The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (29 page)

You could work with the five buddha family principles by picking up a piece of stone or a twig and approaching it from each of its five different aspects. With each family, a whole different perspective will begin to develop. At that point, you have limitless resources. You don’t feel obliged to produce ever more materials, because you can take one thing and make it vajra, karma, padma, ratna, or buddha. You can make all kinds of tartan plaids out of that.

1
. Editor’s note: Sometimes the colors of these two families are reversed, in which case buddha is associated with white and vajra with blue.

Nobody’s World

There are three types of perception: the sense of experience, the sense of emptiness, and the sense of luminosity. With those three levels of perception, we are able to see all the patterns of our life. Whether the patterns of our life are regarded as neurotic or enlightened, we are able to see them very clearly
.

I
N RELATING WITH
the world, there are some very tough questions: what is the world, whose world is it, and what does relating mean? The basic point is that this is nobody’s world, since there is nobody as such. The energy that is constantly taking place does not belong to anybody but is a natural, organic process. Nevertheless, we function as if the world does belong to us, as if I have myself, as if I do exist. From this point of view, the nonexistence of ego—that primordial state of thisness or solid fixation—is not a philosophical matter, but simply a matter of perception. Perception is unable to trace back its existence to its origin. So each perception becomes sheer energy, without a beginner of the perception and without substance—just simple perception.

Perception can be categorized into three levels: experience, emptiness, and luminosity. At the first level, experience, perception is not meaningful self-confirmation, but the experience of things as they are. White is white and black is black. There is a kind of exuberant energy that goes along with the perception. You actually experience something as though you were it. You and the experience become almost indivisible when you experience something in that way. It’s that kind of direct communication without anything between.

The second level is the perception of emptiness, which is the absence of things as they are. That is, things have their space; they always come with a certain sense of room. Despite the complexities or the overcrowdedness of our experience, things provide their own space within the overcrowdedness. Actually, that is saying the same thing: overcrowdedness
is
room, in some sense, because there is movement, dance, play. Things are very shifty and intangible. Because of that, there is a very lucid aspect to the whole thing.

The third level of perception is luminosity. Luminosity has nothing to do with any visually bright light but is a sense of sharp boundary and clarity that does not have a theoretical or intellectualized reference point. It is realized on the spot, within the spaciousness. If there were no space, it would be unfocused; there would be no sharpness. But at this third level, in terms of ordinary experience, we have a sense of clarity and a sense of things as they are seen as they are, unmistakably.

So there are three types of perception: the sense of experience, the sense of emptiness, and the sense of luminosity. With those three levels of perception, we are able to see all the patterns of our life. Whether the patterns of our life are regarded as neurotic or enlightened, we are able to see them very clearly. That seems to be the beginning of a glimpse of the mandala perspective and the beginning of a glimpse of the five buddha family energies.

The five buddha energies are not bound to the enlightened state alone; they contain the confused state as well. The point is to see them as they are: thoroughly confused, neurotic, and painful, or extraordinarily pleasurable, expansive, humorous, and joyous. So we are not trying to remove what we perceive, particularly, and we are not trying to reshape the world in the fashion we’d like to see it. We are seeing the world as it is, without reshaping. And whatever comes along in us is a part of the five buddha family principles and the mandala setup.

I would like to remind you that this is a purely experiential approach. We are not talking about philosophy: “Does this thing exist or not?” “Is this a conceptual-level phenomenological experience?” We are not talking about such things. In many cases, the philosophers have gone wrong, so to speak: they have tried to find out the truth about things as they are without experiencing what things as they are might be at the perceptual level. With that approach, we find ourselves completely theorizing the whole thing, without actually knowing what experience we might have.

If we begin to theorize about the existence of the world, its solidity, its eternity, or whatever, we are blocking out a very large chunk of our experience. We are trying to prove too much and trying to build a foundation too much. We are concerned with the solidity of the foundation rather than with its relationship to earth. That seems to be the wrong approach, even to metaphysics. But in this case we are not talking about metaphysics. This is the experiential level, that which we experience in our everyday lives. Such experience doesn’t have to be confirmed by theory or by proof. It does not depend on anything of that nature. Instead, it is just simply a matter of everyday life experience from minute to minute. It does not involve any long-term project.

The question of perception becomes very important, because perceptions can’t be packed down into a solid basis. Perceptions are very shifty, and they continuously float in and out of our life. You might say, “I have seen a beautiful formation of clouds over the Himalayas,” but that doesn’t mean that such clouds will always be there. Even though they may be part of the attributes of the Himalayas, you wouldn’t expect that when you went to the Himalayas you would always see such beautiful clouds. You might arrive there in the middle of the night under completely clear skies. The idea is that when you describe an experience and relay it to somebody else, whatever you perceive at that moment sounds extremely full, vivid, and fantastic. Somehow you manage to relay the experience of the moment. But if you try to recapture the whole thing or to mimic it, it is impossible. You might end up philosophizing, going further and further from the realities, whatever they might be.

There’s a sharp precision that exists in our life, which generally arises from some form of training or discipline, the sitting practice of meditation in particular. It’s not that meditation sharpens our perceptions, but that sitting practice makes it possible to perceive. It’s a question of removing the clouds, rather than recreating the sun. That seems to be the whole point. An experience of reality may seem to be very uncertain and very faint, but however faint it may be, it still is sharp and precise and tends to bring a lot of clarity.

On the whole, such precise perception depends on a level of watchfulness. Watchfulness is not being careful or tiptoeing about; rather, watchfulness is experiencing a sudden glimpse of something without any qualifications—just the sudden glimpse itself. That has become a problem or an enigmatic question. We ask, “A sudden glimpse of what?” If we have nothing to say regarding what it is, then the whole thing must be absurd. But if we could change our thinking style entirely and open our minds toward something slightly more than what we have and what we have been taught, then we could step beyond that level where everything is based on business transactions and profit making. There is a possibility of awareness without any conditions. From this point of view,
conditions
means anything you use to get out of the awareness or steal from it. So awareness without conditions is just simple, straightforward awareness of itself, awareness being aware without putting anything into it.

That kind of perception seems to be the only key point. It is the key perspective or microscope that is able to perceive the three types of perceptions. At that level, the mandala spectrum and the five buddha family principles are no big deal. They are not extraordinary things to perceive, but matter-of-fact. The basic mandala principle becomes very simple: it is that everything is related to everything else. It is quite simple and straightforward.

Choiceless Magic

We are ready for a firsthand account of what’s going on, rather than just listening to stories. Whether we are going to be in Jerusalem next year, the next seder, tomorrow, or the next hour doesn’t really matter—the only thing that matters is whether Jerusalem exists now, at this very moment
.

I
WOULD LIKE TO
discuss the question of magic. Different perspectives on the world make for different understandings of the functioning of phenomena. That seems to be a natural problem or natural working basis. From that basis, we try to find some common ground in which we could work together, by relying on basic principles such as body, speech, and mind; white, black, red, blue, green; heaven and earth; and all the rest of it.

Those personal expressions that take place in our life, like falling in love or being extremely angry with somebody, are fantastic ground to work with. But that ground has not been developed properly and completely. We reject individual fashions of realization, our particular styles. And on that basis, we try to reject or accept the potentiality and possibilities of being suckered into spiritual trips of all kinds.

People say we are all one and talk about the universality of power. But all that is an expression of frustration, based on not being able to accept their individuality. Because of that, they would like to conform themselves to some large body. When poets are having difficulty creating a poem, they write about the sun and the moon, the earth, or national disasters, things that are seemingly somewhat common. But it is very difficult to get hold of one’s individuality; people find that very difficult. Spiritually or otherwise, we do not trust our individuality, and that is one of our biggest problems. We would prefer a monolithic figure, a monolithic governing principle. We use theistic terms like “Our Maker,” to refer to one person, one big granddaddy. And if we have problems relating to that person, we should try harder; we must not give up.

The problem with that approach is that our individuality is completely neglected. That doesn’t mean we should indulge our personal trips, but there should be some awareness that we are all different. We are all basically, intrinsically different. Our fathers, mothers, children, and great-great-grandparents are different from us, and we are even different from ourselves, from that point of view. So there is an awareness of individuality.

Whenever there is a break from conventionally accepted channels of thought, we get frightened. If we break the law, for example, we might be put in an extremely unpleasant situation psychologically or physically. We do not accept our individuality. We would prefer to have a preprepared menu or a travel guide so that we could take the journey without being hassled by our own individuality. But that is problematic: with that approach, magic cannot exist. We simply try to relate with some common factor, the general principles given to us. And we have our ideas of this and that, so we might be included and our ideas proclaimed as part of the categories in that general statement, rather than applying to us. There’s a lot of cowardice taking place. That seems to be a general problem with our state of mind, state of being.

Individuality is quite tricky. When individuality exists, as what we are, there is a sense of confusion, uncertainty, and chaos. But there’s more room to explore the world and experience the given world and its relationship to ourselves personally. We are individual entities who express reality in our own ways. When you see white, it may not be the same white as the editors of my life assume you should perceive as white. And when you see red, it is the same thing. From that point of view, nobody has the right to commit you to the loony bin if your perceptions don’t fit into the general categories according to the books. There is a lot of room for that kind of perspective.

Perceptions are not governed by one statement alone, but by individuals reacting to the basic elements. When individuals react to air, water, fire, space, or earth, they have different responses. Individually, they have different perspectives on all that. Those differences do not become uniform at all—they are ongoing. The magic lies in that individuality. We are relating individually to all kinds of basic things in life that we seemingly share. But we have no idea, exactly. None of us has had a chance to tell each other precisely what our perception of water is like. We could use all kinds of words and ideas and concepts and terms, but that still would not make it clear. They would be somebody else’s concepts.

When great artists leave their works of art behind—writings or pictures or music—we feel we are in contact with such people, but we actually have no idea. If they were to come back to life, they might be insulted or even horrified by our understanding of their work. So the spark, or magic, lies in individuality, rather than uniformity. It is not that we count down to zero and then levitate all together, or turn the world upside down. That would be a comic-strip version of magic. And if a group of individuals commit themselves to an organization, and suddenly everybody gets high, turned on, that is like a living comic strip. It’s very funny, but there’s a great neglect of individuality.

In many cases, we try to avoid our individuality and instead emulate something else. That is a big problem. Individuality sometimes comes out of ego, like wanting to be an emperor, a king, or a millionaire. But individuality can also come from personal inspiration. It depends on the level of one’s journey, on how far you have been able to shed your ego. We all have our own style and our own particular nature. We can’t avoid it. That would be like asking Avalokiteshvara, who is the embodiment of the padma principle of compassion, suddenly to become a ratna person. The enlightened expression of yourself is in accord with your inherent nature.