The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (27 page)

The nihilistic approach evokes the psychological attitude of fatalism. You understand logically that if you do something, things happen in reaction to it. You see a continuity of cause and effect, a chain reaction over which you have no control. This chain reactive process springs from the mystery of “nothingness.” Therefore, if you murder someone, it was your karma to murder and was inevitable, foreordained. For that matter if you do a good deed, it has nothing to do with whether or not you are awake. Everything springs from this mysterious “nothingness” which is the nihilistic approach to reality. It is a very naive view: one leaves everything to mystery. Whenever we are not quite certain of things which are beyond the scope of our conceptualized ideas, then we begin to panic. We are afraid of our own uncertainty and we attempt to fill the gap with something else. The something else is usually a philosophical belief—in this case, the belief in mystery. We very eagerly, very hungrily search for nothingness, surveying every dark corner in our attempts to find it. But we find only the crumbs. We find nothing more than that. It is very mysterious. As long as we continue to look for a conceptual answer there will always be areas of mystery, which mystery is itself another concept.

Whether we are eternalists or nihilists or atomists, we constantly assume that there is a “mystery,” something which we do not know: the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, the key to happiness. We struggle after this mystery, trying to become a person who knows or possesses it, naming it “God,” the “soul,” “atman,” “Brahman,” “shunyata,” and so on. Certainly this is not the Madhyamaka approach to reality, though the early hinayana schools of Buddhism to some extent fell into this trap, which is why their approach is considered only a partial truth.

The hinayana approach to reality sees impermanence as the great mystery: that which is born must change and die. However, one cannot see impermanence itself but only its manifestation in form. Thus the hinayanists describe the universe in terms of atoms existing in space and moments existing in time. As such, they are atomistic pluralists. The hinayana equivalent of shunyata is the understanding of the transitory and insubstantial nature of form, so hinayana meditation practice is twofold: contemplation of the many aspects of impermanence—the processes of birth, growth, decay, and death, and their elaborations; and mindfulness practice which sees the impermanence of mental events. The arhat views mental events and material objects and begins to see them as momentary and atomistic happenings. Thus he discovers that there is no permanent substance or solid thing as such. This approach errs in conceptualizing the existence of entities relative to each other, the existence of “this” relative to “that.”

We can see the three elements of eternalism, nihilism, and atomistic pluralism in different combinations in almost all the major philosophies and religions of the world. From the Madhyamaka point of view, these three misconceptions of reality are virtually inescapable as long as one searches for an answer to an assumed question, as long as one seeks to probe the so-called “mystery” of life. Belief in anything is simply a way of labeling the mystery. Yogachara, a mahayana philosophical school, attempted to eliminate this mystery by finding a union of mystery and the phenomenal world.

The main thrust of the Yogachara school is epistemological. For this school the mystery is intelligence, that which knows. The Yogacharins solved the mystery by positing the indivisible union of intelligence and phenomena. Thus there is no
individual
knower; rather everything is “self-known.” There is only “one mind,” which the Yogacharins called “self-luminous cognition,” and both thoughts and emotions and people and trees are aspects of it. Thus this school is also referred to in the traditional literature as the
chitta-matra
or “mind-only” school.

The Yogachara school was the first school of Buddhist thought to transcend the division between the knower and the known. Thus its adherents explain confusion and suffering as springing from the mistaken belief in an individual knower. If a person believes that he knows the world, then the one mind appears to be split, though actually its clear surface is only muddied. The confused person feels that he has thoughts about and reactions to external phenomena and so is caught in a constant action and reaction situation. The enlightened person realizes that thoughts and emotions on the one hand, and the so-called external world on the other, are
both
the “play of the mind.” Thus the enlightened person is not caught in the dualism of subject and object, internal and external, knower and known, I and other. Everything is
self
-known.

However, Nagarjuna contested the Yogacharin “mind-only” proposition and, in fact, questioned the very existence of “mind” altogether. He studied the twelve volumes of the
Prajnaparamita
scriptures, which came out of the second turning of the wheel of doctrine by the Buddha, the teaching of the middle portion of his life. Nagarjuna’s conclusions are summed up in the principle of “nondwelling,” the main principle of the Madhyamaka school. He said that any philosophical view could be refuted, that one must not dwell upon any answer or description of reality, whether extreme or moderate, including the notion of “one mind.” Even to say that nondwelling is the answer is delusory, for one must not dwell upon nondwelling. Nagarjuna’s way was one of non-philosophy, which was not simply another philosophy at all. He said, “The wise should not dwell in the middle either.”

Madhyamaka philosophy is a critical view of the Yogacharin theory that everything is an aspect of mind. The Madhyamaka argument runs: “In order to say that mind exists or that everything is the play of the one mind, there must be someone watching mind, the knower of mind who vouches for its existence.” Thus the whole of Yogachara is necessarily a theory on the part of this watcher. But according to the Yogacharins’ own philosophy of self-luminous cognition, subjective thoughts
about
an object are delusive, there being no subject or object but only the one mind of which the watcher is a part. Therefore, it is impossible to state that one mind exists. Like the physical eye, self-luminous cognition cannot see itself, just as a razor cannot cut itself. By the Yogacharins’ own admission, there is no one to know that the one mind exists.

Then what can we say about mind or reality? Since there is no one to perceive a mind or reality, the notion of existence in terms of “things” and “form” is delusory; there is no reality, no perceiver of reality, and no thoughts derived from perception of reality. Once we have taken away this preconception of the existence of mind and reality, then situations emerge clearly, as they are. There is no one to watch, no one to know anything. Reality just
is,
and this is what is meant by the term
shunyata.
Through this insight the watcher which separates us from the world is removed.

How then does belief in an “I” and the whole neurotic process begin? Roughly, according to the madhyamikas, whenever a perception of form occurs, there is an immediate reaction of fascination and uncertainty on the part of an implied perceiver of the form. This reaction is almost instantaneous. It takes only a fraction of a fraction of a second. And as soon as we have established recognition of what the thing is, our next response is to give it a name. With the name of course comes concept. We tend to conceptualize the object, which means that at this point we are no longer able to perceive things as they actually are. We have created a kind of padding, a filter or veil between ourselves and the object. This is what prevents the maintenance of continual awareness both during and after meditation practice. This veil removes us from panoramic awareness and the presence of the meditative state, because again and again we are unable to see things as they are. We feel compelled to name, to translate, to think discursively, and this activity takes us further away from direct and accurate perception. So shunyata is not merely awareness of what we are and how we are in relation to such and such an object, but rather it is clarity which transcends conceptual padding and unnecessary confusions. One is no longer fascinated by the object nor involved as a subject. It is freedom from
this
and
that.
What remains is open space, the absence of the this-and-that dichotomy. This is what is meant by the Middle Way or Madhyamaka.

The experience of shunyata cannot be developed without first having worked through the narrow path of discipline and technique. Technique is necessary to start with, but it is also necessary at some stage for the technique to fall away. From the ultimate point of view the whole process of learning and practice is quite unnecessary. We could perceive the absence of ego at a single glance. But we would not accept such a simple truth. In other words, we have to learn in order to unlearn. The whole process is that of undoing the ego. We start by learning to deal with neurotic thoughts and emotions. Then false concepts are removed through the understanding of emptiness, of openness. This is the experience of shunyata.
Shunyata
in Sanskrit means literally “void” or “emptiness,” that is to say, “space,” the absence of all conceptualized attitudes. Thus Nagarjuna says in his
Commentary on Madhyamaka:
“Just as the sun dispels darkness, the perfect sage has conquered the false habits of mind. He does not see the mind or thought derived from the mind.”

The
Heart Sutra
ends with “the great spell” or mantra. It says in the Tibetan version: “Therefore the mantra of transcendent knowledge, the mantra of deep insight, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequalled mantra, the mantra which calms all suffering, should be known as truth, for there is no deception.” The potency of this mantra comes not from some imagined mystical or magical power of the words but from their meaning. It is interesting that after discussing shunyata—form is empty, emptiness is form, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is identical with form and so on—the sutra goes on the discuss mantra. At the beginning it speaks in terms of the meditative state, and finally it speaks of mantra or words. This is because in the beginning we must develop a confidence in our understanding, clearing out all preconceptions; nihilism, eternalism, all beliefs have to be cut through, transcended. And when a person is completely exposed, fully unclothed, fully unmasked, completely naked, completely opened—at that very moment he sees the power of the word. When the basic, absolute, ultimate hypocrisy has been unmasked, then one really begins to see the jewel shining in its brightness: the energetic, living quality of openness, the living quality of surrender, the living quality of renunciation.

Renunciation in this instance is not just throwing away but, having thrown everything away, we begin to feel the living quality of peace. And this particular peace is not feeble peace, feeble openness, but it has a strong character, an invincible quality, an unshakable quality, because it admits no gaps of hypocrisy. It is complete peace in all directions, so that not even a speck of a dark corner exists for doubt and hypocrisy. Complete openness is complete victory because we do not fear, we do not try to defend ourselves at all. Therefore this is a great mantra. One would have thought that instead of saying O
M GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA,
this mantra would say something about shunyata—
OM SHUNYATA MAHASHUNYATA
or something of the sort. Instead it says,
GATE GATE
—“gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone.” This is much stronger than saying “shunyata,” because the word
shunyata
might imply a philosophical interpretation. Instead of formulating something philosophical, this mantra exposes that which lies beyond philosophy. Therefore it is
GATE GATE
—“gone, given up, got rid of, opened.” The first
GATE
is “rid of the veil of conflicting emotions.” The second
GATE
represents the veil of primitive beliefs about reality. That is, the first
GATE
represents the idea that “form is empty,” and the second
GATE
refers to “emptiness is form.” Then the next word of the mantra is
PARAGATE
—“gone beyond, completely exposed.” Now form is form—
PARAGATE
—and it is not only that form is form but emptiness is emptiness,
PARASAMGATE
—“completely gone beyond.” B
ODHI
. B
ODHI
here means “completely awake.” The meaning is “given up, completely unmasked, naked, completely open.” S
VAHA
is a traditional ending for mantras which means, “So be it.” “Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely exposed, awake, so be it.”

Q:
How does desire lead to birth?

A:
Each time there is a desire there is another birth. You plant wantingness, wanting to do something, wanting to grasp something. Then that desire to grasp also invites something further. Birth here means the birth of further confusion, further dissatisfaction, further wanting. For example, if you have a great desire for money and you manage to get a lot of it, then you also want to buy something with that money. One thing leads to the next, a chain reaction, so that desire becomes a kind of network. You want something, want to draw something into you, continually.

The experience of shunyata, seeing precisely and clearly what is, somehow cuts through this network, this spider’s web, because the spider’s web is woven in the space of desire, the space of wanting. And when the space of shunyata replaces it, so to speak, the whole conceptualized formulation of desire is completely eliminated, as though you had arrived on another planet with different air, or a place without oxygen at all. So shunyata provides a new atmosphere, a new environment, which will not support clinging or grasping. Therefore the experience of shunyata also makes impossible the planting of the seed of karma, which is why it is said that shunyata is that which gives birth to all the buddhas, all the awakened ones. “Awakened” means not being involved in the chain reactions and complications of the karmic process.