The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (39 page)

Student:
Is that why paranoia seems to increase as—

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. To some extent you could say that you exist. You think you exist. And your goal exists. But then you find that the existence of your goal needs maintenance, and that maintenance is a painful thing to do, to the point where
your
existence becomes questionable at the same time.

I mean, it’s very simple logic, extremely simple, first-grade level. You distinguish between A and B and C. If you get beyond that, you relate with D, E, and F. It’s that simple. The reason why A is A is because B is something else, and C is something else again, because the B is not the A, and the C is not the B. Then you go on experimenting until you get to the X. None of the letters are the same as the previous ones. They each have different characteristics. And so forth.

Well, perhaps we should stop at this point. Tomorrow, hopefully, we will discuss tantra. But I haven’t asked my boss yet.

Thank you.

FIVE

Overcoming Moralism

W
E HAVE DISCUSSED
the hinayana level represented by the shravakayana and the pratyekabuddhayana and the mahayana level, represented by the practice ideal of the bodhisattva. Last, we discussed the shunyata principle. At this point, instead of discussing the first tantric yana, the kriyayoga tantra, it might be helpful to give an introduction to tantra as a whole. We could get into the details of the six tantric yanas later on.

As has been indicated, the impermanence, suffering, and egolessness that we discover on the hinayana level play an extremely important part, a crucial part, in tantra as well. We cannot deny this. It is important to understand and acknowledge that we are not just transcending hinayana and latching on to the higher hopes of tantra. Likewise, we cannot ignore the bodhisattva’s path, involving the transplantation of bodhichitta into one’s mind and the practice of the six paramitas.
¹
Also the bodhisattva’s understanding of nonduality is quite important.

If seems that we do need these technical understandings in order to understand the buddhadharma. The idea of the buddhadharma is not particularly to make you into professors or scholars as such. Nevertheless, when we discuss big ideas, powerful ideas, those ideas have to have some specific elements to relate with. So tantra is desperately dependent on an understanding of the hinayana and mahayana, always. Some little technical knowledge of the hinayana principles concerning reality and the mahayana’s principles of morality is a basic necessity, absolutely important. If you don’t have any understanding of those, probably you will miss the whole point of vajrayana, or tantra.

People in the West usually think that tantra is concerned purely with pranayama, mudras, visualizations, and so on.
²
They think that’s what tantra is all about, which is not quite true. There’s something more than that.

To begin with, tantra is based on the understanding of who is practicing tantra. Who are we? Who am I? If you asked a tantric practitioner, “Who are you?” he would automatically say, using the same logic developed on the hinayana level, “I am a collection of stuff that actually doesn’t exist, the five skandhas.” This is also the hinayana answer and the mahayana answer. And if you asked the tantric practitioner, “Why are you practicing this path?” he would automatically say, “Because I have surrendered myself, and my work is dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings.” This is a pragmatic combination of both the hinayana (“I’ve surrendered”) and the mahayana (“I’ve decided to dedicate my life to the benefit of all sentient beings”).

The question might be asked? “What is the basic need to go beyond the hinayana and mahayana? Why don’t we stay on in the hinayana and perfect the hinayana? Or why don’t we stay on in the mahayana and perfect the mahayana? What’s the point of going beyond those into another area?” The mahayana practitioner would say, “The perfection of the hinayana is the mahayana; I can’t help it.” And the tantric practitioner would say, “The perfection of the mahayana is the vajrayana; I can’t help it.”

One of the follies of the bodhisattva or mahayana path is that there is still a good intention involved. No matter how much we try to be detached from our good intention, we are still involved with it. There is some sense of a paramitas, of transcending, of reaching the other shore. There is an element of goodness that rejects the sense of energy. Bodhisattvas claim to be the bravest and most powerful warriors of all. But the bodhisattva’s trying to live up to his virtue becomes a hang-up, a problem. Still searching for warriorhood rather than being a warrior becomes a problem. As bodhisattvas, when we sit down to meditate, we’re trying to become good meditators rather than being in the meditation.

There is no pronounced good intention involved in tantra. Nor for that matter a bad intention either, if you’re concerned about that.

We need to say a bit more about the mahayana notion of shunyata, which is discussed in the
Prajnaparamita Sutra
, for example.
Shunya
means “empty,” and
ta
means “-ness.” Shunyata is removing the barrier, the screen, between subject and object. Shunyata, the absence of the screen, is, for the time being, very important, very powerful.

A hinayana school of Buddhist philosophy says that everything is made out of atoms and everything is conditioned by time. Therefore it is impermanent. This atomist philosophy has been challenged by saying that such logic is not necessary. We don’t need deductive logic to prove our point. In order to see the transparency of the world, we do not have to reduce everything to dust [atoms] or moments [atoms of time] necessarily. To do so is in some sense believing in nothingness. It’s believing that things don’t exist because they’re made out of atoms. So what? Still there is some materialism left over [in the belief that the atoms and the moments exist].

Another philosophical school, referred to as pluralists, believes that a mass is a collection, which proves the nonexistence of the mass. All of the elements of the mass are conditioned by time and space. Things don’t exist because the elements depend on a mutual space. And so forth and so on. It gets very complicated to discuss the pluralists’ and atomists’ view of reality.
³

The notion of shunyata cuts through the position of the atomists and pluralists naturally by saying that we don’t have to reduce everything into dust. In order to demonstrate the nonexistence of a table, we don’t have to grind it to dust and then show it: “Look, this is the remains of the table.” We don’t have to do that. There’s something else involved. If you are saying the table doesn’t exist because it wasn’t a table, it was a collection of dust, then you are creating the idea [that something does exist there that isn’t a table]. Then you still have a pattern of fixed belief. The table consists of a pile of dust, garbage.

The shunyata principle in the bodhisattva’s philosophy does not bother to say that. It does not matter whether the table is supposed to be solid or made out of a collection of atoms. That way, you still end up with a table in some form or other no matter what your belief is. But the bodhisattva would say that your belief itself doesn’t exist. The reason your belief doesn’t exist is that it is
you
who believe. Who are you, anyway? You don’t exist in any case. That removes the barrier.

I’m afraid this is a very crude example. Very crude, kindergarten level. But in any case, since you as a fixed, ongoing entity do not exist, the so-called table, as you named it, as you believed it, as you used it, does not exist. Your version of the table does not exist.

So then the question is, what does exist? The barrier exists, the filter [between subject and object] exists. The optical illusion, the eyeglasses you use, do exist—rather than the projection or the projector.

What the shunyata teaching does is tell you that you do not need to have a barrier to name things. You do not need to have an interpreter to tell you what things are named. [The message here is] the nonexistence of the interpreter. Or the folly of the interpreter. [Without the interpreter, you have] no problem with language. You could have a relationship with language, in fact. Just kick out the interpreter—then you don’t speak any language. That’s fine. Then you are really relating with exploring things as they are. The interpreter doesn’t tell you how things are.

So we come up with a very simple, simple-minded conclusion. Kick out the interpreter, then begin to explore. If nobody explains to you what a table is or what its function is, then you begin to explore its tableness—or potness or rockness or flowerness. You begin to explore, to work with things as they are.

That is what is being talked about in the
Heart Sutra
when it says “Emptiness is also form.”
⁴
Form is no different from emptiness—things do exist in their own right without your judgments, preconceptions, and so forth. [When we drop those,] we begin to see in a very direct way, a straightforward, literal way. The colors are not called red, white, blue, but they are as they are. If we don’t name them, conceptualize them, they become much redder, bluer, and whiter, and so forth. That seems to be the idea of the shunyata principle: seeing things as they are.

But there is the problem of the possibility that when you don’t use preconceptions about things as they are, when you reject the whole language and begin to explore the true nature of things, somehow or other you might be reduced to infanthood. You might become like a deaf person who never heard the language, though you still have a relationship with the things you explore. There’s that problem.

That is the problem of nihilism. If you cut down the preconceptions so that there are no ideas, no fantasies, no categorizing, no pigeonholing, there is the possibility that you might end up as a deaf person, a stupid person. (This is a danger from the tantric point of view, by the way.) And there is also the danger [that of eternalism] that you might end up in an absolute, completed, perfected, meditative state in which you don’t care what things are called. You are only relating to what things
are
. Both those are possibilities of raising the ape instinct again. There is that problem.
⁵

Of course the whole thing sounds good and beautiful: You become completely detached from the whole world of preconceptions—there are no concepts, no naming; things are constantly organic, relational. That’s a very intelligent thing. But at the same time, there’s something that does not quite click, shall we say. Things do not quite work ideally in terms of how we function in the world, in the world of human beings. There is that problem with the mahayana way. The whole thing is moralistic. You try to be good, noncategorizing, all perfect—good and great and kind to everybody. You don’t listen to bad language. You do still acknowledge bad language, but you don’t actually listen to it. That seems to be one of the biggest problems with the mahayana approach to reality. That is the biggest problem.

That is precisely the reason why tantra is necessary. As you can see, you have to cut down dualistic trips of all kinds, conceptualized notions of all kinds, all kinds of believing this and that. You have to cut down that whole thing. But then we are left with numbness. And the tantric approach to life from this point of view is to redefine, regenerate the whole thing again: reintroduce duality, reintroduce conceptualization—but at an entirely different level.

You can’t just begin as a tantric practitioner. That is not possible at all. You have to cut down your things. Everything. You have to cut it all down. You have to reduce yourself to numbness. This is absolutely necessary. Having done that, then you regain your perception. Another evolution begins to happen. That is the evolution of what is called energy or power in tantric language.

In the tantric language, we have the idea of
chandali
, which means “ever-present force” or “ever-present energy.” That energy comes in reawakening from the sedations of the bodhisattva’s trip. You awaken again, but still you have been cured of your dualistic problems. [You awaken to the notion that] duality is necessary. Samsara is necessary. In fact, tantric literature often talks about the sameness or indivisibility of samsara and nirvana. That means that some relationship is taking place that raises your intelligence after the devastating detachment, the devastating sweep, of mahayana. You have to regain energy from somewhere, which is from buddha nature.

So this reawakening fundamentally involves raising the principle of buddha nature, tathagatagarbha, as well as reintroducing the three marks of existence: suffering, impermanence, egolessness. But now they manifest in an entirely different light. Now suffering manifests as an adornment, energy; impermanence as a consort, to dance with; and egolessness as the basic strength to be. The whole thing is interpreted from an entirely different angle. But it is still in keeping with the understanding of life developed on the hinayana level.

Suffering is energy. Impermanence is a consort to dance with. And egolessness is a way to be. This becomes an extremely powerful tantric statement.

One of the founders of our lineage, Naropa, was a great student and scholar of the hinayana and mahayana. But he found that something was lacking in him. He had to give up his [monastic] robe and involve himself again with a teacher. He had to do all kinds of undesirable things that his teacher asked him to do. You can read about all that in Guenther’s
Life and Teaching of Naropa
. You will find the details there. It’s a very good book to read; worth reading if you are interested in tantra. You can find out more there about the outrageousness of the teaching—that nirvana is identical with samsara. That’s one of the phrases that tantric teachers used:
khorde yerme
in Tibetan. That’s a very powerful statement.