The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (58 page)

The second quality of devotion is absence of arrogance. The arrogant approach is to be so passionately involved with our teacher that we become devotional chauvinists and cease to see the rest of the world properly. In fact, we become passionately involved with our own arrogance. We indulge our “devotion” by collecting information, techniques, stories, little words of wisdom—all to confirm our chauvinistic view. It actually reaches a point that the teacher upon whom our arrogance is based himself becomes a threat. The absurdity is that we even end up wanting to use our collection of ammunition against our teacher when he begins giving our “devotion” a hard time.

If our devotion is without arrogance there is not this resentment toward the world or the guru. Absence of such arrogance is absolutely necessary. When courting a teacher, students frequently make a sort of detailed application, listing all their insights and spiritual credentials. That is too arrogant; it is phony, out of the question altogether. It is fine to offer our particular skills or neuroses to the guru as a gift or an opening gesture. But if we begin to dress up our neuroses as virtues, like a person writing a resumé, that is unacceptable. Devotion without arrogance demands that we stop clinging to our particular case history, that we relate to the teacher and to the world in a naked and direct way, without hiding behind credentials.

Buddhism has three levels of development: hinayana; mahayana; and vajrayana, or tantra. Initially, at the hinayana level, devotion is very definite and very direct. The formula of devotion is what is known as taking refuge. One takes refuge in the Buddha as an example; in the dharma, or teaching, as a way of life; and in the sangha, or fellowship of practitioners, as companionship.

At this level the inspiration for devotion arises from a sense of being trapped in the whirlpool of samsara—of being filled with pain, dissatisfaction, and neurosis. Not only are we in that state, but there is the further frustration that however much we try to get out of that state, our too-speedy, too-desperate attempts only make our situation more hopeless. The traditional analogy for this is that of an elephant who feels very hot in the tropical sun and, wanting to bathe in some cool water, jumps into a mud hole. The more he moves around the more he sinks. At the beginning it seems very pleasurable, but when two-thirds of his body has sunk into the mud he begins to panic. He struggles more and more to get out, but it is too late.

Like the elephant, we try to rescue ourselves from our frustration, but the more we try to pull ourselves out the more we sink in. We feel completely helpless. It sometimes reaches the point of feeling that we have made a complete mess out of our lives. What are we to do if we do not get what we want? What are we to do when we have already gotten what we wanted? Even if we have had some success, what are we to do when things still go on after that? We are always back at square one. Our master plan has cheated us. There seems to be no alternative to frustration and confusion. It is this situation that is the inspiration to take refuge. At some point, instead of merely trying to struggle within ourselves, we feel that perhaps we ought to look around and try to find someone to rescue us. Taking refuge in the Buddha as an example means identifying with a person who was able in one lifetime to attain enlightenment and save himself. Since somebody has already done it, perhaps we could do the same thing.

Since we are in an emergency situation, the first thing we learn is that our struggle to pull ourselves out of samsara has to be given up. Being engaged in a struggle may give us some sense of security, in that at least we feel we are doing something. But that struggle has become useless and irrelevant: it only makes things worse. However, the pain we have experienced in our struggle cannot be forgotten. We have to work with it. Rather than struggling to escape pain, we have to make it our path. It then becomes a rich resource for learning. Relating to our pain in this manner is taking refuge in the dharma.

The sangha is composed of the people who follow such a path. We respect those who have undertaken the journey—those who have been able to get out of the mud—as well as our companions, who are working like ourselves. It is not a matter of leaning on others to avoid facing our loneliness. Rather, by taking refuge in the sangha, we acknowledge our aloneness, which in turn becomes an inspiration to others.

The hinayana approach to devotion is not directed toward attaining a sense of emotional security. It is purely a response to an emergency. If we have been hurt in a car accident, we need an ambulance to take us to the hospital. When such an emergency arises, the hypothetical comforts of a successful journey are remote. The only thing we need is for the ambulance to come and fetch us. It is very alarming; we are completely stuck. So devotion in the hinayana is based on the desire to be rescued from the hopeless and chaotic situation in which we seem to dwell continually.

It should be clear at this point that those who become involved with the teaching in this way are quite different from spiritual shoppers who have the luxury of drifting from one involvement to another. For those who are really engaged in working on themselves, there is no time to shop around. They are simply concerned with getting some basic treatment. They have no time for philosophizing or analysis: they are stuck. Help is desperately needed because the pain is so intense.

Psychologically, there seems to be a basic difference in honesty between the hinayana practitioner, who acknowledges the urgent need for a rescuer, and the dilettante spiritual shopper. Spiritual shoppers might acknowledge that there is a problem, but they feel the problem can be patched over until they can get service to their liking. Spiritual shopping is a naive and simplistic version of the fantastic project of spiritual materialism—a project which simply creates and perpetuates suffering in its attempt to achieve egohood. Spiritual shoppers are looking for entertainment from spiritual teachings. In such an approach devotion is nonexistent. Of course, if such shoppers visit a store where the salesman has a tremendous personality and his merchandise is also fantastically good, they might momentarily feel overwhelming trust of some kind. But their basic attitude is not desperate enough. Their desperation has been concealed or patched over, so they make no real connection with the teaching. However, their patchwork is bound to fall apart, and in the midst of that chaos they will have no choice but to come to terms with their desperation. That is the point of emergency out of which the rudiments of genuine devotion arise. Desperation becomes very straightforward.

But what happens after we already have been treated for our pain—when our basic problems have been dealt with and we can afford to relax a little bit? Although our initial symptoms have been cured, our particular medical service may now appear not to be totally ideal, and we may begin to look for a better one. We can once again afford the luxury of shopping for the last word in spirituality, and devotion may be forgotten. We may even begin to develop a sense of resentment toward our teacher, feeling that he has interfered in our business and undermined our dignity. Once we have regained our strength—or hypocrisy—we tend to forget the kindness and generosity of the rescuer, and the compassionate acts he performed. Now that we are no longer stupid, unworthy persons looking for a rescuer, we may feel resentful of having been seen in that abject position. At that point, there is a need for eye-level communication, for a friend rather than a teacher. But how do we bridge the gap between the notion of a rescuer and that of a spiritual friend?

On the hinayana level our condition was similar to that of a patient in an emergency room. There was no point then in being personally introduced to the physician or in trying to be polite. However, when we have recovered from our operation, there is the possibility that the person who performed the operation may take a further interest in us because he has learned a great deal about us during the course of our treatment. He also happens to like us tremendously. But there is the difficulty that as we recover we may resent his interest. We do not want to be intimidated by having our case history recalled.

At that point it is very hard to make a connection, but it is absolutely necessary. It is not like ordinary medical practice in which the doctor can transfer our case to someone else. The person we ran into in the emergency room has to carry on with us until real, fundamental, basic sanity has developed.

Now the notion of surrendering is very important. The greatest gift we can make is to open and expose ourselves. We have to show our physician our secret ailments. Still, the physician keeps calm and quiet and goes on liking us, however repulsive our secret ailments may be. So our relationship with the physician is ongoing.

So the second stage of devotion, on the level of mahayana, comes from discovering our teacher as a spiritual friend, or kalyanamitra in Sanskrit. The guru becomes a friend with whom we can communicate completely in the sense of communication between equals. But at the same time this particular friend is rather heavy-handed: he minds our business.

On the mahayana level, devotion is based on the feeling that we are, up to a point, worthy persons capable of receiving the teachings. Our inspiration, insights, pain, and neuroses all constitute us as good vessels. Our neuroses and pain are not regarded as bad, nor, for that matter, are our virtues regarded as good. Both are just the substance of the vessel. There is an overall sense of trust—a sense of warmth and compassion toward ourselves in that all our aspects can be included in the relationship with the spiritual friend. And devotion to the spiritual friend is complementary to that development of trust in ourselves: devotion at this point is no longer directed toward an external object alone. This attitude of nonaggression toward oneself and others is central to the bodhisattva path, which is at the heart of mahayana Buddhism.

Aggression manifests toward others as pride and toward oneself as depression. If we get fixated in either of these extremes we become unsuitable vessels for the teachings. The arrogant student is like a container turned upside down; he is completely unreceptive to anything coming from outside himself. And the depressed student is like a container with holes in it; since he feels nothing will help he does not heed anything. It is not that before forming a relationship with a spiritual friend we have to become ideal vessels. That would be impossible. But if we have an occasional glimpse of that attitude of nonaggression—a positive attitude toward ourselves, without arrogance or pride—then that creates the possibility of our spiritual friend communicating with us directly.

The first obstacle to devotion at this point is negativity toward ourselves; we judge ourselves too harshly. The usual response to depression, to feeling unworthy of the teachings, is to try to change completely, by making a one hundred percent improvement. We set up a kind of totalitarian regime with the aim of making ourselves into perfect individuals without any faults whatsoever. Whenever we begin to notice our faults peeking through, our automatic reaction is to feel that our journey is being delayed and our perfection challenged. So we try to prune ourselves. We are willing to impose all sorts of discipline on ourselves, punishing our bodies and our minds. We inflict pain on ourselves through stringent rules of all kinds. We may go so far as to seek some magical cure for our shortcomings, since in moments of clarity we realize we cannot handle ourselves. This totalitarian approach seems to be falling once more into the pitfall of spiritual materialism, of trying to make oneself perfect.

The second obstacle to devotion is a further form of arrogance. The student may have received some glimpse of the teachings, and some preliminary sanity may have already developed in him; but then he starts taking liberties. He has too much trust in his own home-brewed potion, too much trust in do-it-yourself projects: “I have developed myself to this level, and I have achieved a lot of the things that I wanted to achieve. I’m sure that I don’t have to go through the embarrassment of regarding someone as my spiritual friend any more. I can study the appropriate books and learn how to brew the spiritual medicines myself.”

It is true than in some sense Buddhism can be described as a do-it-yourself process. The Buddha himself said, “Work out your own salvation with diligence.” So it seems clear that, to a certain extent, salvation is up to us and we cannot really get help from outside. There is no magical gimmick that will solve our problems for us without pain. But while there is no possibility that such external magic or divine powers will save us, a spiritual friend is still necessary. Such a friend might only tell us that doing it ourselves is the only way, but we have to have someone to encourage us to do that and to show us that it can be done. Our friend has done it himself, and his predecessors in his spiritual lineage have done it as well. We have to have this proof that the spiritual path is not a gigantic hoax but a real thing, and that there
is
someone who can pass on the message, the understanding, the techniques. And it is necessary that this friend be a human being, not an abstract figure that can be manipulated by our wishful thinking; he is someone who shares the human condition with us and who works with us on that level. He must have a direct and very concrete understanding of us personally in order for there to be a proper connection. Without that, we are unable to receive any real teachings, any real benefit.

In relating to the spiritual friend, at the same time that we trust ourselves and consider ourselves worthy vessels, there should also be some sense of hopelessness. At this point hopelessness does not mean despair, but simply a loss of interest in manufacturing further expectations. Ordinarily, we live in our world of expectations, which we embellish constantly. Hopelessness means being willing to live nakedly in the moment, without the reference point of our expectations. Expecting good fortune or bad fortune is like believing in fortune cookies: it is just entertaining ourselves with expectations. Chaos might arise or development and creativity might arise—either situation is possible—but in communicating with a spiritual friend we are not looking ahead; we are directly involved in the very moment. The spiritual friend does not exist as a dream of the future, like an arranged marriage that is yet to be consummated. The spiritual friend is right there in front of us—six inches away. He is right there. Whatever image we present to such a friend is immediately reflected back to us. That is why the spiritual friend is referred to as heavy-handed: he minds our business. He has no shyness of himself or us. Just being right there, he minds our business totally.