The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (23 page)

Filming. Unknown location
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COLOR PRINT BY HERB ELSKT, EARLY 1970S. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

Necklace for Lady Diana Mukpo. Designed by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in collaboration with Gina Stick
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PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN, EARLY 1970S. ORIGINAL PRINT SUPPLIED BY GINA STICK. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

Spontaneous calligraphy. Dharma Art Seminar, Boulder, Colorado
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PHOTO BY ROBERT DEL TREDICI, 1980.

Flower exhibit, Denver
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PHOTO BY ROBERT DEL TREDICI, 1980.

Placing reeds. Flower exhibit, Denver
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PHOTO BY ROBERT DEL TREDICI, 1980.

Lichen. “This is a piece of rock with lichen on it. It’s another overcrowded, ratna situation, which provides some kind of space at the same time. It’s like the view I have of all you people from up here. There are not very many gaps—you almost cover the whole floor, and I regard that as space.”

35-MM SLIDE BY CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE, 1974. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

Construction site. “You might say that this photograph is a typical example of aggression. Everything in the picture goes on in its own way without admitting any little suggestions, and everything in it is prefabricated except the grass. Nevertheless, it could also be a point of gentleness. There are no trips involved in scenery like this. There is natural beauty, natural sloppiness, and natural chaos.”

35-MM SLIDE BY CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE, 1974. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

Formal garden. Designed by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in collaboration with Kanjuro Shibata Sensei. GES Building, Boulder, Colorado
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PHOTO BY LIZA MATTHEWS. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

Garden. Los Angeles Environmental Installation
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35-MM SLIDE BY ANDREA ROTH, 1980. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

Library. Los Angeles Environmental Installation
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35-MM SLIDE BY ANDREA ROTH, 1980. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHAMBHALA ARCHIVES.

New Sight

Symbolism is a question of gaining new sight. It is being extremely inquisitive to see things in their own nature
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S
YMBOLISM IS A QUESTION
of gaining new sight. It is being extremely inquisitive to see things in their own nature, not always wanting to change things. The opposite of symbolic vision is resentment, fear, and too much philosophy. You want to change the whole world. You want to hang the picture upside down, but somehow that doesn’t work. The Sheratons, Holiday Inns, delicatessens, and restaurants are still there. It is all still there, completely solid and definite. If you take one attitude toward it, the whole thing is absolutely humorless and rigid. It doesn’t mean anything; it’s the same bad old life, which gives you shivers in your system. You have had problems all your life dealing with things as they are, which are not so good. But you could take a different attitude, seeing things as they are in their own value, in their own spaciousness.

Basically, what we perceive is a square world that has a ceiling, walls, and floor. It is the same as seeing through a camera lens. There are perspectives of all kinds. To begin with, there is space above—the ceiling or heaven. Some people want to think there is something above the ceiling, called a loft. All sorts of people live up there and conduct business downward. And some people think that there is something behind the wall: your neighbors, cities, highways. Then you have the floor, and maybe downstairs there is a cellar, or the heart of the earth where a lot of hot things are going on. It might explode at any time. That’s a possibility someday, I suppose. So we are living in a square world.

Even if we are outside of our house, we still are living in a square world. In this case, when we look up and see the ceiling, it’s called the sky. We look around us and see the mountains or buildings. We look down and see streets or paths. That world is usually what we see. We would like to have somewhere to lean back and take a rest, chairs with backrests and arms we can lean on. Then we have the front, in which we could launch our projects. But we still have the ceiling. We would like to keep a ceiling and a roof both, as shelter from rain, hail, and snowfall. In other words, we are living in a box, and our vision is a box.

Photographs are also boxlike. We have a square camera with a square perspective, and as we wind our film we see one square after another. That squareness seems to be our general frame of reference. But we don’t have to be too concerned with that squareness—we could dance with it. Let’s view that corner, this corner, this corner and that corner. Above we could allow lots of space; at the bottom we could allow a lot of solidity; on the sides we could play with how we view our world. If the world is pushing us to the left or the right, we could go along with that. As long as we don’t fight, there’s no problem. We could have the right invading our left; that’s okay, that’s a nice picture. If the left is invading our right, that also makes a nice picture.