The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (16 page)

At this point I am talking about the artists, rather than the perceivers of art alone. Traditionally, it is a long and arduous process to produce and manufacture art. For instance, to make paint, somebody has to grind vermilion stone in order to make the color vermilion; somebody has to collect greenery in order to make green; somebody has to grind and work with deposits in a cave in order to make blue; somebody has to collect deposits on the earth in order to make orange. Somebody has to work with the soot coming out of bark or the sap of trees to make ink. Everything is made in that way. Before you get into your fancy work as artists, you have to know the pain and the misery, or maybe deny it, that is involved in producing such a work of art. Take the example of the flowers we use in flower arranging. They do not just bloom in heaven and God just shoves them down to us. They need earth, soil, lots of manure, and the protection of the weather, so that finally we have a beautiful chrysanthemum, beautiful irises.

From the modern American point of view, you can just go to the store and buy things and pick them up. That is not quite a good attitude, let alone elegance. People have to realize how things are made and produced, how they happen to be so beautiful, so lovely. Once something is at its best, its fruition, we tend to neglect that. But we are just starting with spring at this point, we haven’t even gone through a summer, let alone autumn. We are far from harvesting. I could say that quite safely. Whether you are the greatest artist who has already made your name and made a good contribution to the world, or at the beginner’s level, we have to realize how difficult it is to start the whole thing. We have to work with the ground, path, and fruition levels together. That is not a particularly easy thing to do.

We really have to drop the idea that if we are driving for a long time on the highway and we get tired and the signpost says, “Food, lodging, and blah-blah-blah,” we can turn off and check into a motel, go to sleep, eat food, have a good time, and go on the next day. We can’t always use our world like that. We have to have some respect for the people who work hard on such situations. We cannot simply say, “Things are fine, convenient; therefore I might as well take advantage of it, as long as I have money.” Usually places charge based on how much work they put in and, according to that, how much production they have achieved. But we don’t think about that, particularly. As ordinary, regular, naive people, in fact, we might tell our friends, “Such-and-such a motel is cheaper than such-and-such a motel.” Why is it cheaper? It is cheaper because they worked with prefabrications. At the more expensive hotels, it was more difficult, because they put in more effort and energy to make their place splendid and good. We ignore so much of our practicality.

The medieval world produced fantastic works of art, as you know: music, painting, instruments, and everything. In the medieval world, some of the greatest artists were only known to be great artists after they died, because when they were living, they worked so organically, trying to put things together. When the fruition of their work came along, they were so pleased and satisfied; but at the same time, their energy ran out and they died. So even though you might have talent at an early stage of life, like Mozart, nonetheless art is still a manual process. Everything has to be manual and realistic. Then you discover the elegance and beauty, because you begin to realize how much energy and exertion it takes to manufacture or display the best of the best. That is what it takes for breathtaking music and breathtaking paintings to happen at the fruition level. You don’t have that right at the beginning.

If you want to become an artist and you want to have the best of everything, you can’t just have it. You have to start by paying attention to reality. You need to learn to eat properly, to cook properly, to clean your house or your room, to work with your clothes. You need to work with your basic reality. Then you go beyond that, and you begin to have something much more substantial. And beyond that, you actually begin to produce a master artistic world altogether. That is the same as in my tradition of Kagyü Buddhism. It is long and arduous; you can’t become suddenly good at something. Of course, it is possible that overnight you come up with a good gadget, a good idea; the next day you patent that and begin to manufacture it, and suddenly you become a multimillionaire. That could happen. But we do not regard that as a true way of doing things. We are bypassing a lot of training, discipline, and reality. And often, when people produce a good work of art in that way and make a lot of money suddenly, they end up committing suicide, dead. Just like Marilyn Monroe.

We have to be honest, real, and very earthy, and we need to really appreciate things as they are. They are so beautiful and wonderful already, but in order to appreciate that, it takes time and discipline—so much discipline.

Great Eastern Sun

You wait for the good moment—the infamous first thought—but nothing happens. There is a thought of giving up the whole thing, or else trying to crank something up artificially. But neither of those things works. Then you sort of become distracted by something else—and when you come back, there it is!

I
NVOLVING OURSELVES
with visual dharma seems to be very straightforward: working with oneself, working with others, and working with oneself and others together. Working with oneself brings the realization of one’s own elegance. Working with others means trying to develop delight in others. And the two together, elegance and delight, bring a basic sense of richness and goodness, which is known as Great Eastern Sun vision. Obviously, you must know by this point that a work of art brings out the goodness and dignity of a situation. That seems to be the main purpose of art altogether.

Great Eastern Sun terminology is used quite a lot in the Shambhala tradition, which is very ancient, and it is also applicable to the present. The three principles of Great, East, and Sun have specific meanings.
Great
means having some kind of strength, energy, and power. That is, we are not fearful or regretful in presenting our expressions or our works of art—or, for that matter, in our way of being. That power is absolutely fearless. If we were cowardly, we would have a problem in trying to handle an object, or even thinking of touching it or arranging it, much less in arranging our life or our world. We would be afraid to do any of that. So the absence of that fear is fearlessness, which develops out of delight. We are so delighted that we spontaneously develop that kind of strength and energy. Then we can move freely around our world without trying to change it particularly, but just expressing what needs to be expressed or uncovering what needs to be uncovered by means of our art.

East
is the concept of wakefulness. The direction in which we are going, or the direction we are facing, is unmistakable. In this case, the word
East
is not necessarily the geographical direction. Here, it means simply the place you see when you can open your eyes and look fearlessly ahead of you. Since this East is unconditional, it does not depend on south, west, or north. It is just unconditional East as basic wakefulness.

Then we have the third category, or Sun.
Sun
has a sense of all-pervasive brilliance, which does not discriminate in the slightest. It is the goodness that exists in a situation, in oneself, and in one’s world, which is expressed without doubt, hesitation, or regret. The Sun represents the idea of no laziness, and the Sun principle also includes the notion of blessings descending upon us and creating sacred world. The Sun also represents clarity, without doubt.

Those three categories are the nature of Great Eastern Sun. We could say that they are trying to bring us out and to uncover the cosmic elegance that exists in our lives and in our art. In contrast, the notion of
setting sun
is that of wanting to go to sleep. Obviously, when the sun sets, you go to sleep. You want to go back to your mother’s womb, to regress, appreciating that you can hide behind dark clouds. That is to say, there is no bravery; it is complete cowardice. At the same time, there is struggle: you do not want to step out of this world completely; you are still trying to survive, still trying to prevent death. So the setting-sun world is based on a psychological attitude of fear. There is constant fear, and at the same time it is deliberately suicidal.

We have a lot of examples of setting-sun art. Some of them are based on the principle of entertainment. Since you feel so uncheerful and solemn, you try to create artificial humor, manufactured wit. But that tends to bring a tremendous sense of depression, actually. There might be a comic relief effect for a few seconds, but apart from that there is a constant black cloud, the black air of tormenting depression. As a consequence, if you are rich you try to spend more money to cheer yourself up—but you find that the more you do, the less it helps. There is no respect for life in the setting-sun world. The only respect you can find there is in the brotherhood of human beings who are trying to combat death with the wrong end of the stick. I’m afraid at this point I have to be biased; there’s nothing positive I can say about setting sun at all. But that actually helps, in that we can see black and white clearly and properly, so there is no doubt whatsoever.

Obviously, Great Eastern Sun vision does not mean that the good people have to win all the time in plays or films. It is not all that simple-minded. For instance, in the Buddhist tradition, there’s a series of stories about the Great Bodhisattva being eaten and recycled, so there is no problem there. That seems to be okay. And the same thing could be said about the Bible, which contains the crucifixion and resurrection, but still continues that vision. So the question of Great Eastern Sun versus setting sun is not so much whether somebody physically wins a victory, but whether psychologically that sense of vision is continued.

The three categories—Great, East, and Sun—are categories of awaking or arising. But I should mention that there is a difference between rising sun and Great Eastern Sun. Rising sun is like a baby; there is potential. The Great Eastern Sun is fully developed, a fully matured sun, whereas the rising sun is an infant sun. So the idea of Great Eastern Sun is to be fully confident and fully developed, full speed ahead. The Buddhist analogy is that buddha nature exists in you, fully developed. You don’t have to try to bring buddha nature into you, but you are already fully awake, on the spot.

The Great Eastern Sun principle has three additional categories or attributes. The first is a quality of
peace
. It is permeated with confidence and dignity, that is, nonaggression. The essence of a good work of art is absence of aggression. Sometimes you might find the elegance and dignity so overwhelming that it’s threatening, but that has nothing to do with any aggression that exists in that work of art. It is just that you are so cowardly that you get frightened. So you shouldn’t regard such an overwhelmingly splendid presentation as aggression.

The second category of the Great Eastern Sun principle is known as
showing the path
. That is, the artist begins to develop some sense of discriminating-awareness wisdom in picking and choosing between wholesome and unwholesome situations. We are not just being naive and accepting everything, but some discrimination takes place, which shows the path from the point of view of Great Eastern Sun vision. This showing of the path could be regarded as first thought best thought. First thought best thought is not necessarily a chronological event. Quite possibly, the first thought might be the worst thought, chronologically speaking. In this case, first thought refers to that thought which is fresh and free.

In the beginning, there is some kind of gap. After the gap, there is an expression of that gap, which is first thought. It is not particularly vague; rather, it is very definite, extremely definite. And it has discriminating capabilities. For instance, when you have your paper and ink and brush, and you project your Great Eastern Sun vision, at first nothing might come into your mind. You might think that you are running out of inspiration. You wait for the good moment—the infamous first thought—but nothing happens. There is a thought of giving up the whole thing, or else trying to crank something up artificially. But neither of those things works. Then you sort of become distracted by something else—and when you come back, there it is! The whole thing exists there. That little flicker of gap brings you to first thought. Then you have the confidence and dignity to execute your brushstroke, your calligraphy, or your painting. And the same thing could apply to musicians or photographers, or to any artist. So showing the path is a guideline of how to see these situations on the spot, on the “first thought best thought” level.

The third category is
victory over the three worlds
. That is somewhat mysterious sounding, but we have to look at the concept of victory. Usually victory seems to mean being able to beat somebody, becoming the best either by sheer pressure, sheer one-upmanship, or sheer knowledge. But from the Great Eastern Sun point of view, the concept of victory is a natural sense of existence that provides no need for challenge, so no enemies exist. Since there is no regret and no laziness, you begin to appreciate the sacredness of the world. Everything is complete and extremely wholesome, so there is no problem. The threefold world is the world of heaven, the world of earth, and the world that joins heaven and earth together, which is your physical body, your speech, and your psychological state of mind. So there is victory over the neuroses of all those realms.

To summarize, the concept of Great Eastern Sun vision is threefold. First is having a sense of goodness in yourself. Second, having some sense of decency in yourself already, you can project that to your audience, your clientele, or the world in general. In that way a tremendous trust is established: goodness, decency, and trust. Third, because all of that has been established, therefore you can create what’s known as
enlightened society
—by works of art, by basic sanity, and also by artists beginning to practice sitting meditation. Needless to say, we have to slip that in somewhere.