The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume One (69 page)

Atisha Dipankara was one of the Indian pandits from Nalanda who was invited at this time. His teaching from India is known as the teaching of Kadam which is, one might say, the second development of Buddhism in Tibet. In the Kadam development,
ka
means “sacred word” and
dam
means “all teaching” or “instruction,” so that means that all the sacred teachings became orally practiced and the practice of all teachings was simplified into everyday practice.

In particular the bodhisattva way of life was practiced, where the main character of Kadam teaching is the practice of egolessness and changing of self. There is, for example, a certain particular meditation practice of dak shen nyamje. This Tibetan word means—
dak
is “I,” “self”;
shen
is “others”;
nyamje
is “exchanging”—so that means changing one to others. This is the first particular practice of that kind of technique of learning by experience the actual teaching of anatta, selflessness. Here, at some stage, you discover, you realize, that only if you are prepared to overcome the resistance of “I,” then you also become others, so there is no barrier and you are able to become one with others. This is the essential practice of the mahayana tradition. There are various stories about this that amount to practiced compassion, karuna method, where monks blessed sick people with infectious diseases and exchanged themselves with the others, so that the sick people were cured.

In the seven teachings of Kadam are such practices as “all faults are mine, all virtues are others,” and other ways to overcome the resistance of self.

From this teaching developed another school called Chöd. This particular tradition is, I think, unknown in India but only developed in Tibet, and this Chöd is associated with the teaching of Buddhist yoga and the teaching of prajnaparamita. The meditator will go to a charnel ground or some such lonely, frightening place, and deliberately sit in an atmosphere where fear arises. Then he tries not to run away from it, but to stay in the fear, or, as it is described in the scriptures, he watches the face of fear and having watched this face of fear, and if he has still any feeling of fear, he surrenders to it. So having surrendered to the fear, and having gone into it, then he overcomes fear.

This is a tradition developed as an extension from the practice of selflessness and the bodhisattva practice in general.

One of the verses this particular school uses is:

The best protection is to say:

“Do what you like to me”

That is the best protection rather than

“Do not hurt me.”

The Age of Milarepa

A
FTER
A
TISHA BROUGHT
the Kadam teaching from India, Buddhism went on developing in Tibet. This period was known as “The Early Stage of Translation.” In the later stage of the Translation period thousands of translators went to India, and scriptures were translated all the time. Marpa, the teacher of Milarepa, was the leader of this movement. He went to India and studied under many great Indian teachers, of whom the foremost was Naropa, and had to go through very severe training. He translated most of these teachings into Tibetan, and then had pupils such as Milarepa. At this time Buddhism developed, particularly with the tradition of Marpa and Naropa, toward a meeting point of devotion and meditation and the practice of yoga. By now the basic teaching of Buddhism was fully introduced in Tibet and no more scriptures of fundamental Buddhism needed translating at all, but only certain teachings of yoga which were not taught in institutions in India, only in certain remote parts of the Himalayan regions such as the monastery of Naropa, Pulahari. Therefore translators had great difficulty in finding these remote teachers, and of course they also had to find which was the right teacher, so it became very difficult for them to find a text to translate. More difficulties arose even while they were doing this translating; for instance in the life of Marpa. He translated about five volumes of a particular teaching of mantrayana with various yoga teachings, and was bringing them back up to Nepal. Another translator had also made the journey to India and, while they were returning, he realized that Marpa had something more than he had, so one day when they were crossing a river the other translator deliberately destroyed the whole translation text and threw it into the river, and Marpa had to go back and start all over again. Other difficulties occurred, such as people being killed, as of course at that time people had to walk all the way from India, crossing the Himalayan mountains and fording great rivers. These journeys were very dangerous.

After Marpa returned to Tibet and taught Tibetans, particularly Milarepa, he would not just give away his teaching, because it was such a wonderful precious thing for which he had sacrificed gold and silver, and indeed his whole life. After all, just receiving teachings is not enough. There must always be a necessary preparation. At the start of learning there must be some manual work of some kind; at some stage hardships must be gone through. This is necessary, and we see a perfect example in Milarepa’s life story. This was the start of the Kagyü teachings, and they are, one might say, similar to the bhakti yoga of Hinduism. When you read the songs of Milarepa, you will see that at the beginning he always starts with an invocation to Marpa, his teacher, who was the embodiment of Buddha, dharma, sangha. So Kagyü became particularly known as the tradition of devotion and faith—faith combined with bhakti yoga, and also the study of guru yoga. This discovery of the inner guru is basic to the teaching of the Kagyü. At the beginning stage there is a tremendous, sometimes even an emotional, involvement with the guru. Milarepa, for instance, could hardly part with his guru, but wanted to remain with him all his life, but then at some stage certain circumstances sent him away, and when his guru deliberately sent him away a kind of confusion was caused. He was not quite sure whether this great devotion was inside or outside—a kind of mixed feeling. At some stage the pupil thinks his guru is outside, living in a certain part of the country, but also there is something familiar about the guru inside him as well, so there is this rather mixed feeling. Then at some stage, because of this, the inner guru becomes more and more developed. Gradually the pupil becomes quite certain that the external guru is merely a symbol, and then he discovers the inner guru, and after this the inner guru remains with him all the time. Reading the life of Milarepa you see that first the guru comes as the human guru, Marpa, and then as the inner wisdom of the guru; and finally there is no division between inner and outer and the whole of life becomes the guru. That happened on the day when he returned to his own part of the country and found that his house had collapsed and was just a ruin, his parents had died, and all his fields were filled with weeds. So everything was chaos, and his great expectation of returning to a cozy home was completely shattered because there was nothing to return to. This great disappointment taught him that he could only learn by experience, by going into his own country—only memory left, and everything entirely chaos. This is known as the world guru, or the “play of Guru Lalita,” the guru which is the teaching of impermanence, which, in fact, he had to go into, because there was nothing else for him to do. This made him go into retreat and practice, not because he could not find any other occupation but because, although it is a great sorrow to see that everything has gone into chaos, everybody has died, and everything been destroyed; still there is something ironic and almost happy about it. Again there is a kind of mixed feeling, because although it is the end of one particular thing it is also the beginning of something else, and this is the meeting point. Dukkha becomes the stepping stone to freedom. This particular teaching of Milarepa, the Buddhist bhakti yoga, is well known, and this tradition is handed down throughout the tantric tradition of Buddhism in Tibet.

Gampopa, Milarepa’s disciple, had quite a different background. At this particular stage Buddhism could not remain simply as Milarepa had taught, in the sense that the practice of yoga is not the whole of Buddhism although with the practice of mahamudra it is the essence of it. It was very necessary to introduce the monastic aspect of Buddhism in Tibet, the hinayana aspect. Gampopa was a fully ordained monk in the Kadam tradition when he first came to Milarepa. We are told that Milarepa asked him, “How long have you been practicing meditation?” “Usually I meditate for about six hours.” Milarepa asked, “Do you get any results?” “No, nothing particularly,” answered Gampopa, “but I tried to do my best, and I have retreated to the mountains and meditated all day, visualizing the divinities and so on.” Then Milarepa laughed and said, “How can you do such meditation practice for six hours a day without any signs of progress?” This was the point where Milarepa asked Gampopa to give up all his practice of this kind of meditation and start again right from the beginning. Gampopa thought this meant that he must just give up and follow the yoga tradition, clothed in white cotton cloth. He was prepared to do this, but he was then told that Milarepa did not exactly want him to give up, because he did not want to make Gampopa like himself, but to bring out his own inner teaching. Each pupil has a different character, quite different from the teacher, so therefore it is not considered best to expand the teacher’s ego, or to transform the ego in the person and make him just like the teacher, but to bring out the particular character in the pupil and to develop this character. Also he said that for the future of Buddhism it was necessary for Gampopa to teach in the robe. Milarepa was pleased that his future pupils would now practice the teaching of the Kagyü school in the full sense.

Gampopa then meditated for nearly six weeks. He was a very intelligent and intellectual person, having read so many books on meditation, and every time he meditated he had visions. For instance, on the first day he had a vision of the Buddha with his five disciples. Although he lived about three miles away from Milarepa’s cave, he thought, “Well, this time I have seen the Buddha himself!” and in the morning, even without any breakfast, he ran to his teacher. Milarepa was just having breakfast and asked him what had happened. Gampopa said, “A wonderful thing has happened. I have seen the Buddha himself. I had a vision of the Buddha himself.” Milarepa did not say anything, he just sent him back to meditate. Gampopa went back and meditated and the next day he saw something else—a mandala. It was so realistic, off he went to his teacher. He got halfway, and then realized “I think this is only a thing,” so he had to go back. Then during the next six weeks of continuous vigil like that, he kept thinking, “Milarepa says there is nothing but now, now, now!” Then the next time, Gampopa saw six worlds, the whole existence of worlds, the worlds of heavens, of pretas, and so on, all in stages, with everybody drinking milk, everyone giving milk to each other. Then someone came from the world of hell right up to heaven, and then it started beginning again—a continuing circle of giving milk. Then he thought, “This is a wonderful thing now.” Because his teacher had said, “Now, now,” then this time he was quite sure that it all meant something very special, so then he ran all the way, so early that Milarepa was still asleep. He said, “Wake up!” and told him all about this vision. Milarepa said, “Well, I don’t know what you call studying. Although I am not much of a scholar, I have read one or two books on the prajnaparamita. It says that everything is illusion, but you scholars never seem to fully understand this. Go back and leave me undisturbed, because we’ve had enough of that to last our whole lives.” Finally Gampopa had a dream that he cut off his own head, and he saw it rolling off down the hill. That was the end of the visions, presenting cutting the root of the self.

Gampopa then returned to the mountain of Taglha Gampo, and there he established his own monastery, so this was one of the first monasteries where Yoga and Vinaya practices were combined. This is one of the first examples of a Tibetan monastery where the yogins practiced meditation and where there was also a monastic institution of ten thousand monks. On one particular occasion disciples of Gampopa, who were known as the three great sons of Gampopa, were meditating on the yoga of inner heat, and their meditation state developed in such an irresistible way that they had to come out of their caves and they began to sing yogic songs. According to Gampopa they were dancing around the monastery in the street, when suddenly the man in charge of discipline caught them and expelled them from the monastery. These three disciples were future regent abbots of the monastery, so it is very interesting to read that in Gampopa’s lecture to them he says that if anyone had even a minor experience, this experience must not be revealed, and one must not be emotionally involved in it. This particular teaching is a tradition still well known in Tibet, especially in the lama gyüpa colleges, where the monk in charge of discipline was supposed to check the corridor when all the monks went into the assembly hall, in case anyone left his footprints in the stone. If anyone did, then they must immediately expel the said monk, because this college was not a place for performing miracles, but a place of development, ready for the final real miracle that one can perform. Miracles are unnecessary. You have to develop the balanced state of self that can be controlled, but you do not need to show it! In a way, the greatest miracle in the Buddhist religion is seeing the balanced state of being.

The Mahasattva Avalokiteshvara

Homage to the Great Compassion, the essential nature of all beings!