The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume One (65 page)

You also carry the crystal container of medicine

Elixir that could cure

The sickness of all human beings.

You appear as harmful demon

And protectress.

I, Chögyam, am not afraid

Whatever form you take

For I have seen you in every possible form.

Take my offerings.

Obey my commands.

As Padmakara subdued you

On the pass of Mount Hepo

In Samye.

I am the descendant of Padmakara;

It is not your wish that counts.

It is time for you to submit

And fulfill the desires of my work

As you did in Samye.

I know your origin,

Born out of an iron boil.

I know your mischievous actions.

I have your sacred heart mantra

And your words of promise

In the presence of Padmakara.

Be my sister

Or mother or maid.

Do not interrupt me any more

This is the command

Of Vidyadhara.

Understand Dakinis

As the universal force;

That is to understand

The true force within your mind.

It is unborn, unoriginated.

Understand this.

November 3, 1969

Looking into the world

I see alone a chrysanthemum,

Lonely loneliness,

And death approaches.

Abandoned by guru and friend,

I stand like the lonely juniper

Which grows among rocks,

Hardened and tough.

Loneliness is my habit—

I grew up in loneliness.

Like a rhinoceros

Loneliness is my companion—

I converse with myself.

Yet sometimes also,

Lonely moon,

Sad and happy

Come together.

Do not trust.

If you trust you are in

Others’ hands.

It is like the single yak

That defeats the wolves.

Herds panic and in trying to flee

Are attacked.

Remaining in solitude

You can never be defeated.

So do not trust,

For trust is surrendering oneself.

Never, never trust.

But be friendly.

By being friendly toward others

You increase your nontrusting.

The idea is to be independent,

Not involved,

Not glued, one might say, to others.

Thus one becomes ever more

Compassionate and friendly.

Whatever happens, stand on your own feet

And memorize this incantation:

Do not trust.

November 25, 1969

Red glaring from the West

Sound of raindrops—

Such a peculiar climate

And a rainbow too.

Freedom,

Freedom from limitations,

Freedom from the square

(Exact patterns all carefully worked out),

Freedom from mathematical psychology

And logic.

The banner of true and free

Flies in the air of the middle way.

It is somehow wholesome,

Healthy as the energetic tiger

Or lion.

Growl,

GROWL—

Beautiful pointed teeth

Demonstrating invincibility.

I, Chögyam, watch all this

From the top of a pine tree

Bending in the wind

Quite nonchalantly.

December 16, 1969

Three-bladed missile

Piercing to the sky—

Vroom,

Bang, Bang!

It leaves the ground.

It is the manifestation of hatred

For the whole earth,

Hatred for this whole solar system.

Who is the victim?

Who is the victor?

It is highly ironical

While others live on

Such luxury.

There must be some force of

Truth and justice—

These very words have been overused.

Yet with the force of the true powerful nature

There will be the perfect situation

Which is unorganized,

Inspired by the pupil who is not conditioned.

So the world is not

All that pitch black—

There is some harmony

And in this harmony we live.

We have been inspired

Yet are neither anarchists

Nor revolutionaries

In the blind sense.

Love to you all.

December 17, 1969

Walking the hidden path of the wish-fulfilling gem

Leading to the realm of the heavenly tree, the changeless.

Untie the tongues of mutes.

Stop the stream of samsara, of belief in an ego.

Recognize your very nature as a mother knows her child
.

This is transcendent awareness cognizant of itself,

Beyond the path of speech, the object of no thought.

I, Tilopa, have nothing at which to point.

Knowing this as pointing in itself to itself
.

Do not imagine, think, deliberate,

Meditate, act, but be at rest.

With an object do not be concerned.

Spirituality, self-existing, radiant,

In which there is no memory to upset you

Cannot be called a thing
.

T
ILOPA

(Translated by Herbert V. Guenther in
The Life and Teaching of Naropa
)

The Way of the Buddha

The path of spiritual development in the Buddhist tradition is described in terms of yanas or vehicles. At each stage along the path, particular methods are employed to take the meditator or yogi to the next stage. In this chapter we briefly describe all nine stages of psychological development and the appropriate vehicles for traveling through them in the hope that some insight into the subtlety and depth, as well as the logic of the experiences involved, will inspire people to enter or persevere on the path. We hope this description will also serve as a caution for those who are overly ambitious or complacent. It should be clear to all who read it that a competent guide is needed since the tendency toward self-deception becomes increasingly dangerous as one progresses on the path.

All the Buddhist traditions in Tibet contain the threefold yanas (of which there are nine subdivisions): the hinayana, or “lesser vehicle,” containing the shravakayana and the pratyekabuddhayana; the mahayana, or “greater vehicle,” which is also known as the bodhisattvayana; and the six yanas of the vajrayana—kriya, upa, yoga, mahayoga, anu, and ati.

No one can embark upon the path without the preparation of the hinayana, without developing the evolutionary tendencies, the readiness for the path. In this sense the teachings could be said to be secret, for, if a person is not ready for the teachings, he won’t be able to hear them. Thus, they are self-secret.

The first recognition of the dharma begins with the shravakayana—that is to say, listening to and hearing the teachings of the four noble truths. The student hears the self-evident problems of life, the evidence for the existence of suffering, and is inspired to look further to find the origin of pain. He is inspired to search out a master who can show him the path toward seeing pain as it is, its origin, and the understanding of suffering as the path. The student might master the application of the eightfold path and so on and come to the pratyekabuddhayana, the second part of the hinayana.

In the pratyekabuddhayana one works backward, using the intellect, from death to ignorance, and so comes to the conclusion of confusion. However, there is still a tendency toward isolation in that the student is still involved with his own world, his own experience of confusion or its absence. And so it follows that the meditation practice in this yana is purely centralized on the simplicity of nowness. The student is constantly disciplining himself to stay in the now. This is true of the shamatha practice of exclusive awareness as well as of the vipashyana practice of panoramic awareness.

Then, as the experience of vipashyana grows, one approaches the third yana, the bodhisattvayana where the individual’s self-conscious search is surrendered to the selflessness of the bodhisattva ideal. Here the work lies in the acts of compassion of the bodhisattva, compassion being the act of radiation of intense warmth, radiation without a radiator. This is, quite simply, the application of the six paramitas of the bodhisattva, the action of the nirmanakaya buddha.

From this action one develops the transcendental knowledge of egolessness. Here the karmic chain reactions dealt with in the previous yana are absent. The twofold veil of conflicting emotions and primitive beliefs about reality is rent—which is the same as saying that one no longer believes in the existence of an individual “I” and that the conceptualizations which this “I” laid on the real world no longer exist. This discovery—of the absence of duality and conceptualization—is called
shunyata
, or nothingness. Having removed the wall between
this
and
that
, the vision of
that
is clear and precise.

But, after all, the experience of shunyata, at this point, cannot be said to be nothing, because there is still some self-consciousness connected with the experience—in that the absence of duality is so vivid. So that the tenth stage of the bodhisattva path is where one experiences the “death” of shunyata and the “birth” into luminosity. Shunyata as an experience falls away and the bodhisattva sees, not only the absence of the barrier, but he sees further into the luminous quality of
that
which is known as the luminosity of prabhasvara of the bodhisattva experience.

But even the notion of that experience is a hang-up, and the powerful weapon of the vajralike samadhi is necessary to bring the bodhisattva into the state of being wise rather than knowing wisdom as an external discovery. That is the moment of bodhi, or wakefulness. Having that knowing wisdom as something external, the first discovery is that of the energies clearly seen—the mandala spectrum. Thus the experience of the vajralike samadhi is the death of the luminosity as an external experience and the birth into the sambhogakaya, the entrance into the vajrayana.

Here colors speak through, as do shapes and movements, until the point is reached where there is no room for a speck of dirt. The perception of the energies for the first time is so intense and overwhelming that one is tremendously impressed by their purity. Here you regard yourself as a servant, for the very reason that you are overwhelmed by the purity of the universe. So you employ thousands of ways of communicating to the universe in terms of bodily purity, mantras, and mudras.

The perception of reality as energies is tantra, and the basic notion of the tantric attitude toward the universal energies is to see them in terms of the dakini principle. That is to say, the dakinis represent the creative-destructive patterns of life. In the kriyayana one is overwhelmed by the brilliant purity of the energies. The falling away of this experience of purity is the entrance into the next yana, the upayana.