The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 (62 page)

Q:
It has been said that the Hindu and Buddhist tantras arose simultaneously, that one did not precede the other. Do you think that is accurate?

G:
I think that is correct, yes. They are quite different and probably one could not be derived from the other. The emphasis in the Hindu tantra is on a way of doing, creating. The Buddhist tantra with its theory of prajna, appreciative discrimination, having equal status with upaya, action, has quite a different emphasis. For one thing, the Hindu term
shakti
never appears in Buddhist texts. Those who say it does can never have seen the actual texts. But the idea of shakti is of paramount importance in the Hindu tantra.

The Hindu tantra took over the Samkhhya system of philosophy, which is based on the dualism of purusha, the male factor, and prakriti, the female or shakti factor.
Purasha
is usually translated as “pure mind” and
prakriti
as “matter.” This is not to be understood in terms of the Western division between mind and matter. Mind and matter as conceived of in the West are both in the prakriti.
Purusha
is a fairly useless term; the concept corresponding to it fits nicely into a male-dominance psychology. The purusha, according to the Samkhya system, throws its light on the prakriti, and this starts a process of evolution.

There are some definite difficulties in this conception. The purusha is defined as being ever-present. If this is the case, liberation can never take place—the ever-presence of the purusha means that he throws his light, irritates the prakriti, continuously. Since there is this dominance of the male over the female, and at the same time, everything takes place within the prakriti—all cognition, all action, everything—the system is logically untenable.

Still it has certain good points. The analysis of the prakriti into the three strands, or gunas—sattva, tamas, rajas—can account well for the psychological differences in individuals. Some people are more intelligent, lazy, temperamental than others. This is well accounted for. Metaphysically, however, the system is complete nonsense. It cannot do what it sets out to do, which is provide for the possibility of liberation. It says if a separation between purusha and prakriti takes place, there is liberation; but this is impossible if the purusha is ever-present. This was later understood by the followers of the yoga system of Patanjali. They tried to get out of the difficulty by postulating a super-purusha, an ishvara, a god. But this merely opens the way to an infinite regress. If one is not enough and a second is supposed to be, why not a third, a fourth, a fifth?

Such a set of improbable conceived principles was bound to present such difficulties. The prakriti is said to be unintelligent, but all intelligent processes occur in it. The purusha is said to be pure intelligence, but it doesn’t cognize. This is like saying, “Look, I have a very special book; but this book has no pages, no print, no binding, no cover—but it is a book!”

Q:
What is the movement of this relationship between purusha and prakriti supposed to be and how is it supposed to come to an end?

G:
The prakriti or shakti is utilized by the purusha. The simile is that he asks her to dance and to perform various antics. Then he says, “Now I am fed up with this so stop it.” Then he says, “Now we are free.” This is a bit primitive.

Q:
It is true that the Buddha’s actual words were never recorded?

G:
Yes.

Q:
Would you be able to say anything, then, about how the sutras came about?

G:
After the Buddha died, an effort was made to collect what the Buddha had said. But all the sutras begin with the form “Thus have I heard. . . .” Certainly there must be passages that were remembered correctly, but there are no means of verifying where the texts represent exact words, because none of the material was reported as direct quotation.

Q:
It seems they could never have been the exact words, then.

G:
The tremendous capacity for memory that existed in Eastern culture could counteract the likelihood that all the exact words were lost. The time when they codified and wrote down the Buddha’s teaching was not necessarily the beginning of its preservation. It might have been decided at that point that it was a good idea to write it all down because the oral tradition
might
become disturbed. But up until that point the oral tradition can be said to have been highly exact. Since the words were rehearsed after the death of the Buddha, this is not very doubtful. The words were precious at that point since the Buddha himself was no longer there. It is true that, whereas in some passages the reciter might give the exact words, in other parts he might recite only as he had understood. But this became accepted.

Another point is that the Pali sutras do not contain everything that was preserved in the tradition. The Sanskrit version preserved in the agamas has sections that were left out in the Pali. The Theravada canon definitely reflects a vested interest.

Q:
What would you say is the basic point in the Buddhist view?

G:
One basic thing that must be learned is what is meant by the I or the ego. We must understand this because the ego is the great stumbling block, a kind of frozenness in our being, which hinders us from any authentic being. Traditionally, the Buddhists ask what such an entity could consist of. Is it what we would call our physical aspect? Our feelings, motivations, our thought processes? These are the things we try to identify as ourselves, as “I.” But there are many things that can be pointed out with regard to each one of these identifications to show that it is spurious.

The word “I” has very special peculiarities. We generally assume that this word is like any other; but actually it is unique in that the noise “I” can only issue in a way that makes sense from a person who uses it signifying himself. It has a peculiar groundless quality. “I” cannot apply to anything other than this act of signifying. There is no ontological object which corresponds to it. Nevertheless, philosophies, Oriental as well as Western, have continually fallen into the trap of assuming there is something corresponding to it, just as there is to the word “table.” But the word “I” is quite different from other nouns and pronouns. It can never refer to anyone but the subject. It is actually a shortcut term which refers to a complicated system of interlocking forces, which can be identified and separated, but which we should not identify with.

To undermine the native persistence of the ego notion is one of the first steps in Buddhism, a prerequisite for all further study. Furthermore, we have to see that the various aspects of ourselves that we tend to identify with from moment to moment as “I”—the mind, the heart, the body—are only abstractions from a unitary process. Getting this back into perspective is also a basic step. Once these steps have been taken, a foundation is laid; although in fact for a very long time we must continue to fall back into spurious identification.

This identification also has its objective pole. When we perceive something, we automatically believe that there is something real corresponding to the perception. But if we analyze what is going on when we perceive something, we learn that the actual case is quite different. What is actually given in the perceptual situation are constitutive elements of an object. For example, we perceive a certain colored patch and we say we have a tablecloth. This tablecloth is what is called the epistemological object. But automatically we believe that we have not only an epistemological object, an object for our knowledge, but also an ontological object corresponding to it, which we believe to be an actual constitutive element of being.

But then, on the other hand, we have certain other perceptions, and we say, “Oh, well, there is certainly nothing like this.” If someone has delirium tremens and he sees pink rats, we certainly say there are no pink rats. But here he goes ahead anyhow and tries to catch them—and he behaves toward them as we do toward ordinary objects. In a certain sense, from the Buddhist point of view, we are constantly chasing about trying to catch pink rats. So here the question arises: If one perception is adjudged delusive and the other veridical, what could be the criterion used to make the distinction? All that can be said is that any object before the mind is an object in the mind. Any belief in ontologically authentic objects is based on an assumption which cannot withstand critical analysis.

What we have, then, is a phenomenon which appears as having some reference beyond itself. But our analysis has shown us that this reference is only an apparent one in which we cannot rely as valid. Now this analysis is extremely valuable because it brings us back to our immediate experience, before it is split into subjective and objective poles. There is a strong tendency at this point to objectify this immediate experience and say that this fundamental and unassailable thing we have got back to is the mind. But there is absolutely no reason to posit such an entity as the mind; moreover, postulating this entity again shifts the attention out of the immediacy of experience back onto a hypothetical level. It puts us back into the same old concatenation of fictions that we were trying to get away from.

So there is a constant analysis, a constant observation that must go on, applied to all phases of our experience, to bring us back to this complete immediacy. This immediacy is the most potent creative field that can exist. The creative potential of this field is referred to in the tantric texts as bindu, or in Tibetan, thig-le.

Q:
Is it possible, if one already has a certain experience of life, to start directly on the tantric path?

G:
There’s a certain danger involved in trying to do advanced practices without having the proper foundation. Unless one has actually gone through the preliminary experiences, conclusions may be drawn on the basis of insufficient information. And they may produce just the opposite effect of the one which is intended. Throughout Buddhist history there has been an emphasis placed on learning, learning more from the philosophical point of view. And this begins with seeing.

In traditional Buddhism what is usually learned at the beginning is the four noble truths. But even these basic truths are the product of a long, long process gone through by the Buddha. It was after Buddha had already gone through all the traditionally accepted practices that the moment came which made him the Enlightened One. It was only after this moment that he formulated these four truths.

The Buddha formulated these truths in the inverse order of cause and effect. Usually we think in terms of cause then effect, but these truths are presented here in the order of effect, then cause.

This order of presentation is educationally oriented. First we have to be brought face-to-face with what is there. Then, when we are willing to accept this, we can ask how it comes about. The third Dalai Lama wrote a very beautiful book on the stages of the spiritual path in which he uses an excellent simile to illustrate the nature of this learning process. A man is walking along, very contentedly, complacently, happily. He hasn’t got a worry in the world. Suddenly there comes a great shock and he finds he has been hit by a torrent of cold water. This really gives him a jolt, and he looks right away to see what has happened. Having been brought face-to-face with a certain situation, his intelligence is entirely aroused. And he sees: “Oh yes, the waterpipe broke!” So he has seen the effect, determined the cause, and already he is at the point of the third truth—that there is a way to stop this. The third Dalai Lama goes on to apply this analogy on a much profounder level. First we must see what is there. In order to do this we need constant study. When we have really learned something about it, we automatically come to the point of beginning to practice in relation to what we have learned. There is a long process between my deciding I must be kind to others and the point where I actually am kind to others. Before such kindness becomes a part of us, we must learn a great deal about what there is.

In English there is the saying, “to see eye to eye.” But perhaps more indicative of the actual attitude that exists in the West as the accumulated result of our tradition would be the saying, “to see I to I.” Even if we had the tantric practices, they would be completely useless as long as we maintained this ego-oriented attitude.

In the tantric tradition we have the description of the experience of a brilliant light. It is a sort of formless energy which appears to us as a brilliant light. Now we cannot have this experience of light as long as we are involved with our ego’s escaping the darkness. In fact it is this very ego involvement which blocks the light. So to begin with we must find out about this “I” which enters into and distorts our being. When we have understood what this is and how it has come about, then we can set those energies free which lead to transformation. The transformation to selflessness does not make us merely an amorphous entity, but leads directly to what the late Abraham Maslow called the “peak experience.” Maslow also coined the term “plateau experience,” which can be understood as the continuous extension of the peak experience. I think the plateau experience could be equated with buddhahood, while recurrent peak experiences could be associated with the bodhisattva or arhat.

But as Maslow also pointed out, before we reach these experiences, there is a lot of work to be done. A solid foundation must be laid; otherwise any extraordinary experience we have will be extremely precarious and without ground and the next blast of wind will simply blow it away. We will be right back where we were, except worse off because the rubble of this extraordinary experience will now be in the way. So although there is a great tendency to try some shortcut, unfortunately it simply does not work.

Q:
Is the concept of the alayavijnana somewhat analogous to Jung’s idea of archetypes as potential roots of death, decay, and rebirth?