The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five (5 page)

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Authors: Chögyam Trungpa

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When this article was reviewed for inclusion in
The Collected Works,
an early, unpublished version was uncovered. In most respects, it was very similar to the final form in which the article appeared in
Garuda II.
However, the closing paragraph of the original was omitted when it was published. Here, Trungpa Rinpoche suggests that those who practice
The Sadhana of Mahamudra
would benefit from studying this essay on the mantra
HUM
This paragraph has been restored in the version that appears here.

Next in Volume Five we have “Explanation of the Vajra Guru Mantra,” an article never before published, which deals with the mantra that invokes Guru Rinpoche, or Padmasambhava. Here, Chögyam Trungpa describes mantra as creating “a living environment of energy.” This article was probably written while Chögyam Trungpa was still in England or shortly after he arrived in the United States. He translates each syllable of the mantra (if it is translatable) and then discusses the meaning of each syllable in some detail. There is a very pithy but penetrating discussion of the guru principle, which presents three aspects of one’s devotion and relationship to the teacher. First, one sees the guru as the superior teacher to whom one opens and surrenders oneself completely. Second, the guru manifests as the spiritual friend, because—as Rinpoche points out—“you must be able not only to surrender but to communicate.” Trungpa Rinpoche relates this aspect of devotion to the meeting of two minds: “Your mind is open to the open space and the guru’s mind is open to the open space. In this way, your mind becomes one with that of the teacher—both are inseparable from unconditioned space.” Finally, Rinpoche talks about the guru as environment, which is seeing occurrences in life as the manifestation of the energy of the teacher. One learns to appreciate the wisdom of the phenomenal world and to see life situations as messages that embody wisdom. If the practitioner ignores the meaning of experiences, then a stronger message, in the form of chaos, will provide the feedback that one has lost touch with “the life situation as teacher.” Recognizing this affords the student an opportunity for further opening and communication. The result is that one develops compassion, the genuine ability to communicate with and help others, as well as the power of
siddhi,
which is sometimes translated as “magical power” or the ability to perform miracles. Here, Trungpa Rinpoche suggests that siddhi is a situation that develops unexpectedly, a sudden unforeseen coming together of circumstances. He ends the article with the suggestion that the real miracle is the “power of compassion, ultimate communication.”

The next offering is Rinpoche’s foreword to
The Torch of Certainty
and the interview with Chögyam Trungpa that appeared in the introduction to the book. The foundation practices that are discussed here are often referred to as the four extraordinary or special preliminaries. They are a practitioner’s first formal introduction to visualization practice and other distinctly tantric aspects of Buddhist yoga and are prerequisites for more advanced meditation practices in the vajrayana. The foundations include 108,000 repetitions of the refuge formula combined with 108,000 prostrations, 108,000 repetitions of the Vajrasattva mantra, and 108,000 mandala offerings, concluding with a guru yoga recitation. These ngöndro practices are a process of surrendering, purifying, offering, and identifying with the lineage by developing longing for the teacher and the teachings.

For a student who has connected with the preceding teachings on lineage and devotion, the ngöndro practices offer the way to actually embark on the path. Although sometimes they are given to students with no other formal background, Trungpa Rinpoche makes it clear that, from his point of view, these practices are only appropriate or helpful for students who have experience in taming and training the mind, which are accomplished through the sitting practice of meditation.

The next two articles, “The Practicing Lineage” and “The Mishap Lineage” are edited versions of the first two talks in “The Line of the Trungpas,” a seminar taught by Chögyam Trungpa at Karmê Chöling meditation center in Vermont in 1975. Both of these talks present an introduction to the Kagyü lineage. It was only in the later talks from the seminar, which remain unpublished, that Rinpoche talked more specifically about the teachers in his particular lineage. In “The Practicing Lineage” he talks about the literal meaning of
Kagyü
as “the lineage of the sacred word,” but he focuses on the lineage as
drubgyü,
or “the practicing lineage,” as it became known during the time of Milarepa. The importance of having a teacher and the necessity of transcending spiritual materialism and ego-clinging are stressed: “The practicing lineage teaches us that we have to get rid of those ego-centered conceptualized notions of the grandiosity of our development. If we are truly involved with spirituality, we are willing to let go of trying to witness our own enlightenment.” In “The Mishap Lineage,” Trungpa Rinpoche talks about how the Kagyü have always loved desolate mountain peaks and practicing in wild and sometimes haunted places. This, he suggests, has made them adept at conquering extreme, foreign territory of all kinds, and thus they have long been known for spreading the dharma in foreign lands. That love of harsh extremes is combined in the Kagyü lineage with profound gentleness and devotion. He also describes how constant mishaps are welcomed by the Kagyü practitioner as further fuel to spark awareness. This also harks back to the story of Rinpoche’s escape from the Chinese at the Brahmaputra River.

“Teachings on the Tulku Principle” is a brief article on the history and meaning of reincarnation and the Tibetan practice of realized teachers taking rebirth in successive incarnations. Such a teacher is called a
tulku,
which literally means “emanation body.” The first Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyü lineage to which Chögyam Trungpa belonged, was in fact the first tulku to be recognized in Tibet. “Teachings on the Tulku Principle” clarifies that a tulku does not represent the continuation of ego or self, but rather expresses the continuity of awake mind, generated by compassion, from one incarnation to the next.

The final group of articles in Volume Five presents three quite distinct discussions of the life of Milarepa. As is the case with his lectures on the life and teachings of Marpa, Trungpa Rinpoche’s seminars on Milarepa have not yet been edited for publication. One of the first teachings he gave in America was a sixteen-talk seminar on the significance of Milarepa’s life. Over the next ten years, he gave many other teachings on Milarepa, including a long seminar titled “The Yogic Songs of Milarepa” at the Naropa Institute in the mid-1970s. We can hope that this material will eventually be made available. For now, the three articles included in
The Collected Works
give us a good indication of the richness of Rinpoche’s insights into Jetsun Milarepa’s teachings.

Milarepa is undoubtedly the most famous and beloved yogi of Tibet. Students from all lineages study his spiritual songs. Trungpa Rinpoche pays tribute to both the rugged quality of Milarepa’s realization and its simplicity. Milarepa’s austere life in mountain caves and his deep devotion to his guru, Marpa, epitomize the qualities that Trungpa Rinpoche points to in “The Mishap Lineage” as the core of the Kagyü sensibility.

“Milarepa: A Warrior’s Life” is a previously unpublished article that was prepared in 1978 as a text to accompany a calendar of reproductions of Tibetan thangkas, or scroll paintings, that depicted scenes from Milarepa’s life. The calendar was never published, so the article was filed away. It was one of the first articles that I worked on with Rinpoche. I uncovered it tucked away in some files in the Shambhala Archives while I was in the process of searching for material for inclusion in
The Collected Works.
It presents the basic events in Milarepa’s life story, with commentary on their significance, making the other two articles easier to follow for readers unfamiliar with the story. The careful reader will notice that each of the three articles differs in some small respects in presenting the details of Milarepa’s life. There are a number of versions of his namthar
,
or spiritual biography, and quite probably Chögyam Trungpa consulted different texts at different times. In working with me on “Milarepa: A Warrior’s Life,” Rinpoche suggested that I consult Lobsang Lhalungpa’s translation of
The Life of Milarepa.

The second article is simply called “Milarepa: A Synopsis.” It too emerged from the files when I was searching for material for
The Collected Works
and has never been published before. It presents a series of scenes from Milarepa’s life, with little commentary on their significance. The writing is quite vivid, however. Excerpts from a number of Milarepa’s songs are included, based on the translation of
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
by Garma C. C. Chang. Although it was impossible to definitively confirm this, it is likely that this article is actually an early treatment prepared by Chögyam Trungpa for a movie on the life of Milarepa, which he began filming in the early 1970s. He and several of his students, including two filmmakers from Los Angeles—Johanna Demetrakas and Baird Bryant—traveled to Sweden to film some exquisite thangkas of the life of Milarepa, which were to be featured in the movie. More information about the film itself—which was also to be an exploration of the qualities of the five buddha families—appears in the introduction to Volume Seven, which presents Rinpoche’s teachings on art and the artistic process.

Volume Five closes with “The Art of Milarepa,” which originally appeared in
Garuda II.
The title is somewhat misleading in that the article has little to do with Milarepa’s artistic expression—his songs—in and of themselves and more to do with his art of life. The opening part of the article is a discussion of how the secret practice of Buddhist yoga evolved in India, especially in the ninth century in the great universities of Nalanda and Vikramashila. The connection that Marpa (Milarepa’s main teacher) had to this tradition is also discussed. In this article, one sees Trungpa Rinpoche’s brilliant insight into Milarepa’s journey through life, the obstacles he encountered, and his final attainment. Throughout, Rinpoche brings together immense appreciation for Milarepa as a highly developed person on the one hand, with a down-to-earth insight into the humanness and ordinary quality of his practice on the other.

After he met his guru, Milarepa lived an austere, ascetic life and spent many years in solitary retreat in caves in the wilderness of Tibet. His lifestyle might seem distant from that of most people, especially in this modern age. Yet Trungpa Rinpoche makes Milarepa’s experience accessible by demystifying it, while maintaining his tremendous appreciation for the attainment of his forefather. He tells us that Milarepa remained an ascetic simply because “that physical situation had become part of his makeup. Since he was true to himself, he had no relative concept of other living styles and did not compare himself to others. Although he taught people with many different lifestyles, he had no desire to convert them.” Milarepa’s asceticism is treated here as an ordinary but very sacred experience, one that really does not have much to do with embracing austerity per se. As Rinpoche concludes, “Simplicity is applicable to the situation of transcending neurotic mind by using domestic language. It becomes profound without pretense, and this naturally provokes the actual practice of meditation.”

It seems fitting that Volume Five should end with these three articles celebrating the life of Milarepa. Although outwardly his was a life marked by the trappings of a secular existence, Chögyam Trungpa, like Milarepa, gave up everything familiar and cozy to bring the dharma of his lineage from Tibet to North America. He, like his forefathers, was rugged and direct, yet supremely sweet and gentle, and marked by an almost unbearable sadness, which became the expression of bliss. As he says in “The Dohā of Sadness,” one of his songs in
The Rain of Wisdom:

You, my only father guru, have gone far away,

My vajra brothers and sisters have wandered to the ends of the earth.

Only I, Chögyam, the little child, am left.

Still, for the teachings of the profound and brilliant practice lineage,

I am willing to surrender my life in sadness.

In many thangkas, Milarepa is shown holding his hand up to his right ear. It is often said that he is listening to himself singing his own songs of realization. But I wonder if he is not listening to hear who will pick up the song of dharma that Trungpa Rinpoche sang in the West. Who will carry forward that melody? The Kagyü gurus are waiting to hear that song sung completely in a foreign tongue, echoing the same wisdom they have guarded with their lives for so many, many years. Let us aspire to join them in their song!