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

Then one does get the physical result of not being at the mercy of the elements. If you are in a hot country, you feel cool. If you are in a cool country, you feel warm. But that seems to be beside the point. The point here is dealing with the tension that one builds up within one’s being, a psychosomatic tension that creates a sense of weakness. The body becomes such a big deal that one does not want to endure even the smallest discomfort. There is tremendous fear involved. Even the littlest discomfort brings enormous panic, particularly when you begin to think that you can’t renew the body, you can’t get further supplies to keep yourself happy. So there’s a sense of panic, which is the cause of tension. One becomes very tight; psychosomatically, one’s whole body becomes one lump of muscle. This makes one very vulnerable to the elements—the psychosomatic or the physical elements. This sense of tension—or anger—creates enormous unnecessary suffering.

Then there is the next dharma of Naropa, realization of the illusory body. Having disowned one’s body, having conquered one’s sense of possessiveness toward one’s body, one’s being, one’s ego, then one begins to mingle oneself with the rest of the mirage of sounds, colors, shapes, energies, emotions—everything. Mingling with that is the practice of illusory body. It’s a kind of celebration. Constantly, there is joy, a dance taking place. It’s not to maintain your thing, but to celebrate.

Then there is the next dharma, dream. This is not necessarily dream at the level of sleep. It is the dreams that we have all the time in our lives, the fantasies and real experiences of our life during the day, the fantasies and thought processes that make our life like it is happening in Disneyland. The search for entertainment is an important aspect of the dream activity. If you realize the dream as dream, then there is no entertainment. But that does not necessarily mean depression. Entertainment is the sense of getting your money’s worth, so to speak, or your energy’s worth. But if we realize dream as dream, the whole approach to life becomes less businesslike, but at the same time very practical. Relating with friends, relatives, the business world, enemies—all these experiences become more real. Generally we think of dreams differently; we think of dreams as something unreal and of something that is not dreams as real. That seems to be a misunderstanding. The point of the dream yoga is to free oneself from the Disneyland-like quality, which is our regular day life, and replace that with dream experience, which is real life. From that point of view, if one could live completely in the dream world, that would be much more real and pragmatic and efficient and complete than the so-called nondream world.

Luminosity is the next one, light. That is a further elaboration of the intelligence one should develop in the
real
dream state, in which you don’t dream but you live properly. There is a sense of panoramic awareness. You are certain about how things function. There is the confidence that we have already developed: the sense of real, genuine understanding and awareness, which is the absence of threat. That is the experience of luminosity.

The next one is called
phowa
in Tibetan, which literally means “pass out” or “eject.” In this case, it’s more likely “eject.” This means that you are capable of making your consciousness step outside of your body when the time comes. Or your consciousness can enter into another body when the time comes. This again means cutting through a lot of possessiveness toward one’s body, particularly the desire for possessions and entertainment. One has to have the power to remove clingings. You can step out in the middle of your meal; before you finish your sentence, you can step out. You don’t have a chance to finish your pun or to finish your dessert. You have to leave things behind, which can be very scary and very unsatisfying.

The last one has to do with sleep.
¹
There was an Indian siddha called Lavapa who fell asleep for twelve years by the side of the main highway running through his city. At the end of twelve years, he had realized mahamudra completely. Sleep is both literal and symbolic here. Symbolically, there is the sense that the samsaric state is a state of deep sleep. Also, physical sleep is a state of complete unconsciousness before dreams arise. The idea is to develop complete awareness, or better in this context of mahamudra, a state of wakefulness. When you’re awake, you don’t have to make a point of being aware, because you are constantly awake in any case. You can do other things along with that. That is the real example of mahamudra; mahamudra is like being awake; you don’t have to maintain your practice or state of wisdom. Everything functions simply and naturally within the process of being awake.

Traditionally, after completing the six dharmas of Naropa, a person begins to practice hatha yoga—pranayama and so forth. The final outcome of the yoga practices is that you learn to perform miracles. Relating with the body in a certain way is very magical. Thus, it is regarded as very dangerous to introduce hatha yoga, or playing with your breath or whatever, at too early a stage. You still don’t have intelligence, awareness, and confidence functioning in a coordinated way. Everything is not synchronized properly. The danger and the strain come when this synchronization does not exist but you are still pushing to achieve.

The notion of miracle is very interesting. Here, miracle is something very basic. It has to come about through the karmic situation, what is going on in your life and in the life of your country. Certain very powerful coincidences take place, and you might become the instigator of them. But if your action is not attuned to the karmic situation, things will go wrong. For instance, if you have the magical power to produce anything you want, the obvious first thing you might do is produce lots of banknotes. But that would create a strange fluctuation in the economic world. The banknotes you’ve produced won’t have been registered properly; though they are seemingly real, they are actually fake. Your action becomes criminal. Somehow the whole thing has to work with the karmic situation that exists in your country. You can’t oversaturate the market. So a miracle is not one-sided in character. It is a mutual creation of you and the situation in the country. The country’s energy and yours become the instigator.

The idea of hatha yoga practice is also to relate with the elements properly, make friends with them—the physical elements as well as the psychological elements. In other words, the vajrayana process is getting to know the world in the fullest possible way. By doing that, you will be able to work with other people and help them, because they are part of this universe, and they have their connections to the elements as well.

Student:
Can you say anything more about stepping out, which you spoke of in connection with phowa practice?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It’s being willing to leave. Things are half-finished, and there is a desire to finish them. You have a sense of openness that gives you the power to step out anytime you wish. That can also extend to being able to step out of your body, leave your body whenever you wish. But the situation has to be right. You can’t practice phowa if you’re freaking out and regarding it as a suicidal thing. In that case, you would still be kept in your body, because you would have a sense of imprisonment. The greater your sense of imprisonment, the more surely you will be kept in your body. So it would not work if you approached it suicidally. It’s a sense of letting go.

S:
Is it to be practiced at the time of death?

TR:
Yes, but not only. It should have implications in all directions.

Student:
Rinpoche, you seem to be saying that visualization of buddhas and yidams should only be done after realization of shunyata.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I wouldn’t say complete realization, but the person should have practice in shunyata first, know how to perceive the world on the shunyata level first.

S:
It seems to me that other Tibetan teachers give visualization practices to new students. Why would they do that?

TR:
In Tibet, most serious practitioners would automatically enter vajrayana immediately. But theoretically they already have some training in the basic practice of meditation. A lot of Western students come to teachers in what is seemingly the same faithful, devoted fashion as Tibetans, but they have no training behind them. So it seems to be premature to start them with vajrayana practices, when they have not even realized the meaning of suffering or of the four noble truths. They can’t just start with visualization.

There is another problem with Western practitioners. Whether they consider themselves Christians or followers of the theistic tradition or not, still their general thinking pattern, their fundamental way of carrying their mind about in this world on the spiritual level, is still based on the theistic tradition. A lot of people may have reservations about believing in an external god and things like that, but still their basic approach goes along with a theistic attitude. Then if they visualize another god, that doesn’t sort anything out for them at all. It just reinforces their national ego or religious ego, which they immediately associate with this. Somehow it just becomes an extra burden rather than an approach toward freedom.

Student:
Isn’t it what you call “idiot compassion” to start students with vajrayana practices? It seems to make so much more sense to begin with the hinayana and mahayana approach of moment-to-moment compassion toward your own mind.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so, yes. Generally, I think we have a kind of social problem here. When Western students come to study with Eastern teachers, they are regarded as special guests, because they come from the land that invented airplanes, motorcars, radios, and other fantastic things of all kinds. There is already something special about them; they have their passport by birth. This is particularly true for Tibetans, for instance. In Tibetan, the word for “foreigner” is not at all derogatory. It has a sense of the exotic. Foreigners are not regarded as barbarians at all, but are thought to be very smart and have powerful minds. As a Tibetan, you might think that one American visitor in your monastery could build airplanes for you if you wanted, or motorcars, fountains, electric plants, or anything. Westerners are considered all-knowing, omniscient. Although they may not actually have any knowledge at all, because of that kind of credential, they are put in the category of special guests, which is actually quite close to idiot compassion. The hard-core ego or neurosis they in fact carry calls for much more training.

Student:
There are literally thousands of people in the West practicing hatha yoga. Are these people making a mistake? Are they not prepared for hatha yoga?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
If you relate with hatha yoga on a hinayana level, like instead of just sitting cross-legged and meditating, then it seems to be okay. A lot of people approach it as just a gymnastic thing. But if they begin to play with psychophysical energy with a semi-tantric approach, as in kundalini yoga, for instance, then it tends to become very dangerous.

Student:
I don’t understand what you said about miracles. It seems to me that even if you were thrown into jail for producing money out of thin air, it would still be a miracle.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It would be criminal. You are not helping the karma of the country. You are creating more unemployment and more pain, which cheapens the energy, green energy.
²
Producing money is an insult to the mandala.

Student:
Is the idea of the dream yoga to realize how completely the world you perceive is made out of your own projections? Is it that once you realize that and relate to it enough, you’re really being more realistic?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s right, yes.

Student:
What do you mean by a
real
dream state?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
This, the way we are now. You are asleep.

Student:
What form does the intelligence that develops into mahamudra take at the hinayana and mahayana levels?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The hinayana level of intelligence is mindfulness. I suppose we could say that the prajna level that comes then is awareness, which is greater than just being mindful of particular things. Mindfulness is also very intelligent, but that intelligence is not as great as awareness. Mindfulness is sometimes called “recollection” (
smriti
in Sanskrit), which does not mean recollecting the past, but recollecting what is happening here now. In the actual, real, final prajna, awareness becomes all-pervasive. You don’t have to project in any particular direction or from any particular angle. It is everywhere. But still there is a sense of pulsation, of flash and spread, flash and spread. It isn’t a constant thing.

S:
What changes that causes the mindfulness to progress to awareness?

TR:
Awareness develops because mindfulness begins to see things so precisely and clearly that the things begin to put out radiations of awareness, rather than just being the objects you’re being mindful of. That permeates. It is an opening. For instance, if you look at a candle, you begin to see not only the candle but also the light that candle is reflecting at other objects. Your vision becomes much greater. That brings intelligence into another area. Awareness is not only awareness of things, but also awareness of space everywhere. You cannot develop such awareness without first developing mindfulness of things.

Student:
Are the six dharmas of Naropa meditation practices?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
They are a kind of meditation practice, I suppose you could say, but they have more to do with relating with the activity of your life; they are more on the level of meditation in action. Of course, there are certain techniques for developing the six dharmas, different tricks, so to speak—visualizations and mantras and so on. But the general idea is that you do those as a preparation, and the actual practice happens in your everyday life situation.