is what we have been discussing here: how to retrain ourselves and how to restrain ourselves, very simply, from physical materialism.

So in working with students in the Western world, I have been presenting a twofold message: first, how to overcome psychological and spiritual materialism; second, how to overcome physical materialism. The first message is designed to help people become genuine practitioners in the Buddhist world. The second message is to help people overcome actual physical materialism by practicing the disciplines of body, speech, and mind, so that they can become warriors in the enlightened world of Shambhala. I hope that you will regard the Shambhala world as a big family. You are all invited to join this particular family. In the Buddhist world, we talk about joining the family of the enlightened ones. Here we are talking about joining enlightened society. Everybody is quite welcome.

1
. A Sanskrit epithet for the Buddha that means “the completely perfect awakened one.”

2
. The weekend meditation programs in which these talks were given.

3
. Trungpa Rinpoche established a yearly outdoor program in 1978 called the Magyel Pomra Encampment as a vehicle for teachings on mind training and overcoming aggression.

4
. The Shambhala Mountain Center, a rural meditation center in the mountains above Fort Collins, Colorado, near the Red Feather Lakes, was previously named the Rocky Mountain Dharma Center.

5
. The four noble truths were the first teaching given by the Buddha after his enlightenment. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path. A brief summary of these teachings is that all life is filled with suffering; that grasping or desire is the source of suffering; that enlightenment, or the cessation of suffering, is possible; and that there is a path or a way to free oneself from the endless cycle of suffering.

6
. For further information, see the entry for Songtsen Gampo in the glossary.

7
. Additional information on Ashoka can be found in the glossary.

8
.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
(1973).

The Primordial Dot

FOUR

The Cosmic Sneeze

Wherever there is a junction in our experience, the primordial dot occurs. Before experience becomes hot or cold, good or bad, there is a junction where the primordial dot occurs. The primordial dot has no bias to either that or this; therefore, it is unconditional. It is the mark of existence of human being and of the challenge of the human heart. Before the challenge, there is it. It’s like hearing a big bang, like the explosion of a cannon. You hear a bang, and then you wonder whether that bang is going to kill you or celebrate with you. One never knows. Usually, it’s neither. It’s just a big bang.

A
S HUMAN BEINGS,
we have a tremendous bond, a tremendous connection together. Having made the basic discovery that we are decent human beings, we are ready for a further discovery. Whether we are delivered or yet to be delivered from the sickness and degraded situations of the setting sun, we are ready to discover the Great Eastern Sun vision.

The Shambhala training is a study of cultural situations—not in the sense of studying another language or another lifestyle, but in the sense of learning how to behave as human beings. We are endowed with head and shoulders; we are endowed with our sense perceptions and our intelligence. We can work on ourselves, and we can communicate with others. We are adorned with a brain and heart, so that we can be intelligent and also soft and gentle. We are capable of being harsh. We are capable of being soft. We are capable of being happy, and we are capable of being sad.

We often take these human attributes for granted, or we may even think they get in our way. People often talk about trying to hold back their tears, but as human beings, we should take pride in our capacity to be sad and happy. We mustn’t ignore the preciousness of our human birth or take it for granted. It is extremely precious and very powerful. We cannot ignore our basic human endowment. Nonetheless, it is not a gift, nor is it purely the product of our own hard work, either. It is simply basic existence, which is contained within us. It is known as the primordial dot.

The primordial dot is the basic purity and goodness that everybody possesses. It is unconditional; that is why it is called
primordial
. It is free from the stains of habitual patterns, and it is free from our educational training. It is free from our childhood upbringing, and it is free from the trials and errors of our everyday life struggles. The primordial dot is the origin of everything, and that is why it has no origin. We can quite safely say that we cannot tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or in this case, we could say that neither did. The dot is not even one. It’s zero.