The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (50 page)

Ekajati with Samantabhadra above her head. Ekajati is a protectress of the dharma and a guide to the masters of tantric teachings. She is a destroyer of those who pervert the true meaning of the dharma. Samantabhadra is the primordial buddha who represents the final state of wakefulness.

DRAWING BY GLEN EDDY.

APPENDIX

The Ten Bhumis and Their Corresponding Paramitas

T
HIS ORGANIZATION
of the ten bhumis and the ten paramitas is taken from the
Dasabhumikasutra.

T
HE
H
EART OF THE
B
UDDHA

Edited by

J
UDITH
L. L
IEF

Acknowledgments

I
WOULD LIKE TO
thank the many people who worked on the development of the articles included in this book. Especially I would like to thank my fellow members of the Vajradhatu Editorial Office, who over the years have taken primary responsibility for the editing and production of Trungpa Rinpoche’s written work, including: Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Carolyn Rose Gimian, and Sarah Coleman. Each of these editors trained directly with Trungpa Rinpoche in how best to convey his spoken teachings in written form, and in the appropriate forms and levels of editing for different occasions and audiences. The articles collected in
The Heart of the Buddha
exhibit the resulting variety of editorial styles. Sherab Chödzin Kohn, who was the first Vajradhatu editor-in-chief, was the original editor for several of the articles included in this collection. He also edited
Garuda
magazine, where many of these articles were first published. Carolyn Gimian worked closely with Trungpa Rinpoche as my successor to the Vajradhatu editorial post and did the original editorial work on the “Sacred Outlook” article. She also did a careful reading of the book and gave much advice on the manuscript in its entirety. Sarah Coleman worked with Vajradhatu Editorial Office for many years, during which time she worked on a number of the articles in this collection.

The original production of the articles included in this collection involved the work of countless volunteers who carried out such tasks as tape recording, transcribing, typing, and manuscript checking. I would like to thank all of them for their donations of time and effort.

I would like to thank Mrs. Diana Mukpo for her kind permission to work with this material.

Most especially, I would like to thank the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa for his tireless efforts in leading students on the path of awakening.

J
UDITH
L. L
IEF

Editor

Editor’s Foreword

T
HE HEART OF THE BUDDHA
is a collection of fifteen previously published articles by the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In choosing the particular articles to be included, the intent was to introduce the reader to as complete a range of Rinpoche’s teachings as possible. For that reason, both introductory essays and more technical or scholarly presentations have been included. Some articles were written for particular publications or for distribution among his students. Others were derived from seminars and talks he gave over his teaching career; as such, they embody the living quality of oral transmission and the importance of discussion and dialogue between student and teacher.

In his many seminars, Trungpa Rinpoche was careful always to balance the role of practice and of study. Students attending such seminars always spent time in formal meditation practice as well as in studying the Buddha’s teachings through lectures, reading, and discussion groups. In that way, they could test their understanding through the mechanism of their own experience, so that refinement of intellectual understanding could be accompanied by a deepening of insight.

P
ERSONAL
J
OURNEY

At the heart of the Buddhist path is the practice of meditation. The development of mindfulness and awareness is an essential foundation for both understanding ourselves and working with others. It is a common preconception that the spiritual journey takes us away from ourselves, to some higher or more peaceful existence. In this context, meditation practice is seen as a kind of drug, or as a way of removing ourselves from the harsh realities of life. However, throughout his teachings, Trungpa Rinpoche stressed that meditation practice is not an escape but a way to “begin at the beginning.”

In beginning the path, we need to be willing to confront ourselves directly, without either wishful thinking or harsh judgmentalism. Through the practice of meditation, we are constantly brought back to working with what is, rather than with what might be; we are constantly brought back to “square one.” So at the heart of the very personal journey of meditation practice is the willingness simply to be who we are. It is a process of acceptance rather than one of manipulation.

While each student’s journey is a solitary one, it is through the meeting of student and teacher that the spiritual path is awakened. The teacher-student relationship is of central importance in the Buddhist tradition. Devotion is the key to unlocking the power of the tradition. However, this concept is quite subtle, and we must be careful to distinguish genuine devotion from the naive approach of blind faith.

S
TAGES ON THE
P
ATH

According to the Tibetan system, an individual student’s journey has three main stages: hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana. (In this context, these terms are simply descriptive of stages of the path and should not be confused with their more common usage as names for historical schools of Buddhist thought.) These three stages work together in a very powerful way. The hinayana marks the beginning stage, in which one explores the workings of one’s own mind and emotions and begins to settle the mind through the practice of meditation. This allows one to lessen one’s sense of struggle and to begin to make friends with oneself. In the second stage, mahayana, this friendliness begins to extend outward. There is a great appreciation for the phenomenal world as well as an understanding of the depth of suffering of fellow sentient beings. This gives rise to compassion and the intent to work for the benefit of others. The third stage, or vajrayana, is one of not holding back but of extending fearlessly to any situation that arises. There is a willingness to relate directly to the wisdom and power of one’s mind and emotions, as evoked in visualization practice and tantric ritual.

While these may be viewed as three stages, they must all work together in a balanced way if the journey is to be successful. That is, each stage expands upon and enriches the previous stage, reawakening its insight in a broader context. So each serves to complement and enrich the others.

W
ORKING WITH
O
THERS

The insights gained through the formal practice of meditation can be applied to the variety of circumstances we encounter in our day-to-day lives. So daily life is not rejected, or viewed as simply a distraction to our “spiritual” practice. Instead, by joining practice and ordinary life, the entirety of our experience is seen as valuable and, in fact, sacred.

Although classically trained in the ancient tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, Trungpa Rinpoche was immensely interested in the workings of modern society and in the social implications of the Buddhist teachings. Therefore he gave considerable attention in his talks and seminars to such issues as education, health care, the raising of children, the nature of relationships, and the conduct of business.

It is hoped that this collection of essays will give the reader a sense of the richness and variety of Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings and of their relevance in day-to-day life.

Part One

PERSONAL JOURNEY

ONE

What Is the Heart of the Buddha?

“Fundamentally speaking, ladies and gentlemen, here is the really good news, if we may call it that: We are intrinsically buddha and we are intrinsically good. Without exception and without the need for analytical studies, we can say that we automatically have buddha within us. That is known as buddha nature, or bodhichitta, the heart of the buddha.”

I
N
B
UDDHISM, THERE
are three codes of discipline, known as shila, samadhi, and prajna. Shila is discipline or conduct, a certain meditative way of behaving. Samadhi is the practice of mindfulness/awareness: the totality of your state of mind can be experienced without distraction. And prajna, or discriminating awareness, is the state of clarity in which you are able to distinguish different states of mind; you are no longer excited or depressed by particular states of mind. These three disciplines bring us to the next stage—of finally transcending the deception of ego, which is the experience of egolessness.

Egohood is the state of mind in which you are either repelled by or attracted to the phenomenal world. What you would like to see depends on your mentality, on what you think is desirable in order to maintain your “I am-ness,” your “me-ness.” We are talking about transcending “I am-ness,” “me-ness,” which is called egolessness.

Egolessness doesn’t mean that you are going to be completely dissolved into nothingness. In Western literature, Buddhism is often accused of saying this, especially in early Victorian Christian literature, as well as in various high school courses on Buddhism. They say Buddhists believe in nothingness, which is certainly not the case.

Egolessness means less “maniac-ness,” in some sense—free from being an egomaniac. Egomania has several levels of subtlety. Ordinarily people think of an egomaniac as an obvious maniac, but if we study enough and look enough, we will see that there are subtleties of egomania. The dictators of the world could be seen as egomaniacal people, obviously, because they perform their functions in that way. But more ordinary people also function in that way, including ourselves in some sense. We would like to possess our world, and so we act in such a way that whatever we see around us is completely in order, according to our desire to maintain the security of “me,” “myself”—which is egohood.

Inspired by means of shila, samadhi, and prajna—discipline, meditation, and discriminating awareness—we have freedom from egomaniac-ness, freedom from egohood. Beyond that, seeing through our own egomaniac-ness, we give birth to, or awaken, our innate greater existence, which is known as bodhichitta in Sanskrit.

Bodhi,
which is related to
buddha,
literally means “awake.”
Buddha
is a noun;
bodhi
is an epithet or an adjective for awakened ones, or for those who are in the process of awakening.
Chitta
is a Sanskrit word meaning “heart” or, occasionally, “essence.” So bodhichitta is the essence of the buddha, the essence of the awakened ones.

We cannot give birth to the essence of the awakened ones unless we train, to begin with, in meditation practice: the shamatha discipline of mindfulness and the vipashyana discipline of awareness. Beyond that, it is necessary to fulfill the three disciplines of shila, samadhi, and prajna. That is, we know what to do and what not to do.

When we practice shila, samadhi, and prajna, we begin to be aware of the buddha in us. It is not that those principles
produce
buddhalike awareness particularly; we have that essence in us already. But shila, samadhi, and prajna bring us into the actual realization of who we are, what we are, finally.

According to the Buddhist tradition, we don’t get
new
wisdom, nor does any foreign element come into our state of mind at all. Rather, it is a question of waking up and shedding our covers. We have those goodies in us already; we only have to uncover them.

The logic here is, if we have to transplant foreign goodie-ness into our system, it does not belong to us; it remains foreign. Because it is not part of us, it is likely to cease to exist at some point. Sooner or later, our basic nature is bound to reject that foreign transplant in our system. (Maybe this logic doesn’t apply to heart transplants. These days they say if you have a foreign heart transplanted in you, you might live; you might survive.)

But here we are talking about awakening what we haven’t already awakened. It is as if we have been kept in captivity and haven’t been able to exercise our faculties properly; our activities have been controlled by circumstances. Giving birth to bodhichitta in one’s heart, buddha in one’s heart, brings extra freedom. That is the notion
of freedom
in Buddhism, altogether. Of course, when we talk about freedom, we are not talking about overthrowing the head of the state or anything like that: we are talking about freedom from the constriction of our own capabilities.