The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (44 page)

The point here is to make ourselves tight and disciplined. We don’t give in to any religious, metaphysical, or psychological problems. We just maintain ourselves as we are. We can be simply what we are. That is the basic point. You have to take responsibility. It is your duty. You are not fundamentally sick. Everybody has a duty, and you do pretty well as yourself, as what you are. You could help a lot of people. That’s what we’re talking about.

I don’t want to play down the colorfulness of the early poems of my friend Allen Ginsberg, but when he made poetry out of his reaction to the Vietnam War and other problems that America faced, he could have been contributing to the problems. The ground of blamelessness is connecting with things as they are, the simple, clean-cut level, definitely the clean-cut level of things as they are. If you see something wrong, say it. You don’t have to say it in a pejorative or negative sense at all. Just say it and do something about it. Talk to your friends. Tell them: Let us not do
this,
let us do
that
. In fact, every one of you has tremendous power. You don’t have to be the president of the United States, particularly. You can be your own king or queen.

Blamelessness is a very simple point. Blame doesn’t come from one’s partners or friends. Taking blame onto yourself means that it is
yours
. In other words, when you’re outside and you shout something, if it bounces off a rock, then the rock says, “ai, ai, ai, ai.” But you don’t blame the rock. You blame yourself, because
you
said “ai, ai, ai, ai.” You’re in an echo chamber, so you blame the echo
er
rather than the echo itself. Therefore, there is hope; there is hope of reducing blame.

When you are afraid of something, it might be a fear of darkness, a fear of knives, a fear of guns, or of anything. You can’t just have fear without fear
of
something. So what is that other? Who is the other? That’s
yourself
. There is a story about a man who’s locked in a room. He’s sitting in that room, a big room with lots of space and lots of possibilities of noise bouncing back. Things are getting cold and dark and darker. He hears something. So he says, “Who dat?” When there is no response, he says, “Who dat who said, ‘Who dat?’?” And then he says, “Who dat who said, ‘Who dat?’ when I said, ‘Who dat?’?” The antidote to that echo chamber is to make friends with yourself.

Give yourself a break. That doesn’t mean to say that you should drive to the closest bar and have lots to drink or go to a movie. Just enjoy the day, your normal existence. Allow yourself to sit in your home or take a drive into the mountains. Park your car somewhere; just sit; just be. It sounds very simplistic, but it has a lot of magic. You begin to pick up on clouds, sunshine and weather, the mountains, your past, your chatter with your grandmother and your grandfather, your own mother, your own father. You begin to pick up on a lot of things. Just let them pass like the chatter of a brook as it hits the rocks. We have to give ourselves some time to be.

We’ve been clouded by going to school, looking for a job—our lives are cluttered by all sorts of things. Your friends want you to come have a drink with them, which you don’t want to do. Life is crowded with all sorts of garbage. In themselves, those things aren’t garbage, but they’re cumbersome when they get in the way of how to relax, how to be, how to trust, how to be a warrior. We’ve missed so many possibilities for that, but there are so many more possibilities that we can catch. We have to learn to be kinder to ourselves, much more kind. Smile a lot, although nobody is watching you smile. Listen to your own brook, echoing yourself. You can do a good job.

In the sitting practice of meditation, when you begin to be still, hundreds of thousands, millions, and billions of thoughts will go through your mind. But they just pass through, and only the worthy ones leave their fish eggs behind. We have to leave ourselves some time to be. You’re not going to see the Shambhala vision, you’re not even going to survive, by not leaving yourself a minute to be, a minute to smile. If you don’t grant yourself a good time, you’re not going to get any Shambhala wisdom, even if you’re at the top of your class technically speaking. Please, I beg you, please, give yourself a good time.

This doesn’t mean that you have to go to an expensive clothing store to buy three-thousand-dollar suits. You don’t have to go to the most expensive restaurant to eat. For that matter, you don’t have to go to a bar and get drunk. The way to give yourself a good time is to be gentle with yourself. A lot of problems come from self-hatred. Let us let go of that; let us let it go away. Let us
be
as real people. Let us be genuine people who don’t require doctors, medicine, aspirin, codeine, all the rest of it. Let us be just basic human beings.

See the beautiful deer. They have no one to rule them, but they frolic in the meadow as if they had a deerkeeper. They are so clean; they have such head and shoulders; they are beautifully horned. The deer, the fox, the jackal—all have their own beauty in being themselves. Nobody is taking care of them.

I’m somewhat appalled that we can’t do that for ourselves. On the other hand, it is a human condition that has been handed down through the generations. Now is the time for that to end. Now is the time of hope for us. The wisdom of the East comes to the West. The Shambhala teaching is here right now, completely pure and undiluted by anybody at all. You are so fortunate, if I may say so, on behalf of my forebears and grandparents and myself. It is wonderful that you have this opportunity. Please don’t waste your time. Every minute is important. Nonetheless, have a good sleep, and don’t work while you’re asleep!

S
ACREDNESS

I

First it swells and goes where it will,

Isn’t this a river?

It rises in the East and sets in the West,

Isn’t this the moon?

II

Never setting,

Isn’t this the Great Eastern Sun?

Whether it exists or not,

It is the Shambhala kingdom.

III

Love that is free from hesitation

And passion that is free from laziness

Can join East and West.

Then, South and North also arise.

You arise as the king of the whole world.

You can join both heaven and earth.

IV

Being without fear, you create fear.

The renown of fear cannot be feared.

When through fear you examine yourself,

You trample on the egg of fear.

These four untitled poems were written on the same day that the talk “Blamelessness” was given.

1
. After using two common anonymous names as examples, the author uses the names of several students present in the audience when he gave this talk. Lodrö Dorje was the Dorje Loppon, or the head of practice and study for Vajradhatu, the main Buddhist organization founded by Chögyam Trungpa. Ösel Tendzin was the Vajra Regent, the author’s Buddhist heir. Diana Mukpo was the author’s wife. And of course, the last-named person is the author himself.

ELEVEN

Attaining the Higher Realms

You can help the world. You, you, you, you, and you—all of you—can help the world. You know what the problems are. You know the difficulties. Let us do something. Let us not chicken out. Let us actually do it properly. Please, please, please! We are trying to reach the higher realms and help others to do so, instead of being stuck in the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the animal realm—which are the other alternatives, the lower realms. Let’s do it. Please think about that. I wish that you would all take a personal vow to help others who are going through such turmoil.

B
LAMELESSNESS,
or being without blame, comes from being daring. You might say, “How dare you call me Joe Schmidt? How
dare
you?
How dare
you?” When you say that, you automatically raise your head and shoulders. If you look at yourself in the mirror when you say, “How dare you?” you will see that. So this kind of daring is human upliftedness.

Daring is very direct, but at the same time, it’s somewhat difficult to attain, because, in many cases, we don’t like ourselves. We feel that we aren’t equipped with everything that we should have, so we don’t feel very good about ourselves. In fact, we feel that we have a lot of problems. We consider some of those things to be private matters. “I can’t have an orgasm,” or “I acted impulsively. I shouted at somebody when I didn’t need to.” There are a lot of situations where we feel inadequate, bad, or strange. The way to overcome all of that is to have a loving attitude toward yourself.

When you pay attention or you want to hear what someone is saying, you sit or stand upright. Interestingly enough, the ears make head and shoulders: If somebody says something that you have to strain to hear, you perk up your ears to listen. That is precisely the image of Deer Park, which is His Holiness Karmapa’s logo. Two deer are sitting on either side of the wheel of
dharma,
which represents the proclamation of the Buddhist teachings, trying to listen to the Karmapa teaching. It’s as if they were saying, “What did he say? What’s it all about?” The same is true in many of the traditional thangkas, or paintings, of Milarepa, a great Tibetan Buddhist saint who wrote many beautiful songs of meditative realization. He is often shown cupping his right hand over his ear, listening to himself singing his own song. He’s cupping his hand to his ear so that he can hear his own voice singing the melody and the words of the song. Listening is a sense of personal inquisitiveness, which brings a sense of satisfaction. At least you can hear the music!

The logo of the Karmapa, showing two deer on either side of the wheel of dharma. The Tibetan inscription on the banner reads: “The Seat of the Glorious Karmapa.”

FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

We have to help others who cannot hear. We can help them by providing a sense of joy. To those who feel aggression toward the world, we can say, “Experiencing the world is not all that bad, my dear friend. This world is not all that terrorized by passion, aggression, or ignorance.” When you make a new friend who has never heard of such a thing as Shambhala wisdom or buddhadharma, the teachings of the Buddha, you might invite him or her to join you in a cup of coffee or some good scotch. Then you can sit back together and listen to this world. In that way, you can share the experience that the world is workable. It’s not all
that
bad at all. You might find that the alcohol provides possibilities to share the space together. The next day, when your friend wakes up, they may have a hangover and they may go back to their depressed world. Still, it’s better that your friend have the hangover.

We’re trying to cheer up the rest of the world—including ourselves. As you practice and come to understand the Shambhala teachings, some genuineness takes place. You begin to see that snow is actually much whiter, winter is so beautiful, and summer is fabulous. I have created dharma art installations that demonstrate those sorts of possibilities.
¹
It is possible to cheer up. Good heavens! Please believe me. It is possible to cheer up in all sorts of different ways, and it is absolutely possible to cheer up the world.

At this point, the world is depressed. That is our main concern. Sometimes the world has been uplifted in a negative way, such as during the Vietnam War or during the two world wars. People had something to cheer them up, because they had a proper enemy: “The Germans have a big gun, but on the other hand, ours might be better.” But how are we going to cheer up when there’s no enemy? What if the economy becomes depressed? The point is that it is up to you individually. You have to cheer yourselves up, to begin with. Charity begins at home, as they say. Then others are no longer a nuisance, and the world around you is a good world, the best world. It becomes your partner, your friend. Even if your car runs into another car and makes a big dent, that might provide a topic of conversation. First, ARRRRR! Then, it may become a joke, quite funny. Then, you can make friends. “Where do you live? Come for dinner. Come for a drink.” It’s possible. Particularly in the United States of America, those possibilities exist.

The key to blamelessness is nonaggression, definitely. When you’re angry, you become extremely intelligent. You say, “This happened because of that and that and that.” Or you say, “He did this, and he did that,” or, “She did this, and she did that, and therefore, this happened.” Aggression has a tendency to become
so
intelligent, and it begins to spread and split into further levels of aggression. When you’re really angry and aggressive, there is a tendency to smear the excrement of aggression on everybody. That’s why the Shambhala vision of nonaggression is so important. Whenever you’re tempted to blame something on someone else, saying, “This happened because of that,” or, “That has happened because of this,” just come back to your oneness. The Shambhala principle of wholeness is like a Ming vase that has no cracks in it. It holds together majestically as a Ming vase with its intricate designs. Try to maintain that sense of being. When there is ARRRRR!—think of the Ming vase. And you could think of me, too!